UConn Today – Business Law professor Robert Bird has been selected as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar and will spend three months studying human-centered legal strategy and design in Finland next semester.
“I’m excited about this opportunity to collaborate with my peers in Finland, who are doing some interesting work on strategic legal design,’’ he said. “I believe this research will add value to organizations, make complex contracts easier to understand, and benefit my students as well.’’
UConn Today – It was, perhaps, the most talked-about wedding cake in the history of marriage ceremonies.
In 2012, Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., refused to make a custom wedding cake for the marriage of a same-sex couple. The bakery owner objected, saying that the ceremony conflicted with his religious beliefs.
Although the Colorado Civil Rights Commission found the bakery had discriminated against the couple, the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned that decision in 2018. The ruling said the Commission failed to maintain religious neutrality, sidestepping questions about anti-discrimination laws and human rights.
UConn Today – CEOs and corporations should integrate legal strategy – an often-overlooked competitive advantage – into the core of their business plans, says Business law professor Robert Bird.
“Legal knowledge is the last great source of untapped competitive advantage in organizations, and the corporations that recognize this can unlock a storehouse of value creation that their rivals might miss,’’ Bird says.
UConn Today – Professor John Mandyck, the CEO of the Urban Green Council and the former Chief Sustainability Officer at United Technologies, will speak on the topic, “Is Sustainability Dead?’’ next month.
The presentation is part of the Equity Now speaker series and it will be livestreamed at 6 p.m. March 27. Students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of the university are welcome to participate. Pre-registration is required.
With the United States again out of the Paris Climate Treaty and the Trump administration favoring fossil fuels, it’s easy to wonder if the sustainability movement is over. It’s definitely not, according to Mandyck.
UConn Today – Professor Tania N. Valdez, a George Washington University Law School faculty member and an attorney who has represented immigrants for more than a decade, will speak about “Immigration Law and the New Presidential Administration’’ next month.
UConn Today – Any company that strives to be profitable and successful needs to include women and other diverse representatives in its leadership. Yet even in the most forward-focused organizations, women may still face obstacles to inclusion.
Sameer Somal, a tech entrepreneur and the co-founder of Girl Power Talk and Girl Power USA, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping you women become leaders in business and society, will share his experiences and perspective on empowering women during the next Equity Now presentation on Nov. 19. The event is sponsored by School of Business.
UConn Today – The School of Business’ 2024-25 Equity Now Speaker Series will kickoff this month with a presentation by Lauren Cleary, an ethics and compliance professional at Patagonia, the popular outdoor equipment and apparel brand.
UConn Today – The School of Business’ Marketing Department has created a 30-credit Master of Science in Social Responsibility & Impact in Business, addressing an escalating demand for professionals in the field and significant student interest in pursuing careers that impact economic, environmental, and social sustainability.
The new degree program was approved by the University’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday, April 17, and launches this fall. The degree will prepare graduates to drive innovative and impactful business decisions for positive social change.
UConn Today – More than one billion people worldwide live with a disability, and yet a vast majority of those with ‘invisible’ disabilities try not to disclose them at work for fear of stigma and discrimination.
Lawrence Deju-Wiseman, Executive Director & Global Head of Strategic Initiatives at Morgan Stanley in London and an employee with an ‘invisible disability,’ will be the guest speaker at the final Equity Now Speaker Series event at 5 p.m. April 15.
The Marketing Department at the UConn School of Business hosted its 11th annual Voya Financial Colloquium on the topic of “Consumer Financial Decision Making.” The event, held on Oct 13th, 2023, brought together researchers from across the country to discuss how consumers respond to a changing financial landscape, the challenges they face in navigating financial systems and how their interactions within a broader social context influence their financial decisions.
“The study of consumer financial decision making explores how consumers accumulate and use financial resources over time and is a fast-growing area of research within the field of marketing,” said UConn Marketing professor Christina Kan in opening remarks.
Professor Kan, who organized the event, went on to discuss how financial decision making is also of interest to many other disciplines, noting “Our goal for this colloquium was to look at the topic of consumer financial decision making from a variety of different perspectives, and we’re delighted to have a panel of speakers from diverse backgrounds.”
The colloquium featured four distinguished speakers – Professors John Lynch, Rafael Becerril Arreola, Rebecca Hamilton, and Robert Lawless – each of whom approached the topic from different perspectives – including marketing and law – as well as different methodologies – including experimental, econometric, and ethnographic approaches.
The colloquium fostered an energetic discourse between speakers and participants, including marketing and law faculty and doctoral students from UConn, UMass and URI.
Below are profiles of the guest speakers and an abstract of their presentations:
John Lynch, Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, delved into the complex relationship between financial knowledge, financial behavior, and financial well-being. Lynch highlighted two prevalent approaches to improving consumer financial well-being: financial education and behavioral interventions, often referred to as “nudging.” He introduced the concept of “just in time” financial education, positioning it between these two approaches.
Lynch used these concepts as a springboard for discussion on his recent research into a pressing issue – employees cashing out their 401(k) retirement savings when changing jobs. In a comprehensive study covering 162,360 terminating employees, Lynch and his coauthors found that over 40% of individuals leaked their 401(k) savings, cashing out at job separation, with employer contribution proportions influencing the likelihood of leakage. The findings underscored the unintended consequences of well-intentioned employer matches, revealing the delicate balance between supporting employees and inadvertently encouraging financial decisions that undermine long-term well-being.
Rafael Becerril Arreola, Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina, focused on the impact of product price rankings on consumer choice. His research addressed Veblen effects and counter-effects, investigating how product prices signal consumer wealth. Using a quasi-experimental approach, Becerril Arreola’s approach addresses potential identification threats. His analysis capitalized on a rich dataset on automobile rentals to demonstrate that consumer sensitivity to local rankings of selling-prices is highly heterogeneous, often negative, and comparable in magnitude to consumer sensitivity to rental fees. The study highlights the role that prices play in wealth signaling effects and suggests that conspicuous consumption may be more significant than previously estimated.
Rebecca Hamilton, the Michael G. and Robin Psaros Chair in Business Administration at Georgetown University, explored the challenges families face in responding to resource scarcity. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 diverse families, Hamilton developed a framework illustrating how multi-dimensional, concurrent and/or consecutive life events (such as job changes, house moves or child birth) create mismatches between available and required resources, triggering situational resource scarcity. The study identified various patterns of adjustments in consumption and resource investment over time, and how they are influenced by families’ chronic resource constraints and availability of support networks. Hamilton notes that that the flexibility afforded by multiple family members is constrained by collective goals, domains of control, tensions, and negotiations within families.
Robert Lawless, the Max L. Rowe Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, provided a thought-provoking presentation on the bankruptcy system and the experiences of individuals navigating financial distress. Using data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, a long-running study of persons who file bankruptcy, Lawless highlighted the prevalence of personal bankruptcy in the U.S., noting that roughly one in ten Americans have filed bankruptcy at some point during their lives. His presentation focused on two themes. The first centered around the legal and economic consequences of filing bankruptcy and how legal services are marketed just like everything else. The second theme illustrated life in the “sweatbox,” shedding light on the financial precarity and distress that individuals endure in the years leading up to bankruptcy filing.