Tag: research

Portland Tribune (Oregon), “If you’re happy and you know it” features research by Prof. Stuart Bunderson on workplace behavior and those who view work as a calling, not just a job.

New research from Olin Prof. Lamar Pierce, Associate Professor of Strategy, has been attracting national media coverage in the past week. Prof. Pierce is featured in a report on NPR’s All Tech Considered that looks at the software surveillance options available to employers who want to protect sensitive data from their own employees. On Sunday, June 22, a front page article in The New York Times, “Unblinking Eyes Track Employees” by Steve Lohr, examines the pros and cons of workplace surveillance as it becomes increasingly ubiquitous and cites Pierce’s research extensively.

The research is published in a paper, “Cleaning House: The Impact of Information Technology Monitoring on Employee Theft and Productivity,” by Pierce and co-authors Daniel Snow (BYU), and Andrew McAfee (MIT). The paper received the Olin Award for research that impacts business earlier this year.

The paper details analysis of data generated by a software surveillance program used to detect employee theft in hundreds of restaurants across the U.S. The researchers found that when employees knew they were being monitored, they not only stopped stealing from the till, but they actually changed their work behavior to increase productivity, tips, and profits for the restaurants.

Watch video of Lamar Pierce discussing his Olin Award-winning research on IT monitoring and its effects on employee theft and productivity below.

Listen to Lamar Pierce on NPR here.

Wow!  Olin’s faculty members are doing some amazing research.

At our first Praxis luncheon this year, Professor Andrew Knight presented his research on how to effectively lead teams with diverse values.

Most of us think of diversity in terms of demographics, or skill sets.  Professor Knight and his team found that we really need to be thinking about diversity of values – because teams with similar values need to be managed much differently than teams with differing values, in order to maximize team performance.

When team members’ values differ, there is a high risk of conflict.  Managers of these teams can either provide structured, task based leadership, or they can provide person-focused leadership.  Professor Knight found that when managers provided task-focused leadership, teams with a high values variance vastly outperformed (and with less conflict) similar teams receiving person-focused leadership.

When team members’ values were similar, both leadership styles resulted in good performance, although the person-focused managers had slightly better outcomes.

This research is truly relevant to business, across all industries and functions, and certainly has changed the way I look at diversity in teams!

Murray Weidenbaum, Richard Mahoney, and Andrew Knight

The Praxis luncheon series was designed to help put the relevant, cutting-edge research of Olin’s faculty in the hands of business leaders who can apply its findings to benefit their own organizations.

Sponsored by Olin’s Distinguished Executive in Residence, Richard J. Mahoney, the luncheon series is part of a broader effort to foster meaningful, mutually beneficial interaction between Olin’s faculty and the corporate community.

Read a summary of Prof. Knight’s research paper in the new issue of Praxis: Research that Impacts Business.

Do you groove to the oldies or dance to the newest beats? New research from Olin’s Joe Goodman may surprise you about the music you like to listen to again, and again.

Neil Schoenherr reports:

We are constantly bombarded with a seemingly limitless amount of new music in our daily lives. But why do we keep coming back to that one song or album we couldn’t get enough of in college?

New research from Washington University’s Olin Business School shows that although consumers say they prefer to listen to unfamiliar music, their choices actually belie that preference.

The study, “The Same Old Song: The Power of Familiarity in Music Choice,” could have implications for marketers and the playlists, events, venues and products which they choose to advertise.

“In three studies, we examined the power of familiarity on music choice and showed that familiarity is a more important driver of music choice than more obvious, and commonly tested, constructs such as liking and satiation, i.e., being ‘sick of’ certain music,” says

Prof. Joe Goodman

Joseph K. Goodman, PhD, associate professor of marketing at Olin and co-author of the study, along with Morgan Ward of Southern Methodist University and Julie Irwin of University of Texas at Austin.

“Our results suggest that the emphasis on novelty in the music domain, by consumers and people often protesting the current state of the music business, is probably misplaced,” Goodman says. “In the marketplace, and in our pilot study, consumers say that they want more novelty when in fact their choices suggest they do not.”

The study shows that consumers pick music they are familiar with even when they believe they would prefer less familiar music.

Goodman suggests that based on the findings marketers should continue to promote what is familiar to consumers, even though it might not be the most liked. In addition, managers and artists should not underestimate the power of familiarity when promoting their music.

He says that though the studies show the importance of familiarity in music, it also shows that there is a place for new music as well. Consumers have a need for both novel and familiar music, and they especially prefer familiar music when they are busy working or doing cognitively demanding tasks.

Goodman says that the success of services like Pandora and Spotify will continue because they not only play personalized familiar favorites, but they also introduce people to new music with familiar musical elements.

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