We mark the official start of the new year with celebrations on January 1. New Year’s is a time for new beginnings and a chance to start fresh. We revel in the possibilities and opportunities the new year brings. Frequently, it is a time for goal setting. Perhaps you’ve even made a New Year’s resolution or two?

But New Year’s is also a time to pause, if only for the briefest of moments, before we return to work, school, or whatever regularly scheduled programming life has in store for us. It’s a chance to take a pulse on the current state of things. We reflect on the past year, bask in the glow of its high points, and appreciate lessons learned from the challenges we faced.

So, before we launch full steam ahead into the new year, let’s take a look back at some great stories you may have missed this past year on EmoryBusiness.com.

Students Write Notes to Themselves for the Future

Every August, the students in Goizueta Business School’s Full-Time MBA programs gather for Keystone. It’s a week of giving back through volunteering and catching up with classmates after a summer internship. Students take the opportunity to pause, reflect, and project. As part Keystone, they write a letter to their future self, not to be opened for at least five years. The letter-writing experience has been a Goizueta MBA tradition since 2012.

Emory Entrepreneurship Summit Features Renowned Shoe Designer Stuart Weitzman

Goizueta Business School hosted the 7th annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit March 30-31. One of the highlight’s of this year’s was the keynote address from Stuart Weitzman. Known for his commitment to prioritizing function as an integral element of fashion, Weitzman encouraged those in attendance to pursue their passions. He shared insights with a packed room of aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators in the form of a number of his truisms—or as he prefers to call them, “Stu-isms.”

Goizueta Launches Graduate Business Degree for Veterans & Active-Duty Military

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School announced in July the launch of its new Master in Business for Veterans. The program is a fully accredited 11-month degree for active-duty military, veterans, National Guard, and Reserve personnel. Spearheaded by Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General and Associate Dean for Leadership Ken Keen, as well as Faculty Lead Professor JB Kurish, the program will be guided by an advisory board of high-level business executives, several of whom are both retired military and graduates of Goizueta. The working professional program began accepting applications in August 2023 with the first cohort of veterans starting classes in May 2024.

Goizueta Business School Introduces New Master in Management Program for Recent Graduates

This past summer, Goizueta introduced its new Master in Management program. It’s designed specifically for graduates with a non-business major who are looking to level up their undergraduate degree. Experienced professors who are experts in their respective fields help students develop a foundation of with business knowledge and skills. Best of all, students can complete the Master in Management program in just ten months. This provides a fast-track option for students to gain a valuable business education and expand their career options.

Virtual Reality Revolutionizes Classroom Learning

Jill Perry-Smith is bringing an entirely new dimension to Goizueta’s Executive MBA program. Her focus: navigating difficult conversations and finding effective conflict resolution strategies. Through the use of virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), Perry-Smith, senior associate dean for strategic initiatives and professor of organization and management, hopes to provide more students with experience in dealing with interpersonal conflict.

Goizueta Faculty Work to Help the LGBTQ+ Community Thrive

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and the LGBTQ Institute at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights are partners in the second survey of LGBTQ+ Southerners, released in April 2023. The study is a follow up to the 2017-18 inaugural survey, which was conducted by the Institute and George State University. This newly released study aims to help fill a critical research gap, looking at an understudied group with a larger data set.

The Voice of Alexa: How Speech Characteristics Impact Consumer Decisions

Rajiv Garg is associate professor of Information Systems & Operations Management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. Garg conducts research that explores the impact of artificial intelligence voices on consumer behavior and purchase intent, along with partners at HEC Paris and The University of Texas at Austin.

So, here’s the question: Can the voice of Samuel L. Jackson sell you an office chair? Read on to find out.

Playing Ball: How One Goizueta Graduate Has Scored Big in the NBA

Meet Lauren Cohen 00BBA, who recently entered her 24^th season with the National Basketball Association (NBA). But she doesn’t play basketball. She’s the vice president of partner management and operations lead for the NBA’s global partnerships group.

Cohen credits two things with the stability and tenure she’s enjoyed at the NBA: the people she works with and her opportunities to change roles every few years. But it all started with the strong foundation she build at Goizueta.

Preparing Workers of the Future

The future of work. What does it mean?

For Goizueta Business School graduates, the future of work is an exciting prospect, and they are ready for it. These workers of the future are embracing their passions and pursuing multiple careers. They are making business decisions for the betterment of society and leveraging technology to enhance their skills. On top of that, they are learning how to lead dispersed, remote teams.

Goizueta graduates don’t fear the future. They embrace it.

Talking about the Business of Healthcare

Healthcare is a business like many other industries, but instead of just making money, healthcare workers must also save lives. Navigating patient care and profitability is a unique challenge that neither business professionals nor doctors are able to address alone.

Goizueta helps bridge that gap. We teach clinicians the fundamentals of business and teach business professionals how to apply their knowledge specifically within the healthcare field.

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

The post The Best Stories of 2023 from Goizueta Business School appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

“We continue to develop principled and impactful leaders and entrepreneurs, foster innovation for a data and technology driven world, and grow a global presence fueled by local synergies,” said Gareth James, John H. Harland Dean. “I’m proud of our faculty and staff – and energized about the future of our school and students.”

Impacting Business & Beyond

Faculty and staff contribute to the Goizueta and Emory community, but also have significant impact on society and the broader business world. External awards include:

Karen Sedatole, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Accounting, was named as an editor to the Accounting Review. Sedatole was also elected to the position of president elect for the Management Accounting section of the American Accounting Association.

Emma Zhang, associate professor of information systems & operations management, was named an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Zhang was also named an associate editor to the Journal of the American Accounting Association.

Ruomeng Cui, associate professor of information systems & operations management, was a finalist for the 2022 Management Science Best Paper Award in Operations Management for her paper, “Learning from Inventory Availability Information: Evidence from Field Experiments on Amazon.”

Panos Adamopoulos, assistant professor of information systems & operations management, was named as an associate editor at Management Science.

Giacomo Negro, professor of organization & management, was appointed as the senior editor of Organization Science and also received an honorable mention for the Robert K. Merton Award for his paper, “What’s Next? Artists’ Music After Grammy Awards.” Negro additionally served as the principal investigator for the 2022 LGBTQ Southern Survey.

Erika Hall, associate professor of organization & management, was named as an incoming associate editor at the Academy of Management Discoveries.

Dan McCarthy, assistant professor of marketing and Marina Cooley, assistant professor in the practice of marketing were recognized by Poets&Quants’.” McCarthy was also a finalist for the Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award.

John Kim, associate professor in the practice of organization & management, was designated as one of the top instructors by Coursera for Management Consulting courses.

Vilma Todri, assistant professor of information systems & operations management, was named an associate editor to the Management Information Systems Quarterly Journal, one of the top three leading Information Systems journals.

Tonya Smalls, assistant professor in the practice of accounting, has been appointed to serve on the Inaugural Advisory Board for Make-A-Wish Georgia (MAWGA).

Leading the Future Of Emory and Goizueta

Goizueta Business School and Emory also honor academic professionals and leaders for their dedication to excellence through teaching, content development, experiential learning, scholarly inquisition, and commitment.

“We could not be prouder of our exceptional faculty and staff for their remarkable work and dedication throughout the past year,” says Anandhi Bharadwaj, who will step down as vice dean for faculty and research this summer as Professor Wei Jiang prepares to take on the role. “It has been an honor to work alongside our faculty and staff in developing the school and its programs.”

The recipients of these prestigious honors and awards are listed below:

Rajiv Garg, associate professor of information systems & operations management, was awarded the Provost’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education. Garg was also honored as the MSBA Distinguished Core Educator.

John Kim, associate professor in the practice of organization & management, was awarded Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Giacomo Negro, professor of organization & management, received the Keough Faculty Award. Negro also received the Jordan Research Award.

Marvell Nesmith, associate dean of academic affairs & instructional design, received the Keough Staff Award.

Marina Cooley, assistant professor in the practice of marketing, was honored as the BBA Distinguished Educator and was also recognized for MBA Teaching Excellence (One Year).

Omar Rodríguez-Vilá, professor in the practice of marketing, was awarded the Evening MBA Distinguished Core Educator and was also recognized for MBA Teaching Excellence (Two Year).

Charles Goetz, associate professor in the Practice of organization & management, was awarded Evening MBA Distinguished Elective Educator.

Ray Hill, associate professor in the practice of finance, was recognized for MBA Teaching Excellence (Classic Faculty).

Alvin Lim and David Sackin were awarded MSBA Distinguished Elective Educators.

Rob Kazanjian, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Organization & Management, was awarded Executive MBA Distinguished Educator (Core).

Kevin Crowley, associate professor in the practice of finance and Narasimhan Jegadeesh, Dean’s Distinguished Chair of Finance, were awarded MAF Distinguished Educators. Crowley was also awarded Executive MBA Distinguished Educator (Elective).

Giacomo Negro, Melissa Williams and Panos Adamopoulos received Goizueta research awards at the levels of full, associate, and assistant professor, respectively.

Goizueta Business School is proud to present the accomplishments of these and other faculty members within our institution. To learn more about the teaching, specialized research, and core interests of each faculty member, check out our faculty profiles and their related publications. 

The post Goizueta Faculty and Staff Shine with Prestigious Accolades and Honors appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

In time for Pride Month, new research, led by Goizueta faculty, working with the LGBTQ Institute, highlights the evolving challenges and progress for LGBTQ+ Southerners. One of the many takeaways: even though most respondents have, at some point, felt stigmatized, most also view their LGBTQ+ identity as a positive in their lives. Pride in the Goizueta community brings this point home.

Amid a recent wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, especially concentrated in the South, Pride Month matters for the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. At Emory, taking Pride to heart can be seen in recent research that aims to better understand the needs of LGBTQ+ Southerners, as well as in support for campus activities, groups, and the fostering of a sense of belonging for all.

First, the research.  

The Survey

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and the LGBTQ Institute at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights are partners in the second survey of LGBTQ+ Southerners, released in April 2023. Following up on the 2017-18 inaugural survey, which was conducted by the Institute and George State University, this newly released study aims to help fill a critical research gap, looking at an understudied group with a larger data set.

A total of 1,326 LGBTQ+ adults living in the American South answered questions about their education, employment, healthcare, social and political involvement, and some of their experiences of discrimination.

Here are a few of the notable takeaways from this survey:

• Positivity: The vast majority—78%—of survey respondents view their LGBTQ identity as something positive in their lives.
• Stigma: At the same time, more than 83% reported having been subject to slurs or jokes because of that identity at least a few times in their lives. (On top of those, other instances of harassment and discrimination were tallied.)
• Early awareness: Nearly 23% of the survey respondents reported that they first felt that were LGBTQ+ before age 10. Another 36% identified between the ages of 10 and 14. By age 19, about 84% of the survey sample felt aware of their LGBTQ+ identity.
• Speaking out as teens: Meanwhile, 55% said they had told someone else that they were or might be LGBTQ+ before age 20. Others came out later in life.
• Active and engaged politically: A resounding 70% of respondents have donated to political campaigns at some point, with 71% saying they donated to candidates who supported LGBTQ+ rights. What’s more, 96% said they were registered to vote, with 92% reporting that they did vote in the 2020 presidential election.
• With allies at work: On the job, 80% of the respondents said they can rely on at least one ally (that is, someone they consider supportive regarding matters concerning their sexual orientation and/or gender identity), with 71% reporting the reassurance of multiple allies.

The survey was conducted between June 2021 and March 2022, amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that continues to this day. It covers responses from the current residents of 14 U.S. states: namely, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

“The 2022 Southern Survey provides valuable data for advocates, policymakers, and community members working to advance LGBTQ+ rights in the South,” says Tim’m T. West, the current executive director of the LGBTQ Institute.

More LGBTQ+ people live in the South than any other U.S. region although they have been underrepresented in previous national surveys.

Tim’m T. West, Executive Director, LGBTQ Institute

More on the overall study design and methodology is available in the published report.

The View From Goizueta

From Goizueta Business School faculty, Giacomo Negro, professor of organization and management, was the principal investigator and co-director of the study. He worked closely with Melissa Williams, associate professor in the same department. These two were joined by Gabrielle Lopiano, who earned her PhD at Goizueta in 2021 (and now is assistant professor of management at Vanderbilt), as well as LGBTQ Institute Scholar Ashlei R. Petion and the Institute’s former director Ryan M. Roemerman, who was also co-director of the study.

“It’s important to remember that this is not a monolithic community we’re studying,” says Negro. “There’s a lot of complexity here.”

That complexity includes the respondents’ gender identities, racial identities, sexual orientations, education and class, age groups, as well as other demographic factors in the South’s rural and urban settings. And with this complexity in mind, the survey broaches a broad range of topics, including experiences of discrimination.

Understanding this complexity is important, because “LGBTQ rights are, fundamentally, human rights,” Negro emphasizes. And the study can be a means for community leaders and policymakers to better understand the barriers to thriving that are faced by the more vulnerable members of the LGBTQ+ community. For example, they ask: who may struggle in school or experience harassment seeking medical care? Which groups and sub-groups are most at risk?

Take the high school experiences, which can be a crucial time in identity formation and shape later socioeconomic outcomes. Where is support found, or not? Have certain people skipped class or even dropped out of school to avoid harassment or negative treatment? Knowing this can help target resources to help, Negro explains.

Agreeing with Negro, Williams also adds that their analyses so far—there is still more work to be done—reveals good news in growing awareness, growing support, along with areas of concern, where stigmas persist. For example, “we see people coming out at a younger age, which shows that awareness growing. And yet, there is still a gap between the age when most know and when most tell others about their LGBTQ+ identity,” she notes.

Fostering Belonging for All on Campus

“Belonging is such an important concept,” says Allison Gilmore, director of admissions and student services for Goizueta’s PhD program and a member of Goizueta’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Council. Gilmore has worked at being an active ally—she herself has family members who identify as LGBTQ+—to make sure students can bring their authentic selves to their studies and pursuits. “It’s about upholding Goizueta’s core values,” she says, serving its mission to prepare principled leaders to have a positive influence on business and society. “That makes me proud of where I work.”

Fellow staff and DEI Council member Jamie Anne Harrell wholeheartedly agrees. Harrell, who is Goizueta’s business intelligence and data analytics lead, was the school’s first openly transgender MBA graduate.

I started transitioning in December 2015 and in the Spring of 2016, ahead of my graduation in May, I was reintroduced to my class with my chosen name ‘Jamie,’ to a huge round of applause. I was not just accepted or tolerated, but actively welcomed.

Jamie Anne Harrell, Goizueta Business Intelligence & Analytics Lead & DEI Council Member

Upon graduation, she started working at Goizueta and has observed more progress since. For instance, Harrell points to medical coverage that now includes more expenses that are relevant to her wellbeing, such as vocal feminization training. “I don’t want to have to worry for my safety if I speak up in a bathroom in Florida. It’s about being accepted, and it matters.”

Back at work, “it’s about bringing your whole self in, which is important for engagement and outcomes,” the analytics expert notes. “You know, Pride Month means showing the world who we are.”

Out and Networking for What Comes Next

That sentiment is echoed by Tyler Dinucci, who identifies as a gay man and expects to receive his MBA degree from Goizueta in 2024. “Pride Month is a chance for LGBTQ+ people to declare we are here and our identities are valid,” he explains.

“For so long, many LGBTQ+ people were treated as deviants or degenerates because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.” But now is a time “for people across the LGBTQ+ spectrum to celebrate themselves as complete members of society.”

Tyler Dinucci

As a student, Dinucci appreciates resources such as Goizueta’s Pride Alliance, serving as a support space and a way to network with alumni. He also appreciates access to the annual ROMBA (“Reaching out MBA”) conference, which gathers LGBTQ+ business students and alumni at a national level. (Last October it was in Washington, DC, and this October in Chicago.)

Here, it’s clear: “LGBTQ identities are not just something to be tolerated, they are to be celebrated,” as Negro puts it. Happy Pride Month to all.

Want to get involved? The Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life seeks to engage the university community in the creation of an affirming and just campus environment while supporting the development of students of all gender and sexual identities. Check out resources including legal services, navigating campus, health, and professional development.

Have specific questions or need assistance? Reach out to your Goizueta Business School Safe Space Allies who have been trained to help and support members of the LGBTQ+ community at Emory.

The post Pride Month: Working to Help the LGBTQ+ Community Thrive appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

In 2018, the LGBTQ Institute started surveying LGBTQ people in the South to glean unprecedented insights into their quality of life with a focus on access to health care, civic engagement and employment. They are preparing for another round of the survey and have partnered with Emory’s Goizueta Business School to develop and disseminate the survey and organize the data.

“The South receives the least amount of money for LGBTQ research, and we wanted to fill that gap,” says Ryan Roemerman, executive director of the LGBTQ Institute. “The goal is to create an infrastructure for community intervention resources and serve as a tool for activists and academics to work together.”

During the first survey, the LGBTQ Institute collected 6,502 responses from LGBTQ individuals living in 14 states, including: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. This year, they hope to increase that number.

“We hope to understand more about the daily life of LGBTQ people in the South, and how it might have changed over the last few years as the politics of the country have changed,” says Giacomo Negro, who teaches organization and management at Goizueta and serves as the principal investigator from Emory on the project.

Partnering on the survey aligns with Negro’s research on identity in the workplace. He’s studied how the presence of LGBTQ and LGBTQ-friendly businesses in cities and counties contributed to greater acceptance in society and helped to pass anti-discrimination ordinances. From the survey, he hopes to deduce how LGBTQ people feel about how affinity groups and resources in the workplace impact their experiences of work.

“The advantage of this survey is that it asks questions to individuals about identity, and this information is not accessible in Census-based data,” says Negro. “The survey will also allow us to explore employment outcomes when marginalized groups become less stigmatized than they have been in the past.”

He’s joined by Melissa Williams, associate professor of organization and management at Goizueta, who studies gender and diversity in the workplace, and PhD candidate Gabrielle Lopiano. The group has worked together on the survey methodology.

In addition to gleaning deeper insights, the survey has been modified to gather information about travel and COVID-19. The survey is also shorter, taking only 15 minutes from start to finish. Responses will be collected from June to October, in alignment with PRIDE Month and LGBTQ History Month.

This article by Kelundra Smith was originally featured on the Emory News Center.

Giacomo Negro is Professor of Organization & Management; Goizueta Term Chair, Organization & Management; Professor of Sociology (by courtesy). Read more about PhD candidate Gabrielle Lopiano here.

The post Goizueta Business School Partners with the LGBTQ Institute on Survey appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Recessions also hurt race relations

Economic downturns aren’t just bad for businesses and households. Recessions tend to spur heightened animosity towards Black Americans in the U.S., and this not only drives social inequality but can significantly impair the outlook for Black professionals. These are the troubling findings of research published in Psychological Science by Goizueta’s Emily Bianchi, associate professor of organization & management, and Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization & management. They ran a number of studies to capture people’s responses and shifts in attitude during periods of recession. They also looked at the impact on professional success for Blacks in areas like the arts and politics. What they found is that when times are hard, White people feel more negatively towards Black people and are more likely to stereotype or compartmentalize them. They’re also more prone to seeing racial inequity as acceptable and even “natural.”

Similarly, Black politicians and musicians were less likely to fare well in congressional elections and in the Billboard charts. Bianchi and Hall’s research is striking in that it explores the more nuanced and subtle forms of racism that manifest when communities face financial downturns. It suggests there is a certain fluidity in attitudes towards race that can be shaped by changes in our economic and social context — which may also help explain, at least in part, why Black people are particularly hard hit in times of recession.

Whose side are you on?

Protest marches grab headlines. But while heightened visibility for a cause might be good news for the social movement in question, the trade-offs for other affiliated organizations may not stack up so positively. So says a recent article in Organization Science by Giacomo Negro, professor of organization & management at Goizueta. Together with Stanford University’s Susan Olzak, he put together a data set of pro-LGBTQ protest events staged across a range of U.S. cities over 20 years to gauge how these events impacted local organizations — social movement groups on the one hand, and on the other, more loosely affiliated organizations like local businesses with customers and stakeholders both in and outside of the LGBTQ community. What they found was that greater participation in pro-LGBTQ protests lowered the market viability of these neutral organizations. Negro puts this down to having to “choose sides” and being less effective at addressing the needs of multiple audiences in the presence of polarizing events such as protests. Protests by nature pose a type of challenge to society, so people associated with the cause motivating the protest have to take a clear side or stance, explained Negro. And the visibility protests generate comes at a price for any participating organization that engages distinctly different stakeholder groups, from customers or clients to employees. If one group endorses a controversial issue, another can shun it. These insights come at a time when U.S. firms are increasingly involved with social causes, from human rights to race and gender issues. They will need to balance the pros of visibility against trade-offs in terms of their stakeholders.

IoT boosts online sales

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of smart devices or objects that are connected to the internet — objects that “talk” to each other and that can be combined with automated systems to gather and analyze information. IoT technology is making waves in business today because of a slew of benefits that range from rich data collection, enhanced security and reduced operation costs to enhanced customer-centricity. One space benefitting from the use of IoT is e-commerce. And a forthcoming article in Information Systems Research by Goizueta’s Panagiotis “Panos” Adamopoulos and Vilma Todri, both assistant professors of information systems & operations management, suggests that forward-thinking retailers would do well to understand the advantages of using IoT as an alternative purchase channel for consumers.

Together with NYU’s Anindya Ghose, they tracked sales data from a major multinational online retailer using IoT to automate purchasing and consumers’ convenience. They found that implementing the new technology led to significant statistical and economic gains for the company thanks to increased automaticity and more favorable mental accounting that made these products “easier to consume.” Interestingly, these gains were particularly associated with certain product characteristics, helping retailers determine effective future IoT strategies. As businesses continue to waiver about adopting IoT because of technical challenges that surround its implementation, these findings should provide interesting food for thought.

Learn from experience (just make sure it’s someone else’s too)

Businesses and business managers grow and develop because we learn. We learn from our performance metrics and KPIs — they tell us what we do well and not so well. But it’s challenging. For a start, there’s the issue of the metrics themselves. In today’s complex, fast-changing environment, it can be hard to pin down our KPIs with total accuracy. Then there’s the question of how we learn. Is it better to learn from our own firsthand experience — or from others’? Kristy Towry, John and Lucy Cook Chair and professor of accounting, and colleagues Jongwoon “Willie” Choi 11PhD, Gary Hecht, and Ivo Tafkov 09PhD have explored the science behind learning and decision-making in heightened complexity, and their new paper in The Accounting Review finds that when KPIs are messy, managers learn far better when that learning is vicarious, in other words, when we learn from each other and share our learning. And that’s because vicarious learning helps us to see the bigger picture, the trends and the patterns, Towry said. Learning from our own experience alone tends to make us over-focus on what’s happened most recently and what’s immediately in front of us and miss the greater scheme. The challenge, then, to businesses that want to accelerate their growth is to break through the silos and proactively look for ways to share knowledge, explained Towry. Learn from experience by all means. Just make sure it’s other people’s experience too.

Putting a value on peer pressure

Our colleagues can exert some influence over different aspects of our careers and even our private lives. There’s nothing too surprising about that. However, new research published in The Review of Financial Studies by Associate Professor of Finance Gonzalo Maturana should give households and businesses alike pause. When it comes to making big purchasing decisions — whether or not to refinance our mortgage, say — we could be more susceptible to positive peer influence than we realize. Maturana and Jordan Nickerson from MIT Sloan School of Management leveraged publicly available employment records — public school teachers from Texas — and unearthed something stunning: where there was notable mortgage refinancing activity in a peer network, individuals within that network were 20.7% more likely to refinance their own mortgage and access positive savings. And that’s not all. The peer effect also helped shape individuals’ choice of mortgage lender. And critically, the more savings they were likely to make by refinancing, the more of this activity there was across the peer group. These peer dynamics should be on the radar of policy makers looking to incentivize mortgage refinancing and to drive household liquidity, said Maturana, as well as banks who want to drive their customer base growth responsibly. The latter could leverage the multiplier effect of peer dynamics to make sure that valuable information on mortgage rates reaches more households more efficiently.

Is breakthrough innovation always a team sport?

If you’re looking to innovate, conventional wisdom says you need to build a team. You only get the breakthrough ideas when you have different people working together, collaborating and sharing knowledge, right? Not necessarily, says Tian Chan, assistant professor of information systems & operations management at Goizueta. Chan and colleagues put together a study, published in IdeaWatch, that reveals something striking: in certain circumstances, individuals can be just as effective as teams in creating breakthrough innovations. It all depends on how easy it is to break down your invention into different components or modules, he said. With design patents that cover innovations on the way something looks — think the iconic curved bottle of a Coca-Cola or Apple’s sleek iPhone — innovations tend to be holistic and don’t easily divide into chunks, and a team might get bottlenecked by coordination or communication issues. With utility patents that cover innovations on the way a product functions, you can have inventions that are very modular (such as the Dell PCs) to inventions that are hard to break into components (such as the internal combustion engine). So here, teams do tend to do better than individuals. His advice to business? If you want to increase your chances of a breakthrough, align your human resources and collaboration structures around the type of invention in your sights. But don’t assume you always need a team.

The post #GoizuetaKnows appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Social issues can polarize people. Whether political, race-related or tied to civil rights, a cause strongly felt can encourage individuals to stand up and take clearly defined sides. The same is true of business organizations.

Now when a business is closely aligned to a cause, the visibility that comes with social protest can play to its advantage. Big protests grab headlines. They drive publicity. They can attract customers and clients. Organizations that sit very close to a particular movement or mission may benefit from a share of the spotlight that activism attracts. 

But what about other businesses? What about firms that might support a cause from the sidelines, say, but aren’t fully affiliated or defined by its mission? How does social protest affect them?

Shedding light on this is a new study by Professor of Organization & Management Giacomo Negro: “Which Side Are You On? The Divergent Effects of Protest Participation on Organizations Affiliated with Identity Groups,” published in Organization Science in 2019.

Together with Stanford’s Susan Olzak, he looked at the LGBTQ movement in the U.S. and the ways that support for LGBTQ issues impact businesses that are on the fence, so to speak, at moments of protest.

They find that while organizations that are strongly integrated with the movement get a boost in activity and numbers, the exact opposite is true for these “mild supporters.”

In fact, in the year following a major demonstration, march or manifestation, more of these organizations appear to have gone out of business, and fewer were founded.

To understand these dynamics, Negro and Olzak put together a complex data set covering pro-LGBTQ protest events across 13 U.S. cities that ranged from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Baltimore and Atlanta and others between 1991 and 2007. They looked at weather conditions in these cities at the date and time of each protest to gauge the size of participation and determine which events were better attended than others.

To identify gay-friendly businesses in each city at the time of these protests, Negro and Olzak analyzed the Gayellow Pages, a NY-based directory of firms covering businesses and nonprofits that were clearly aligned to the movement and others that, while supportive, were less so. They looked at a range of organizations in the directory and operating at the time of protests, from gay bars and clubs to shops, banking services, health services and religious and cultural organizations.

Coding the data and studying the results, Negro and Olzak were able to distinguish a clear causal tie between higher participation at pro-LGBTQ events and vital rates (foundings, disbandings, and counts) of active affiliated organizations in the area.

Where participation in protests increased in a city, that city subsequently saw a larger number of conspicuously pro-gay organizations. But that same area saw a decline in the number of the mildly supportive– the more “mundane,” as the authors call them—organizations in the 12-month period following the event.

So could it be that being more level-headed in the context of social change is bad for business?

Possibly, said Negro.

“It may well be that it’s harder for entrepreneurs to create a viable business model for their venture in a more polarized context. If your business is more hybrid—if you’re supportive of a cause without being overtly affiliated with it—then it could be harder to engage other customers or clients who are uncomfortable doing business with a firm that is even vaguely linked to a specific social group or movement. Similarly, the core supporters of the cause can look at the same organization as not authentically engaged with them.”

His findings certainly suggest that existing in a “gray zone,” where you take neither one side or the other, is a hard place for organizations to thrive in times of social change.

“If protest activates the cultural boundary surrounding a group’s identity, then increasing protest participation will threaten the viability of precisely those organizations trying to engage inside and outside audiences,” Negro said. “At the same time, bridging inside and outside audiences also conveys a confusing identity and a more limited commitment to pursuing goals relevant to either audience.”

This is an insight that should inform decisions on values and organizational culture at a time when corporate citizenship and doing the right thing as a business have perhaps greater currency than ever before.

For businesses interested in supporting social causes, said Negro, maybe doing the right thing means taking a clear side. And sticking to it. 

The post Exploring the impact of social protest on business appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Do we dismiss bad news because we know better?

No one likes getting bad news. But grim tidings can, at least, inform our decisions and help us make better choices, right? Not necessarily, says Diwas KC, associate professor of information systems & operations management. Together with colleagues from UNC and Harvard, KC tested the hypothesis that we sometimes stick to pre-existing ideas even when bad news should reshape our perceptions. They looked at responses from 147,000 cardiologists to a 2016 announcement by the Food and Drug Administration criticizing a type of artery stent. While the doctors were generally less likely to use the stent following the news, it turns out that their views on it were also significantly influenced by their own experience and that of their peers. Not only that, but the more experienced they were, the faster they discounted the bad news over time. The study sheds new light on how we respond to bad news, and how perception and experience drive behavioral bias. Management Science (2019)

Calibration committees lead to better performance assessment

Most employees are dissatisfied with their company’s performance evaluation processes. This is one of the key findings of a new large-scale study conducted by Goizueta’s Karen Sedatole, interim dean and Goizueta Advisory Board Term Professor, in collaboration with the WorldatWork association. That said, there is one evaluation practice that consistently garners favor: calibration committees, which consist of peer supervisors or higher-level managers who assess performance ratings and adjust them to drive greater consistency across the organization. Surveying more than 250 WorldatWork members, Sedatole and colleagues found that 43 percent of organizations had been using calibration committees in recent years. Some 78 percent of the survey respondents reported that calibration committees were effective at reducing bias, while 82 percent said that they boosted consistency. These findings build on Sedatole’s previous research into calibration committees and their potential to attenuate the issues surrounding subjective performance evaluation. “Pay equity and even-handedness remain some of the most critical issues facing organizations,” she says. WorldatWork (2019)

Using customer data to value non-subscription firms

Deciding whether to buy or sell a company has historically boiled down to two things: sales growth and profits. Recently though, customer-based corporate valuation has been gaining traction on Wall Street and elsewhere. For “contractual” firms that operate a customer subscription system, tracking customer loyalty and engagement is relatively straightforward. But most businesses are non-contractual, making it harder to assess customer-based valuation. A new paper by Goizueta’s Dan McCarthy, assistant professor of marketing, addresses this. McCarthy and Peter S. Fader (Wharton) have developed a methodology that overcomes challenges such as unobservable customer churn and highly aggregated data—things that make customer-based valuation hard to assess. Their model crunches publicly available data like latent attrition, repeat purchasing and time-varying spend-per-purchase patterns to give new depths of insight into overall firm valuation. Not only that, says McCarthy, it also “permits external stake-holders to get beneath surface-level metrics like revenues, and to therefore better understand the underlying unit economics of these kinds of businesses.” Journal of Marketing Research (2018)

Racial stigmatization, employee performance and the tie to lower pay for all

Research shows that there is a tie between compensation and diversity: the more black, minority or female workers there are in a team or company, the more likely it is that salaries for everyone in that team or company will be lower. But new research by Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization & management, suggests that other factors like performance can make matters even worse than previously thought. Hall and colleagues ran two industry studies and a field experiment to determine whether performance can exacerbate or alleviate stigmatization. With poor-performing teams, they found that the presence of black coworkers drives even greater stigmatization and, as a consequence, lower salaries for everyone. This is likely because managers penalize a team under the guise of “poor performance,” but in reality are discriminating against a team with black teammates. When the team performed well, employers no longer had a plausible reason for discrimination, so compensation did not suffer. Hall warns that poor performance can mask racial discrimination within organizations’ culture. Moreover, the amplifying effect of poor performance on stigmatization extends to non-black employees: a lose-lose scenario that can lead to white employees distancing themselves from black colleagues to avoid stigmatization by association. Journal of Applied Psychology (2019)

Employees with families are more absorbed in work than single, childless peers

The ideal employee is single and childless—unencumbered by family responsibility and free to focus more on work. It’s a common perception across many sectors, and for people who are married or have children, the negative connotations can impact career advancement. But new research by Jill Perry-Smith, professor of organization & management, turns this idea on its head. Together with Tracy L. Dumas (Ohio State), Perry-Smith has found that employees who have a spouse or children are actually more absorbed in their work than their single, childless colleagues. Surveying 2,000 business school alumni and analyzing employee diaries, they found that family structures and associated after-work activities have a direct tie to how absorbed people actually feel in their work. “We discover that anticipating family chores or responsibilities after work actually reinforces the work mindset rather than distract from it,” says Perry-Smith. “It keeps employees more psychologically immersed in their roles.” The onus is now on organizations to “work harder to understand the diversity of employees’ nonwork lives,” she says. Academy of Management Journal (2018)

Is effective community action a case of going back to school?

Civic action can be hugely effective. From neighborhood watch to youth projects to traffic safety initiatives, civic engagement has the potential to make meaningful differences in communities. But what happens when communities become more diverse over time? Research by Goizueta organization & management faculty Wes Longhofer, Giacomo Negro and Peter Roberts looks at 30 years’ worth of data from UNICEF’s “Trick or Treat” campaign to find out.

They discovered that counties with greater racial or economic heterogeneity experienced declining fundraising performance, likely because of the fragmentation of shared interests and less interaction between diverse groups. Interestingly, they also found that among the different kinds of community organizations involved in sponsoring civic activities, schools significantly outperformed churches and clubs.

As such, schools could be better equipped not only to bring young people from diverse backgrounds together, but also to mobilize their families around a common goal. In light of this, Longhofer, Negro and Roberts urge the research community to adopt
a more general and systemic focus on schools as critical community organizers. Administrative Science Quarterly (2019)

Are recommendation systems skewing consumer choices?

Personalized recommendation systems can take the work out of deciding what to buy in the densely crowded online marketplace. In theory, they’re good for business too—driving loyalty and sales. But it’s not all win-win, according to new research by Associate Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management Jesse Bockstedt. And that’s because computerized recommendation system don’t just reflect consumers’ tastes—they can actually mold them. Bockstedt and colleagues from Carlson (U of Minnesota) and Kelley (Indiana U) ran a series of experiments, assigning random and erroneous recommendation ratings to downloadable songs. For each 1 star increase in ratings, participants were willing to pay up to 17 percent more for the song. And that’s problematic, says Bockstedt. If recommendation engines can manipulate choices this way, there’s the potential for consumers to buy products that are ultimately disappointing or to ignore products they may otherwise have purchased. Not only that, these anomalies can compound over time, as consumer feedback influences future personalized recommendations, creating a vicious cycle that further compromises prediction accuracy. A case of caveat venditor? Information Systems Research (2018)

Incumbents versus new players—the role of “legitimacy” in customer perceptions

What happens to incumbents when new players enter the market? Goizueta’s Özgecan Koçak, associate professor of organization & management, and colleagues have leveraged the recent legalization of recreational cannabis to investigate this. In 2012, Colorado became the first state to green-light cannabis for non-medical use, creating a domino effect across the country. The researchers used data from Weedmaps, a website, to look at how incumbent dispensaries (re)positioned themselves relative to the newcomers. In counties which had not voted for the legalization of recreational cannabis, they found a “sharpening” of identity among medical dispensaries, with customers typically referred to as “patients.” Conversely, in states where voters were in support of legalizing cannabis for non-medical use, the researchers found a “blurring” of medical and recreational identity in response to increasing competition from new dispensaries with recreational licenses. The study provides a useful framework that integrates local communities’ beliefs about the legitimacy of products to show how producers can (re)connect with current and potential customers. Organization Science (2018)

The post Knowledge Creation appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.