B-School Bulletin: 8 Pioneering Penn Figures In Black History

Photos from University of Pennsylvania Archives and Records Center

A Look At 8 Pioneering Figures In Black History At Penn

News from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania

For three weeks now, Penn has joined communities across the country to commemorate Black History Month.

In light of the annual, month-long observance, The Daily Pennsylvanian dug into the University’s archives to present a brief history of black students, faculty, and staff at Penn.

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When it came to researching the gig economy, driving for Uber made it “easy to get embedded in the market as you analyze it,” Paul Oyer says. Winni Wintermeyer photo

What An Economist Is Learning By Driving For Uber

News from Stanford Graduate School of Business

“Over the past few years, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Paul Oyer has explored the growing gig economy from many perspectives. He’s analyzed hourly and annual income differences between freelancers and full-time employees. He’s researched (and consulted for) Upwork, the world’s largest freelance website. He’s nosed around Uber’s database. And last year, to better understand how the ride-sharing platform works, he became one of the company’s certified drivers.

“We recently sat down with Oyer. Our main goal was to learn more about the many cultural shifts being caused by the exploding gig economy, but we also wondered what a tenured professor of economics learned by driving people around for money.”

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Dayne Walling at Averbuch Auditorium

Four Lessons In Leadership From The Former Mayor Of Flint, MI

News from Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management 

“After the City of Flint switched water supply sources from the Detroit water system to the Flint River in April 2014 while under a state-appointed manager, local residents began complaining about the smell, taste, and color of the water, and claimed it caused skin problems. Eventually, health issues emerged, including an outbreak of Legionnaires disease and signs of lead poisoning in children.

“During the first months of the crisis, then-mayor Dayne Walling tried to respond to complaints and address the known problems. As the crisis continued, Walling lost his mayoral re-election campaign in November 2015, ending his two terms in office. Eventually, the water was found to contain high levels of bacteria and lead due to insufficient water treatment and corrosion prevention.”

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What It Takes To Transform Your Firm

News from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management 

“In business, longevity requires continual transformation from companies. Sometimes small adjustments are sufficient. But other times businesses need to reconceive their most fundamental operations in order to survive and stay vital.

“’Organizations can never exist effectively in a steady state,’ says Brink, now a senior fellow and adjunct professor in the markets and customers initiative at the Kellogg School.”

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Spanning The Boundaries That Limit Organizational Innovativeness

News from INSEAD

“By their very nature, multinational corporations straddle many boundaries, most obviously national, cultural, economic, institutional and organisational. Adding to the challenge is the fact that these boundaries span both the external and internal contexts in which the firm’s units operate. As such, they can become a source of conflict as organisations try to reconcile the search for efficient global integration with the need to compete in diverse local environments.

“External boundaries range from tangible ones such as accounting practices, reporting standards or labour laws, to more subtle ones such as customers’ cultural preferences or channel practices. Internal boundaries include cognition and modes of action across geographies and cultures, as well as functional and knowledge domains. As many managers will be aware, mergers and alliances can add further layers of professional and organisational boundaries which are difficult to erase. For example, even though they merged in 2004, Air France and KLM still retain distinct cultures, attitudes and behaviours. And years after the merger that led to the creation of Novartis, staff continued to identify as either Ciba-Geigy or Sandoz employees.”

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