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Copyright: © 2013 The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
No one makes it to the top ranks of corporate management without a healthy amount of self-assurance. Confidence underlies decisive strong leadership but does overconfidence lead managers to cross the line and commit fraud? New research by Wharton accounting professor Catherine M. Schrand and doctoral student Sarah L. C. Zechman examines patterns in frauds to determine if some frauds evolve not out of pure self-interest but because executives are overly optimistic that they can turn their firms around before fraudulent behavior catches up with them. Their paper is titled ”Executive Overconfidence and the Slippery Slope to Fraud.”
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How do consumers react when they discover someone else bought the same product they did at a cheaper price? Do they feel differently if that someone else is a friend versus a stranger? Wharton marketing professor Lisa Bolton and two colleagues explore pricing and fairness perceptions in a new research paper and document how attitudes are different or in some cases similar between consumers in China and those in the United States. The paper is titled ”Culture and Marketplace Effects on Perceived Price Fairness: China and the USA.”
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Congress and the White House recently settled on an economic stimulus package with unusual speed pushing the throttle to pull the economy out of a nosedive. Is this just election-year grandstanding or does economic stimulus really work? While some experts argue that priming the economy now is unnecessary or even counter-productive others support the $168 billion package and its emphasis on low and moderate-income recipients. As for the health of the economy overall experts agree that no economic boom is in the near-term forecast.
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Failing to manage your company’s talent needs says Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli ”is the equivalent of failing to manage your supply chain.” And yet the majority of employers have abysmal track records when it comes to the age-old problem of finding and retaining talent. In a book coming out in April titled Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty Cappelli offers a fundamentally different paradigm for thinking about talent management one that takes many of its lessons from just-in-time manufacturing.
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In 2005 about two years after Autumn Bayles became the first chief information officer at Philadelphia-based Tasty Baking Company a supply chain executive quit the company. ”As a part of my technology work I was very involved with that side of the operation ” said Bayles who was hired to be part of president and CEO Charles Pizzi’s turnaround team. ”I raised my hand and said ’Why don’t you let me do this?’” They did and she succeeded. Volunteering for new responsibilities and continuously growing in your job were two of the suggestions that Bayles now senior vice president strategic operations offered her audience at the recent Wharton Women’s Conference.
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As fallout from the subprime lending crisis continues a number of remedies have been proposed to deal with it. One is legislation to curtail predatory lending which is generally thought to be a factor behind the issuing of so many subprime loans to borrowers with poor credit. What qualifies as predatory lending? And what are the conditions that make it flourish? Wharton finance professors David Musto Philip Bond and Bilge Yilmaz analyze predatory lending in a new paper titled ”Predatory Lending in a Rational World.”
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When former Senator George Mitchell finally released his report on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball last December many of its conclusions came as no surprise to baseball fans most of whom had heard the allegations of steroid use for years. With fans aware of such egregious behavior why has attendance at games continued to climb? Are baseball’s ”consumers” impervious to ethical lapses? No say Wharton professors but the case demonstrates how bias competition and a lack of oversight can work together to create an ethically toxic atmosphere -- in any field.
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Approximately 19% of the world’s electricity bill comes from lighting according to Rudy Provoost CEO of Philips Lighting. As such Philips the world’s largest producer of industrial and consumer lighting products has a big role to play in the ongoing transformation from incandescent to solid-state lighting using LED technology. Provoost who until last year was CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics is no stranger to new technologies which he says are ”just a vehicle to respond to needs.” Figuring out what those needs are weeding out needless complexity and innovating with an eye on the bottom line are the keys to growth Provoost says. He recently spoke with Wharton marketing professor George Day and Knowledge at Wharton about the challenges of staying ahead in a rapidly changing industry.
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Delta Airlines is reportedly about to merge with Northwest Airlines in a deal that’s likely to set off a major round of consolidation in the airline industry. Wharton experts say that other major airlines are likely to fall in line with their own consolidation plans. Or so the speculation goes. But this scenario has been talked about before. Is the latest consolidation dance for real? And what are the implications of such mergers for consumers low-cost carriers and the economics of the airline industry overall?
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In the mid-1990s a new C-suite title was born when General Electric CEO Jack Welch dubbed Steve Kerr the company’s ”chief learning officer.” Since then CLOs have sprouted up at major firms in several industries. But what does this new breed of ”learning leaders” bring to the table that traditional human resources departments and employee training programs do not? How does an increased emphasis on learning improve an organization? And do new technologies like distance learning simulations and online portals enhance or impede work-based education? To answer these questions Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Ed Betof former vice president of talent management and CLO at Becton Dickinson and Company who is a senior fellow and academic director of Wharton Executive Education’s Executive Program in Work-Based Learning Leadership; Mike Barger vice president and CLO at JetBlue University; and Ann Schulte vice president of global learning at MasterCard Worldwide.
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