Ethan Bernstein (@ethanbernstein) is an Assistant Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Business School. He teaches the first-year MBA course in Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD), a PhD course on the craft of field research, and various executive education programs including Global Strategic Management. His teaching and research address topics related to leadership, global collaboration and teamwork, design thinking, and learning in organizations. Professor Bernstein’s work has been published in journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Harvard Business Review, Research on Organizational Change and Development, Cornell Law Review, and the Stanford Journal of Law, Business, and Finance, and it has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, NPR, Inc., Forbes, Fast Company, Businessweek, MSNBC’s Bottom Line, Yahoo! Finance, Esquire, United Hemispheres, Nikkei Business, Nikkei Shimbun, Le Monde, Maeil Business (Korea), and TEDx Boston, among others. He is a 2014 HBR McKinsey Award Finalist, and his research has won awards including the inaugural J. Richard Hackman Dissertation Award, the Academy of Management’s 2013 Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior award, the Academy of Management’s 2013 Best Publication in Organization and Management Theory award, the Academy of Management's 2014 Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in Organizational Behavior award, the Academy of Management's 2014 Best Paper Based on a Dissertation Award, the INGRoup 2014 Best Paper award, the 2013 Fredric M. Jablin Doctoral Dissertation Award from the International Leadership Association, the HBS Wyss Award, and the Susan G. Cohen Doctoral Research Award. In his current research, Professor Bernstein examines how, and under what conditions, privacy makes groups more productive—and specifically how the sharing of information across and within boundaries affects learning, innovation, and organizational performance. In a world obsessed with transparency, his findings suggest that boundaries may sometimes provide unanticipated benefits and be an underutilized managerial performance lever. Put differently, attention matters for performance, and boundaries can be strategically important in directing it. Professor Bernstein earned his doctorate in management at Harvard, where he also received a JD/MBA degree. While a doctoral student, he was a Kauffman Foundation Fellow in Law, Innovation, and Growth, and he remains a member of the New York and Massachusetts Bar Associations. He holds an AB in Economics from Amherst College, which included study at Doshisha University in Kyoto. Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Bernstein spent a half-decade at The Boston Consulting Group in Toronto and Tokyo. Tapped by Elizabeth Warren to join the implementation team at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he spent nearly two years in executive positions, including Chief Strategy Officer and Deputy Assistant Director of Mortgage Markets, at the newest United States federal agency. In addition to his organizational behavior courses, Professor Bernstein has taught a wide range of topics and students, including Accounting and Finance in the HBS MBA Analytics program, Operations at the Samsung Premier Leadership Development Program, Economics at Harvard College, and the Business Leadership Program at HBS. Professor Bernstein is a self-declared culinary adventurer and avid cyclist, runner, skier, reader, and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me listener. Originally from Los Angeles, he lives in Newton with his wife, Maly (HBS MBA 2006), and young son. Featured Work
Beyond the Holacracy Hype The Overwrought Claims—and Actual Promise—of the Next Generation of Self-Managed Teams Holacracy and other forms of self-organization have been getting a lot of press. Proponents hail them as "flat" environments that foster flexibility, engagement, productivity, and efficiency. Critics say they're naive, unrealistic experiments. We argue, using evidence from a multi-year research agenda at several mainstream organizations that have adopted these forms, that neither view is quite right. Although the new forms (built upon on a half-century of research on and experience with self-managed teams) can help organiztaions become more adaptable and nimble, most companies shouldn't adopt their principles wholesale. A piecemeal approach usually makes sense. Organizations can use elements of self-management in areas where the need for adaptability is high, and traditional models where reliability is paramount.
The Transparency Trap 2014 HBR McKinsey Award Finalist To get people to be more creative and productive, managers increase transparency with open workspaces and access to real-time data. But less transparent work environments can yield more-transparent employees. Employees perform better when they can try out new ideas and approaches within certain zones of privacy. Organizations allow them to do that by drawing four types of boundaries: around teams of people (zones of attention), between feedback and evaluation (zones of judgment), between decision rights and improvement rights (zones of slack), and for set periods of experimentation (zones of time). By balancing transparency and privacy, organizations can encourage just the right amount of “deviance” to foster innovative behavior and boost productivity.
The Transparency Paradox A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control Using data from embedded participant-observers and a field experiment at the second largest mobile phone factory in the world, located in China, I theorize and test the implications of transparent organizational design on workers’ productivity and organizational performance. Drawing from theory and research on learning and control, I introduce the notion of a transparency paradox, whereby maintaining observability of workers may counterintuitively reduce their performance by inducing those being observed to conceal their activities through codes and other costly means; conversely, creating zones of privacy may, under certain conditions, increase performance. Empirical evidence from the field shows that even a modest increase in group-level privacy sustainably and significantly improves line performance, while qualitative evidence suggests that privacy is important in supporting productive deviance, localized experimentation, distraction avoidance, and continuous improvement. I discuss implications of these results for theory on learning and control and suggest directions for future research.
Facts and Figuring An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces When it comes to solving problems, we find that the connectedness enabled by transparent, open collaboration is a double-edged sword. Problem-solving involves both the search for information (facts, or puzzle pieces needed to solve a problem) and the search for solutions (figuring, or interpretations of those facts into theories and ultimately solutions). Connectivity among collaborators allows coordinated information gathering, so that facts are found more efficiently. But it also allows coordinated interpretations of those facts into solutions (otherwise known as copying!), leading to a premature, suboptimal consensus. As we explain in much more detail in the paper, leading effective problem-solving teams thus requires flexibility in how collaboration is structured at different phases of the process.
PublicationsBernstein, Ethan, Saravanan Kesavan, and Bradley Staats. "How to Manage Scheduling Software Fairly." Harvard Business Review Blogs (September 2, 2014). (A version of this article appeared in the December 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review under the title "Taming Scheduling Software.") View Details
Lazer, David, and Ethan Bernstein. " Problem Solving and Search in Networks." Chap. 17 in Cognitive Search: Evolution, Algorithms, and the Brain, edited by Peter M. Todd, Thomas T. Hills, and Trevor W. Robbins, 269–282. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. View Details
Bernstein, Ethan, and Ryan Buell. "Trouble at Tessei." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 616-031, October 2015. (Revised December 2015.) View Details
Research SummaryRESEARCH SUMMARY Overview by Ethan S. Bernstein Professor Bernstein’s research is currently focused on the relationship between transparency and productivity in organizations. He seeks to understand how observability affects learning, innovation, and performance—for both the observer and the observed.
In the name of collaboration, organizations have striven for transparency in the workplace, literally tearing down walls in an effort to let managers and employees observe each other. Despite transparency’s broad appeal (at least to the observer), we know very little about how transparent observation—by managers, peers, subordinates, customers, the public—impacts performance.
What if there’s a downside to all of this transparent observation? For example, when observed, we tend to put pressure on ourselves to meet the expectations of our observers—something we can do in a multitude of ways with different consequences for productivity.
Drawing on field experiments, laboratory experiments, and qualitative field work, this developing body of research, representing collaborations across faculties and institutions, is increasingly finding a home in the organically emerging HBS “Transparency Lab.” Below are selected contributions by Professor Bernstein (past and forthcoming) to that growing body of research. Keywords: Privacy; Transparency; Field Experiments; Lab Experiments;Manufacturing; Organizational Learning; Operational Control; Chinese Manufacturing; Interpersonal Communication; Design; Governance; Governance Controls; Government Administration; Innovation and Invention; Law;Management; Organizations; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture;Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance; Groups and Teams;Networks; Social and Collaborative Networks; Strategy; Theory; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; Service Industry; Consulting Industry; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Bicycle Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Video Game Industry;Retail Industry; Legal Services Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States;China; Japan; Taiwan; Korean Peninsula; Europe RESEARCH SUMMARY Transparency, Organizational Learning, and Operational Control: Do Zones of Privacy Make Us More Productive? by Ethan S. Bernstein Transparency, or accurate observability, of an organization’s low-level activities, routines, behaviors, output, and performance provides the foundation of both organizational learning and operational control. Yet, in a world obsessed with transparency, Professor Bernstein’s first significant finding was that boundaries to transparent observation may sometimes provide unanticipated benefits, and may in fact be an underutilized managerial performance lever. Using data from embedded participant-observers and a field experiment at the world’s second-largest mobile phone factory (located in China), he found that transparency on the factory floor systematically reduced workers’ performance by 10 to 15 percent as they concealed their activities through codes and other costly means. This finding indicates that creating zones of privacy may, under certain conditions, increase performance. In addition, in a curious phenomenon Professor Bernstein defines as the “transparency paradox,” he finds that less transparent work environments can yield more transparent employees. Those results have been replicated in an increasingly wide range of contexts—from technology companies to retail organizations to knowledge work. By balancing workplace transparency and privacy, organizations can avoid the “transparency trap” by encouraging just the right amount of “deviance” to foster innovative behavior and boost productivity. Successful companies do this by creating four specific types of privacy boundaries: around teams of people (zones of attention), between feedback and evaluation (zones of judgment), between decision rights and improvement rights (zones of slack), and for set periods of experimentation (zones of time). On-going research continues to dive deeper into how to most productively implement these zones of privacy. RESEARCH SUMMARY Transparency and Problem Solving: Does Privacy Improve Problem Solving in Networked Search? by Ethan S. Bernstein If you wanted to design an organizational structure to optimize problem-solving prowess, how would you do it? Would you design perfect transparency (everyone observing everyone), or would you include boundaries for individual or sub-team privacy? In a set of problem-solving lab experiments involving a Clue-like mystery game, Professor Bernstein and his colleagues asked individuals in 16-person organizations to solve problems, recording both their activities and their performance (individually and collectively). Different 16-person organizations solved the same problems but under different degrees of transparency and with varying success. In the end, boundaries played an important role in performance. For example, transparency benefited fact-finding but hindered the process of accurately interpreting those facts develop correct theories/answers. Professor Bernstein continues to explore how the structure of communication networks can affect the balance between innovative and imitative thinking. Understanding this dynamic is the first step in balancing the need for the system to share information rapidly so that individuals have all the information necessary to solve the problem, and the need to preserve a diversity of theories among participants in order to make the interpretation of information effective. RESEARCH SUMMARY Transparency and Creative Knowledge Work by Ethan S. Bernstein We have assumed that taking down walls in high-value, high-talent workplaces like architectural firms, biotech laboratories, and health-care operations will improve output by generating more interdisciplinary collaboration. The results above, however, suggest there may be hidden costs to interdisciplinary transparency. When observed, human beings tend to try to meet the expectations of those observing them, and yet in these creative, knowledge-intensive environments, it may be the most unexpected, weird-looking idea that solves a dilemma or saves a life. What is the net effect? Do these environments work the same or differently than the manufacturing and problem-solving environments above? RESEARCH SUMMARY Transparency and “Flat” Self-Governed Organizations by Ethan S. Bernstein An increasing number of organizations, including several recently in the press, are adopting “flat,” manager-less, self-governed organizational structures. When hierarchy is flattened and bureaucracy is dissolved, peer observation can become far more important as a governing constraint. Does transparency, in the absence of hierarchy, yield organizations that operate innovatively, effectively, and efficiently, or does it recreate the worst of high-school cliques within adult organizations? When implemented correctly, these organizations can be highly successful, but initial research suggests that “correctly” involves some degree of well-designed boundaries to transparency. RESEARCH SUMMARY Transparency and Labor Scheduling by Ethan S. Bernstein Fundamentally, organizations consume inputs and, through a set of processes, produce outputs. Historically, organizational transparency meant observing the inputs and the outputs. Technological advances in workplace transparency have significantly enhanced management’s ability to look into the black box of the “processes” by instrumenting intermediate work activity, often under the rubric of what Ben Waber has termed “people analytics” (Waber, 2013). As managers adopt tools to more closely observe activity (rather than outcomes), they drive deeper into what was previously considered private. What are managers doing with all of that data? That’s the key question. That debate is getting particularly hot in the area of labor scheduling, where Professor Bernstein and his colleagues are increasingly conducting a multi-organization research study. Our preliminary results suggest that the success of scheduling systems depends upon whether it serves as a tool for or against the workers. In many ways, data-driven scheduling software is attractive to retailers because it gives them unprecedented transparency. But the ultimate success of these systems depends on this same transparency being available to employees as well. Additional field experiments on this topic are currently underway. Keywords: Labor Scheduling; Transparency RESEARCH SUMMARY Transparency and Service Operations by Ethan S. Bernstein In modern organizations, customer service associates find themselves being watched by both customers and managers. How much does observation of customer service associates by managers (who do not have direct contact with the customer) improve or reduce levels of customer service? How much does observation by customers (who do not have direct contact with organizational leadership and policies) improve or reduce levels of customer service? Research is currently in-progress to investigate both of these questions.
TeachingTEACHING INTEREST Overview by Ethan S. Bernstein Professor Bernstein teaches Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD). This course focuses on how managers become effective leaders by addressing the human side of enterprise. The course is divided into five modules: - Leading Teams: In a world where most problems faced by organizations are too complex for a single individual to tackle alone, leadership frequently involves forming, mandating, and managing teams. And yet teams are fickle. Even as teams become more and more common at all levels of organizations, a shocking number of them fail to live up to their potential or even deliver at all. Small differences in the leadership of teams can have large consequences for the success of their efforts. In six class sessions, we build an understanding of how leadership of team identity/design and team processes can significantly improve team effectiveness and the chances of becoming a high-performing team.
- Enhancing Interpersonal Effectiveness: Those in charge have always depended on others to get work done. This means building a network of effective work relationships. The segment begins by identifying the critical ingredients for building effective relationships with superiors, colleagues, and subordinates. We will look at various interpersonal relationships from different perspectives, including hierarchical, demographic, and cultural aspects, exploring the nuances of working with those from varied demographic backgrounds and the advantages and disadvantages of different communication and influence strategies. The aim of this segment is to enable managers to successfully build effective work relationships as they apply to managing in all directions.
- Leading, Designing, and Aligning Organizations: This module explores in depth what it takes to be an effective leader. This segment will also examine what it takes to achieve “congruence” among an organization's elements: its strategy, critical tasks, formal organization, people, and culture. We will study a number of leaders “in action” to gain insight into the critical functions and personal qualities that contribute to effective leadership. To be effective, the critical elements of an organization need to be in alignment.
- Leading Change: Leaders’ attempts to renew or change their organizations often fail. In this segment of the course we will compare and contrast efforts to transform organizations in order to identify critical stages and activities in the change process. We will identify different approaches for developing and communicating a vision for an organization and for motivating people to fulfill that vision. We address the following questions: What are the primary sources of resistance to change? What are the most appropriate ways for overcoming them? What change strategies “work” and under what conditions?
- Developing Your Path: In this final module, we will focus on several strategic issues involved in building a dynamic career, paying particular attention to early- and mid-career choices and dilemmas. We will consider the following topics: How do individuals learn to lead? What critical experiences and relationships are needed?
The LEAD course has the following six goals: - The course offers a realistic preview of what it means to manage
- The course helps students begin to transform professional identity from individual contributor to manager
- The course helps students confront both the task learning and personal learning involved in becoming a manager
- The course addresses the process of developing effective relationships with a diverse collection of individuals and groups
- The course helps students develop an understanding of what it takes to be an effective leader
- The course helps students learn how to be proactive and entrepreneurial in developing your leadership talents over the course of your career
Professor Bernstein takes particular joy in teaching LEAD as he was a student in the LEAD course in the fall of 2000 (Section D).
Professor Bernstein also teaches a PhD seminar in the craft of field research.
Keywords: Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Innovation Leadership
Awards & Honors
Finalist for the 2014 McKinsey Award for the best article in Harvard Business Review for "The Transparency Trap" (October 2014).
Winner of the 2013 Fredric M. Jablin Doctoral Dissertation Award, awarded by the International Leadership Association and the Jepson School for Leadership Studies for demonstrating substantial insights and implications for the study of leadership through Professor Bernstein's dissertation, “Does Privacy Make Groups Productive.”
Won the 2010 Susan G. Cohen Doctoral Research Award in Organization Design, Effectiveness, and Change from the CEO (Center for Effective Organizations at the USC Marshall School of Business) and the Academy of Management's Organization Development and Change Division for his work, "Innovation Boundaries: Deconstructing Autonomy."
|
|
