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- Spring 2023
- Article
Incentive Contract Design and Employee-Initiated Innovation: Evidence from the Field
By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin
This study examines how the design of incentive contracts for tasks defined as workers’ official responsibilities (i.e., standard tasks) influences workers’ propensity to engage in employee-initiated innovation (EII). EII corresponds to innovation activities that are...
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- December 2022
- Article
Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market
By: Yanhui Wu and Feng Zhu
A growing number of people today are participating in the gig economy, working as independent contractors on short-term projects. We study the effects of competition on gig workers' effort and creativity on a Chinese novel-writing platform. Authors produce and sell...
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- October 2022
- Case
Colette Phillips and GetKonnected!: Creating Inclusive Ecosystems
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Amy Chiu and Joyce Kim
Colette Phillips’ marketing firm had just won the City of Boston’s 2nd largest contract in history to a Black-owned company. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Get Konnected!, the networking organization for people of color that she founded 15 years earlier and led to...
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Keywords:
Diversity;
Ecosystem;
Inclusion;
People Of Color;
Network;
Racial Bias;
Gender Bias;
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem;
Entrepreneur;
Change;
Change Barriers;
Change Leadership;
Community;
Innovation;
Pandemic;
Impact;
Systemic Racism;
Minority-owned Businesses;
Social and Collaborative Networks;
Equity;
Race;
Small Business;
Prejudice and Bias;
Boston
- October 2022
- Article
A Structural Model of Organizational Buying for Business-to-Business Markets: Innovation Adoption with Share-of-Wallet Contracts
By: Navid Mojir and K. Sudhir
The paper develops the first structural model of organizational buying to study innovation diffusion in a B2B market. Our model is particularly applicable for routinized exchange relationships, whereby centralized buyers periodically evaluate and choose contracts,...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
The Impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act on the U.S. Economy
By: Joe Long, Carlo Medici, Nancy Qian and Marco Tabellini
This paper studies the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration to the United States after 1882, across U.S. counties between 1870 and 1940. We find that the Act reduced labor supply for both the Chinese and other groups (i.e., white and...
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- Article
Policies to Influence Perceptions about COVID-19 Risk: The Case of Maps
By: Claudia Engel, Jonathan Rodden and Marco Tabellini
Choropleth disease maps have become an important tool for informing the public about the risks posed by COVID-19. In a survey conducted in the U.S. state of Georgia in June 2020, we randomly assigned respondents to view either of two maps. The first one reported...
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- January 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Teaching Note
Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language
This case explores the growth of Ureed, an online marketplace for translation services that is powered by a workforce consisting of remote freelancers who are based in the United Arab Emirates. Nour Al Hassan, the founder and CEO faced the challenge of how best to...
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- October 2020 (Revised April 2022)
- Case
When Institutions Fail: HIV/AIDS in the 1980s
By: Tom Nicholas and Christian Godwin
During the early 1980s, young gay men in urban centers such as San Francisco and New York City began contracting a mysterious illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis meant almost certain death, with a less than 1% survival rate. Conflicting...
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Keywords:
Ethics;
Policy;
Government and Politics;
Health Pandemics;
History;
Rights;
Media;
Organizations;
Business and Community Relations;
Religion;
Social Psychology;
Identity;
Prejudice and Bias;
Social Issues;
Public Opinion;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
Biotechnology Industry;
Health Industry;
Journalism and News Industry;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
Public Administration Industry;
United States
- March 2020 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Culture at Google
By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Amy Klopfenstein and Sarah Mehta
Beginning in 2017, technology (tech) company Google faced a series of employee-relations issues that threatened its unique culture of innovation and open communication. Issues included protests surrounding Google’s contracts with the U.S. government, restrictions of...
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Keywords:
Human Resources;
Employee Relationship Management;
Recruitment;
Retention;
Resignation and Termination;
Labor;
Working Conditions;
Employment;
Labor Unions;
Wages;
Law;
Lawsuits and Litigation;
Rights;
Ethics;
Values and Beliefs;
Fairness;
Organizations;
Organizational Culture;
Mission and Purpose;
Social Psychology;
Attitudes;
Behavior;
Conflict Management;
Trust;
Motivation and Incentives;
Prejudice and Bias;
Power and Influence;
Information Technology;
Internet and the Web;
Information Infrastructure;
Society;
Social Issues;
Culture;
Civil Society or Community;
Demographics;
Diversity;
Ethnicity;
Gender;
Race;
Technology Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
California
- March 2020
- Article
Which Early Withdrawal Penalty Attracts the Most Deposits to a Commitment Savings Account?
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Harris, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Jung Sakong
Previous research has shown that some people voluntarily use commitment contracts that restrict their own choice sets. We study how people divide money between two accounts: a liquid account that permits unrestricted withdrawals and a commitment account that is...
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- January 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Crisis at the 11th Hour
A successful lawyer describes an important decision she had to make as a young attorney about whether to disclose information in a contract.
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- 2010
- Article
Budgeting, Psychological Contracts, and Budgetary Misreporting
By: Susanna Gallani, Ranjani Krishnan, Eric J. Marinich and Michael D. Shields
This study examines the effect of psychological contract breach on budgetary misreporting. Psychological contracts are mental models or schemas that govern how employees understand their exchange relationships with their employers. Psychological contract breach leads...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Incentive Power and Knowledge Sharing Among Employees: Evidence from the Field
By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin
There is consensus, both in the literature and in practice, about knowledge sharing within organizations being a key determinant of success. However, organizations struggle to sustain employees’ engagement in knowledge sharing. One challenge lies in the fact that,...
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Keywords:
Organizational Knowledge Sharing;
Employee Driven Innovation;
Innovation Appropriability;
Contract Design;
High-powered Incentives;
Low-powered Incentives;
Incentives;
Pay-for-Performance;
Rank-and-file;
Employees;
Knowledge Sharing;
Innovation and Invention;
Motivation and Incentives;
Creativity;
Performance
- July 31, 2017
- Article
A Commitment Contract to Achieve Virologic Suppression in Poorly Adherent Patients with HIV/AIDS
By: Marcella Alsan, John Beshears, Wendy S. Armstrong, James J. Choi, Brigitte C. Madrian, Minh Ly T. Nguyen, Carlos Del Rio, David Laibson and Vincent C. Marconi
Objective: Assess whether a commitment contract informed by behavioral economics leads to persistent virologic suppression among HIV-positive patients with poor antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence.
Design: Single-center pilot randomized clinical trial and a...
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- 2017
- Chapter
Innovation Policies
By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
Past work has shown that failure tolerance by principals has the potential to stimulate innovation, but has not examined how this affects which projects principals will start. We demonstrate that failure tolerance has an equilibrium price – in terms of an investor’s...
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- April 2015
- Article
Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers
By: Shawn Cole, Martin Kanz and Leora Klapper
This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk assessment and lending decisions. We first show that while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable...
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- June 2013
- Case
Ron Ventura at Mitchell Memorial Hospital
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Heide Abelli
Mitchell Memorial Hospital is a 750-bed regional academic medical center in Ohio. Andy Prescott, Chief of the Cardiovascular Center, is reviewing the performance evaluations of his star vascular surgeon Ron Ventura. The evaluations, the result of a 360-degree...
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- November 2012
- Article
Empirical Observations on Longer-term Use of Incentives for Weight Loss
By: Leslie K. John, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp
Behavioral economic-based interventions are emerging as powerful tools to help individuals accomplish their own goals, including weight loss. Deposit contract incentive systems give participants the opportunity to put their money down toward losing weight, which they...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Innovation Policies
By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
Past work has shown that failure tolerance by principals has the potential to stimulate innovation, but has not examined how this affects which projects principals will start. We demonstrate that failure tolerance has an equilibrium price ― in terms of an investor's...
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- Article
Employee Selection as a Control System
By: Dennis Campbell
Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study...
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