Stories about villains and heroes have captured the human imagination for centuries, and now those characters are ubiquitous on the packages and labels of products. But do these characters influence whether people are willing to buy something, and how much they’ll pay for it? Professor Tamara Masters of Brigham Young University predicted that vice, or...
Commerce
New Study Finds Employee Incentives Can Lead to Unethical Behavior in the Workplace
Considering end-of-year bonuses for your employees? Supervisors be forewarned, a new study finds that while incentive rewards can help motivate and increase employee performance it can also lead to unethical behavior in the workplace. “Goal fixation can have a profound impact on employee behavior, and the damaging effects appear to be growing stronger in today’s...
Expert on Market Conditions Leading Up to GM Announcement to Close Plants, Lay Off 14,000 People
General Motors on November 26 announced plans to close five manufacturing sites and consolidate production in North America and eliminate an estimated 14,000 white collar and blue-collar jobs. Rodney Parker, associate professor of operations management at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, said the announcement reflects several new realities for GM. “First, it reflects the...
A World Without Brick-And-Mortar Stores? Even Avid Online Shoppers Say, ‘No, Thanks’
It has been dubbed the “retail apocalypse” – the widespread shuttering of brick-and-mortar stores across America in the wake of online shopping’s skyrocketing popularity. But how do consumers feel about this changing retail landscape? University of Arizona researcher Sabrina Helm decided to find out in a new study published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer...
Move Over CEOs: Designers Have Arrived in Corporate Boardrooms
Design is heading to a corporate boardroom near you. Its form is not a chair, handbag or technology. It is human. This new type of designer is equally comfortable in a navy suit or black turtleneck. Fuelled by top-selling business books and management consultant reports, this latest design movement is all about customer-tailored companies thriving...
High Stakes Decision-Making Causes a Little More Cheating, a Lot Less Charity
The age old adage of virtue being its own reward may not hold true in the corporate world – in fact, honorable acts could lead workers to behave more selfishly later on, new research has shown. A new study has revealed the true extent to which a phenomenon called “moral licensing” can transform how employees...
Study Finds Racial Disparities in Student Debt Increase After Young People Leave College
Racial disparities in student debt between blacks and whites may perpetuate the racial wealth gap according to a study in the online first edition of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. The study is the first to evaluate how racial disparities in student debt change over one’s life course– from when young people first graduate or leave...
Corra Launches Avant: The Only Fashion-Focused SAP Accelerator
Corra is launching Avant, the only SAP Commerce Cloud-qualified accelerator designed to meet the needs of fashion brands. This refined solution reduces both cost and time-to-market of a typical SAP Commerce Cloud implementation by up to 40%, allowing fashion retailers to bypass the need for costly customizations and to invest more budget in strategic business initiatives....
$280.6 Billion Opportunity for the Global Footwear Market by 2023
The global footwear market is expected to expand at an overall annual compound growth rate (CAGR) of 3.44% from 2018 to 2023, leading to a global revenue of USD 280.61 billion by 2023, according to a new report from ResearchAndMarkets.com. Based on the various products available, the global footwear market has been classified into athletic and...
Leaders May Create Ineffective Cultures Because They Are Stuck in the Past, Study Shows
Where does culture come from? This basic question is one of the toughest for both researchers and practitioners to answer because culture is deeply entrenched in people’s minds and taken for granted. To date, researchers have proposed a functional view of culture – that culture is a response to the current needs within and outside...