I Thought We’d Never Be Able to Do It

December 3, 2015

2015 CIBER Case Challenge Participants
Participants in the 2015 CIBER International Case Competition pose in front of the Jonathan the Husky statue on the UConn Storrs campus.
(Quian Callender/UConn School of Business)

Students from Different States, Nations Collaborate to Solve Real-World Problem during UConn’s CIBER Challenge

“I thought we’d never be able to do it,” UConn marketing major Stacia Smart recalls thinking when she heard that she and a team of other college students, all strangers, would have just 24 hours to solve a vexing sustainability problem for a major corporation.

Not only did Smart and her “Quadruple Threat” team develop a possible solution, including a new product idea for Unilever, but they took second-place in the UConn CIBER International Case Challenge this fall.Continue Reading

Professor Timothy Folta Leads Corporate Strategy Conference in France

December 2, 2015

Tim Folta (Courtesy of University of Strasbourg)
Tim Folta (Courtesy of University of Strasbourg)

When does it make sense for corporations to expand by adding additional products or businesses to their portfolio?

The topic was the subject of a three-day international conference last month in Strasbourg, France, titled, “Corporate Strategy and Resource Redeployment,” which was organized by UConn Management Professor Timothy B. Folta.Continue Reading

Correspondence Between Self- and Good- Manager Descriptions

Professor Gary Powell and co-author, mentor and dissertation adviser, D. Anthony Butterfield
UConn Management Professor Gary Powell stands with his co-author, mentor and dissertation adviser, D. Anthony Butterfield, a professor at UMass, following a presentation to the UConn Management Department this fall. (Ethan Freund/UConn School of Business)

UConn Management Professor Gary Powell stands with his co-author, mentor and dissertation adviser, D. Anthony Butterfield, a professor at UMass, following a presentation to the UConn Management Department this fall. Powell and Butterfield presented research, published by the Journal of Management, titled “Correspondence Between Self- and Good-Manager Descriptions: Examining Stability and Change Over Four Decades.” Even today, as women attain college degrees in record numbers and have a larger presence in the workforce, sex-based inequalities create hurdles to leadership roles for women that their male counterparts do not face, they concluded.

Do Managers Seek Control and Entrenchment?

The CLS Blue Sky Blog – Do managers seek control of the firm, or the level of ownership consistent with entrenchment? Entrenched managers own shares within a range which is high enough to give them control, but sufficiently low to make other shareholders bear the brunt of their non-value maximizing actions. There is a large literature on how entrenched managers can benefit themselves by extracting wealth from other shareholders, but conclusive evidence that managers seek entrenchment is currently lacking.

Internship Success Story: Emily Vasington

November 30, 2015

Emily Vasington is a marketing senior who had a summer internship with Whirlpool Corporation. She received this internship by attending the Fall Career Fair and learned more through her business fraternity, Pi Sigma Epsilon. At Whirlpool, she created a holistic assessment of the company’s in-store marketing materials and developed strategic recommendations to maximize the effect of its in-store marketing investments.Continue Reading

Distinguished Fellow Award

Professor Ram Gopal
Professor Ram Gopal, recipient of the Information Systems Society’s Distinguished Fellow Award (Nathan Oldham/UConn School of Business)

Professor Ram D. Gopal Noted for Intellectual Leadership, Stewardship, Impactful Research

Professor and OPIM Department Head Ram D. Gopal has received the prestigious Information Systems Society’s Distinguished Fellow Award, recognizing his intellectual leadership, stewardship and impactful research.

“This is like winning the ‘Nobel Prize’ for information systems,” said Gopal, beaming after collecting his award on Nov. 2 at a conference in Philadelphia.Continue Reading

Scholarly Recognition

Two OPIM Ph.D. Candidates, One Alumna Achieve Noteworthy Accomplishments

Two UConn OPIM Ph.D. students and a recent program alumna have achieved noteworthy accomplishments in recent weeks.

Alumna Lei (Michelle) Wang ’14 Ph.D., assistant professor at Penn State University, received the 2015 Nunamaker-Chen Dissertation Award at the Conference on Information Systems and Technology–INFORMS Conference 2015 for her research titled, “Three Essays on the Interface of Location-Based Services, Consumers’ Shopping Behavior and Firms’ Marketing Strategy.” The award recognizes and rewards outstanding dissertation research by scholars in the field of information systems.Continue Reading

Research Seminar with Robin Soster, University of Arkansas

November 20, 2015

Recently, the Marketing Department invited Professor Robin Soster from the University of Arkansas to speak about her research. Professor Soster presented a paper titled, “How cost reclassification can reduce rumination on loss and eliminate the sunk cost effect in preliminary choice settings” on Friday, November 13. This research examines the effect of cost reclassification (i.e., reframing sunk costs as instrumental toward a newly-available alternative) on the propensity of Continue Reading

Pink Tax Forces Women to Pay More for Products

WFSB Channel 3 TV- Women are shelling out thousands of dollars more on products that are marketed to women, over the same things that are geared toward men.

Women may want to start looking in the men’s section if they want to save some extra money.

Experts estimate women pay $1,400 more each year on products that are marketed toward them, and over $100,000 in a lifetime.

It is called the ‘Pink Tax.’