256 Posts found for Source: Stanford University

People tend to think of diversity as simply demographic, a matter of color, gender, or age. However, groups can be disparate in many ways. Diversity is also based on informational differences, reflecting a person’s education and experience, as well as on values or goals that can influence what one perceives to be the mission of something as small as a single meeting or as large … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Gregory Northcraft, Karen Jehn, Margaret Neale | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Internet search engines use an auction system for selling business advertising on their sites. Researchers say firms buying that advertising could save time and money by using a different bidding strategy.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Ostrovsky | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Marketing / Sales

The important difference between an entrepreneur and an administrator is that the entrepreneur is opportunity-driven, whereas the administrator tends to be resource-driven.

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Decades after Milton Friedman framed the debate over the social responsibility of business with an article in the New York Times Magazine, the discussion continues. Should businesses concentrate on achieving socially desirable outcomes? Can business be guided by the rule of law when governments are sometimes corrupt? How does operating globally affect a company’s behavior? These and other issues were the focus of one … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Ethics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Ran Kivetz and Itamar Simonson have embarked on a broad research effort to understand why customers join loyalty programs and how they use them. They recently completed a paper that examined how the amount of effort consumers must expend to get a reward-how many miles, points, or purchases they must accumulate-affects the types of rewards they prefer. Kivetz and Simonson found that the more … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Itamar Simonson, Ran Kivetz | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

When does culture influence consumer purchasing decisions? This is a complex and under-examined issue recently explored by Donnel Briley and Jennifer Aaker. Four experiments found that culture-based differences show up when information is processed in a cursory and spontaneous manner. But when there is time to deliberate more – by examining information on the Web, for instance – attempts by advertisers to rely on cultural … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Donnel L.Briley, Jennifer L. Aaker | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Marketing / Sales

For billions around the world, shadowy underground markets provide food, services, and income that makes daily life possible. Helping countries grow out of poverty requires changing the rules of the game to shift these markets above ground.

Content: Article | Author: John McMillan | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Economics, International

Psychologists know false stories thrive in situations of heightened anxiety. Chip Heath, a Stanford-trained psychologist, is doing research to try and explain why, in more normal times, people tell each other rumors and urban legends on a day-to-day basis.

Content: Article | Author: Chip Heath | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior

For those entrepreneurial types who aren’t keen on starting a company from scratch, creating a search fund to buy an existing business may be the way to go.

Content: Article | Author: Meredith Alexander | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Finance

It’s been said that no one is a prophet in his own land, but can anyone be a prophet in his or her own organization? Apparently, the ancient adage seems to hold true even in our modern temples of commerce, says Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer. People in most companies, he has found, value knowledge possessed by outsiders more than they do knowledge possessed by members of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior

One is a popularity contest. Another is a number cruncher’s dream. As business school rankings proliferate, readers wonder: What do they actually measure?
And whom do they serve?

Content: Prospective MBA Content | Author: Jennifer Reese | Source: Stanford University | Subject: MBA Program Rankings

To many, the principal-agent model is the obvious lens through which executive pay should be viewed. Such a sentiment sits uncomfortably with a large number of empirical studies suggesting that the process of determining executive pay seems to be more readily explained by recourse to arguments of managerial power and influence. This paper investigates the micro-underpinnings of boardroom behavior in order to explain this departure … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Brian G.M. Main, Charles A. O’Reilly III | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Corporate Governance

Being able to get a job is more important than stable prices to people’s sense of satisfaction and happiness. So says research on the effects of inflation and unemployment by Justin Wolfers, assistant professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His findings, based on analysis of over half a million individual surveys, show that unemployment outweighs inflation by a ratio of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Justin Wolfers | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Economics

In globalization we can come closer together, but we still don’t know one another. We can start up a new business fast, but growing wise in the way of life takes a long time. It’s never complete, never right, and never perfect. An ethic is deeper than morality or custom. It comes out of our deepest desire to make meaning out of our lives and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Culture, Integrity

It’s hard to know what is meant by business ethics. Only people, not businesses, have ethics. Ethics is me, the individual, as a person. I’m ethical or unethical. If I’m employed in a business that I think is unethical, I have a clear choice. I can get out of that business and find something else to do. It doesn’t seem to me it’s ethical for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Ethics

Nobody really believes that it’s an ethical precept that you obey every law. If you obey a law that requires you to do something that is unethical or amoral, I think everybody in the room would agree it’s a proper human behavior to break that law as long as you’re willing to accept the responsibility for that. That was the justification for conscientious objection during … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Ethics, Legal

Many of the more conventional books on leadership show leaders as mythic and heroic figures. Students want their leaders to be perfect and without any personal blemishes. What they fail to realize is that sometimes the very qualities that make someone imperfect also help explain their tremendous drive to succeed and energy to focus on one narrow realm of achievement.

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Leadership

People do care about the truth of an idea, but they also want to tell stories that produce strong emotion, and that second tendency sometimes gets in the way of the first.

If we could understand what kinds of stories succeed beyond all expectations, even when they are not true, we might be able to take legitimate information, about health for example, and change people’s behavior … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Communication, Organizational Behavior

Markets are the most potent antipoverty engine there is – but only where they work well. The caveat is crucial.

Left to themselves, markets can fail. To deliver their full benefits they need support from a set of rules, customs, and institutions. They cannot operate efficiently in a vacuum. If the rules of the market game are inadequate, as often they are, it is difficult … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Economics

Organizations are characterized by inertia and there are good reasons for this. Reliability and accountability are valued attributes of organizations. These qualities are strengthened by predictable routines and structures, which create inertia as a byproduct.

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Organizational Behavior