Negotiation, Organizations & Markets

- Article
Using Fresh Starts to Nudge Increased Retirement Savings

By: John Beshears, Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi

We conducted a field experiment to study the effect of framing future moments in time as new beginnings (or “fresh starts”). University employees (N=6,082) received mailings with an opportunity to choose between increasing their contributions to a savings plan immediately or at a specified future time point. Framing the future time point in relation to a fresh start date (e.g., the recipient’s birthday, the first day of spring) increased the likelihood that the mailing recipient chose to increase contributions at that future time point without decreasing their likelihood of increasing contributions immediately. Overall, fresh start framing increased retirement plan contributions in the eight months following the mailing. Our findings represent the first experimental demonstration of the benefits of fresh start framing in a consequential field setting.
- Article
Using Fresh Starts to Nudge Increased Retirement Savings

By: John Beshears, Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi

We conducted a field experiment to study the effect of framing future moments in time as new beginnings (or “fresh starts”). University employees (N=6,082) received mailings with an opportunity to choose between increasing their contributions to a savings plan immediately or at a specified future time point. Framing the future time point in...
- October 15, 2021
- Article
Virtuous Victims

By: Jillian J. Jordan and Maryam Kouchaki

How do people perceive the moral character of victims? We find, across a range of transgressions, that people frequently see victims of wrongdoing as more moral than non-victims who have behaved identically. Across 15 experiments (total n = 9,355), we document this Virtuous Victim effect and explore the mechanisms underlying it. We also find support for the Justice Restoration Hypothesis, which proposes that people see victims as moral because this perception serves to motivate punishment of perpetrators and helping of victims—and people frequently face incentives to enact or encourage these “justice-restorative” actions. Our results validate predictions of this hypothesis, and suggest that the Virtuous Victim effect does not merely reflect (i) that victims look good in contrast to perpetrators, (ii) that people are generally inclined to positively evaluate those who have suffered, or (iii) that people hold a genuine belief that victims tend to be people who behave morally.
- October 15, 2021
- Article
Virtuous Victims

By: Jillian J. Jordan and Maryam Kouchaki

How do people perceive the moral character of victims? We find, across a range of transgressions, that people frequently see victims of wrongdoing as more moral than non-victims who have behaved identically. Across 15 experiments (total n = 9,355), we document this Virtuous Victim effect and explore the mechanisms underlying it. We also find...
- October 13, 2021
- Editorial
How Companies Can Improve Employee Engagement Right Now

By: Daniel Stein, Nick Hobson, Jon M. Jachimowicz and Ashley Whillans

A year and a half into the pandemic, employees’ mental “surge capacity” is likely diminished. Managers must take proactive steps to increase employee engagement, or risk losing their workforce. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in organizations longer. The authors created this Employee Engagement Checklist: a distilled, research-based resource that practitioners can execute on during this critical period of renewed uncertainty. Use this checklist to boost employee engagement by helping them connect what they do to what they care about, making the work itself less stressful and more enjoyable, and rewarding them with additional time off, in addition to financial incentives.
- October 13, 2021
- Editorial
How Companies Can Improve Employee Engagement Right Now

By: Daniel Stein, Nick Hobson, Jon M. Jachimowicz and Ashley Whillans

A year and a half into the pandemic, employees’ mental “surge capacity” is likely diminished. Managers must take proactive steps to increase employee engagement, or risk losing their workforce. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in organizations longer. The authors created this Employee Engagement Checklist: a...

About the Unit

The NOM Unit seeks to understand and improve the design and management of systems in which people make decisions: that is, design and management of negotiations, organizations, and markets. In addition, members of the group share an abiding interest in the micro foundations of these phenomena.

Our work is grounded in the power of strategic interaction to encourage individuals and organizations to create and sustain value (in negotiations, in organizations, and in markets). We explore these interactions through diverse approaches: Although many of us have training in economics, we also have members with backgrounds in social psychology, sociology, and law.

NOM seeks to apply rigorous scientific methods to real-world problems -- producing research and pedagogy that is compelling to both the academy and practitioners.

Recent Publications

Using Fresh Starts to Nudge Increased Retirement Savings

By: John Beshears, Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi

Article |
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

We conducted a field experiment to study the effect of framing future moments in time as new beginnings (or “fresh starts”). University employees (N=6,082) received mailings with an opportunity to choose between increasing their contributions to a savings plan immediately or at a specified future time point. Framing the future time point in relation to a fresh start date (e.g., the recipient’s birthday, the first day of spring) increased the likelihood that the mailing recipient chose to increase contributions at that future time point without decreasing their likelihood of increasing contributions immediately. Overall, fresh start framing increased retirement plan contributions in the eight months following the mailing. Our findings represent the first experimental demonstration of the benefits of fresh start framing in a consequential field setting.

Keywords: Choice Architecture; Randomized Field Experiment; Savings; New Beginning; Fresh Start; Saving; Retirement; Behavior

Citation

Find at Harvard

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Virtuous Victims

By: Jillian J. Jordan and Maryam Kouchaki

October 15, 2021 |
Article |
Science Advances

How do people perceive the moral character of victims? We find, across a range of transgressions, that people frequently see victims of wrongdoing as more moral than non-victims who have behaved identically. Across 15 experiments (total n = 9,355), we document this Virtuous Victim effect and explore the mechanisms underlying it. We also find support for the Justice Restoration Hypothesis, which proposes that people see victims as moral because this perception serves to motivate punishment of perpetrators and helping of victims—and people frequently face incentives to enact or encourage these “justice-restorative” actions. Our results validate predictions of this hypothesis, and suggest that the Virtuous Victim effect does not merely reflect (i) that victims look good in contrast to perpetrators, (ii) that people are generally inclined to positively evaluate those who have suffered, or (iii) that people hold a genuine belief that victims tend to be people who behave morally.

Keywords: Moral Judgment; Restorative Justice; Punishment; Compensation; Person Perception; Moral Sensibility; Judgments; Perception

Citation

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How Companies Can Improve Employee Engagement Right Now

By: Daniel Stein, Nick Hobson, Jon M. Jachimowicz and Ashley Whillans

October 13, 2021 |
Editorial |
Harvard Business Review (website)

A year and a half into the pandemic, employees’ mental “surge capacity” is likely diminished. Managers must take proactive steps to increase employee engagement, or risk losing their workforce. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in organizations longer. The authors created this Employee Engagement Checklist: a distilled, research-based resource that practitioners can execute on during this critical period of renewed uncertainty. Use this checklist to boost employee engagement by helping them connect what they do to what they care about, making the work itself less stressful and more enjoyable, and rewarding them with additional time off, in addition to financial incentives.

Keywords: Employee Retention; Employee Engagement; Employee Relationship Management; Work-Life Balance

Citation

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Don't Get It or Don't Spread It: Comparing Self-interested versus Prosocial Motivations for COVID-19 Prevention Behaviors

By: Jillian J. Jordan, Erez Yoeli and David Rand

2021 |
Article |
Scientific Reports

COVID-19 prevention behaviors may be seen as self-interested or prosocial. Using American samples from MTurk and Prolific (total n = 6,850), we investigated which framing is more effective—and motivation is stronger—for fostering prevention behavior intentions. We evaluated messaging that emphasized personal, public, or personal and public benefits of prevention. In initial studies (conducted March 14–16, 2020), the Public treatment was more effective than the Personal treatment, and no less effective than the Personal+Public treatment. In additional studies (conducted April 17–30, 2020), all three treatments were similarly effective. Across all these studies, the perceived public threat of coronavirus was also more strongly associated with prevention intentions than the perceived personal threat. Furthermore, people who behaved prosocially in incentivized economic games years before the pandemic had greater prevention intentions. Finally, in a field experiment (conducted December 21–23, 2020), we used our three messaging strategies to motivate contact-tracing app signups (n = 152,556 newsletter subscribers). The design of this experiment prevents strong causal inference; however, the results provide suggestive evidence that the Personal+Public treatment may have been more effective than the Personal or Public treatment. Together, our results highlight the importance of prosocial motives for COVID-19 prevention.

Keywords: COVID-19; Prevention; Prosocial Motivation; Health Pandemics; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives

Citation

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Diversifying P&G’s Supplier Base (B)

By: Kris Ferreira, Kym Lew Nelson, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Sarah Mehta

October 2021 |
Supplement |
Faculty Research

This (B) case accompanies the (A) case of the same title.

Keywords: Business Ventures; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Business Organization; Family Business; Joint Ventures; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Race; Fairness; Ownership; Consumer Products Industry; Service Industry; United States; Ohio

Citation

Diversifying P&G’s Supplier Base (A)

By: Kris Ferreira, Kym Lew Nelson, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Sarah Mehta

October 2021 |
Case |
Faculty Research

In February 2003, P&G hosted two meetings—one with its largest woman- and minority-owned suppliers and one with its largest non-minority-owned suppliers. Attendees in each meeting heard the same message: P&G was keen to grow its commitment to inclusive supply chains, but felt hamstrung by the limited scale and scope of its existing woman- and minority-owned suppliers. It was up to the attendees to determine how to work together to meet P&G’s needs. Otherwise, the consumer packaged goods giant would be forced to look outside its home city of Cincinnati, Ohio, for diverse suppliers at scale. This case tells the story of how Carl Satterwhite, president and co-owner of Infinity Services, a minority-owned furniture installation business, and J. Scott Robertson, president and owner of Globe Business Interiors (GBI), a non-minority-owned office furniture company, responded to P&G’s call.

Keywords: Business Ventures; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Business Organization; Family Business; Joint Ventures; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Race; Ethics; Fairness; Ownership; Consumer Products Industry; Service Industry; United States; Ohio

Citation

Educators

A (Dynamic) Investigation of Stereotypes, Belief-Updating, and Behavior

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Basit Zafar and Paola Ugalde Araya

Working Paper |
Faculty Research

Many decisions – such as what educational or career path to pursue – are dynamic in nature, with individuals receiving feedback at one point in time and making decisions later. Using a controlled experiment, with two sessions one week apart, we analyze the dynamic effects of feedback on beliefs about own performance and decision-making across two different domains (verbal skills and math). We find significant gender gaps in beliefs and choices before feedback: men are more optimistic about their performance and more willing to compete than women in both domains, but the gaps are significantly larger in math. Feedback significantly shifts individuals’ beliefs and choices. Despite this, we see substantial persistence of gender gaps over time. This is particularly true among the set of individuals who receive negative feedback. We find that, holding fixed performance and decisions before feedback, women update their beliefs and choices more negatively than men do after bad news. Our results highlight the challenges involved in overcoming gender gaps in dynamic settings.

Citation

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Unshrinking the Pie: Desirée Stolar's Negotiation Saga (A)

By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green

October 2021 |
Case |
Faculty Research

When Desirée (“Des”) Stolar’s wool sweater shrank two sizes, the Harvard Business School student worked with classmates to develop a solution that both fixed her problem and launched Unshrinkit, a successful consumer goods company with a widely-available product for reversing wool shrinkage. Stolar’s path to success would eventually include an appearance on the hit television show Shark Tank and an investment offer from billionaire Mark Cuban. But along the way she encountered several challenging negotiations—over equity allocations, supplier and manufacturer terms, with skeptical potential investors, business and legal deal teams, etc.—that threatened to derail her efforts. Unshrinkit (A) tells the story of Unshrinkit while stopping at six crucial "negotiation challenges” that call for students to articulate how they would approach each challenge. Unshrinkit (B) reveals the strategies, tactics, and mindsets by which Stolar approached these challenges. This provides instructors and students with opportunities to compare their proposed advice with what Stolar actually did—as well as to draw broader lessons from her saga.

Keywords: Bargaining; Startups; Negotiation; Contracts; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

Citation

Educators

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