Organizational Behavior
Reinventing the Way We Work—Again
The pandemic changed where we work and how we work, how we think about the place of work in our lives and vice versa—all against a backdrop of rapid technological change, economic upheaval, and a reckoning with racism. We talked with Yale SOM's Heidi Brooks about how to have necessary conversations about a new experience of work.

For U.S. Army, Improving Mental Health Care Meant Breaking Down Barriers Between Teams
The study suggests that for many organizations, assigning professionals from one team as points of contact to members of another—while they still maintain close ties to their own peers—may help resolve conflicts.
Three Questions: Prof. James Baron on Amazon’s New Minimum Wage
We asked Prof. James Baron, an expert in human resources and labor markets, what Amazon’s $15 minimum wage would mean for workers there and at other companies.
Three Questions: Prof. Marissa King on the Cost of Loneliness
There is increasing evidence that isolation has a powerful negative effect on health and productivity. We asked Yale SOM’s Marissa King, an expert on social networks, how we can reinforce the connections that help sustain us.
The Agony and Ecstasy of the Gig Economy
Should the so-called gig economy be called the roller coaster economy? Yale SOM's Amy Wrzesniewski, an expert in how we experience work, investigated the lives of independent workers and found that they experience dramatic emotional highs and lows.
Can Better Teamwork Save Lives?
By gathering and analyzing real-time data about how team members interact, researchers investigated whether a care coordinator can improve outcomes—and in the process, learned just how delicate team dynamics can be.
Three Questions: Prof. Marissa King on How the Opioid Epidemic Spreads
We asked Yale SOM’s Marissa King, an expert in social networks who has studied the spread of drug addiction, what is driving the opioid crisis and how it can be addressed.
Do Organizations Implement the Best Crowdsourced Ideas?
Many companies use crowdsourcing in search of new ideas. But in a video interview for ESMT’s Knowledge series, Professor Linus Dahlander says that organizations seeking crowdsourced ideas end up sticking with the most familiar ones.
Can Low-Hanging Fruit Drive Earnings Growth?
Jeremy Eden ’86 and Terri Long, co-CEOs of consulting firm Harvest Earnings, argue that organizations ignore ways to significantly grow earnings because of “behaviors that limit what we know and how we think.” Their solution starts with asking lots of questions.
How Do Leaders Advance Sustainability in Complex Organizations?
Sustainability leaders often have to interact with a wide range of stakeholders with varied interests and incentives. They need to figure out the best way to engage, communicate, prioritize, and implement—in other words, to persuade. According to a panel of sustainability executives, that can mean sidestepping the language and baggage of sustainability entirely.
How Do You Hire When Everything Keeps Changing?
How do companies with rapidly evolving business plans and a constantly shifting competitive landscape hire the right people for tomorrow, let alone next year? While education and training still matter, Laszlo Bock, head of people operations at Google, says that the company looks for people with the ability to learn, solve problems, and step in when leadership is needed.