Tag: Praxis

Associate professor of marketing Robyn LeBoeuf presented research findings to an eager corporate audience in December at the first Praxis Series breakfast. Attendees were surprised to learn that speaking about goals in terms of weeks rather a specific date appeared to motivate people to take initial action toward pursuing goals.

Robyn LeBoeuf

There is more research to be done, as the Q&A time after her presentation proved. There are many more questions about how wording can affect goal-setting to motivate customers or employees.

LeBoeuf’s presentation included research published in her paper, “The Influence of Time-Interval Descriptions on Goal-Pursuit Decisions”. The paper was a top contender in the  2015 Olin Award competition that honors research that impacts business.

Contact or learn more about Professor LeBoeuf here.

Read previous Praxis and Olin Award papers here.

Judges of the 2015 Olin Award competition couldn’t choose just one winner this year from the field of relevant and rigorous research papers submitted by Olin faculty, so they named two winners. Professors Andrew Knight and Anne Marie Knott were each awarded the prize.

Professor Knott presented her paper, “Explaining the Broken Link Between R&D and GDP Growth,” on March 27 to business leaders from industries including pharmaceuticals, life sciences and technology, energy, and household product manufacturing.

Knott’s latest research grew out of her work on developing a measure of R&D productivity called the Research Quotient (RQ), which forms the basis for CNBC’s annual firm innovation rankings. RQ measures the percentage increase in revenues achieved from a 1 percent increase in R&D spending, and fits the construct in growth theory that predicts a firm’s profits, growth, and market value.

In searching for an explanation of RQ declines at some companies and the broken link between R&D productivity and GDP growth Knott realized there was a culprit hiding in plain sight: outsourced R&D!

Firms failed to realize outsourced R&D has zero returns! Thus while a 10% increase in internal R&D increases later revenues by 1.7%, a 10% increase in outsourced R&D has no impact on later revenues.

The good news is this problem is easily reversed! And it’s likely R&D can again drive firm and economic growth. If firms restore their prior R&D productivity levels by gradually bringing outsourced projects back in house, Knott predicts growth in firm revenues and GDP will follow.

Learn more about Professor Knott’s articles and presentations.

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An Invitation

The 2015 Olin Award co-winner, Professor Andrew Knight, will present his paper “Who Defers to Whom and Why? Dual Pathways Linking Demographic Differences and Dyadic Deference to Team Effectiveness” on May 12. Professor Knight’s research explains what drives interpersonal influence in teams and connects patterns of influence to team performance. Register for this event by emailing your RSVP to CorporateRelations@olin.wustl.edu.

Read more faculty research and watch professor videos here.

Leaders in the financial industry appreciated Professor Xiumin Martin’s presentation of her paper Internal Information Asymmetry, Internal Capital Markets, and Firm Value at the December 9, 2014 Praxis luncheon.  A lively Q&A session ensued.

Bloomberg Businessweek ranks Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis #4 in Intellectual Capital (the volume of faculty research published in top business journals), among the best business schools in the country.

“Praxis” is the application of theory or ideas, and it’s the name of our annual publication that features faculty research that is relevant to business managers today. Research put into practice is at the heart of the collaborative relationship between Olin Business School and our Corporate Partners. Let’s work together to make business better.

Read Olin Praxis here and watch this video of Prof. Martin talking about her research on information asymmetry.

Contact Dorothy Kittner for more information at kittner@wustl.edu or 314-935-6365.

St. Louis is a long way from her native Barbados, but Michelle Duguid has adjusted to life on the shores of the Mississippi as an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Olin since 2009. Her areas of research include: group demography and social status; group creativity and decision-making.

Duguid’s research paper, “Female Tokens in High-Prestige Work Groups: Catalysts or Inhibitors of Group Diversification?” was featured in Olin Praxis: Research that Impacts Business in 2012.

Read more about a new course on Women and Leadership that Duguid is co-teaching this semester with Maxine Clark, founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Standing instead of sitting at meetings has several known benefits, but until now, researchers didn’t have empirical data to prove that it really leads to more creativity and better overall performance.  Organizational behavior professors Markus Baer and Andrew Knight use wearable technology in experiments to measure how people behave in meetings whether sitting or standing. Read an executive summary of their research in the newest issue of Praxis, Research that Impacts Business. Baer and Knight discuss their research in this video: