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Copyright: © 2013 The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
After an unusually long 23-year tenure as chief executive Reuben Mark who is still chairman of Colgate-Palmolive sees corporate leadership like a baseball game that is won not by spectacular homeruns but by singles and doubles. In a recent Wharton leadership lecture titled ”The Essence of Colgate’s Leadership Training ” Mark said effective leadership at the $12.2 billion consumer products company pays off in incremental and consistent gains. ”The essence of leadership is the idea of continuous improvement. No matter what you can always coach people to do a little better and if everyone does that the whole organization moves up.”
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When Apple dropped the price of its iPhone by a third after only two months on the market even its most loyal buyers complained bitterly forcing CEO Steve Jobs to apologize and offer a partial rebate. According to Wharton faculty and analysts the iPhone episode reflects an evolving marketplace where innovation fierce competition and globalization are changing strategic approaches to pricing. Meanwhile pricing is gaining new interest as management looks for ways to increase revenues after years of focusing their attention on downsizing and cost-cutting.
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CBS launches an online editing studio called EyeLab so fans can edit short versions of video programming. ABC distributes full versions of its television shows on its own site and via AOL for free. NBC Universal teams up with Amazon.com to distribute its shows. The frenetic wheeling and dealing for digital distribution of TV programs -- just as the fall season is gearing up -- reflects the television networks’ attempts to find Internet business models that can be profitable and still protect both their intellectual property and brand identity.
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When mortgage default rates started to climb earlier this year many experts thought the damage would be confined to the minority of issuers that had binged on subprime lending. It hasn’t turned out that way. Consumer spending is off the credit crunch is spreading and the housing market is in a slump. ”The degree and the extent of the harm done were not expected. It surprised me. But the fact that this would end badly was not surprising ” says Wharton real estate and finance professor Susan Wachter. Wachter and colleague Richard K. Green trace the evolution of the home-financing market over the past decades in a new paper titled ”The Housing Finance Revolution.”
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Among the U.S. auto industry’s many challenges are the ongoing negotiations between General Motors and the United Automobile Workers union aimed at coming up with a new contract to replace the one that expired on September 15; the recent takeover of Chrysler by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management; and a possible slowdown in consumer spending as a result of fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis. Meanwhile industry watchers are awaiting the outcome of reported efforts by India’s Tata Motors to take over two of financially plagued Ford Motor’s luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover. Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie co-director of the International Motor Vehicle Program spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about these and other issues.
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Because the U.N. has an aggressive agenda for gender equity you might think it would ensure that women play a prominent role in its high-profile peacekeeping arena. According to Rachael Mayanja an assistant U.N. secretary-general and special advisor on gender issues and advancement of women you would be wrong. At the 2007 annual conference of the Association for Human Resources Management in International Organizations (AHRMIO) held at Wharton this month Mayanja noted that none of the U.N.’s 18 peacekeeping missions around the globe is currently directed by a female. Her message: ”It’s high time HR examines itself and does something to make sure that gender balance becomes a reality.”
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Men are bigger tightwads than women; younger people are more likely to be spendthrifts than older people; and the more educated a person is the more likely he or she is to be a tightwad. While ”tightwad” and ”spendthrift” are not exactly labels that most people would welcome in a discussion of their spending habits they are valuable as predictors of consumer behavior. Indeed Scott Rick a visiting professor at Wharton and two colleagues recently came up with a scale to determine the extent to which people are tightwads or spendthrifts -- and what the implications are for retailers trying to more accurately target potential buyers in their stores and on their websites.
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The corporate apologies are piling up. Mattel CEO Robert Eckert apologized on September 12 for lead paint found in millions of the company’s toys. TD Ameritrade CEO Joe Moglia apologized on September 14 for a database breach. Apple CEO Steve Jobs apologized on September 6 for cutting the price of the high-end iPhone. Dell executives apologized in August for delayed deliveries of certain models. JetBlue apologized in February for canceling flights and leaving passengers stranded during an ice storm. While executives moved quickly to stem damage to their companies’ reputations it takes more than speed to manage a crisis. As Wharton experts and others point out the rules governing crisis management have changed.
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If you don’t yet know about the Webkinz craze you soon will especially if you have children of your own or at least know one or two on your block. Webkinz are essentially stuffed animal ”pets ” but what makes them different from other hot toys of years gone by -- Cabbage Patch Kids Beanie Babies Tickle Me Elmo and even the century-old teddy bear -- is the business model behind them. By melding the old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar world of toy retailing with an opportunity to participate in an online community Webkinz taps into the kiddie zeitgeist and shows a deep understanding of how to use the concept of virtual worlds to full advantage according to marketing experts at Wharton and elsewhere.
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Pop singer Britney Spears would seem to have little to teach candidates for the U.S. presidency. But her lame performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on September 9 -- she forgot the words to a lip-synched song -- is a cautionary tale about the speed with which news travels in a wired world. Indeed news reports and video clips of political gaffes travel just as fast as bad music reviews and elicit judgments just as quickly. For presidential candidates it leaves little room for error in how they package themselves and their message.
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