The start of a new year is a symbolic clean slate. It’s a chance to embrace fresh opportunities, set ambitious goals, and imagine what lies ahead.

It’s also a great time to pause for a moment of reflection. Before diving headfirst into the demands of work, school, or life’s daily rhythm, we can appreciate the journey we’ve traveled over the past year. It’s a chance to celebrate our achievements, reflect on the lessons learned and challenges faced, and carry forward the wisdom we’ve gained.

So, before we launch full steam ahead into the new year, let’s take a look back at some of the most compelling and memorable stories that defined 2024 on EmoryBusiness.com.

Welcoming Impressive Inaugural Classes to Two New Programs

Meet the Inaugural Cohort of Goizueta’s New Master in Management Program

One of Goizueta Business School’s newest additions is the Master in Management degree, a program for recent college graduates with liberal arts and science majors. Spanning 10 months, the program acts as a “fast track” option for students to gain business skills to complement their undergraduate work. Among the inaugural cohort, 38% graduated from an Emory University program, with a total of 84% of the class graduating from their undergraduate programs in 2024.

Meet the First Cohort of Goizueta’s New Master in Business for Veterans

Goizueta Business School launched a new graduate degree last year, and the first cohort of students started in May. The Master in Business for Veterans program is led by Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General and Associate Dean for Leadership Ken Keen. The inaugural cohort of this working professional program includes 31 students. Among them are two Air Force, 19 Army, five Marines, and five Navy veterans and active duty service members. These men and women have decorated and accomplished backgrounds, including several careers of service to the United States.

Experiential Learning Opportunities Abound

MBA Students Explore Denmark’s Model for Work and Well-being

This summer, more than 25 MBA students from Goizueta Business School ventured out of the classroom and across the globe, traveling to Copenhagen, Denmark to explore how the Danes approach their short work week (standard 37 hours), while having some of the most productive companies in the world. The immersive experience is part of a new course at Goizueta, Life Design for the Modern MBA, focused on helping Goizueta students—who are passionate, ambitious, and often working in overdrive—to find meaning and fulfillment in both career and life.

Team Building with Taste: Lessons in Leadership from the Kitchen

At first, Yaqi Liu 26BBA wasn’t keen about getting up early on a Saturday to cook. But over the course of the day, Liu changed his mind. “It was a really good experience,” he says. That experience is called “Team Building with Taste.” It’s a cooking competition in the style of Bravo network’s “Top Chef,” except with the ultimate goal of improving team dynamics. The challenge is a part of the undergraduate BBA program’s Team Dynamics and Leadership class. Over multiple weekends this fall, student teams were given a $50 budget, a set time to plan and shop, and one hour to cook and plate their meals. The teams then presented their dishes to a panel of judges.

How HackATL Fosters Future Changemakers

A lot can happen in 48 hours. For Selina Kao 27BBA, that was the turnaround time afforded her team at this October’s HackATL competition. Their mission? Transform a fledgling business idea into an actionable plan. Hosted by The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, this year’s event—powered by a dynamic collaboration between InnovATL, the City of Atlanta and the center—brought together more than 300 students from across the Southeast. After two days of frenetic brainstorming, building, and pitching transformative start-up initiatives to a panel of judges, the top teams took home over $13K in prizes.

Accomplished Alumni Create Meaningful Impact

Goizueta’s Veterans: Meet Matt Smith

In February 2025, Matt Smith 01MBA will retire as a two-star major general for the U.S. Army. His story is unique because of its many twists and turns. Smith joined the Army in college, before heading to the corporate world in Atlanta in the late 90s and enrolling in Goizueta Business School’s MBA program. However, it wasn’t long before Smith realized that the military was where he was meant to be. He resumed active duty for the Army in 2019, and in December 2022, he stepped into his current role as commander of the Joint Task Force – North. His team has helped federal agencies with interdepartmental coordination and assisted U.S. Border Patrol when they needed additional observation help. Smith says the skills he gained from earning an MBA have helped set him apart as a military leader. Now he’s he’s giving voice to Goizueta’s veterans as part of the advisory board for the new Master in Business for Veterans program.

Meet Marnie Harris: Building Hotels with Purpose

When Marnie Harris 20MBA was an undergraduate biomedical engineering student, she dreamed of building a more accessible world. Harris helped found The Excel Program at Georgia Tech, a certificate program for students with intellectual disabilities. When Harris graduated, she stayed on to welcome the first cohort of Excel students. But she soon came to believe that creating meaningful employment for this demographic must begin inside business, where the jobs are. So, Harris enrolled in Goizueta Business School’s MBA program, where she received the Woodruff Scholarship, Emory’s most prestigious named scholarship, awarded to Emory applicants who want to make a positive social impact. Now, Harris serves as the director of business and marketing strategy at Pavilion Development Company. There, she’s developing and franchising the Shepherd Hotels brand, which focuses on employing staff with intellectual disabilities.

Holistic Health Starts at Home: Meet Kyle Brown

After enrolling in the One-Year MBA program at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, Kyle Brown 20MBA became interested in holistic living and the various ways cannabidiol (CBD) could improve one’s health. Brown soon teamed up with his aunt, an expert gardener and advocate of natural medicine, who had long been growing her own herbs for healthful teas. The duo developed a series of CBD tea formulas, and ultimately launched their brick-and-mortar cannabis bar Bookstore Gallery. While its products assist in pain management on an individual level, Bookstore Gallery leads the charge of healing on a community level. Brown’s holistic healing mission comes to life through diverse events, including therapy-focused happy hours, game nights, tailgates, spoken word poetry, men’s mental health meetups, and creative outlets like “Puff and Paint.”

Groundbreaking Research from Goizueta’s Brightest Minds

Mitigating Bias in AI: Sharing the Burden of Bias When it Counts Most

From directions on Google Maps to job recommendations on LinkedIn, by now, we’ve all grown accustomed to AI systems’ integration in nearly every aspect of our daily lives. But are AI systems fair? The answer to this question, in short—not completely. Fortunately, some dedicated data scientists are working around the clock to tackle this big issue. One of those data scientists is Gareth James, who also serves as the Dean of Goizueta Business School as his day job. In a recent paper titled “A Burden Shared is a Burden Halved: A Fairness-Adjusted Approach to Classification” Dean James—along with coauthors Bradley Rava, Wenguang Sun, and Xin Tong—have proposed a new framework to help ensure AI decision-making is as fair as possible in high-stakes decisions where certain individuals—for example, racial minority groups and other protected groups—may be more prone to AI bias, even without our realizing it. 

Hiring More Nurses Generates Revenue for Hospitals

Underfunding is driving an acute shortage of trained nurses in hospitals and care facilities in the United States. American nurses are quitting in droves, and that’s bad news for patient outcomes. For beleaguered administrators looking to sustain quality of care while minimizing costs (and maximizing profits), hiring and retaining nursing staff has arguably become something of a zero-sum game in the U.S. But could there be potential financial losses attached to nurse understaffing that administrators should factor into their hiring and remuneration decisions? Research by Goizueta Professors Diwas KC and Donald Lee, as well as recent Goizueta PhD graduates Hao Ding 24PhD (Auburn University) and Sokol Tushe 23PhD (Muma College of Business), would suggest there are.

Training Innovative AI to Provide Expert Guidance on Prescription Medications

A new wave of medications meant to treat Type II diabetes is grabbing headlines around the world for their ability to help people lose a significant amount of weight. The two big names that come to mind are Ozempic and Wegovy. However, both medications come with a host of side effects, and are not suitable for every patient. Many clinics and physicians—particularly in smaller communities—do not have immediate access to expert second opinions needed to make decisions about prescription medications such as these. That’s one of the reasons Karl Kuhnert is using artificial intelligence to capture the expertise of physicians like Caroline Collins MD through the Tacit Object Modeler, or TOM. By using TOM, Kuhnert and Collins can create her “decision-making digital twin.” Though there are a number of ways TOM could be useful to the healthcare industry when prescribing medications, not least among them is the potential to expand access to the expert opinions of medical specialists to rural areas experiencing significant health disparities.

Help keep the great Goizueta stories coming with a gift of support to Emory’s 2O36 campaign.

The post The Best Stories of 2024 from Goizueta Business School appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Emory Business is pleased to share the following books written by Goizueta faculty.

Saloni Firasta-Vastani, Associate Professor in the Practice of Marketing & Jagdish Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Chaired Professor of Business

Purpose-Driven Pricing: Leveraging the Power of Pricing for Profit and Societal Good

Pricing is often a key strategic tool for increasing profitability, but it can also be used for societal good. This book shows how effective pricing can reduce carbon emissions, promote eco-friendly products, and improve health outcomes and quality of life. Written by experts in pricing strategy, the book connects organizational purpose with practical tools for implementing change through pricing.

Jagdish Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Chaired Professor of Business

Artificial Intelligence in Customer Service: The Next Frontier for Personalized Engagement

This edited volume explains how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance customer service by increasing customer engagement, improving user experiences, and boosting customer and employee well-being. The book addresses these issues through real-world examples. It offers a global perspective on AI in customer service, covering customer well-being, data and technology integration, and customer engagement.

India’s Road to Transformation: Why Leadership Matters

Since gaining independence in 1947, India has been led by 14 prime ministers, some of whom have greatly advanced its socio-economic development. This book highlights how various leaders, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s unifying philosophy, have used their influence to improve the lives of Indians through transformative economic and social policies.

Wes Longhofer: Goizueta Foundation Term Associate Professor of Organization & Management

Social Theory Re-Wired: New Connections to Classical and Contemporary Perspectives

This social theory text offers the structure of a traditional print reader with the flexibility of a comprehensive interactive website. It features readings from notable classical and contemporary theorists, organized around core themes such as the puzzle of social order, the dark side of modernity, and identity.

Wei Jiang, Vice Dean for Faculty and Research and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance

Analytics for Finance and Accounting: Data Structures and Applied AI

This book teaches students how to combine AI with accounting and finance data. Instead of starting with programming, the book first introduces domain data, textual features, and relevant use cases. It then covers emerging technologies and how to apply AI and machine learning tools to analyze unstructured financial data, like conference call transcripts and annual reports.

Foundations and Trends® in Finance: Corporate Governance Meets Data and Technology

Corporate governance includes the processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions that influence how a corporation is directed and controlled. In this booklet, Jiang and Li explore three key themes: the redefinition of information and information asymmetry through big data, blockchain technology’s potential to transform shareholder voting and blur the line between securities and tokens, and the impact of smart contracts on decentralized governance through decentralized autonomous organizations.

Lakshmi Shankar Ramachandran: Associate Professor in the Practice of Finance

Fintech and Sustainability: How Financial Technologies Can Help Address Today’s Environmental and Societal Challenges, featuring a chapter by Lakshmi Shankar Ramachandran

This book overviews fintech applications and their impact on sustainable finance. It explores how financial technologies can boost sustainable investments and corporate decisions, helping to achieve sustainable development goals. Considering practitioner and academic perspectives, it examines how fintech can improve sustainability practices, address potential threats, and discusses policies and regulations to enhance sustainability benefits.

Karl Kuhnert: Professor in the Practice of Organization & Management

The MAP: Your Path to Effectiveness in Leadership, Life, and Legacy

Great leadership isn’t about winning, pleasing people, or holding titles. It’s about making a unique contribution to your family, friends, community, organization, country, or the world. It requires wisdom, courage, and effort; it’s not an automatic result of aging. Based on decades of research on adult development, The MAP explains how we can take control of our growth and accelerate progress in leadership, life, and legacy.

Kuhnert is creating a chatbot to accompany the book with the idea of rereleasing the book with the coaching chatbot to personalize the content for readers.

Goizueta faculty apply their expertise and knowledge to solving problems that society—and the world—face. Learn more about faculty research at Goizueta.

Discover more great reads from Emory authors here.

The post New Reads: Goizueta Faculty Between the Pages appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School offers insights into why and how we can use artificial intelligence to deliver educational content.

• + Early technological interventions can improve student outcomes, as long as human instructors are also involved.
• + Material that is delivered by AI tools can be quickly and easily updated. It also can be customized to provide more personalized learning experiences.
• + Many professors aren’t familiar with AI tools—and students are. So, schools need to encourage collaboration and provide support to faculty who want to experiment with the technology.

How would business education change if all instructors were assisted by avatars—virtual doppelgängers that look and sound just like them? More broadly, how would it affect student learning if every classroom included an artificial intelligence (AI) component?

The possibilities seem endless. When AI instructors are part of the classroom experience, it opens doors to many possibilities. Schools can deliver content in multiple languages, create hyper-personalized learning experiences, and easily update program materials. But how does an avatar’s communication of material compare to that of a human instructor?

To answer that question, Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta is exploring the best ways to deliver education through avatars, AI, and other developing technologies. Driven by curiosity, faculty and staff members are building on lessons learned during COVID-19, when curricula had to be adapted for online learning.

“In four or five years, AI technology will exponentially change. So, it’s up to us to embrace a more collaborative, technology-enabled education model,” says Gareth James, the John H. Harland Dean of Goizueta Business School and an expert on statistical and machine learning methodologies. He notes that faculty who use AI are not merely standing at the front of the classroom, presenting knowledge. They’re also learning from students, “because many students are independently learning about this technology.”

Through these collaborative efforts, Goizueta’s faculty and staff have developed five key insights about why and how to use AI in the classroom.

1. AI Can Improve Student Outcomes

Rajiv Garg wondered how the presence of human and AI instructors might affect student performance—whether separate or in some combination. An associate professor of information systems and operations management, Garg worked with student researchers to set up a small study. He and his team assigned 40 students to classes taught by a human, an AI system, or both.

The students who performed best on the final exam had learned with human-generated course content guided by an AI voice/avatar. The second-best performers learned from the completely human-generated course. Those in the completely AI-generated course did less well. The poorest-performing students were those in the AI-generated course led by a human voice/avatar.

Garg and his students are expanding this small-scale experiment this semester. So far, it suggests that a faculty expert still does a better job of generating a course than an AI system does. But an AI assistant or avatar can deliver content successfully. This means schools can save both time and money by having human experts generate new content and avatars deliver it. James says, “You could certainly imagine getting the best of both worlds: great research and great presentation skills.”

To create AI assistants, professors first design avatars that are similar to themselves in appearances, voices, accents, and mannerisms. After professors feed scripts to the AI system, their avatars deliver the content in the form of videos. They can then use this content to supplement classroom teaching.

A faculty expert still does a better job of generating a course than an AI system does. But an AI assistant or avatar can deliver content successfully.

Garg encourages academics to be thoughtful in the material they provide to their virtual assistants. That’s because the AI is learning from all the content it consumes, and better inputs lead to more useful outputs. He also suggests that professors continually tweak the material the AI is using. Otherwise, both the avatar and the content could become stale and ineffective.

Creating an AI assistant is “not just a switch that you flip,” he warns. “You may be innovating content a dozen times in a semester to make sure the content is achieving the task of teaching students.”

2. AI Enables Quick Course Updates

AI is raising societal expectations that all deliverables—just like Amazon boxes—will arrive immediately. With the help of AI, faculty can swiftly create new material that reflects breaking changes across industries, explains Pam Tipton, Goizueta Business School’s senior director of custom executive education programs.

This flexibility is particularly useful for schools that offer customized education courses. Such programs often are delivered on demand to C-suite leaders in industries that are rapidly changing—sometimes because of AI itself. Many of Goizueta’s executive education participants come from Atlanta, a metro area of 5 million people that is home to 17 Fortune 500 company headquarters. AI allows professors to swiftly create and incorporate “new case studies, especially from within an executive’s own company,” Tipton says.

Her advice to professors who are unfamiliar with AI: Try a small experiment with free tools. “Set up free accounts and see what the output looks and feels like,” Tipton advises. “Play around in small ways to integrate AI into your classroom. When you experiment, you’ll find the AI tools that work for you and your clients.”

3. Faculty Need Support to Try AI

Stephanie Adams initially gulped at the disruption posed by AI. As the senior associate director of academic affairs and instructional design at Goizueta Business School, she supports faculty and students by helping them optimize their working relationships. While she knows AI presents growth opportunities in educational applications, she realizes that the learning curve can be steep for professors unfamiliar with the technology. She recommends that administrators provide accessible paths that encourage professors to try AI.

“We have folks who embrace innovation and technologies and folks who are more fearful, skeptical,” she says. “It’s important to build a space where they feel comfortable learning new things, comfortable exploring, and okay when something doesn’t work.”

Goizueta faculty have learned to use AI to develop slide decks, organize syllabi and course content, generate ideas, and comb through data. They also have discovered that some AI tools are better for text, while others are better for images or data. “When faculty feel empowered, it impacts learners in a positive way,” says Adams.

AI presents growth opportunities in educational applications, but the learning curve can be steep for professors unfamiliar with the technology.

The school held a gathering that allowed faculty and staff to share their AI experiences and teaching strategies. Adams particularly likes the scavenger hunt that a faculty member created using free AI tools. “There is an online link with a small prompt that helps professors learn to use the tool in a very basic way,” she says. “A scavenger hunt can be a brilliant, low-stakes way to learn and build confidence with AI.”

She adds, “Adapting to AI is a lot about teaching and learning with curiosity, because we’re never going to dip our toes in the water and learn something new if we let our fears hold us back.”

4. Students Must Learn the Ethics of AI

While faculty might find it difficult to master AI, many learners are already familiar with it. However, it’s often up to the school to ensure that students use the new technology in an ethical fashion.

“We don’t want students to violate the honor code. We want to uphold the integrity of our work,” says Adams. She believes it’s essential for the business school community to discuss its standards and agree upon best practices and guidelines for using AI.

“Rather than saying, ‘This AI tool is banned in my class,’ faculty could consider saying, ‘Let’s use this tool and really explore it,’” Adams suggests. Professors could have AI respond to a problem, then ask students to analyze its responses. What did it get right? Where did it go wrong? Students will learn not only how to use AI language models, Adams emphasizes, but also how to think critically.

Karl Kuhnert is one of the Goizueta professors who is exploring how AI can support ethical decision-making in the classroom and beyond. Using sophisticated AI software, he is “cloning” leading experts. To do this, he uses their judgment, intuition, and experience to create their digital twins. The resulting tools help individuals learn how to make subjective, time-critical, high-consequence decisions. It’s particularly useful in complex industries such as healthcare and insurance. For instance, doctors can use AI tools to determine whether or not to prescribe new weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic.

5. Be Strategic—But Have Fun.

Tinkering has its roots in play, and Goizueta Business School channeled some whimsy—and generated some buzz—by creating an avatar of its top leader. “Digi-Dean” stars in a brief social media video about how the school’s leadership is applying AI to business education.

“Emory may no longer need my services,” laments James, who is originally from New Zealand, in a post about his digital alter ego. “Anyone need a slightly used dean with an exotic accent?”

AI gives business schools another tool to expand their global reach, drive meaningful classroom exchanges with students, and respond to daily market changes.

More seriously, Goizueta faculty and administrators identify many benefits of using AI in the classroom:

• + Avatars allow schools to provide highly personalized education at a lower cost per student. For instance, faculty can use avatars to deliver content in any language to students from anywhere in the world.
• + Using AI, schools can customize core business courses for specific industries such as finance, real estate, healthcare, and technology.
• + If a professor leaves an institution, the school can use an avatar service to easily re-edit and rerecord supplemental materials.

Preparing for the Future

Today’s business schools are constantly seeking to expand their global reach, drive meaningful classroom exchanges with students, and respond to daily market changes. AI gives them another tool to achieve these goals.

In addition, when schools incorporate AI into the classroom, they are preparing students for the future. Goizueta’s namesake, former Coca-Cola CEO Robert C. Goizueta, put it this way: “Business schools today cannot just reflect business the way it is. They must teach business the way it will be.”

It’s clear that businesses will be relying heavily on new technology to support their future planning and growth. Business schools must adapt their educational approaches accordingly.

Goizueta’s teaching innovations have transformed the traditional classroom into a dynamic digital ecosystem with virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and holographic capabilities. Learn more about our unparalleled educational experience with unparalleled results.

The post The Avatar as Instructor appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

The two big names in GLP-1 agonists are Ozempic and Wegovy, and both are a form of semaglutide. Another medication, tirzepatide, is sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound. It is also a glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) agonist as well as GLP-1.

Physicians have been prescribing semaglutide and tirzepatide with increasing frequency. However, both medications come with a host of side effects, including nausea and stomach pain, and are not suitable for every patient. Many clinics and physicians do not have immediate access to expert second opinions, as do the physicians at Emory Healthcare.

Creating a Digital Twin 

That lack of an expert is one of the reasons Karl Kuhnert, professor in the practice of organization and management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, is using artificial intelligence to capture the expertise of physicians like Caroline Collins MD through the Tacit Object Modeler, or TOM. By using TOM, developed by Merlynn Intelligence Technologies, Kuhnert and Collins can create her “decision-making digital twin.” This allows Collins to reveal her expertise as a primary care physician with Emory Healthcare and an Assistant Professor at Emory School of Medicine, where she has been leading the field in integrating lifestyle medicine into clinical practices and education.

Traditional AI, like ChatGPT, uses massive amount of data points to predict outcomes using what’s known as explicit knowledge. But it isn’t necessarily learning as it goes. According to Kuhnert, TOM has been designed to learn how an expert, like Collins, decides whether or not to prescribe a drug like semaglutide to a patient. Wisdom or tacit knowledge is intuitive and rooted in experience and context. It is hard to communicate, and usually resides only in the expert’s mind. TOM’s ability to “peek into the expert’s mind makes it a compelling technology for accessing wisdom.”

“Objective or explicit knowledge is known and can be shared with others,” says Kuhnert.

For example, ChatGPT uses explicit knowledge in its answers. It’s not creating something new. It may be new to you as you read it, but somebody, somewhere, before you, has created it. It’s understood as coming from some source.

Karl Kuhnert

“Tacit knowledge is subjective wisdom. Experts offer this, and we use their tacit know-how, their implicit knowledge, to make their decisions. If it were objective, everyone could do it. This is why we hire experts: They see things and know things others don’t; they see around corners.”

Mimicking the Mind of a Medical Expert

Teaching TOM to see around the corners requires Collins to work with the AI over the course of a few days. “Essentially what I do is I sit down with, in this case, a physician, and ask them, ‘What are thinking about when you make this decision?'” says Kuhnert. “The layperson might think that there are hundreds of variables in making a medical decision like this. With the expert’s tacit knowledge and experience, it is usually between seven and twelve variables. They decide based on these critical variables,” he says.

These experts have so much experience, they can cut away a lot of the noise around a decision and get right to the point and ask, ‘What am I looking at?’

Karl Kuhnert

As TOM learns, it presents Collins with more and different scenarios for prescribing semaglutide. As she makes decisions, it remembers the variables present during her decision-making process. “Obviously, some variables are going to be more important than other variables. Certain combinations are going to be challenging,” says Collins. “Sometimes there are going to be some variables where I think, yes, this patient needs a GLP-1. Then there may be some variables where I think, no, this person really doesn’t need that. And which ones are going to win out? That’s really where TOM is valuable. It can say, okay, when in these difficult circumstances where there are conflicting variables, which one will ultimately be most important in making that decision?”

The Process: Trusting AI

After working with TOM for several hours, Collins will have reacted to enough scenarios for TOM to learn to make her decision. The Twin will need to demonstrate that it can replicate her decision-making with acceptable accuracy—high 90s to 100 percent. Once there, Collins’ Twin is ready to use.

“I think it’s important to have concordance between what I would say in a situation and then what my digital twin would say in a situation because that’s our ultimate goal is to have an AI algorithm that can duplicate what my recommendation would be given these circumstances for a patient,” Collins says. “So, someone, whether that be an insurance company, or a patient themselves or another provider, would be able to consult TOM, and in essence, me, and say, in this scenario, would you prescribe a GLP-1 or not given this specific patient’s situation?”

The patient’s current health and family history are critical when deciding whether or not to prescribe semaglutide. For example, according to Novo Nordisk, the makers of Ozempic, the drug should not be prescribed to patients with a history of problems with the pancreas or kidneys or with a family history of thyroid cancer. Those are just the start of a list of reasons why a patient may or may not be a good candidate for the medication.

Kuhnert says, “What we’re learning is that there are so many primary care physicians right now that if you come in with a BMI over 25 and are prediabetic, you’re going to get (a prescription). But there’s much more data around this to suggest that there are people who are health marginalized, and they can’t do this. They should not have this (medication). It’s got to be distributed to people who can tolerate it and are safe.”

Accessing the Digital Twin on TOM   

Collins’s digital twin could be available via something as easy to access as an iPhone app. “Part of my job is to provide the latest information to primary care physicians. Now, I can do this in a way that is very powerful for primary care physicians to go on their phones and put it in. It’s pretty remarkable, according to Colllins.”

It is also transparent and importantly sourced information.  

Any physician using a digital twin created with TOM will know exactly whose expertise they are accessing, so anyone asking for a second opinion from Colllins will know they are using an expert physician from Emory University.

In addition to patient safety, there are a number of ways TOM can be useful to the healthcare industry when prescribing medications like semaglutide. This includes interfacing with insurance companies and the prior approval process, often lengthy and handled by non-physician staff. “Why is a non-expert at an insurance company determining whether a patient needs a medication or not? Would it be better to have an expert?” says Collins. “I’m an expert in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine. So, I help people not only lose weight, but also help people change their behaviors to optimize their health. My take on GLP-1 medications is not that everyone needs them, it’s that they need to be utilized in a meaningful way, so patients will get benefit, given risks and benefits for these medications.”

The Power of a Second Opinion

Getting second, and sometimes third, opinions is a common practice among physicians and patients both. When a patient presents symptoms to their primary care physician, that physician may have studied the possible disease in school but isn’t necessarily an expert. In a community like Emory Healthcare, the experts are readily available, like Collins. She often serves as a second opinion for her colleagues and others around the country.

“What we’re providing folks is more of a second opinion. Because we want this actually to work alongside someone, you can look at this opinion that this expert gave, and now, based on sourced information, you can choose. This person may be one of the best in the country, if not the world, in making this decision. But we’re not replacing people here. We’re not dislocating people with this technology. We need people. We need today’s and tomorrow’s experts as well,” according to Kuhnert.

But also, you now have the ability to take an Emory physician’s diagnosing capabilities to physicians in rural areas and make use of this information, this knowledge, this decision, and how they make this decision. We have people here that could really help these small hospitals across the country.

Caroline Collin MD

Rural Americans have significant health disparities when compared to those living in urban centers. They are more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, injury, chronic respiratory disease, and stroke. Rural areas are finding primary care physicians in short supply, and patients in rural areas are 64 percent less likely to have access to medical specialists for needed referrals.

Smaller communities might not have immediate access to experts like a rheumatologist, for example. In addition, patients in more rural areas might not have the means of transportation to get to a specialist, nor have the financial means to pay for specialized visits for a diagnosis. Collins posits that internal medicine generalists might suspect a diagnosis but want to confirm before prescribing a course of treatment.

“If I have a patient for whom I am trying to answer a specific question, ‘Does this patient have lupus?’, for instance. I’m not going to be able to diagnose this person with lupus. I can suspect it, but I’m going to ask a rheumatologist. Let’s say I’m in a community where unfortunately, we don’t have a rheumatologist. The patient can’t see a rheumatologist. That’s a real scenario that’s happening in the United States right now. But now I can ask the digital twin acting as a rheumatologist, given these variables, ‘Does this patient have lupus?’ And the digital twin could give me a second opinion.”

Sometimes, those experts are incredibly busy and might not have the physical availability for a full consult. In this case, someone could use TOM to create the digital twin of that expert. This allows them to give advice and second opinions to a wider range of fellow physicians.

As Kuhnert says, TOM is not designed or intended to be a substitute for a physician. It should only work alongside one. Collins agreed, saying, “This doesn’t take the place of a provider in actual clinical decision-making. That’s where I think someone could use it inappropriately and could get patients into trouble. You still have to have a person there with clinical decision-making capacity to take on additional variables that TOM can’t yet do. And so that’s why it’s a second opinion.”

“We’re not there yet in AI says Collins. We have to be really careful about having AI make actual medical decisions for people without someone there to say, ‘Wait a minute, does this make sense?’”

AI Implications in the Classroom and Beyond

Because organizations use TOM to create digital twins of their experts, the public cannot use the twins to shop for willing doctors. “We don’t want gaming the system,” says Collins. “We don’t want doctor shopping. What we want is a person there who can utilize AI in a meaningful way – not in a dangerous way. I think we’ll eventually get there where we can have AI making clinical decisions. But I don’t think I’d feel comfortable with that yet.”

The implications of using decision-making digital twins in healthcare reach far beyond a second opinion for prescription drugs. Kuhnert sees it as an integral part of the future of medical school classrooms at Emory. In the past, teaching case studies have come from books, journals, and papers. Now, they could come alive in the classroom with AI simulation programs like TOM.

I think this would be great for teaching residents. Imagine that we could create a simulation and put this in a classroom, have (the students) do the simulation, and then have the physician come in and talk about how she makes her decisions.

Karl Kuhnert

“And then these residents could take this decision, and now it’s theirs. They can keep it with them. It would be awesome to have a library of critical health decisions made in Emory hospitals,” Kuhnert says.

Collins agreed. “We do a lot of case teaching in the medical school. I teach both residents and medical students at Emory School of Medicine. This would be a really great tool to say, okay, given these set of circumstances, what decision would you make for this patient? Then, you could see what the expert’s decision would have been. That could be a great way to see if you are actually in lockstep with the decision-making process that you’re supposed to be learning.”

Kuhnert sees decision-making twins moving beyond the healthcare system and into other arenas like the courtroom, public safety, and financial industries and has been working with other experts to digitize their knowledge in those fields.

The way to think about this is: say there is a subjective decision that gets made that has significant ramifications for that company and maybe for the community. What would it mean if I could digitize experts and make it available to other people who need an expert or an expert’s decision-making?

Karl Kuhnert

“You think about how many people aren’t available. Maybe you have a physician who’s not available. You have executives who are not available. Often expertise resides in the minds of just a few people in an organization,” says Kuhnert.

“Pursuing the use of technologies like TOM takes the concept of the digital human expert from simple task automation to subjective human decision-making support and will expand the idea of a digital expert into something beyond our current capabilities,” Kuhnert says. “I wanted to show that we could digitize very subjective decisions in such areas as ethical and clinical decision-making. In the near future, we will all learn from the wisdom codified in decision-making digital twins. Why not learn from the best? There is a lot of good work to do.”

Goizueta faculty apply their expertise and knowledge to solving problems that society—and the world—face. Learn more about faculty research at Goizueta.

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The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis are rewriting the rules of business anew each day. What worked yesterday may not work today — or ever again. It is testing executive leadership and the strength of leaders’ past performance in creating a strong market orientation, a sound financial base, effective people-based processes and a culture of innovation, engagement and trust.

“This is not going to be a ‘flip-the-switch’ situation where we are suddenly back to where we were in late 2019,” said Nicola Barrett, chief corporate learning officer at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. “It’s critical for leaders to think about how they are going to adapt to the next normal, and then the next normal after that.”

Smart leaders are rethinking, reimagining, and reinventing their businesses, Barrett said. “By taking stock of all of the tangible and intangible assets that you have and recombining them in a way that meets both the short-term survivability challenge with new and emerging business needs on which to build for the long term.”

Emory Executive Education, the unit Barrett leads at Goizueta, has focused on how businesses find and capture new sources of growth from the ideas, research and teaching of its faculty. While it may sound counterintuitive, now is the time to identify changes to your business model, potential new products and services and explore new market segments, Barrett said. This is about defining the next normal, not just adapting to what comes next.

The urgency for forward-focused change requires a high degree of organizational and individual agility and resilience. This has implications for several factors central to organizational success: leadership; strategy; a market orientation; complex problem solving and decision-making; and the ability to execute.

“Leadership starts with having a true understanding of your purpose and values, being willing to adapt and learn and inviting and inspiring others to do the same” says Barrett, expanding on statements made by Karl Kuhnert, professor in the practice of organization and management at Goizueta, in an article about becoming a competent leader.

When there is a high degree of uncertainty, top-down, hierarchical decision-making increases business risk. Organizations can’t flex quickly enough. According to Rick Gilkey, also a professor in the practice of organization and management at Goizueta. “as complexity accelerates, organizations don’t have people with all the answers.” Successful leaders provide an environment in which employees can thrive. Investing in people and cultivating a culture of innovation, in which ideas are encouraged and examined rigorously, increases the value of their knowledge and actions.

Kuhnert and Gilkey have identified common traits in successful leaders. They found mature, effective leaders think differently: they paint on a much larger canvas than less mature leaders. For example, either/or quandaries are replaced by both/and thinking. Closely associated with thinking like a leader are behaviors like:

• Staying curious.
• Continuously scanning, looking for weak signals.
• Identifying unconventional sources.
• Disconfirming information.
• Dissenting productively.
• Seeing patterns.
• Seeking opportunities, particularly in adversity or scarcity.

Opportunities emerge when leaders listen to existing and prospective customers through frontline employees, social media and other tools that help companies stay in sync with their suppliers and buyers’ interests, Barrett said. Robert Kazanjian, Asa Griggs Candler professor of organization and management at Goizueta, teaches that “strategy isn’t a once-and-done. You have to be constantly thinking about, talking to and understanding your stakeholders, where they are going, and the challenges they’re facing.”

In an article about anticipating market shifts and improving organizational agility, Kazanjian said that a company misses opportunities to grow when it only makes “small tweaks instead of big shifts” in its strategy. “They don’t revisit questions about where to compete and how to compete,” Kazanjian said. “Crises, for instance, require leaders to pay immediate attention to strategic choices for both short-term survival through cost reductions and to developing new revenue sources for long-term growth. It may be that existing trends and emerging practices are accelerated by crisis, requiring organizations to more quickly alter strategies and build new capabilities for the longer term.”

Leaders must challenge themselves to ask: will the business model used by their company be relevant tomorrow? Where are disruptors most likely to originate? Technology has elevated customers’ expectations while reducing barriers to entry. “Only a few years ago, the sale price of a taxi medallion was huge, but then, thanks to technology, anyone who had a car could effectively become a cab driver,” Barrett said, noting the success of disruptors like Uber and Lyft and the widespread adoption of these services by the public.

Businesses grow when they involve customers in the creation and delivery of value, said Steve Walton, a professor in the practice of information systems and operations management at Goizueta, in an article about creating, capturing, and delivering new growth. “[The future of business] will become even more customer-centric.” In other words, leaders need to think about how customers are using their products or services and identify ways to improve the value offered to them.

“You have new, nimble, technology-enabled companies that are coming in and disrupting the value chain of traditional industries. Business leaders have to be constantly mindful of where new competition may come from,” said Anandhi Bharadwaj, endowed chair in electronic commerce and professor of information systems, operations management at Goizueta.

“You have to think of an operating model that is conceived in the digital world and then how this spawns new growth opportunities,” said Bharadwaj. “Then, think about how to build the required operating model.”

Goizueta is following Bharadwaj’s principle – accelerated due to the pandemic, Barrett said. Faculty and administrators are using technology to deliver sophisticated digital learning experiences. “While in-person learning is great, technology-enabled learning can be highly engaging and effective if designed well.”

Technology, data, social issues, speed and avenues of information dissemination have changed how to reach, understand and deliver value to customers. Big data offers marketers a substantial opportunity to connect with current and prospective customers, segment and learn what each values, and predict their behavior over time.

Data can show how customers act at any point in their buying journey, from acquisition to retention to engagement. “This creates opportunities for marketers to interact with their customers and prospective customers more than they have in the past,” said David Schweidel, a professor of marketing at Goizueta, in an article about using big-data marketing initiatives to find new growth sources.

In many organizations the role of chief marketing officer is being replaced by that of a chief growth officer, said Barrett, and “new growth opportunities emerge at the intersection of disciplines like technology, marketing and finance.” Daniel McCarthy, assistant professor of marketing at Goizueta, recommends “leveraging individual-level transactional data using best-in-class marketing science models to predict what customers will do in the future, when they’re going to make their purchases, how much they’ll spend, and how much of that spend will be retained as profit.”

Analyses like this can be directly linked to company valuations. According to Kristy Towry, John and Lucy Cook Chair and professor of accounting at Goizueta, in an article about modern managerial accounting practices, “accounting and finance cannot be a silent part of an organization. Accountants are experts in measurement and should be working across functions using forward-looking accounting skills to inform strategic decisions and help execute them effectively via good measurements and controls.”

Barrett believes that “surviving and thriving through this current global crisis not only relies on how well we have managed our organizations in the past, how adaptive we are as leaders, our strategic agility, and rigorous decision-making capability but on the culture and people practices we have in place.” Regardless of whether you are in accounting, finance, marketing, sales, strategic planning, IT or operations, ensuring your people are operating optimally is critical for your organization to operate at its full potential.

It’s also important to take note of the research into the physiology of decision-making and the impact of stress on executive functioning, productivity and performance. “Several of our faculty have research in this area, and now, more than ever, it is critical for leaders to be aware of how they and their team members are functioning mentally, emotionally and physically and how this impacts performance,” said Barrett. Citing Walton, Barrett pointed out that “when business operations are optimized through people who are doing their jobs well, better decisions are made, better data is collected, and better technologies and processes are implemented.”

Though the future is unclear, leaders must continuously learn and adapt to grow their businesses today and tomorrow. “The best leaders, as they evolve in their careers, realize they don’t have all the answers and that the way they did things yesterday may not be the best way to do them tomorrow,” Barrett said. “This pandemic has accelerated the pace at which leaders have to consider and lay the foundations for the next phase of their organizations.”

“Growth is about finding and capturing new opportunities by continually looking at your business in a new light and truly understanding your customers. We are going to have to rethink and reimagine what business and our organizations are going to be like in the next normal, however long that may be,” Barrett said. “Our goal in executive education at Goizueta Business School is to help leaders do just that by equipping them with the mindset, skill sets, and tool sets they need to be effective for their organizations.”

If you’d like to learn how you or your organization can engage with Goizueta faculty on this topic, speak with a learning advisor at 404-727-2200 or visit our website.

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School was created in 1919 as one of the nation’s first business schools. Its degree and Executive Education programs consistently rank in the top 25 in the world among major publications including Businessweek, The Economist, U.S. News & World Report, and Forbes.

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– Erika H. James, Dean of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School

Many of today’s business challenges are fluid, but goal one remains constant – grow the business. The pace of business is constantly accelerating. Circumstances, context and competitors are changing, and the best solutions to grow the business are often unclear and uncertain.

Environmental issues. Social issues. Geopolitical issues. Competitive issues.

These are just a few of the challenges that today’s business leaders face. But no individual leader or single organization can solve any of these problems with yesterday’s tools and leadership styles and skills.

“It feels like, as executives, we’re in over our heads because things are so complex, so challenging. The problems that we all face are wicked,” said Karl Kuhnert, a professor in the practice of organization and management at Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

Business leaders can no longer rely solely on their technical skills because not every problem can be fixed with a technical solution. They must develop new ways to shape strategies, solve problems and seize opportunities. “As complexity accelerates, organizations don’t have people with all the answers,” said Rick Gilkey, a professor in the practice of organization and management at Goizueta.

As faculty members at Goizueta, Gilkey and Kuhnert challenge executives to learn to lead in a way that facilitates responding to the demands of the marketplace while simultaneously influencing what that marketplace looks like.

Leading today

“You build the enterprise around people,” Gilkey said. “It used to be that leaders thought they inherited a culture. Now, leaders know they are responsible for creating a culture where people can achieve. It’s about human capital.”

“Human capital” is the epicenter of the concept of new growth. Business leaders view knowledge as an asset whose value can be increased by creating a culture of innovation, engagement and nurturing ideas from across the organization. Investing in people increases the value of their knowledge, according to Gilkey.

“Leaders need to have a deeper sense of the value they impart and what other people are imparting as well,” Gilkey said. “This isn’t a command-and-control performance. It’s about creating an environment for other people to be successful.” So Gilkey and Kuhnert focus on helping business leaders and their organizations create and capture new growth by facilitating personal and organizational change.

Today’s leaders must continue to grow personally to succeed organizationally. They need to adopt a personal growth mindset where challenges and failures are viewed as opportunities to learn and improve. “Leadership is about your ability to grow to understand problems that are more dynamic and more complex,” said Kuhnert. “Successful leaders come to see things more broadly and to view problems in a more holistic way. This is adaptive learning.”

Learning to lead

Both Kuhnert and Gilkey say they strive to identify what makes successful leaders successful – and what distinguishes experienced, effective leaders.

Kuhnert has researched how executives view adaptive problems differently as they mature as leaders. “They don’t solve the significant problems we face. They outgrow them,” he said.

“I’m helping people outgrow the problems they’re currently facing through models of adult development. When they realize there is a better way to handle the problem than the approach they have been using, that reflects their maturity as a leader.”

In his recent book, The Map, Kuhnert and co-author Keith Eigel outline five levels of development that define the maturity and capability of a leader. The following leadership development levels (LDLs) are based on the work of Robert Kegan, formerly the Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education. The levels serve as a framework to understand someone’s leadership maturity — and subsequently the rationale for their decision making:

Mature leaders, those at levels 4 and 5, who are more altruistic and more empathic, make the effort to create “brain-friendly environments” where employees can thrive. “They create a culture where people go into work excited to get there, they find meaning and purpose in what they do there, and then when they get home, they want to talk about it instead of to forget about it,” Gilkey said.

Gilkey has focused his work using neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and his work as a consulting psychologist and psychotherapist, to understand how leaders leverage their personal maturity to build work environments that optimize their organization’s most valuable asset: its people.

Gilkey says his research has found that the best leaders engage their emotions during strategic thinking, moral reasoning and creative problem solving. His research included using MRI scans to see what executives’ brains look like during these tasks.

Gilkey’s research also found that Level 4 and 5 executives make ethical decisions first through emotions. Thus, when they encounter a moral problem, for example, their emotions tend to outweigh their rational thinking initially.

He said there are two kinds of moral reasoning: rule-based and care-based. For example, a leader who uses care-based reasoning will be more willing to support a top employee who comes in late but works late, say due to caregiving responsibilities, rather than reprimanding them for always being tardy, as a rule-based leader would.

Gilkey says his research indicates that executives who actively develop their emotional maturity and who understand how to leverage emotions in their decision making may be more effective in the workplace. Custom business training programs like those offered at Goizueta can help aspiring leaders to accelerate their own maturation and professional growth.

What makes mature, effective leaders different

Effective leaders see the world differently because they are different. These are five ways through which effective leaders differentiate themselves, according to Gilkey.

• How they think. The most strategic leaders are also the best at coming up with new tactics and approaches because they are able to see hidden connections that others may miss. Either/or thinking has been replaced by both/and thinking.
• How they learn. Effective leaders are always looking for new sources of information, are naturally curious, and gain insights from unconventional sources. They also continuously seek to disconfirm information, disagree in a productive way, and identify patterns and opportunities, particularly in adversity or scarcity.
• How they manage their emotions and leverage their emotional quotient (EQ). Effective leaders build a culture of emotional safety, optimism, commitment and performance.
• How they operate. Effective leaders sometimes behave in ways that could be construed as counterintuitive or even inconsistent. In volatile situations they are calm; when answers are needed, they focus on questions; they can be both reverential and irreverent, narcissistic (in a mature sense) and altruistic; they operate effectively within hierarchies but are not defined by them, they can be both forceful and receptive, controlling and empowering, and they marshal all these forces in response to the best interest of the people and organizations they serve.
• How they manage their behavior. Having an executive presence means being approachable, open to feedback, positive and resilient.

Leading in the future

Future leaders who want to add value and succeed in a high-velocity business environment must approach learning in a multidisciplinary, holistic way. Experiential learning is critical for executives, Gilkey said. “We know from studying brain development that you learn from experiences that are different from yours. It forces learning, growth and development.”

In its leadership coaching program, for example, Goizueta synthesizes multiple disciplines ranging from neurology to Buddhist psychology and family systems theory to help organizations develop their leaders and find their competitive edge. That reflective and emotionally mature approach will be the way for tomorrow’s leaders.

Problems are becoming too complex for people to solve alone. Leaders must be willing to give up the right to be right, and to consider conflicting viewpoints, Kuhnert said. “You have to figure out a way to meet people where they are, and hopefully they’ll meet you where you are, and you can solve problems together.”

If you’d like to learn how you or your organization can engage with Goizueta faculty on this topic, speak with a learning advisor at 404-727-2200 or visit our website.

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School was created in 1919 as one of the nation’s first business schools. Its degree and Executive Education programs consistently rank in the top 25 in the world among major publications including Businessweek, The Economist, U.S. News & World Report, Financial Times, and Forbes.

The post Leaders must refocus how they lead to be successful in today’s — and tomorrow’s — business world appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Gut instincts and judgment calls are among the most valuable pieces of knowledge. Typically, that is developed over years, or decades, of work in a focused area, such as education, healthcare, law enforcement or finance. 

Bottling that information through artificial intelligence in a way that can be translated by scale using a pioneering piece of technology was recently outlined in a talk at Goizueta. Karl Kuhnert, a professor in the Practice of Organization & Management, engineered the discussion by Carl Wocke, managing director of Merlynn Intelligence Technologies, a South Africa-based company.

Wocke introduced to an audience of industry professionals, professors and students proprietary technology called “TOM,” or Tacit Object Modeler, something that is built to replicate and clone human expertise. The idea, by working with companies around the world, is to digitally produce the information that leads a police officer to make a traffic stop, a doctor to believe something deeper is wrong, or a customs and border agent to question a suspicious cargo ship. Mimicking human expertise instead of replacing it. 

“What this technology does is it actually digitizes the wisdom of experts,” Kuhnert said. “That is, taking the long history of how that expert makes a decision and digitizes it and creates an algorithm. The real genius for this technology for me is the ability to scale expertise, because you can share this algorithm with others and help them grow and develop.”

Wocke said he’s driven by a fusion of psychology and mathematics, and that the most important issue facing us is access to knowledge. 

“I became obsessed with the concept of what happens when someone dies,” Wocke said. “What happens with knowledge? How can you lose knowledge, how can you lose experience? How can you lose expertise? How can you lose who you are? Where does that go?”

Wocke believes expertise is worth something. For example, someone experiencing chest pains would put added value in a top cardiologist.   

“There’s comfort, there’s value in actually getting the bias of an expert to assist you with that decision,” he said. “Time and time again, we see that. When the rubber hits the road, when the back’s against the wall, people reach out for that expertise. So, with the TOM technology, we have the ability to reach out for that expertise and touch that expertise.”

One romantic notion Wocke describes is if someone is facing a life-altering decision, they could go to their great-grandfather and ask him, “What would you do?” That kind of advice is human, he said. Google might return an aggregate, but imagine asking the likes of Abraham Lincoln or Nelson Mandela? Wocke and Kuhnert believe there is a significant industry around second opinions in the medical space. 

Wocke believes there are three phases of AI: making it credible; commercializing intellectual property of an asset that’s developed; and using technology to give back to society, and encapsulating expertise where it’s available commercially. The key is not only accessing expertise, but also making it available. 

The importance of TOM is not only found in business, Kuhnert said, “but I actually think it has a great deal of importance how we make better decisions in general.”

The post How AI could digitize human expertise appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Is the time of the employee close at hand? After more than 20 years of downsizing, offshoring, buyouts, and innovation setting fire to traditional rules of the workplace, things are looking up for experienced, in-demand professionals. Many economic trends are on the uptick, and the unemployment rate continues to drop, from 8.2 percent in July 2012 to 4.3 percent in July 2017.

For workers with specialized skills, the job market is ripe with opportunity.   

Top talent can be picky about where to work, and it isn’t necessarily about more pay. No, highly educated and skilled professionals are looking to work for companies where they feel motivated, engaged, and appreciated.

Employers must learn—quickly—what that means.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25 percent of US employees quit their jobs in 2015.

The ability to recruit and retain top talent has become a valuable competitive advantage. Human capital, like equipment or products, translates to the bottom line. So why do established companies find it difficult to attract and keep the best and brightest? While many factors contribute to such turnover, research suggests one key reason workers leave jobs is because they aren’t sure they can trust their employer.

Recessions, globalization, and technological advances lead companies to downsize. But downsizing can exact a heavy emotional cost on workers—on those who lose their jobs and on others who remain.

These actions alone can breed distrust. It’s no wonder much of the workforce takes pause when choosing a place to spend their workdays.

According to Emily Bianchi, assistant professor of organization & management, trust and fairness impact recruiting and retention. She says employees must have confidence in employers to feel committed to their work and to the company.

“People are more likely to stay with employers they believe are trustworthy and fair,” she says. Indeed, a study from the Society for Human Resource Management ¹  indicates that “a culture of respect, trust, and belonging” is a key component for creating an effective workplace.

The rules of engagement

Long ago, corporate leaders embraced the importance of feelings in the workplace. But the competition for talent is steep and deep in intangibles, particularly for older companies looking to compete with Millennial-heavy firms embracing work-life balance, community activism, and any number of perks. A large, well-established corporation may not be seen as nimble or creative enough to attract experienced executives or retain more motivated employees. Highly skilled workers often seek smaller, more innovative firms that can add to their skill set and ability to pivot to the next career opportunity. With less hierarchy, smaller companies often offer a better chance for advancement and the opportunity to play a more decisive role in the organization’s future.

The result? Employees are more engaged.

A new guard of technology firms dominates Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017. Bianchi believes employers underestimate the role of trust, fairness, and engagement in recruiting and retention. She finds engagement improves recruiting and retention efforts and adds to worker productivity.

Culture and profit are connected.

Understanding fairness

So, what’s a company to do?  Bianchi argues corporations should work hard to develop a sense of trust in order to win—and keep—the best and brightest.
One way organizations can build trust is through transparency.

“Organizations and managers that are transparent about how they make decisions tend to be more trusted,” she says. “When they are not transparent, there is a sense there is something people are hiding—a reason they don’t want employees to know what is really going on.” 

Bianchi says it’s in a company’s best interests to figure out what truly motivates employees. That’s more than throwing money at the problem. She says employers assume employees care primarily about outcomes—how much they are paid, chances for promotions, and titles.

Not completely true.

“Of course people care about these things, but they also care a lot about whether they are treated respectfully and in fair and transparent ways,” Bianchi says.

Research suggests employees form trust judgments early in their tenure with an organization. Bianchi says once an employee forms a judgment, it’s hard to change and recommends managers do their best to earn employees’ trust early and often.

“Being fair and transparent is an inexpensive and relatively easy way to recruit and retain the best employees,” she says.

And retention is certainly in a company’s economic interest. According to the Society for Human Resource Management², employers shell out about six to nine months of an employee’s pay to recruit and train a replacement.

And don’t forget productivity.

The IBM Smarter Workforce Institute’s research report “The Employee Experience Index” notes, “Positive employee experience can contribute to higher motivation to apply extra effort at work and go ‘above and beyond’ typical job responsibilities.”

While it’s inexpensive (and smart) to be fair, Bianchi’s research suggests several ingrained behaviors work against managers. For example, people often have different assumptions about whether other people are trustworthy. Bianchi says employers may not recognize it, but some people are simply more trusting than others.

“They assume others have good motives and will act in the common interest,” she says. “Others tend to view people with suspicion and expect that others will somehow harm them. People who are more generally trusting tend to have more positive perceptions of whether their workplace is fair and equitable.”

In this sense, it can be hard for employers to change people’s preexisting beliefs about whether or not workplaces are fair.

A sense of belonging

But building trust and creating a culture of fairness can’t occur in a vacuum. A long stream of academic research, including that performed by Goizueta’s Erika Hall, reveals the power of bias in the workplace.

Hall, assistant professor of organization & management, notes racial and gender bias hurt employee engagement. Her research indicates most bias is not obvious, but the mere perception of bias can impact job performance and employee retention.

“People tend to know about overt prejudice, but bias isn’t always readily apparent,” she says. For example, a manager might favor one employee over another for a position simply based on perceived gender roles and what they think a “male” or “female” job should be.

Hall argues companies can work to handle covert biases and begin to create a fairer and more trusting workplace by acknowledging that bias exists and that most people have preconceived notions about a group or gender.

“If you’re conscious of bias and you have a desire to create a bias-free environment, it means you can work against it,” she says. “If employers can recognize the systemic bias in commonplace incidents, they can counteract it in the workplace.”

According to Hall, companies can select leaders who recognize what an inclusive workplace truly means. According to research from Catalyst³, “inclusive leaders both value their employees’ unique diversity and also find a common ground to foster a sense of belongingness.” 

As employees place an ever-increasing value on the company culture, it’s impacting the job decisions they make. If company culture is seen as inviting and accepting, then prospective employees will likely hear about it.

If the company is seen as a place where opinions and people aren’t valued, then the world will know it.

“Current and prospective employees are, generally speaking, looking for their companies to be more
socially minded or conscious,” Hall says. “Reputation follows a company, and even prospective employees know about the ‘feel’ or environment at certain companies.”

All things being equal

If negative impressions have an impact outside company walls, what is the impact inside? Rarely do decisions affect an internal or external audience exclusively. Willie Choi 11PhD, associate professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh, says choices managers make about an employee are observed and assessed by other employees in the organization. His research into “vicarious learning” shows a trickle-down effect leaders should recognize, especially if there’s a misstep.

“Imagine two coworkers, one more senior than the other,” Choi says. “If the more senior employee is let go, the more junior coworker sees that decision and will immediately think about the implications for himself or herself.”

But Choi says issues of fairness and trust can have differing implications depending on whether or not the manager makes decisions for recruiting or retention.

“I think there is a distinction regarding what fairness and equality mean for recruiting compared to what those concepts mean for retention,” Choi says. “In particular, recruiting processes are embedded within an external labor market, in which there are many prospective job candidates looking for jobs and, likely, many employers looking for qualified candidates.”

Uncertainty exists in an external market. No one is certain any specific job candidate is a perfect match for the position. That uncertainty affects what job candidates and employees view as fair or equal.

In contrast, retention is part of an “internal” labor market where employers and employees have
more information about the nature of the job and its demands.

“Both sides have tangible, firsthand experience of the employment relationship and thus have a better sense of the match between the employer and employee,” Choi says.

Those assessments relate to how the employee is performing in his or her current job and how said employee might perform if promoted.

A strategic approach

Additional insights change what employers and employees view as equal or fair.

Research indicates employers take a proactive approach to creating a fairer and more engaging work environment. Unfortunately, employers may not be making the critical link between improving the company culture and its positive impact on retention.

Karl Kuhnert, professor in the practice of organization & management, says high employee turnover is no surprise given a large number of companies have no efforts to address attrition. To rectify this, formal and informal training, as well as mentorship, should focus on future jobs, not merely improving current performance. Kuhnert’s research shows younger employees especially want to feel like the company is invested in them. Kuhnert joined the Goizueta faculty this fall, and for more than 20 years his research has focused on leadership development and organizational change.

“Your best employees want access to ways to increase their skills to rise within the company,”
Kuhnert says.

It’s no secret employees want work with a purpose.

One of the best retention strategies, according to Kuhnert, is to have a company purpose that deeply resonates with the people in the organization.

“If I am contributing to a worthwhile mission, and we are doing that together, I am unlikely to seek out [other] employment options,” he says. “Most employees want to know how they’re doing on their jobs. In too many jobs, people don’t see a connection between their work effort, pay, and rewards.” 

Employees and leaders working as one is of great importance, says Graham Geiselman 06BBA, manager in the human capital practice at Deloitte Consulting. He says collaboration can go a long way to bridging the gap between employer and employee. He recommends companies encourage a collaborative environment to build camaraderie and trust between employees and, consequently, the organization.

The end result, he argues (and research supports), is a more productive company.

For managers looking to encourage collaboration, they’ll need to think beyond the office. Leaders should appreciate work-life pressures their employees face and how the same pressures can tank a productive and collaborative workplace, says Geiselman. He notes Deloitte and its own generous leave policy as an example of such understanding. But the upstarts in the corporate world are leading the way and changing what top employees expect from a company.

“It seems that some of the companies that are best at embracing the balance of work and play are smaller startup organizations that feature things like unlimited PTO, flexible work schedules, and outstanding family benefits,” Geiselman says.

Value of empathy

Successful leaders are attuned to the particular needs, values, and motivations of their employees. In the book titled The Map: Your Path to Effectiveness in Leadership, Life, and Legacy, Kuhnert and coauthor Keith Martin Eigel argue great leaders lead where others are, not where they themselves are. This level of understanding creates a sense of inclusiveness and trust, and, in turn, employees feel more committed to the organization.

“Effective leaders know how to put themselves in another’s shoes and see what others see,” Kuhnert says. 

It’s a big mistake for top managers to forget their empathetic side, says Kuhnert, especially given the demands of a younger workforce. Perks like time off and higher pay are relevant, but growth opportunities, like increasing job responsibility and access to leadership development programs, are essential.

“What young leaders want is a chance to help grow the company,” he says. “Too often many managers miss the opportunity to invest in employee loyalty by not including young leaders in their executive development programs.” 

Loyalty is bred through trust and a sense of fairness in the workplace.

“In today’s organization, we are all networked, and we depend on one another to do our jobs,” Kuhnert says. “When we let others down, communication and relationships become strained and problems go unaddressed, and it eventually impacts bottom-line profits. With so much daily stress, there is little time for the important kind of reflection that unlocks commitment, trust, courage, loyalty, and other vital virtues necessary for leadership.”

The takeaway

Research is clear.

Companies must invest more time and money toward motivating employees—as much or more than skills training.

Bianchi says the absence of investment can have devastating consequences, whether it’s a drop in employee productivity or an increase in attrition.

While her research continues to delve into trust and fairness issues in the workplace, she has expanded it to study CEO misconduct, the impact of the economy on ethics, and the effect of economic recession on individualism.

But she isn’t surprised trust and fairness remain at the top of her mind in today’s ever-evolving and fractured workplace.

For organizations hoping to change the current dynamic, Bianchi recommends leaders start at the beginning and understand what causes employees to worry about trust and fairness in the first place.

“It’s simply because humans are hardwired to care about it,” she says. “Our attention and anger spike when we believe we are being treated unfairly. It’s something we see very clearly in children, but what we may not recognize is that adults care just as much about it. Employees who don’t believe they are being treated fairly are likely to be looking for other opportunities and putting in less effort towards helping the organization succeed.”

1  Society for Human Resource Management’s “Effective Workplace Index,” 2017

2  Society for Human Resource Management’s “Human Capital
Benchmarking Report,” 2016

3  Prime, Jeanine and Elizabeth R. Salib. “Inclusive Leadership:
The View From Six Countries.” New York: Catalyst, 2014

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Panagiotis (Panos) Adamopoulos, PhD
Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management (ISOM)

Panagiotis (Panos) Adamopoulos completed his PhD in information systems at New York University in 2016. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Adamopoulos held positions at the University of Minnesota as well as Relational SA and Toyota Hellas. Adamopoulos’s primary research interests include data science, machine learning, econometrics, and experimental research designs in the areas of personalization, mobile and social commerce, and online education.

Tetyana Balyuk, PhD
Assistant Professor of Finance

Tetyana Balyuk completed her PhD in finance at the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management in 2017. Balyuk has held positions at the University of Toronto, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and Telenor Group Ukraine. Balyuk’s primary research interests are corporate finance, lending, fintech, banking, and household finance.

Ruomeng Cui, PhD
Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management (ISOM)

Ruomeng Cui completed her PhD in operations management at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management in 2014. Prior to coming to Emory, Cui held positions at Indiana University’s Kelly School of Business. Cui’s primary research interests include empirical operations management, supply chain management, information sharing, consumer behavior, social media, and government procurement. She has published articles in a number of leading journals, including Harvard Business Review, Management Science, and Production & Operations Management. Media reports on her research include National Public Radio and the Globe and Mail.

Christoph Herpfer, PhD
Assistant Professor of Finance

Christoph Herpfer completed his PhD in finance at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and the Swiss
Finance Institute in 2017. Herpfer has previously studied at the London School of Economics and held positions at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Oliver Wyman. Herpfer’s primary research interests include corporate finance, banking, and law and finance.

Özgecan Koçak, PhD
Associate Professor of Organization & Management

Özgecan Koçak completed her PhD in organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2003. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Koçak held positions at Columbia Business School and Sabanci University. Her research in the fields of organization theory, economic sociology, and strategy focus on market structures and meaning systems that shape organizational and individual behavior. Koçak’s articles have been published in a number of leading journals, including Management Science and the American Journal of Sociology.

Daniel McCarthy, PhD
Assistant Professor of Marketing

Daniel McCarthy completed his PhD in statistics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 2017. McCarthy is also the cofounder and chief statistician of Zodiac, a predictive customer analytics platform. McCarthy’s primary areas of research include Bayesian models, computational methods, customer lifetime value, and the marketing-finance interface. His articles have been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the American Statistical Association: Theory and Methods, Statistica Sinica, and the Annals of Applied Statistics. His work has also been featured in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, CBS, Slate, Business Insider, and The Motley Fool.

Karen Sedatole, PhD
Professor of Accounting

Karen Sedatole completed her PhD in business administration at the University of Michigan in 2000. Prior to joining the Emory faculty, Sedatole was the Russell E. Palmer Endowed Professor of Accounting at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the design and effectiveness of performance measurement and reward systems, the role of forecasting and budgetary systems within organizations, and control in interorganizational collaborations. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals, including Contemporary Accounting Research, the Journal of Management Accounting Research, and The Accounting Review. Sedatole is a two-time recipient of the American Accounting Association Notable Contributions to Management Accounting Research Award and currently serves as senior editor of the Journal of Management Accounting Research.

Jianxin (Donny) Zhao, PhD
Assistant Professor of Accounting

Jianxin (Donny) Zhao completed his PhD in business administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. Before coming to Emory, Zhao held positions at the University of North Carolina. His primary research interests include debt markets, financial accounting, social networks, and corporate governance.

Renee Dye, PhD
Associate Professor in the Practice of Organization & Management

Renee Dye completed her PhD in English at Emory University in 1994. Dye has previously held positions at Emory, McKinsey, and Navigant, and she is the founder of Stratitect, an independent consulting firm. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals and magazines, including Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and The McKinsey Quarterly.

Karl Kuhnert, PhD
Professor in the Practice of Organization & Management

Karl Kuhnert completed his PhD in industrial and organizational psychology at Kansas State University in 1985. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Kuhnert was a professor at the University of Georgia, where his teaching and research interests include leadership development, organizational change, and decision-making artificial intelligence. His articles have been published in a number of leading journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Leadership Quarterly, the Journal of Management, and the Leadership and Organizational Development Journal.

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Coauthored with Mona Sinha and Reshma Shah, associate professor in the practice of marketing, Professor of Marketing Jagdish Sheth’s new book, Breakout Strategies for Emerging Markets, demonstrates how companies can succeed in these markets, unfazed by the ups and downs of the global economy. This book integrates insights drawn from extensive primary research worldwide, pioneering academic research and case development, practical consulting, and management experience. By observing how companies practice breakout marketing in emerging markets across the world and connecting their experiences to theoretical frameworks, this book traverses a creative path between theory and practice and introduces a new paradigm for marketing strategy. Breakout Strategies contributes to marketing thought and practice by offering eight strategies for companies competing in emerging markets.

Leadership isn’t about winning, according to a new book by Karl Kuhnert, professor in the practice of organization & management. Coauthored with Keith Eigel, Kuhnert’s book, The Map, explains great leadership is about making a contribution to family and friends, a community or organization, or the country or world. Based on decades of research on adult development, the book explains how individuals can take control of their own growth and accelerate progress in leadership, life, and legacy.

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