461 Posts found for Source: Knowledge@Wharton

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Earlier this fall, Safeway, a food retailer based in Pleasanton, Calif., took out radio and television ads apologizing to customers of some recently-acquired grocery stores for changes in these stores’ operations. Safeway joined what seems to be a long list of apologizers – from investment bankers to fast food corporations – who have recently expressed regret for a variety of mistakes. With a year full … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Ethics, Management

Corporate governance plays a fundamental role in any economy, but does it play the same role, asks Wharton management professor Mauro Guillen in a research paper entitled “Corporate Governance and Globalization: Is There Convergence Across Countries?” The answer, Guillen concludes, is no. Despite increasing globalization, separate economies go about corporate governance in different ways, ranging from the Anglo-Saxon shareholder-centered model found in the U.S. and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Corporate Governance

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When Enron collapsed a year ago, thousands of employees’ retirement savings were wiped out, sparking quick calls for reform of 401(k) plans. Some changes were put in place earlier this year, others are still being debated in Congress. But now that the smoke of corporate scandals has begun to clear, do problems with 401(k)s still appear as bad as they did last winter? Should the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Economics, Finance | Industry: Finance / Banking

As scandals erode confidence in corporate executives and a sluggish world economy depresses revenues and profits, it is clear that the world of business faces major challenges and a new environment. At such a time, a new approach to leadership is critical, according to Stewart D. Friedman, a management professor at Wharton and former director of Ford Motor Company’s Leadership Development Center. This approach, which … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Stewart D. Friedman | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Leadership

he customer may always be right, according to the old adage. But here is a not-so-old adage that is just as true: The customer may not always be profitable. That’s why more companies are starting to take a harder look to determine which customers are worth serving and which should take their business elsewhere. The notion of eliminating customers may seem counterintuitive but in many … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Sources: Knowledge@Wharton, strategy+business | Subjects: Customer Related, Management

EBITDA, or Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization, has been used by analysts and investors to measure the fiscal health of the many high-tech, media and other asset-heavy firms that do not generate earnings, but instead incur plenty of depreciation, amortization and other charges. Recently, however, EBITDA has come under fire for contributing to accounting irregularities at such companies as WorldCom and AOL Time … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Accounting, Finance

What constitutes a successful identity-oriented marketing strategy? According to Wharton marketing professor Americus Reed II, it consists of three critical links – the consumer, the identity and the brand. If these links are forged, says Reed, who recently completed a research paper on this topic, “then they create connections that can lead to advantageous marketing outcomes for companies that are savvy enough to incorporate identity … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Marketing / Sales

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The corporate scandals of the last year have left regulators and Congress working overtime on remedies such as better accounting standards and tougher penalties for renegade executives. But stock investors could use something else: an advance warning system to identify potential threats. Is there a way to tell, ahead of time, which publicly traded companies are most likely to cook the books? There’s no perfect … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Accounting, Finance

Wharton professor Howard Kunreuther looks at the bankruptcies of Barings Bank and Arthur Andersen, and the severe losses incurred by Union Carbide and Lloyd’s of London after a series of disasters, and he sees a common thread: How the actions of one division or plant severely damaged the whole company. In a recent paper, Kunreuther analyzes the challenges organizations face in dealing with low-probability events … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Risk Management

When Congress enacted the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA), many financial institutions bristled at the thought of additional regulatory oversight, particularly when it would require the industry to lend to low-and moderate-income neighborhoods. In the 25 years since its enactment, does the CRA still inspire resistance from banks? Given its turbulent beginning, how effective has the CRA been and how can it be improved? … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Finance, Industry Specific | Industry: Finance / Banking

Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it … he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Smith | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics, Personality / Behavior

Welcome to the world of global back-office operations, or as it is often called, cross-border business-process outsourcing. While companies have long outsourced manufacturing operations and other tasks such as IT maintenance or software development, the trend has now expanded to include other kinds of business processes such as customer contact, bill processing and medical transcription. Companies are moving such work to locations in India, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Best Practices, Outsourcing / BPO

As the recent proposed sale of Hershey Foods shows, any action a company takes that affects the well-being of its employees and community, among other stakeholders, should be made by a board interested in more than the bottom line. Wharton marketing professor Scott Armstrong urges boards of directors to be democratic and more representative of stakeholder interests. The result, he says, would be fairer and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Corporate Governance

In Turkey, the apartment buildings that collapse during earthquakes are known as “bribe buildings.” In Africa, bridges dot the landscape with no roads to connect them. There’s no doubt that corruption, endemic in emerging economies around the world, throws economic development into chaos. It affects decisions made by bureaucrats, degrades the quality of those in power, and discourages foreign investment. Wharton legal studies professor Phil … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Ethics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

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In trying to assess consumer attitudes towards pricing, marketing professor Lisa Bolton and two other researchers conducted experiments designed to measure whether shoppers feel they get a fair shake from the businesses they regularly patronize. The answer, it turns out, is no. Consumers in fact routinely assume that companies gouge them and reap large profits. The results of this research are summarized in a new … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Customer Related, Pricing

In the wake of news reports about compensation excesses in U.S. companies, Cendant recently announced that it expected to reduce the issuance of employee stock options and use grants of restricted stock instead. That decision has placed Cendant – an $8.9 billion real estate and travel conglomerate – in the vanguard of a movement to reject option-based incentives and return to a more traditional way … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management