Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.

The Surprising Effects of Employee Surveillance – Questrom School of Business Blog

BU Questrom School of Business professor Michel Anteby recently co-authored new research that explores the ways in which increased surveillance of employees can lead “to workers’ strikes and sometimes even quitting their jobs altogether.”

The article points to a 2011 experiment where TSA managers installed cameras to monitor officers “as an attempt to stop the disappearance of baggage in airports.” According to TSA officers, they felt they “as though their managers were merely looking for a reason to discipline them.”

According to Anteby’s research, “under such scrutiny, one tends to lose sight of the bigger picture, which ends up with employees feeling undervalued and over scrutinized.”

You can read the full article here.

These 12 European Startups Are Using Technology to Improve Opportunities For Low-And Middle-Income Workers – MIT Sloan Newsroom

The MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy’s Global Inclusive Innovation Challenge announced its 12 European finalists, all of which are working to improve economic opportunity for workers. According to the article, “the competitors are judged on vision, impact, participation, and scalability.”

Initiative Director Erik Brynjolfsson writes, “If we employ inclusive innovation globally, it could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. We can have more wealth, better health, and widely held prosperity.”

According to the article, the European finalists will travel to “Darmstadt, Germany, in early September, where they will pitch their ideas at a regional competition. The winner of each category then goes on to compete in November during the Global Grand Prize Gala at MIT. The gala includes four $250,000 prizes, one for each category.”

The 12 European finalists, organized by category, are as follows:

Skills Development and Opportunity Matching

• Data4You, an all-ages coding boot camp.
• Jobiri, which “assists people with finding jobs through an AI-driven career adviser.”
• micro:bit, which “provides tiny programmable computers for students and teachers.”

Income Growth and Job Creation

• ABURY’s “Design meets Craft” connects “designers and artisans through a digital platform to find creative project partners, and connect with the global market.”
• mecasa is an “online platform connecting caretakers with senior individuals who need daily support.”
• ProGlove is a “smart glove designed to scan and streamline manufacturing and logistics work.”

Financial Inclusion

• hiveonline is a “mobile platform offering small- and micro-businesses administrative help and access to financial services.”
• Trezeo, which “provides a mobile financial platform for independent workers.”
• Sherpa, which “offers insurance to people who are self-employed, freelancers, contractors, and other entrepreneurs.”

Technology Access

• BLITAB, a “tactile tablet designed for blind and visually-impaired users.”
• Pangea Electronics “builds sustainable and eco-friendly technology.”
• Teqmine Analytics uses “AI to help customers with their research and development questions.”

You can read more about the event here.

Think You’re Having a Heart Attack? If You’re a Woman, Insist on a Female Physician – Harvard Business School News

New PNAS research co-authored by HBS Associate Professor Laura Huang, along with the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities’ Brad Greenwood and Washington University in St. Louis’ Seth Carnahan finds that of “more than 500,000 heart attack patients admitted to hospital emergency departments in Florida between 1991 and 2010, female patients treated by male physicians were less likely to survive than patients of either gender treated by female physicians or male patients treated by male physicians.”

Moreover, “survival rates among female patients treated by male physicians improved with an increase in the percentage of female physicians in the emergency department and an increase in the number of female patients previously treated by the physician.”

In “Patient-Physician Gender Concordance and Increased Mortality Among Female Heart Attack Patients,” the researchers write:

“These results suggest a reason why gender inequality in heart attack mortality persists: Most physicians are male, and male physicians appear to have trouble treating female patients. If female patients tend to be more challenging for male and female doctors to diagnose and treat, the patterns we document may reflect the fact that the most skillful physicians (i.e., female physicians) provide the highest return to their skills when treating the most challenging patients (i.e., female patients).”

You can read more about the research here.

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