The special Liars & Con Men issue of the magazine (vol. 26, no. 5) includes a selection of research about lying in politics and business.
Tag: Business
The benefits of management short sightedness [new study]
High-level decision-makers within a company often behave in a short-sighted way – with a pronounced lack of concern for what might happen in the future. In other words, they’re managerially myopic. You might think that such behaviour could damage a firm’s performance. And you’d be right. [See, for example, Blockholder Trading, Market Efficiency, and Managerial […]
Computer-Learning-Driven Exercise Suggestions During Meetings
Yet another possible great advance in humanity’s pursuit of both artificial intelligence and meetings: “Machine learned optimizing of health activity for participants during meeting times,” US patent application 20180116599A1, Paul R. Bastide, Filiz Isabell Kiral-Kornek, Dwarikanath Mahapatra, Susmita Saha, Arun Vishwanath, and Stefan von Cavallar, filed November 2, 2016, rights assigned to International Business Machines […]
An analysis of CEO shirking (at the golf course)
CEOs of high-profile (e.g. S&P 1500) corporations are sometimes tempted to shirk their duties. One quite well-tried method of shirking is to leave the office for the day and play golf instead. Thus, as an observer, if you take the position that shirking might in general hamper business performance, an extrapolated question can be asked […]
Indirect Business Effect of Ominous Music on Sharks
One of the first research projects to look at the possible indirect business effect of ominous music on sharks finds that there may be a there there. The study is “The Effect of Background Music in Shark Documentaries on Viewers’ Perceptions of Sharks,” Andrew P. Nosal, Elizabeth A. Keenan, Philip A. Hastings, and Ayelet Gneezy [pictured […]
Headless mannequins – good for business (or not)?
Mannequins in shop windows – should they have heads, or shouldn’t they? And what about mannequins displayed online? From a retailer’s point of view, the question of whether to use headed or headless mannequins is a complex one – or rather, the answers are complex. And now, for the first time, such answers can be […]
Wining, dining and whining
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch” runs the old adage. But is there? And/or, should or shouldn’t there be? Similar questions are addressed in a new paper from Benjamin E. Hermalin, (Thomas and Alison Schneider Distinguished Professor of Finance and Professor, Department of Economics at the Haas School of Business, University of California, […]
Handshakes galore – but do they work? An analysis.
Search the archives of any upscale picture library [example] and you’ll find hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photos featuring business-persons earnestly shaking hands. But does handshaking actually have any real effect at, say, a business meeting? For the first time (?) an experimental study has examined whether handshaking might (or might not) help in cooperative dealmaking […]
The cost of a phone agent’s smile
Humans who answer the phones in call centers are, in many organizations, requested or even required to smile, smile, smile. A team of researchers at Goethe-University Frankfurt in Germany and the University of Denver ran an experiment to see what this forced smiling does to the forced smilers…. —so begins today’s Improbable Innovation nugget, which appears in its entirety on […]
The Greedy Bastard’s Guide to Business
Morris B. Holbrook, who is the William T. Dillard Professor Emeritus of Business at Columbia University Business School, New York, has had 35-plus years of experience in teaching MBAs. This experience has enabled him, possibly prompted him, to author a new paper for the Journal of Macromarketing (December 2013, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 369-385) […]