If one wants to calculate the environmental impact of purchasing a product or services, they must consider the role of the capital assets that went into their production — machinery, factories, IT, vehicles, and roads — and the energy and materials required to create those assets. For instance, any assessment of the environmental “footprint” of...
Commerce
Incumbent CEOs Working with New CFOs Earn 10% More Money
It pays to be the boss. According to new research from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, it pays even more to be an incumbent CEO working with a newly hired chief financial officer (CFO). Fuqua researchers studied more than 20 years of data from S&P 1500 firms and found CEOs took home an average...
Outcomes Vary for Workers Who ‘Lawyer Up’ in Employment Arbitration Disputes
Conventional wisdom dictates that workers who “lawyer up” in workplace disputes would be more likely to improve their chances at securing a better outcome, but in an alternative dispute resolution context such as arbitration, employers can all but cancel out those positive effects, says a new paper by a University of Illinois expert who studies...
New Research Shows the More Women on a Company’s Board, the More Market Value Is Lost
A company with a gender-diverse board of directors is interpreted as revealing a preference for diversity and a weaker commitment to shareholder value, according to new research in the INFORMS journal Organization Science. The study examines investor responses to board diversity and finds that one additional woman on the board results in a 2.3% decrease in...
Gender Quotas in Business — How Do Europeans Feel?
Despite years of effort to bring more women to the top boards of business, the proportion of women on the committees of listed companies remains in the single digits. In 2019, women held just 8.7 percent of the positions on the boards of the 160 largest German companies. Despite this, quotas, such as the statutory...
Alibaba’s $38 Billion-Plus in Single’s Day Sales Top Last Year in New Record
Concerns abound about whether Chinese consumers will continue to splurge on luxury goods and other “non-essential” items, with Sanford C. Bernstein revealing “weakening discretionary spending” and “more muted” demand from Chinese customers, thereby, suggesting that “the luxury-goods sector may be close to a ‘temporary plateau.’” While such news does not bode well for luxury brands, according to...
Monopolizing and Monetizing a Color: What is the Value of Tiffany & Co.’s Trademark Blue Hue?
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is vying for Tiffany & Co. The Paris-based luxury goods conglomerate made a $14.5 billion play for the American jewelry stalwart last month, in furtherance of a quest to bolster its offerings in the fast-growing jewelry market. Just as analysts predicted, Tiffany’s board reportedly rejected LVMH’s initial, unsolicited offer to seek a...
Zac Posen’s Former CFO is Suing the Recently-Shuttered Brand For Unpaid Wages, Expenses
The demise of the Zac Posen brand is not coming without at least one lawsuit, which sheds some light into the winding down of the famed fashion brand. It turns out that a few weeks before Zac Posen announced that it would shutter after 20 years in business, the New York-based womenswear brand favored by supermodels,...
Instagram to Test Hiding “Likes” in the U.S. What Does that Mean for Influencers, Brands?
On the heels of Instagram’s decision to remove its visible “like” counter from its platform in certain geographic regions, such as Canada and Australia, earlier this year, the app’s operators say they will perform the same test in the U.S. beginning this month. The roll-out by the Facebook-owned photo and video-sharing app is being touted as larger ethos,...
Higher Earning ‘Elite’ Political Lobbyists Overstate Their Own Achievements, Study Shows
“Elite”, high-earning political lobbyists are more likely to overstate their achievements, a new study shows. Political influencers who have a smaller salary and work in specialist areas or for public interest groups are less overconfident – or even underestimate their success, according to the research. This suggests overconfidence can help lobbyists make connections with important...