Does hiring compensation consultants result in higher pay for CEOs? Until recently, academic studies exploring this question have yielded no evidence that CEOs use compensation consultants to justify higher pay. A new disclosure requirement from the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), however, allows researchers to better differentiate the potential motives behind the hiring of compensation consultants […]
Read More… from How CEOs Strong-Arm Their Compensation Consultants to Get What They Want
Özalp Özer of The University of Texas at Dallas and Yanchong Zheng of MIT Sloan researched the role of regret and availability misperception in shaping a retailer's pricing and inventory strategies. They found that forward-looking consumers who see a product they want to buy will hesitate: should they buy it now, or wait till later when […]
Read More… from Markdown Vs Everyday-Low-Prices: The Impact of Regret and Availability Misperceptions
As more and more people prefer to shop online, an online presence is almost a requirement for just about any kind of bricks-and-mortar company from any kind of industry. Some online companies, however, are discovering the surprising benefits of traveling in the other direction: opening up bricks-and-mortar showrooms, allowing customers to feel and try on […]
Read More… from When Showrooms Help Online Companies
What is the basis for a company’s competitive advantage? Traditionally, this question elicits one of two answers: 1) Industry structure. Finding the product-market space within a particular industry that is optimal for your company: in this space you can establish a monopolistic or at the least an oligopolistic position through various barriers to entry. 2) […]
Read More… from Why Companies from Emerging Markets Are Putting the Heat on Multinationals
Many managers believe that quality is something that they as managers and decision-makers can control. Quality is internal and stable, unlike prices, which are subject to changing market conditions. Although prices are set internally, of course, these outside market pressures effectively, in the view of managers, take price decisions out of their hands (for example, […]
Read More… from Do Your Managers – Responses to Market Results Damage Profits?
Why are some people more open to change and others instinctively resistant to anything that significantly alters the status quo? The key is often in an individual’s basic attitude toward change. Some people will default to an unfavourable, negative attitude toward change that leads to resistance, while others have within them a favourable positive attitude […]
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Why are some women negotiators better than others? The answer may lie in whether or not women believe that their gender and professional identities are compatible or not. Women who believe their gender and professional roles are compatible — women who are in the social science terminology “high on gender/professional identity integration,” or GPII, are […]
Read More… from Why Women Who Blend Gender and Professional Identities Are Better Negotiators
Why do so many people make New Year’s resolutions? Because the New Year is the most obvious and universal of temporal landmarks — the dates or periods in time that mark a meaningful transition or change. Anything from a birthday or an anniversary to the first day on a new job or even in a […]
Read More… from How Landmarks in Time Help Employees Set Aspirational Goals
Research in the past suggested that specifically working at happiness (what can I do today to be happier?) is counterproductive since it focuses the person on what is making him or her unhappy. New research, however, argues for an opposite effect: focusing on your happiness makes you happier. The researchers found that participants in three […]
Read More… from Happiness at Work: How Daily Reminders Improve Employee Morale
The use of reference points — for example, a monthly sales quota of 20 sales — is at the heart of reference-dependent behavioural economic theories, the most influential being “prospect theory.” According to prospect theory, an outcome is evaluated based on a reference point. Failure to achieve the reference point (19 sales instead of 20) […]
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