$3M gift to ASU’s Carey School Establishes New Biz Chair

MIT professor Eric So. Image: Scott Bauer

MIT Prof Offers Secrets To Better Investing

News from MIT Sloan School of Management 

“A few years ago, Eric So and a co-author finished a working paper about corporate earnings announcements and posted it on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). They had found something striking: Corporations telegraph the content of their quarterly financial results via the timing of their earnings announcements.

“That is, publicly traded companies have a window of time to announce each quarter’s financials. If they set up an announcement early in that period, it means a good earnings report; if the announcement is scheduled for late in the period, it suggests relatively bad news is on the way. For stock traders, that’s a great insight, as the response to So’s paper confirmed.

“’I posted it on SSRN at around three o’clock on a Thursday, and by the end of the day Friday, I had 10 invitations to present at hedge funds,’ says So.”

Read more


The Art Of Balancing Autonomy And Control

News from MIT Sloan School of Management 

“Today, managers recognize that innovation requires a high level of work autonomy for their employees. This encourages curiosity, enables independent thinking, and provides an environment in which employees can experiment and test new problem-solving approaches with minimal fear of failure. At the same time, top-level management and shareholders expect managers to innovate at an increasingly demanding pace, putting top-down pressure on employees to channel this autonomy into productivity. The challenge for managers becomes figuring out how to balance autonomy and control in order to achieve organizational goals without jeopardizing innovation.

“The world of hackathons brings the study of balancing high-speed, creative autonomy and administrative control to bear in many interesting ways. Both the hacking and making cultures are centered around creative autonomy, curiosity-led problem-solving, and freedom to independently build solutions. Managing hackathons requires bringing together myriad technologists, designers, and other professionals and supporting their free exploration while simultaneously helping them finish with working prototypes. In these high-pressure environments, how do hackathon organizers chart a path to success, and what can industry managers learn from them?”

Read more


Gift to establish 4 professorships at Fuqua School

News from Duke University Fuqua School of Business

“Duke University has received a $7 million grant to establish four professorships to bolster faculty excellence in research and teaching at The Fuqua School of Business, President Vincent E. Price said Thursday.

“The gift from The Duke Endowment, a private foundation based in Charlotte, will provide matching funds to establish four endowed full professorships at Fuqua. The Endowment will match gifts of $1.75 million from future donors for each of the professorships, bringing the total of Duke’s Fuqua Faculty Support Challenge to $14 million.”

Read more


LBS

3 Steps Closer To A Purposeful Organization

News from London Business School

“Most executives realize that, to motivate employees and improve productivity, they cannot rely on financial incentives alone. People need to understand the higher purpose of their jobs.

“Respondents in a global survey of senior executives by Harvard Business Review and EY’s Beacon Institute agreed on the importance of purpose: 89% said a strong sense of collective purpose drives employee satisfaction; 84% said it can affect an organization’s ability to transform itself; and 80% agreed that purpose helps increase customer loyalty.

“One company we know well took this to heart. During a weekly meeting, senior executives started to explain how their pharmaceutical products not only attracted profits but also significantly improved patient outcomes. One senior manager introduced a patient who explained how one of the company’s drugs had saved her life.”

Read more


Wharton

Why Books Matter For The Long Run

News from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania 

“Why have Eric Schmidt, Meg Whitman, Reid Hoffman, John Doerr and other leading technologists resorted to the venerable (some would say backward) practice of book-writing to communicate their visions? Why did Mark Zuckerberg introduce a quaint book-of-the-month feature onto the runaway train of Facebook? Why does Bill Gates regularly pen long, thoughtful book reviews in a whirlwind communications culture fueled by texts and tweets?

“How have books survived the information tsunami, and what will authors and publishers have to do to leverage the success of books for the long run?”

Read more


PwC’s Rohit Kumar met with Kelley students on Dec. 10 and discussed an understanding of policy issues as crucial to many companies. Kelley photo

An Insider’s View Of Washington And Policymaking

News from Indiana University Kelley School of Business

“Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and its 3/2 MBA Program welcomed Rohit Kumar, a principal at PwC LLP and leader of the firm’s tax policy services group in its Washington National Tax Services practice.

“Kumar provided a unique perspective. He has extensive knowledge of government and public policy. Before joining PwC in 2013, he worked closely with three Senate leaders on Capitol Hill, including seven years with current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for whom he served as domestic policy director and deputy chief of staff.

“He helped to develop and implement tax, trade, budget and health care policy for McConnell as well as former Sens. Trent Lott, Bill Frist and Phil Gramm.”

Read more

DON’T MISS LAST WEEK’S NEWS- AND DATA-FILLED BULLETIN

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.