Browsing HBS Theses and Dissertations by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 83
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Accuracy, Timeliness, and Managers’ Discretion of Fair Value Pricing: Evidence From the Banking Industry
(2018-05-23)This paper investigates how recent institutional developments impact the potential channels, and thus available discretion, by which managers can manipulate reported fair values. First, I use extensive field research to ... -
Behavioral Drivers of Process Deviations and the Effects on Productivity and Quality: Evidence From the Field
(2018-05-23)This dissertation provides empirical evidence from high-stakes field settings of how productivity and quality are affected by workers' deviations from prescribed processes. The first essay of the dissertation explores the ... -
Branding in the New World: How Accessible Information, Social Media, and Changing Values Impact Symbolic Consumption
(2020-06-29)Consumers attitudes towards products and brands are rapidly changing. The democratization of luxury has made products of quality more available and the internet has facilitated access to information that was previously not ... -
Collective Job Crafting: How Groups Shape Their Identity and Work Over Time
(2020-11-03)The rising levels of ambiguity, uncertainty, and dynamism organizations face today prompt groups and their members to step outside of the boundaries of their formal job descriptions in order to fulfill the shifting demands ... -
Competing Globally: Institutional Voids in Emerging Markets
(2016-05-13)This dissertation addresses institutional development in emerging economies, as well as its implications on firm strategy. Specifically, as emerging markets are characterized by “institutional voids”, that is, the absence ... -
Complexity, Contract Design and Incentive Design in the Construction Management Industry
(2015-05-26)In this paper I examine how one construction management company uses contract design and incentive design to respond to aspects of task complexity and relationship complexity present in its construction projects. In terms ... -
Consumer Behavior in Close Relationships
(2021-05-18)My dissertation is composed of three papers examining consumer decision-making in the context of close, personal relationships. Countless consumer decisions, from small (e.g., bringing soup to a sick friend) to large (e.g., ... -
The Continuum of Choice: Essays on How Consumer Decisions Are Made, Changed, and Perceived
(2016-05-13)This research investigates the continuum of choice—unseen, unanticipated causes and consequences of consumer decisions. Three essays investigate hidden factors that influence the choices we make, subtle ways to affect ... -
Customer Acquisition, Engagement, and Retention in Online Advertising
(2020-06-29)Online advertising continues to evolve at a rapid as the internet and the digital marketing landscape mature. Firms face new challenges in acquiring, engaging and retaining customers. Entire new markets and technologies ... -
Decisions and Dynamics in the Upper Echelons: Implications for Firm Governance, Strategy, and Performance
(2019-05-30)This dissertation examines how individuals in the upper echelons of the organization – namely, the board of directors, CEO, and top management team – shape firm governance, strategy, and performance. This dissertation ... -
The Digital Commons: Tragedy or Opportunity? The Effect of Crowdsourced Digital Goods on Innovation and Economic Growth
(2015-05-26)The classic economic concept of the tragedy of the commons occurs when individuals overuse a public good, resulting in the complete depletion of the good. Comparatively, in the digital world public goods are non-rival and ... -
Director Heterogeneity and its Impact on Board Effectiveness
In the first section of the dissertation, I examine whether boards that are heterogeneous along six dimensions--age, gender, race, tenure, rank, and function--perform their most critical tasks better than boards that are ... -
Does Compliance Training Decrease Corporate Misconduct? Evidence From Field Data
(2020-06-29)Firms spend significant resources on compliance training, but it is often criticized as being cosmetic. Using proprietary records on compliance training and allegations of misconduct from a large multinational firm, I ... -
Does Privacy Make Groups Productive?
Transparency is one of the great cross-disciplinary themes of management and organizations today. Increases in transparency, or accurate observability, of activities, routines, behaviors, strategies, output, and performance ... -
Donations and Differentiation: Three Essays on Non-Profit Strategy
(2016-05-13)Given increased competition with for-profit firms, the issue of the comparative advantage of non-profit organizations is renewed. While non-profits may want to differentiate themselves when faced with additional non-profit ... -
Dynamic Problem Solving for Breakthrough Innovation: The Case of a Social Robot
(2018-10-04)This dissertation consists of four chapters that propose a novel theoretical framework for understanding organizational creativity and innovation that I call dynamic problem solving. Previous scholars have proposed extensive ... -
Emotion-Sourced Variation in Service Operations
(2020-06-29)While multiple literatures suggest that emotion shapes behavior and satisfaction in experiences, there has yet to be a concerted effort to explicitly consider human emotion – whether from customer or employee -- as a source ... -
Engaging Supply Chains in Environmental Initiatives: Adoption and Information Sharing
This dissertation consists of three papers that analytically and empirically explore how to better engage firms and supply chains in environmental sustainability initiatives. Together, these papers contribute to the ... -
Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Nascent Industries
This dissertation explores the activities entrepreneurs undertake when launching ventures and innovating in new or nascent industries. Actors in nascent industries can play a vital role in shaping the future. Yet the ... -
Essays in Financial Accounting Standard Setting
This dissertation consists of three essays that explore the financial accounting standard setting process. In the first, I examine the extent to which the FASB's agenda determination is a function of the contemporaneous ...