Customer mistreatment towards customer service employees is a problem both for the employee and the organisation. There is substantial evidence that it leads to employee burn-out, emotional distress and absenteeism. Changing such customer behaviour is difficult if not impossible. But new research shows that companies may be able to help their employees cope ... Read More

When firms announce they will repurchase shares, the market tends to see this as good news and responds positively – even though there is no requirement on the firm to actually repurchase. In fact, a number of firms never do so. So why does the market react as it does? Researchers Utpal Bhattacharya and Stacey Jacobsen think they have an answer: the ... Read More

Auditors’ reports convey information about a firm’s financial health, including the private information discovered by auditors, but they can only produce two opinions: unqualified, or unqualified with explanatory language (also called an MAO – modified audit opinion). This has led to criticism from financial analysts and regulators that auditors’ reports ... Read More

Firms are under growing expectation by consumers to adopt sustainable practices, but when that expectation is not followed up with action and collides with price issues, it can lower the brand in consumers’ eyes and have knock-on effects on consumers’ own green behaviour. This was the finding of a study by Wenbo Wang, Aradhna Krishna and Brent McFerran ... Read More

Most people tend to be over-confident and over-optimistic – they have too great a belief in their own abilities to influence outcomes and believe the outcomes will be positive. Usually, these biases have been associated with sub-optimal decisions. But new research suggests they also have an upside. Over-optimism, boosted by over-confidence, can lead ... Read More

In the technological olden days – before 2000 – when everyone used 56k modem dialups or the equivalent and their main activities were e-mailing and web browsing, the pricing options for internet service providers (ISPs) were pretty straightforward: they charged by time usage. But all that has changed with the introduction of more applications that require ... Read More

When it comes to launching new products, major firms such as Philips and Microsoft have adopted seeding strategies that target influential customers in social networks so they can spread the word to their friends, colleagues and acquaintances. The difficulty, of course, is how to identify such people and assess their reach. Traditionally, researchers have ... Read More

Shareholder litigation is important to investor protection and stock market development because it encourages managers to be more transparent. But it also represents a risk to firms and their leaders, who may face allegations of wrongdoings such as breaching their fiduciary duties and violating securities law. Directors’ and officers’ (D&O) liability ... Read More

Agriculture long ago declined in importance in developed economies, but in the developing world it remains the dominant sector. However, its development is hindered by low productivity. To overcome this, non-governmental organizations and for-profit social enterprises provide learning opportunities for farmers. The recent voice-based information service ... Read More

Employee creativity is an obvious and essential ingredient for firm innovation, but it has usually been framed as a product of an employee’s intrinsic (internal) motivation. Now, new research has revealed that something else matters, too: the human resources systems, and the ownership of the firms in which these systems are implemented. Dong Liu, Yaping ... Read More