News from Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business
“It’s unclear when, exactly, the trend of free shipping began, but a good starting point is probably the 1999 launch of Zappos, an early online shoe seller.
“The company worried that consumers wouldn’t be willing to buy shoes without trying them on, so it offered free shipping and free returns, thus eliminating the risk the shoes didn’t fit. These days, free shipping is among the most popular promotions online retailers deploy, and consumers have come to expect them whenever they shop online. At the same time, the rate of product returns has grown immensely. A study in 2006 found that 5.6 percent of online purchases were returned. By 2013, that number had increased to almost 37 percent.
“Scott Neslin, the Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing at Tuck, has been studying sales promotions for decades. In a new working paper, Free Shipping Promotions and Product Returns, he and Edlira Shehu of the University of Southern Denmark and Dominik Papies of Universität Tübingen in Germany investigate how these phenomena work in combination.”
Competing In An Increasingly Digital Age
News from London Business School
“When Hein Knaapen, Chief Human Resources Officer at ING, took part in a panel discussion at London Business School’s HR Strategy Forum in February, he said something striking while discussing how established businesses can best compete in an increasingly digital age. ING’s biggest competitor, Knaapen said, is not a bank at all: these are Amazon and other big techs, platforms that are now often behemoths selling an ever-expanding range of consumer goods.
“To understand the context of Knaapen’s remark, we need to know something of ING’s recent history. The Dutch banking giant was founded in 1991 as a merger of an insurance firm, Nationale-Nederlanden and a bank, NMB Postbank Group. It quickly grew into a firm with a global reach, employing 51,000 staff and offering retail and wholesale banking to customers in more than 40 countries.”
Health Care Is An Investment, And The U.S. Should Start Treating It Like One
News from Harvard Business School
“We invest billions of dollars each year in medicines, new technologies, doctors, and hospitals — all with the goal of improving health, arguably our most prized commodity. Yet, investments in the U.S. health care system woefully underperform relative to those made in health care in other countries. For instance, the U.S. spends nearly 7–10% more of its national income on health care than other similar countries and yet life expectancy at birth remains, on average, two to three years lower.
“To be sure, many factors influence health outcomes and the investments the health care system makes are only one input. But a large reason why investments in health care underperform is because we invest so much in services that are clearly low-value — i.e., offer little or no clinical benefit relative to the cost — and likely many more where the returns are gray. Investing limited health care dollars into low-value services crowds out our ability to spend on high-value services. So if we want to see better outcomes, we need to start to think like investors.”
Tuck First-Year Students Begin 10-Week Real World Project Course
News from Dartmouth Tuck
In March, a team of Tuck students ventured to Morocco for a global First-Year Project
“Tuck first-year students returned to campus from spring break recently and began an exciting phase of their MBA experience: First-Year Projects.
“Fifty-nine teams composed of 292 students are working for companies such as Smugglers’ Notch Resort, PF Flyers, Orvis, and the Himalayan Cataract Project, applying their classroom learning to complex business challenges.
“The FYPs began with the annual kickoff event on March 26, where teams learned how to scope their project and then met with their client on campus or via video conferencing. In the afternoon, teams met with their faculty advisors, who ensure that each team works on key project management skills such as defining the key question, developing an issue tree, and story boarding. The event concluded with a social gathering where teams, advisors, and clients mingled and discussed the work ahead.”
Emory University Undergraduate Applications Reach New Record High
News from Emory University Goizueta Business School
Emory student volunteers welcome the newest class on Move-In Day, helping them settle in to their new campus home
“Emory University has received a record 27,982 applications to be part of the Class of 2022, a 16 percent jump from the previous year.
“Beyond the growth in the number of students vying for spots in undergraduate programs, admission officers saw students with higher academic achievements and who also embody Emory’s commitment to discovery, engagement and leadership both in the classroom and in the community.
“’We are moving beyond focusing on students who have the ability to do something wonderful to those who will,’ says John Latting, associate vice provost for enrollment and dean of admission. ‘Emory is attractive not just for its liberal arts and research excellence but for students who are thinking of how to have a positive influence on the world.’”
Behavioral Economics: Are Nudges Cost-Effective?
News from UCLA Anderson School of Management
“Behavioral science does not suffer from a lack of academic focus. A Google Scholar search for the term delivers more than three million results.
“While there is an abundance of research into how human nature can muck up our decision making process and the potential for well-placed nudges to help guide us to better outcomes, the field has kept rather mum on a basic question: Are behavioral nudges cost-effective?
“That’s an ever more salient question as the art of the nudge is increasingly being woven into public policy initiatives. In 2009, the Obama administration set up a nudge unit within the White House Office of Information and Technology, and a year later the U.K. government launched its own unit. Harvard’s Cass Sunstein, co-author of the book Nudge, headed the U.S. effort. His co-author, the University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler — who won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics — helped develop the U.K.’s Behavioral Insights office. Nudge units are now humming away in other countries, including Germany and Singapore, as well as at the World Bank, various United Nations agencies and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).”
Disrupting Management
News from London Business School
“Disruption isn’t just about digital. The common theme at London Business School’s (LBS) HR Strategy Forum 2018 was that it’s time to reconsider the human side of work. Is your management fit for purpose? Are your people equipped to play their part in your organisation’s survival in a future where the ground moves even as you’re walking across it?
“Technology advances at its own furious pace, but our response should be less about getting technical experts to get on top of that and more about reconsidering what it is to work in a way that’s more adaptable, to look at what roles people may play in our organizations of the future.
“An HR director doesn’t have to be an A.I. expert but they certainly have a role in making sure their people are ready to leverage A.I. rather than be disenfranchised by it. We can be fairly optimistic as we look ahead to the time where machines are doing much of the manual work, freeing humans to do the work that adds the most value to customers, such as design, creative ventures and services.”
Campaign Contributions Swayed By Neighbors’ Politics
News from UCLA Anderson
“If your neighbors can see your political participation, does that change how you participate in the political process?
“That’s the question behind a pair of large-scale studies from UCLA Anderson’s Ricardo Perez-Truglia, who explored how social influences affect political contributions and, by extension, other kinds of political involvement. This research shows that social pressure does matter and that it matters in decidedly partisan ways.
“Understanding political-social dynamics is especially important now, amid an increasingly partisan political system and the hyper polarizing candidacy and administration of Donald Trump. In the words of Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein, ‘partyism’ has become even more pronounced than racism in determining how people interact with one another.”
When Fee-Pressured Audit Offices Focus On Non-Audit Services, Financial Statements Suffer, Study Shows
News from Notre Dame University Mendoza College of Business
“Firms hire auditors to create independent assessments of their financial statements, providing assurance to investors and outside parties that they are free from material misstatement.
“However — especially since the economic downturn — companies pressure auditors to lower their fees as a way to reduce costs. Auditors, in turn, place greater emphasis on more-profitable non-audit services, such as consulting, which can negatively impact audit quality, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.
“How do Audit Offices Respond to Audit Fee Pressure? Evidence of Increased Focus on Non-audit Services and their Impact on Audit Quality by Erik Beardsley, assistant professor of accountancy in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, along with Dennis Lassila of Texas A&M University and Thomas Omer from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is forthcoming in Contemporary Accounting Research.”
Left to right: Jennifer A. Herdt, Laurie Santos, Kimberly Goff-Crews, Shelly Kagan
At Yale Well Event, Professors Serve Up The Pursuit Of Happiness Three Ways
News from Yale School of Management
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