This month, INSEAD professors continue to push the boundaries of business knowledge across multiple domains. Their research ranges from how airlines adapted during Covid-19, why donors benefit from splitting up their donations, family ties in turnaround strategies, decision-making frameworks for complex problems, and how continuity of care impacts healthcare workloads.

1. Applying learning to an unprecedented crisis

Extreme crises can facilitate knowledge transfer and retention in ways traditional learning theory doesn't predict, research by Henrich Greve suggests. Examining the severely impacted airline industry during Covid-19, Greve found that organisational learning did occur but that learning patterns differed for reversible and irreversible actions. This suggests that decision-makers prioritised adaptive choices while carefully considering the long-term strategic implications of their actions.

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2. Increasing the perceived value of donations

While donating money is an impactful and efficient form of altruism, scepticism about donors' real motives often exists. Research by Stephanie Lin and Rebecca L. Schaumberg from The Wharton School proposes a simple solution: dividing donations into multiple smaller gifts instead of one large sum. 

Across ten studies, participants seemed to interpret the number of donations as a signal of stronger, ongoing impulses to give and a deeper connection to a cause, even when the effort and cost to donate are the same. By simply adjusting how they give, donors can positively influence how their motives are perceived. 

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3. The strategic impact of family ties when dealing with firm crises

Jennifer Petriglieri and her co-authors* look at how the relationships of founders to their firms results in different turnaround strategies and outcomes when a company faces difficulties. Founding families adopt a "familial" approach due to their close ties within the company, while founders without ongoing family ties tend to embrace an "entrepreneurial" identity focused on seizing opportunities. The severity of the crisis and the age of the company also influence the effectiveness of these distinct leadership styles.

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*Jan-Philipp Ahrens, University of Mannheim; Marc Kowalzick, Erasmus University; and Jochim G. Lauterbach, Technical University of Munich. 

4. New methods for tackling complex decision making

Decision-making can often be tricky: It's hard to understand what people prefer when there are many factors involved. It’s equally hard to understand how those factors relate to each other. Using a real life example of how well different solar power plants operate, this research by Ilia Tsetlin and his co-authors offers new methods and conditions that help address these dual challenges and come up with satisfactory decisions. 

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*Alfred Muller, University of Seigen; Marco Scarsini, Luiss University; and Robert L. Winkler, Duke University.

5. The value of continuity of care to healthcare workloads

Does seeing the same doctor on a consistent basis improve patient care and affect the resulting workloads for hospitals and general practices? Using public data from a three-year period in the United Kingdom, new research by Michael Freeman and his co-authors* show how resulting workloads vary dependent on whether a patient sees a regular general practitioner (GP), a GP who doesn't usually see that patient, or a temporary (locum) GP.

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*Harshita Kajaria-Montag, Indiana University; Stefan Scholtes, University of Cambridge; Denis Pereira Gray and Philip Evans, University of Exeter; and Kate Sidaway-Lee, St Leonard’s Research Practice, Exeter.