Organizational Behavior

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Placing the right people in the right role lets companies innovate and grow. But there’s no surefire way of getting the perfect fit. Some companies are turning to big data to solve this problem; some go with the gut to find creativity and judgment. Beth Axelrod, eBay’s head of human resources, explains how the company goes about finding and retaining the talent it needs.

Managers are most likely to grant flextime to men in high-status jobs who request it to pursue career development opportunities, according to a new study by Professor Victoria Brescoll. Women, regardless of their status within a firm or their reason, are less likely than high-status men to be granted a schedule change.