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Karmini Sharma on how empathy-led training can curb sexual harassment in India

Karmini Sharma — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 10:39:25 +0000

Karmini Sharma on how empathy-led training can curb sexual harassment in India

Karmini Sharma Tue, 25/02/2025 - 10:39

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How did your research on sexual harassment training come about?

I come from Delhi, which is known to be an unsafe city for women. It was clear that women's everyday lives, especially their mobility, were severely restricted because of this issue. For example, after 19.30, you rarely see women outside the home because it isn't safe for them to move around freely. So, women's safety and mobility have always been issues that I have been concerned about.

I was working on my PhD around the same time that the #MeToo movement started in India, so there was a lot of information on sexual harassment. I already had a strong interest in this topic, so I read up on existing research and started formulating my questions on how sexual harassment could be effectively addressed through awareness training. While there was some literature on the effects of sexual harassment on economic outcomes, we knew next to nothing about what can help prevent sexual harassment.

The timing was perfect because large funders started to pivot resources towards projects on sexual harassment. I partnered with Safecity, an NGO that has pioneered the study of sexual harassment. They helped develop the training materials and, as an established organisation, were also helpful in connecting me with universities to deliver the training.

How does your study contribute to or innovate beyond the existing literature on sexual harassment training?

There have been a few social psychology papers that have looked at the impact of various trainings on attitudes to sexual harassment, but none, to my knowledge, study the effects of such training on actual sexual harassment, so that's where this paper innovates over existing literature.

After providing the training to the men, I asked the women in their classes about incidents of sexual harassment from men in their classes/peer groups. I was then able to connect the training with actual outcomes of sexual harassment from those men, as experienced by the women, rather than relying on the men's self-reported changes in attitude or awareness, which is what the rest of the literature has been doing.

Another key innovation of the paper was an empathy-led approach to delivering the training. I wanted the men to have a deeper understanding of the impact sexual harassment has on women. It's not just a joke or simple brush against a woman's body, but has far-reaching effects that can affect their everyday lives, like mental health, mobility, and perception of sexual harassment risk.

I collected anonymised stories from the women in the same classes as the men who received the training, asking them to share in their own words their experiences of sexual harassment and how it affected them in the long term.

Safecity then shared these stories with the men during the training and facilitated discussion.

Sharing women's experiences made the men more receptive to the training, as they connected the training with real-life experiences of the women in their class.

How did this empathy-led awareness training cause a reduction in reported incidences of sexual harassment?

Men's awareness of sexual harassment increases in the short term, three to four months after the training, and remains high in the long term, two to three years after the training.

But the most powerful factor that reduced reported incidences of sexual harassment as a result of the training was men's perception of their peers. Seeing how their peers talked about and engaged with the topic of sexual harassment enabled them to update their own beliefs and behaviours (what we call second order beliefs) about others. I find that they were more likely to think that their peers will more likely support a victim and call out "inappropriate behaviours" after the training. This was persistently the case in the short and long run.

Although awareness is still critical in reducing sexual harassment, the potential of men's social environment remains an important factor in bringing about real change in their behaviour. A lot of focus groups and talking to men later confirmed this hypothesis as well.

And this doesn't just apply to sexual harassment; it can be for homophobia, racism, bullying or any other form of harassment.

How has the training benefited the women's career opportunities and engagement with the labour market?

The paper was not designed to examine the impact on the labour market outcomes, but I saw that women were more likely to search for a job after the training than to go on to further education. Why this was the case is still an open question; it could be that they felt more empowered due to the training, but further research is needed. The next step in the study is to follow up with the women, examine their presence on online labour market platforms, and see what kinds of companies they work for. In fact, this is exactly what I am doing now.

How are your research findings advancing the conversation around sexual harassment training?

Yes, it definitely has. This paper is proof that empathy-led awareness training can effectively reduce the incidence of sexual harassment and provides insights into what mechanisms make it work. The paper has been recognised by Institute for What Works to Advance Gender Equality (IWWAGE) and also received the best student paper award at the Australian Gender Economics Workshop 2021.

I'm making the case for organisations to make more effort in delivering sexual harassment training with care. Leading with empathy to build awareness ensures its effectiveness rather than merely treating it as a check-box exercise.

This Q and A discusses findings from Karmini Sharma’s working paper on Tackling Sexual Harassment: Short and Long-run Experimental Evidence from India (September 2024), funded by JPAL (Crime and Violence Initiative, formerly Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and University of Warwick).

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Q and A with Karmini Sharma, Assistant Professor in Economics and Public Policy, ImperiaBusiness School, on transforming harassment training through empathy and evidence

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Could working from home strain your relationship?

Dr Alejandro Hermida Carillo — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Could working from home strain your relationship?

Dr Alejandro H… Wed, 15/01/2025 - 12:14

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Working from home isn’t an automatic win for everyone. Research by Dr Alejandro Hermida Carrillo suggests it can be linked to strain in some romantic relationships and requires careful thought and design.
Couples’ preferences matter – those that share a more relaxed attitude towards blending home and work tend to adapt better to home working.
Different or shared strict work-home boundaries can create tension and loneliness – employers should offer flexibility, when possible, while giving employees the final say over where they work.

When individuals weigh up whether to work from home, the anticipated benefits are appealing – more flexibility, more control over personal lives, and more time with their partners. But our research reveals a more complicated story. Work and its boundaries can drive a wedge between some relationships, and this can intensify the more partners work from home.

For many, working from home has become a major part of modern working life, kickstarted by the COVID-19 pandemic and continued by popular demand. It offers a freedom not found in an office, and employees seek it more than companies are willing to offer it. But such flexibility doesn’t always come without its own trouble.

Remote work may pose hidden challenges for some couples, as part of a wider struggle to manage boundaries between their professional and personal lives. Could blurred lines between work and home, combined with different individual preferences, end up isolating partners from each other? And could the fallout be serious enough to prompt couples to consider splitting up?

Our two studies explored these questions. For our first study, we surveyed some 170 couples in Munich during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a second investigation, we followed more than 1,500 couples across Germany over the course of a year. Both studies featured dual earner couples from a range of professions and levels of seniority, with an average age of 43 in the first study and 39 in the second.

We wanted to understand how partners’ individual preferences for keeping work out of home life fit together, and whether some combinations are better suited to remote work than others. In particular, we looked at whether these preferences affected people’s ability to be fully present, in body and mind, for their partners - and the knock-on effects for themselves and their relationships.

Why couples can clash over work

Couples can sometimes clash over how they approach work during their time off. Some are fiercely protective of their personal time, while others don’t mind the odd intrusion even when they’re no longer at work. The odd email might land during mealtimes, or a boss might phone out of hours. For employees working from home, these differences can become more consequential.

We discovered that keeping work and home separate can become hard for remote workers – but not always. When couples share a more relaxed approach to work spilling over into home life, remote workers cope better when work inevitably intrudes. We believe that these couples may make better arrangements to work around their schedules, such as sharing calendars to plan their days and take breaks together.

"When couples take different approaches – say, one favours strict limits while the other is more relaxed – things can become more complicated."

But if both parties prefer to set strict limits between home and work, this is where remote work can get tricky. This combination becomes increasingly detrimental the more time people work from home. When couples take different approaches – say, one favours strict limits while the other is more relaxed – things can also become more complicated. More extensive working from home made these differences more troublesome, but only for men. Quite unexpectedly, women who worked from home extensively benefitted from having partners with different views, and we're not sure why. One possibility is that they may be more open to learning new ways of managing work at home from their partners, but further research is needed to understand this.

The link to loneliness

But by far the most concerning finding was the knock-on effect that heightened conflict can have on mental health and relationships. The conflict that people experience when work prevents them from being present for their partners, both physically and emotionally, can lead to loneliness. For some people, working from home can make this problem worse. This loneliness can affect not only the person struggling to switch off from work, but also, to a lesser degree, their partner. In other words, even if someone has no control over their partner’s job demands, they may still feel lonely as a result. This matters more than ever as loneliness afflicts an estimated one in six globally (World Health Organization, 2025) and is recognised by health authorities to harm people’s health and wellbeing.

As we tracked the couples in our second study, we found that the lonelier they felt, the more likely they were to start talking about splitting up. While discussing separation was rare – around seven per cent of couples in the second study - this was nonetheless a striking finding in Germany, where separation is typically not discussed lightly.

When individuals and companies negotiate flexible work deals, they almost certainly focus on the benefits, assuming this will lead to greater productivity and well-being. But this isn’t guaranteed - our work shows that there may be an inadvertent emotional toll on some employees and their partners. Individual expectations differ, and couples need to be aware that working from home might affect family life. Businesses, too, need to consider the impact of their working practices on employees’ personal lives.

Who should decide where we work?

Knowing there’s a connection between conflict and loneliness, managers could consider helping staff create clearer limits between work and home life when appropriate.

Few work practices have stoked such controversy recently as working from home. Our work makes the case for leaving the final decision to the employee. Working from home doesn’t automatically cause stress but nor does it guarantee a happier worker. The answer lies, in part, in the preferences of individuals within couples. With this in mind, employees should include their partners in the decision making, and companies should listen to their staff. Ultimately, they are the ones who should have the final say.

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More freedom, more flexibility, more time at home – so what could go wrong? New research reveals the surprising ways remote work can contribute to tensions in some couples.

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Decentralised Autonomous Organisations rethink the role of bosses. But who really has the power?

Ying-Ying Hsieh — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Decentralised Autonomous Organisations rethink the role of bosses. But who really has the power?

Ying-Ying Hsieh Wed, 15/01/2025 - 12:14

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Intended to democratise organisational governance, new research from Ying-Ying Hsieh, Phanish Puranam and Noam Gelman-Hofstadter suggests power in most DAOs is rather centralised.
Autonomy is often used to mean both automation and independence. DAOs promise decisions executed by code and freedom from external control, but most still rely on human judgement and third-party platforms.
DAOs stand as an important experiment in alternative organisational governance, offering lessons for conventional companies seeking to democratise decision making and decentralise power.

DAOs are a blockchain-based alternative to traditional governance structures. Rather than a conventional hierarchy of executives and managers, DAOs aim to give members a more direct role in decision making, with some decisions executed automatically by smart contracts.

The idea is that decisions are voted on, self-executed, and recorded on a blockchain, making them visible to all members to ensure transparency and accountability at scale. This in turn reduces bureaucracy and administrative overheads, making the organisation more democratic, innovative and agile.

Take MakerDAO as an example. In March 2020, a crash triggered by COVID-19 left the organisation with serious liquidity issues. Rather than executives deciding what to do, a novel solution that surfaced informally in a community channel was debated by risk assessors, smart contract code reviewers and ordinary members, and was then approved through a formal vote.

But has the DAO model really resulted in power being shared more democratically across the board? Our research, the largest systematic empirical examination of DAOs to-date, addresses this question.

Surprisingly centralised

We found that more than 80 per cent of voting rights in the average DAO are controlled by less than 1 per cent of addresses (and multiple addresses may be controlled by single members). That means power is concentrated within a small group, though unlike in a conventional firm, this emerges through token ownership and low turnout rather than deliberate structure.

Another factor is the gap between membership and participation. We observed that the average DAO has 5,024 members, but only 709 voters and 10 proposers, with over half of all proposals receiving fewer than 12 votes. While everybody is entitled to vote, having lots of members does not necessarily mean lots of people have a meaningful say.

“While everybody is entitled to vote, having lots of members does not necessarily mean lots of people have a meaningful say.”

Whales and delegates

One key issue is the existence of ‘whales’ and ‘delegates’, i.e. those who control a large number of voting tokens. Whales hold their tokens outright, and are free to vote however they like, including on their own proposals. Delegates, by contrast, are granted voting power on behalf of other members, but this power is conditional: they can lose their delegate status if they vote against the wishes of those they represent

This distinction matters. Whales pose a greater threat to true decentralisation than delegates, because their unconditional voting power answers to nobody but themselves. And because holdings are visible on the blockchain, the position of whales may be known beforehand, which can make the result of a vote feel like a foregone conclusion. Delegates, despite holding real voting weight, rarely use it unilaterally, as going against their delegators’ wishes risks their position.

Whales can also buy more tokens to sway contested decisions. In many cases, a large share of voting tokens are locked in vesting arrangements held by founders and early investors – in the average DAO, vesting tokens equal 38 per cent of liquid holdings. When these are unlocked, voting power can be further concentrated, exacerbating the issue.

Autonomy and algorithmic governance

There is a question as to how autonomous DAOs really are. ‘Autonomy’ can mean two different things: automation, i.e. decisions executed without human involvement, and independence, i.e. freedom from outside control.

Most DAOs attempt both, but often achieve neither. We found that only around 8 per cent use on-chain governance, where votes are recorded and executed automatically via blockchain. The rest rely on off-chain voting through third-party platforms, with humans viewing results and carrying out decisions – the opposite of blockchain automation, though not completely independent of all oversight.

This offers a wider lesson beyond DAOs. It is tempting to view the trend of businesses increasingly handing decisions to AI tools as a form of self-sufficiency, in which processes run themselves free of human oversight. But if DAOs are any guide, automating decisions does not bring independence – it substitutes reliance on people for reliance on digital infrastructure and the third parties who run it.

What businesses can learn

Ultimately, our evidence suggests that DAOs deviate from the decentralised, autonomous ideal organisation design they were built around. However, this is not to say that they fail as an innovation. Rather, they stand as an important experiment in alternative organisational governance. They are best understood as a distinct organisational form in their own right – something closer to a financialised community or an algorithmic commons than either a corporation or a traditional community.

Conventional companies can also borrow elements of the DAO model, experimenting with giving employees, customers and other stakeholders a more direct voice in decision making. The MakerDAO example shows how this can work in practice – collective decisions settled through proposing and voting – even under urgent conditions that would normally require centralised, top-down control.

This article draws on findings from “Neither community nor corporation? A deeper look at decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)” by Dr Ying-Ying Hsieh (ImperiaBusiness School), Professor Phanish Puranam (INSEAD) and Noam Gelman-Hofstadte (DeepDAO Ventures Ltd), published In Industrial and Corporate Change.

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Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) promised an alternative to traditional hierarchies, but truly distributing power within them has proved more nuanced than it first appeared.

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Do big bonuses really affect employee behaviour?

Zeyu Qiu — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Do big bonuses really affect employee behaviour?

Zeyu Qiu Wed, 15/01/2025 - 12:14

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Leaders should not assume that financial incentives alone will shape ethical behaviour, according to new research by Dr Zeyu Qiu
The personal or moral cost of lying can counterbalance the attraction of greater financial rewards

On a basic level, remuneration is likely to be the main reason most people go to work. The relationship, however, between pay and how people feel and behave is not simple. We know, for example, that the connection between money and happiness or money and effort is complicated. Greater pay does not necessarily lead to happier, more diligent workers.

Pay also shapes behaviours organisations would rather not encourage. Bonuses and commissions often reward reported results rather than actual outcomes, which could provide a financial incentive for employees to be dishonest. On the other hand, businesses might assume that better paid workers are more likely to be honest and follow rules.

But does the promise of more money actually encourage people to lie or be honest, or is this relationship more complicated than it seems? Our research explores this question, starting with a simple dice roll experiment.

Incentive to lie

We split 589 UK participants into two groups and asked them to roll a die and report their results, offering them payment based on how high a number they rolled. Reported rolls of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 were worth, respectively, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 points. In one group (the "low-incentive" group) each point was worth 6p. In the other group (the "high-incentive" group) each point was worth 60p. This meant the maximum payouts per roll were 60p and £6 respectively – a tenfold difference.

Participants were given full anonymity, as the experiment was conducted online. Both groups had an incentive to lie, though the high-incentive group obviously stood to gain more from dishonesty, so we might expect this group to lie more often.

Surprisingly, however, we found that both groups were dishonest to almost exactly the same degree, with no statistically significant difference in their reported results. They reported an average of 4.17 (low-incentive) and 4.15 (high-incentive), where an honest average would have been 3.5.

Around a quarter of rolls in each group were reported as sixes, well above the honest rate of one-in-six, and around five per cent of rolls were reported as ones, well below the honest rate. In simple terms, both groups lied, but they lied at the same rate regardless of one group having a much larger financial incentive than the other.

"Greater remuneration does not necessarily lead to happier, more diligent workers."

Values vs. financial reward

Our results suggest that money can serve as a motivation for dishonesty, but equally that there are other factors at play. People may also be guided by their individual values, a sense of what is right and wrong, or their personal identity. The chance to gain more money alone does not necessarily change people’s behaviour.

In a business context, where bonuses and rewards remain the primary tools for influencing employee behaviour, this finding suggests it may be worth looking beyond them. Working to improve an organisation’s culture, for example, or rewarding employees with leadership opportunities and greater trust, could therefore be important alongside financial incentives.

Additionally, a financial reward may incentivise employees to narrowly focus on the target at hand. The Wells Fargo scandal that saw staff open millions of unauthorised accounts, for example, was widely seen as a result of aggressive sales quotas.

"People may also be guided by their individual values, a sense of what is right and wrong."

A more holistic approach to behaviour change, on the other hand, could help bring employees along in pursuing the organisation’s wider goals, making them active, engaged agents in its growth and development. In other words, a bonus can signal what an organisation wants an employee to achieve, but it does not necessarily make them believe in the broader aims behind the target.

Doing the right thing

There’s also a useful distinction here between compliance and commitment. Compliance sees employees do things the right way because of the potential rewards or consequences, but only as far as the rules extend and only while they believe they are being watched. Commitment, however, links again to the idea of wider buy-in, with employees doing things properly and well even when there is no incentive or anyone watching.

There was no way for the participants in our study to be caught lying, and they were aware of that. This suggests that those who told the truth may have done so for intrinsic, personal reasons; a broader commitment to honesty and "doing the right thing".

None of which is to say that businesses should abandon financial incentives entirely, but rather that they may work best as part of a rounded system that also includes clear values, accountability and direction. Money can be a powerful motivator, but it may often not be the deciding one.

Discover more insights by Dr Zeyu Qiu

Read 'On the robustness of monetary stakes and lying'.

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New research from ImperiaBusiness School shows financial incentives have less effect on employee behaviour than previously believed.

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'Boomerasking': How to break the annoying habit hurting your workplace relationships

Michael Yeomans — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

'Boomerasking': How to break the annoying habit hurting your workplace relationships

Michael Yeomans Wed, 15/01/2025 - 12:14

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The road to hell, as the saying goes, is paved with good intentions. This is as true for interpersonal relationships as it is for any aspect of life; setting out to build a connection is no guarantee of a meaningful bond, and some actions even have the opposite effect.

Such is the case with "boomerasking", which recent research from Harvard Business School and �� identifies as the act of asking someone a question, briefly letting them answer, and then answering it yourself.

The boomerasker's intention tends to be to start a conversation with a positive connection before sharing something on their side, rather than leading with information about themselves. Indeed, the researchers found that around 83 per cent of respondents thought boomerasking would help them make a better impression than launching into what they wanted to say without an initial question.

In fact, the effect is to appear egocentric and disinterested; the study found that people prefer conversation partners who more straightforwardly talk about themselves, and find boomeraskers less sincere and less likeable.

This is due to the importance of "conversational uptake": the natural pattern of building on the contributions of the other person in a conversation, including through listening, asking follow-up questions and paraphrasing. Boomerasking shows interest in the first two stages, through asking a question and listening to the response, but then fails at the third stage when the response is ignored and the conversation becomes self-focused.

As we are all constantly evaluating whether people’s motives are selfish or selfless in conversation, when someone asks us a question, we hope they really care about the response. With that in mind, it’s easy to see how going to the trouble of sharing something, only to have the other person ignore it and talk about themselves instead, can be particularly jarring.

Poor communication is lowering job satisfaction, increasing stress, and eroding trust in leadership

Lessons for leaders

There’s obviously an important lesson here for managers and business leaders, who may be especially keen to boost team morale or help colleagues feel included. In this context, team members might be particularly put off by a boss who, for example, arranges meetings only to brush over people’s feedback to tell everyone their own thoughts, or asks colleagues about their weekends and then proceeds to tell them about their own time off rather than engaging with the response.

This type of chronic boomerasking comes across as cold and self-interested, which is particularly relevant as remote and hybrid roles come to be the norm across sectors. Digital communication – where listening behaviours are more visible than they might be in person – are becoming a cornerstone of workplace productivity.

In line with this, a 2023 study found that poor communication is lowering job satisfaction, increasing stress, and eroding trust in leadership. Staff that feel this way, with a lack of voice, are more likely to disengage, increasing employee turnover and "quiet quitting".

It’s possible that there is a generational element to this as well. Previous generations may have been more ready to accept a hierarchical dynamic in which a manager’s opinions simply mattered more, but we know those who make up the workforce of the future value authentic engagement and meaningful connection. This means boomerasking is likely to be a more damaging habit now than in previous decades, and leaders need to curb it as part of a move towards recognising the type of communication younger colleagues prioritise.

Breaking the habit

Fortunately, following these simple tips can help leaders to train themselves out of the boomerasking habit:

Practice self-awareness – realise you’re asking questions and then dismissing, or failing, to listen to the response is the first step to improving.

Show real interest: practice asking follow-up questions or comments that show you’ve understood what someone has said.

Stay focused for one more round: when you feel the impulse to talk about yourself, let the conversation take one more round of turns, focusing on the other person.

Ask questions you can’t answer: leading with a question you can’t answer yourself can help curb the urge to turn the conversation back to you, e.g. asking someone about their pets if you don't have any.

Spark a broader culture shift: encourage a culture of curiosity, in which staff at all levels are encouraged to learn from one another and are rewarded for it.

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Who decided what ambition looks like?

Poornima Luthra — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Who decided what ambition looks like?

Poornima Luthra Wed, 15/01/2025 - 12:14

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Women do not lack ambition. Dr Poornima Luthra explains that workplaces are still structured in ways that make career progression hard to sustain.

As a result, women are redefining ambition on their own terms, with many turning to entrepreneurship rather than climbing the corporate ladder.

The sheer volume of women leaving their jobs should serve as a wake-up call.
Businesses must rethink how “ambition” and “success” are defined by evaluating their workplace systems and cultures to make sure talent is not being lost due to poorly designed systems.

"Ambition” and “success” need redefining

Women do not lack ambition, as the 2025 Women in the Workplace McKinsey & Company report concludes. But there is a cost to success which has prompted many women to leave the workforce. Ambition is about growth and challenge; it's a personal driver which reflects our individuality.

A recent CNN Business report found that almost half a million women had left their jobs in the US between January and October in 2025 for reasons ranging from poor work-life balance, the cost and challenges of accessing childcare and toxic workplace cultures.

These pressures reflect a deeper structural issue: many workplaces were not designed with diverse career paths or life circumstances in mind.

As a result, many women are turning to entrepreneurship. Women are now starting nearly half of the businesses in the US, according to a recent article in Forbes magazine. A 2024 Wells Fargo Impact of Women-Owned Business Report cites the number of women-owned businesses increasing at nearly double the rate of male-owned businesses between 2019 and 2023. Choosing entrepreneurship doesn’t signal lower ambition. It often signals the opposite — ambition on one’s own terms.

When organisations fail to support diverse forms of ambition, they risk losing talented employees.

Why is this a business problem

The sheer volume of women leaving their jobs should serve as a wake-up call to business leaders. Many organisations are still largely run by men, and gender biases, both subtle and explicit, continue to shape workplace culture. When organisations fail to support diverse forms of ambition, they risk losing talented employees.

How business leaders can redefine ambition and success

We need to make both cultural and organisational changes, with a long, hard look at what ambition and success should look like. Business leaders must redefine these constructs for the workforce and next generation:

On the systems side, leaders must revisit hiring, promotion criteria, pay structures and performance evaluation. If we define ambition solely as vertical progression, we will continue to reproduce inequality and risk losing talented employees.

On the cultural side, leaders must model sustainable success. That means realistic expectations, visible boundary-setting, and rejecting the idea that heroic sacrifice equals commitment.

All leaders and team members should have the agency to challenge bias in their own teams.

Conversations about equity of opportunity must start early, in classrooms and around dining tables, as we speak to young people about success.

Before we question women’s ambition, we need to question the systems we’ve built. If the goal isn’t desirable, the cost is too high and the support isn’t there, disengagement cannot be named as a lack of ambition. It’s simply a rational response to inappropriately designed systems.

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Redesigning work: how everyday nudges can transform decision-making

Shamita Harsh — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Redesigning work: how everyday nudges can transform decision-making

Shamita Harsh Wed, 15/01/2025 - 12:14

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Drawing on insights from her latest book Can I Say That? Dr Luthra offers a research-driven exploration of fear as an under-examined force shaping organisational behaviour. Recognised by Thinkers50 in its Top 10 Best New Management Books for 2025, the book is a go-to guide on how to navigate difficult conversations at work and nurture inclusive cultures.

Recognising the many faces of fear at work

Across more than two years of research on resistance and backlash, Dr Luthra has identified fear as the central, often unspoken, force inhibiting inclusion efforts. But fear, she emphasises, is not monolithic. It takes multiple forms: fear of change, fear of discomfort, fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, fear of personal cost, and fear of not making progress.

“Many of us are fearful of fear itself,” she notes. “Workplaces lean toward positive emotions, and difficult emotions are pushed aside. But without understanding what holds us back, we cannot move forward.”

These fears quietly distort decision-making: leaders rely on familiar hiring patterns to avoid risk and organisations double down on symbolic gestures instead of confronting root causes.

A multigeneration approach to decision making

Yet global markets now demand a fundamentally different approach. Customer bases are shifting rapidly, particularly across the Global South, where younger demographics are driving new consumer expectations. “Luxury fashion houses, for example, cater increasingly to young customers in India, China and parts of Africa,” she notes. “These groups want something very different from previous generations.”

To respond, many organisations have introduced “shadow boards” to bring younger talent into decision-making, ensuring leaders stay attuned to emerging trends.

Practices such as reverse mentoring, cross-generational representation in hiring and strategy discussions and transparent decision-making will reframe difference as strategic value.

As Dr Luthra emphasises, “Inclusion is not charity, it’s a business imperative. It yields better innovation, better market alignment and better decisions and outcomes for organisations ready to evolve.”

How employment processes need redesigning and not retrofitting

Amid increasing global resistance to EDI, many organisations feel pressure to reduce visibility or retreat entirely. Dr Luthra advises a different approach.

“This is the time to go under the radar; not to retreat, but to become more strategic,” she says. “Change the terminology if needed. Call it inclusion, belonging, well-being. But do the hard work.”

That hard work includes redesigning employment processes, implementing systemic nudges to mitigate the influence of bias, and equipping teams with tools to make equitable decisions.

“Zero-sum thinking emerges when people feel threatened,” she notes. “Systemic and cultural change reduces that threat by making inclusion feel fair, not imposed.”

Beyond fear, Dr Luthra’s upcoming research turns to a broader organisational challenge: growing polarisation.

“It’s not just EDI,” she notes. “Organisations are divided over remote work, AI adoption, sustainability targets. We are becoming stuck in debate rather than dialogue.”

Hiring for likeability is at the expense of innovation

In today’s world, traditional leadership models built on predictability and control no longer serve organisations. “We still operate in systems designed for the first and second Industrial Revolutions,” Dr Luthra explains. Under pressure to deliver short-term results, leaders often default to hiring for “fit,” reinforcing sameness at the expense of innovation.

Kenji Yoshino’s idea of “covering” refers to the unspoken need for people to “fit” in and integrate into structures and systems that were originally not built for them. Dr Luthra discusses how one can instil microaffirmations to indicate value, respect and build inclusion. This can often look like inviting people whose voices and perspectives have not been heard or whose efforts have not been made visible in the context of contributing to a business.

If there is one message Dr Luthra hopes readers take away from Can I Say That? it is deceptively simple: do not let fear hold you back. She observes: “Fear is human. But progress requires understanding it, naming it and learning to let it go.”

In a world where uncertainties multiply and systems strain under competing expectations, this mindset shift may be the foundation not only for more inclusive workplaces, but for more resilient, adaptive leadership.

Read insights from Dr Luthra’s book

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New behavioural research from Dr Poornima Luthra shows how targeted, everyday workplace behaviours can reduce bias, improve decision-making and strengthen organisational performance.

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Tobias Kretschmer on research in strategy and technological change

Shamita Harsh — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Tobias Kretschmer on research in strategy and technological change

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Tobias Kretschmer has joined ImperiaBusiness School as Professor of Strategy, Technology & Organisation at the Department of Management & Entrepreneurship. With a research career spanning global leading institutions, his work examines how technology and organisation design interact to drive competitive advantage in the digital economy.

Professor Kretschmer’s research focuses on platform markets and the digital transformation of firms, investigating how technology reshapes strategic decision-making, value creation, and organisational performance. His recent work explores how increasingly large and influential complementors are challenging long-held assumptions about dominance in digital ecosystems.

Professor Kretschmer also contributes to the field through several editorial and leadership roles, serving as Senior Editor at Strategy Science, Vice Chair of the Organization Design Community, and as part of the leadership team for the Academy of Management’s Technology & Innovation Management Division. He was Panel Chair for the European Research Council’s SH1 Starting Grants in 2024 and is currently a Research Fellow in Organisational Economics at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London.

How technology reshapes competition and collaboration

Across his research portfolio, Professor Kretschmer combines theory and empirical evidence to explore how digital change impacts organisations and markets. In his paper “Anonymity and Peer Feedback in Crowdsourcing”, he studies how anonymity affects the quality and tone of feedback in digital collaboration environments, offering insights into the design of more effective crowdsourcing systems.

In “First-Party Complements in Platform Markets: The Role of Competition”, he investigates how platform owners decide whether to release their own complementary products, uncovering strategic patterns that depend on the intensity of user and complementor competition.

His paper “Protected but Punished?”, examines how whistleblower protection laws influence wage dynamics—revealing that while stronger protections enhance transparency, they can also trigger unintended wage adjustments within firms.

Other recent journal publications include analyses of news aggregators and media competition, game wikis and community-driven innovation (both Strategic Management Journal), and the impact of GDPR on data-driven business models (Marketing Science).

His research has been published in Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Management Science, American Economic Review and Information Systems Research.

Prior to joining ��, he was Professor of Strategy, Technology & Organisation at LMU Munich School of Management, where he led the Institute for Strategy, Technology & Organisation. He holds a PhD in Economics from London Business School and an MSc in Strategy from the University of St. Gallen. Professor Kretschmer has also held full-time positions at London School of Economics and Political Science and INSEAD, and visiting positions at Bocconi University, University College London and NOVA School of Business & Economics.

Discussing his move to ��, Professor Kretschmer said: “I’ve been studying new technologies for my entire career. Being at Imperiagives me a chance to learn in depth how these technologies work and to understand the strategic implications of technological change (and vice versa).”

At ��, he looks forward to deepening cross-disciplinary collaboration. He is eager to work with scholars in strategy, technology and data science to better understand how firms can navigate digital disruption and design organisations that thrive in it.

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Dr Poornima Luthra on advancing equity, diversity and inclusion in business and society

Shamita Harsh — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 12:14:02 +0000

Dr Poornima Luthra on advancing equity, diversity and inclusion in business and society

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Creating inclusive workplaces is no longer just a moral imperative but a business necessity. For Dr. Poornima Luthra, incoming Principal Lecturer of People, Culture & Inclusion and Deputy Head of Department (Teaching) at ImperiaBusiness School, the challenge lies in bridging rigorous academic research with practical tools that enable organisations to foster equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI).

An award-winning author, speaker and educator, Dr. Luthra has spent nearly two decades building expertise in talent management and inclusive leadership across Europe and Asia. Her books Can I Say That? (2025), Leading Through Bias (2024), The Art of Active Allyship (2022) and Diversifying Diversity (2021) have positioned her as one of the foremost global voices on DEI. She is also a contributor to Harvard Business Review and a trusted advisor to global organisations including Deloitte, L’Oréal, Carlsberg, Novo Nordisk and Médecins Sans Frontières.

The School continues to strengthen the belief that the future of business leadership is deeply rooted in inclusion and Dr Luthra is excited to contribute to shaping future leaders with diverse representation and adaptability.

“I am thrilled to join ImperiaBusiness School as it offers a dynamic environment at the forefront of global business education and research,” she says. “The School’s strong commitment to innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration and real-world impact aligns perfectly with my vision for advancing knowledge and nurturing future leaders.”

Carving a space with global recognition and impact

Dr. Luthra’s contributions to rethinking inclusion have earned her widespread recognition. In 2023, Thinkers50 named her among the world’s 30 up-and-coming management thinkers and listed her books The Art of Active Allyship and Can I Say That? among the top 10 management books of 2023 and 2025. The same year, she won the Nordic Blaze Inclusion Awards in the Trailblazer category, further underlining her impact as a thought leader shaping inclusive business practices worldwide.

As a keynote and TEDx speaker, she creates transformative learning experiences that empower individuals to recognise bias, practice allyship and embed inclusive leadership in their everyday work. Through her consultancy, TalentED, she supports organisations in making sustainable changes to culture and practice, ensuring diversity is not only celebrated but embedded in business strategy.

At ��, Dr. Luthra brings this global expertise into the classroom, equipping students and future leaders with the skills to lead inclusively in complex, international contexts. Her work demonstrates how rigorous research, when paired with practical application, can shift organisational mindsets that enable real change.

With her mix of global perspectives and practical insight, Dr. Luthra is charting a new course for how business schools and businesses alike approach talent and inclusion in the 21st century.

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From bestselling books to keynotes to advising global organisations, Dr Luthra joins ImperiaBusiness School to inspire the next generation of inclusive leaders

Main image: Poornima Luthra

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Karmini Sharma on how empathy-led training can curb sexual harassment in India

Karmini Sharma on how empathy-led training can curb sexual harassment in India

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How did your research on sexual harassment training come about?

How does your study contribute to or innovate beyond the existing literature on sexual harassment training?

How did this empathy-led awareness training cause a reduction in reported incidences of sexual harassment?

How has the training benefited the women's career opportunities and engagement with the labour market?

How are your research findings advancing the conversation around sexual harassment training?

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Q and A with Karmini Sharma, Assistant Professor in Economics and Public Policy, ImperiaBusiness School, on transforming harassment training through empathy and evidence

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More freedom, more flexibility, more time at home – so what could go wrong? New research reveals the surprising ways remote work can contribute to tensions in some couples.

Decentralised Autonomous Organisations rethink the role of bosses. But who really has the power?

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Intended to democratise organisational governance, new research from Ying-Ying Hsieh, Phanish Puranam and Noam Gelman-Hofstadter suggests power in most DAOs is rather centralised.

Autonomy is often used to mean both automation and independence. DAOs promise decisions executed by code and freedom from external control, but most still rely on human judgement and third-party platforms.

DAOs stand as an important experiment in alternative organisational governance, offering lessons for conventional companies seeking to democratise decision making and decentralise power.

Surprisingly centralised

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Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) promised an alternative to traditional hierarchies, but truly distributing power within them has proved more nuanced than it first appeared.

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The personal or moral cost of lying can counterbalance the attraction of greater financial rewards

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New research from ImperiaBusiness School shows financial incentives have less effect on employee behaviour than previously believed.

'Boomerasking': How to break the annoying habit hurting your workplace relationships

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Change your conversational style and rebuild trust and inclusion among your colleagues

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Women do not lack ambition. Dr Poornima Luthra explains that workplaces are still structured in ways that make career progression hard to sustain.

As a result, women are redefining ambition on their own terms, with many turning to entrepreneurship rather than climbing the corporate ladder.

The sheer volume of women leaving their jobs should serve as a wake-up call.

Businesses must rethink how “ambition” and “success” are defined by evaluating their workplace systems and cultures to make sure talent is not being lost due to poorly designed systems.