106 Posts found for Source: Graziadio Business Report

Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) have a useful role in business financing when used appropriately. However, there must be transparency, and all parties must understand the risks.

Content: Article | Authors: Edward H. Fredericks Jr., Peggy J. Crawford, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Accounting, Finance

Knowing how to determine the credit-worthiness of your customers may help save your business.

Editor’s Note: this article is basically a look at the Z-score Model of Edward Altman…

Content: Article | Authors: L. Wayne Gertmenian, Ph.D., Nikolai Chuvakhin | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Finance

Decision making can often result in managerial missteps, even those decisions that involve ethical considerations. Many common themes emerge as we look at these problematic decisions. Most significantly, various cognitive processes that leaders often unwittingly employ and which may be called “mental gymnastics” or mind games may serve to support and sustain unethical behavior.

Content: Article | Author: Charles D. Kerns, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Ethics, Management

James (Jim) Kouzes is a highly regarded leadership scholar and an experienced executive. The Wall Street Journal has cited Kouzes as one of the twelve most requested “non-university executive-education providers” to U.S. companies.

Kouzes is co-author with Barry Posner of the award winning book, The Leadership Challenge (over one million copies sold) and is an executive fellow in the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Management

Eclecticism is an important characteristic for a leader, as leadership is an integrative discipline. Leadership draws on philosophy because much of what leaders do has to do with belief systems such as capitalism versus communism. Leadership draws on history, as good leaders take the time to appreciate the successes and failures of those who have gone before them. Leadership draws on anthropology-as leaders are constantly … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Leadership

Think about the [leadership development] problem along two dimensions-skill and challenge. Ideally, leaders will flourish when their skill set supports them in the challenges they face. If you put people with a lot of skill in a marginally challenging position, they are likely to be bored. When you put that same person in a situation where the challenge is significantly greater than their competence, they … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

For it is character through which leadership is exercised, it is character that sets the example and is imitated in turn…The more successfully tomorrow’s manager does his work, the greater will be the integrity required of him…No matter what a man’s general education or his adult education for management, what will be decisive above all, in the future even more than in the past, is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Character, Leadership

Vision moves the enterprise; values stabilize the enterprise. Vision looks to the future, values to the past.

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Vision

Managers consistently overestimate how fast they have to move and what needs to be done in the short run and underestimate what can be done in the long run.

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Change Management, Management

The decision as to whether or not to make the first offer or demand in a negotiation needs to be a strategic choice rather than a default. The first offer can have a significant effect on the final outcome.

Editor’s Note: includes a negotiation exercise for use in a classroom or business training class

Content: Article | Author: Michael B. Rainey, J.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Negotiation

Corruption happens. When corruption occurs, either in an organization’s home (domestic) environment, or in a foreign country, it raises a number of questions and issues for managers and professionals. The questions relate to what forms corruption takes, who is involved, and why it exists. The issues relate to how we cope and deal with corruption in general and within specific cultural and national contexts. The … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Diane Singel, Gerry Rossy, Ph.D., Mark Mallinger, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Ethics, International

Business people need to know how to recognize the signs should a deflationary spiral begin and how to prepare ahead of time with practical relevant business plans and strategic initiatives.

Content: Article | Author: Donald M. Atwater, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Economics, Finance

Founder of Kinko’s

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: David M. Smith, Ph.D., Frieda L. Gehlen, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Management

Treat the pursuit of customer satisfaction as you do any other profit-driven investment — that is, assess it in terms of its net present value (NPV) and/or return on assets employed (ROA).

Content: Article | Author: Chic Fojtik, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

I think the idea is that one has, among other responsibilities, the responsibility to try to increase shareholder value. But when you say “maximize,” you’re now saying it’s my priority at the cost of all others. And that’s what I will not acknowledge — any more than I would go the other way and say my purpose is to maximize the happiness of my employees. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Business Rules, Miscellaneous

Lacy Edwards has been in the software industry almost since there was a software industry. He put himself through college by working as a computer programmer after a stint in the Marine Corps, and spent five years at IBM where he was an award-winning sales executive. Since then he has served as CEO of three new companies, building them to the point where they did … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Charles Morrissey, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Management | Industry: Software

This article describes the concept of hedge funds/alternative investments, many of the different strategies they employ, and their relationship to Modern Portfolio Theory.

Content: Article | Author: Darrol J. Stanley | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Finance, Industry Specific | Industry: Investing

An intensive study of teams in the aeronautical industry in the mid-90’s, led to the observation that successful learning teams went through a four-stage process before they achieved collective or organizational learning. Conflict often acted as a stimulant to propel teams toward organizational learning. On the other hand, not all teams became successful learning teams, and conflict was sometimes a factor when they did not. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Kathryn S. Rogers, Ph.D., Teri C. Tompkins, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Organizational Behavior

The decision in Victor’s Little Secret v. Victoria’s Secret requires that the holder of the trademark prove that a competitor’s similar trademark causes actual dilution in order to obtain an injunction against its use. However, significant questions remain.

Content: Article | Authors: Carol Docan, Leonard Rymsza, Linnea B. McCord | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Legal

To be an effective leader one must demonstrate a low need for approval, because as innovators, leaders have to challenge the comfort zones of the majority, and rejection is part of that territory.

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Leadership