The Trust Dilemma: Do CEO Vulnerability Disclosures Attract or Alarm Individual Investors?
In four experiments, we examine CEO personal vulnerability disclosures across technology and pharmaceutical industry settings, demonstrating that such disclosures can shape how individual investors evaluate firms. Disclosing vulnerabilities unrelated to the company increases investor trust and enhances evaluations of more-optimistic forecasts, as well as reduces negative reactions to bad earnings news. However, when CEO vulnerability disclosure pertains to a company-related vulnerability, investors perceived CEOs as less competent.
Behavioral Intervention Construal: A Framework for Understanding Inferences from Behavioral Interventions
Managers and policymakers frequently use behavioral interventions—including incentives and messaging campaigns—to influence people’s behavior. They often choose an intervention by asking whether it will make a desired behavior easier, cheaper, or more attractive. Our research suggests they should also ask a second question: “What could this intervention unintentionally communicate?” For instance, interventions can signal that an organization is self-interested or trying to control people’s choices.
Three Strategic Bets on AI’s Future
This paper examines competition in the consumer AI assistant market using worldwide iOS and Android app-store data from seven major AI assistants from May 2023 through December 2025. Rather than finding a winner-take-all market, we show that major product launches tend to coincide with growth in the overall category, with little evidence of direct cannibalization across leading models. In other words, the “AI war” appears less zero-sum than commonly assumed.