Ross Featured In the News - Week of Feb. 2

Week Ending Feb. 2
 

Feb. 2 - Newsweek - Is Donald Trump Really More Popular than Taylor Swift? (Marcus Collins)
According to Marcus Collins, marketing professor at the University of Michigan and author of For The Culture, Trump and Swift are "two sides of the same coin."

"They both represent something beyond their category," he told Newsweek. "Taylor signifies a brand of feminism and Trump represents anti-establishment ideology—and their tribes are meaningfully committed to these ideals."

Feb. 2 - U.S. News & World Report - Financial Judgments Poised to Reveal Truth About Trump’s Wealth (Will Thomas)
If he can't pay the judgments in cash, he might have to sell some of his properties, and that levies a "double whammy" on Trump's financial situation, says William Thomas, assistant professor of business law at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, since those assets would be unloaded in a "fire sale" that does not benefit Trump.

In real estate, investments pay off over years, if not decades, says Thomas, whose research explores the foundation of corporate and white-collar crime.

Jan. 31 - Wall Street Journal - The Price Women Pay for Networking With High-Status People (Siyu Yu)
To get ahead in the workplace, you need to network with high-status people. That’s the conventional wisdom, and research shows it is good advice.

There is just one risk: The strategy is effective for men—but less so for women, and it can even harm their status at the office.

In a recent study, we discovered that when women form instrumental networks with higher-status colleagues, other co-workers react negatively—but not so to men—because of stereotypes and biases about how women should behave. This backlash causes the women to lose status in the eyes of others.

Jan. 30 - Poets&Quants - From Angry Voicemails To A Dog’s Death, These Students Grapple With A Leadership Crisis
In Ross’ Leadership Crisis Challenge, teams will be confronted by a myriad of challenges that will ultimately include a flood of social media hate, a ransom demand by hackers, a class action lawsuit, and even improbably the death of a dog, Fluffy. The leadership team is in charge of a startup with an inflated $5 billion valuation that has never been profitable and is low on cash reserves. Inevitably, the crisis will likely disrupt plans for a forthcoming IPO.

Tangled up in the crisis, each team will have to surmount a series of heart-pounding provocations: record a video to address the crisis to the public, present to an emergency board meeting, and finally–for a select few finalists–respond to hard-hitting questions from actual journalists at a press conference.

Week Ending Jan. 26 

Jan. 23 - Associated Press - U.S. Customer Satisfaction at Record High (Claes Fornell)

In 2023, and especially in its final quarter, the U.S. economy showed remarkable vigor: Gross domestic product (GDP), labor markets, consumer spending, household income, productivity, and the stock market all improved at a healthy rate. The rate of inflation dwindled close to its long-term average and customer satisfaction surged to an all-time high.

“There is one remaining economic anomaly, however,” said Claes Fornell, founder of the ACSI and the Distinguished Donald C. Cook Professor (emeritus) of Business Administration at the University of Michigan. “As evidence of a well-functioning economy, companies with superior customer satisfaction usually have superior stock returns. The relationship between strong customer satisfaction and positive abnormal stock returns has yet to recur. It is not that the stock returns on customer satisfaction have been weak, but they have not outperformed the market the way they did in the past.”

Jan. 22 - The ‘Gander - Opinion: Michigan is Not a Climate Haven. We are Already Paying for a Warming Planet (Andrew Hoffman)
Dr. Andrew Hoffman of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan points out that a recent survey by the Society of Actuaries named climate change as the top concern among underwriters. Companies, he said, are throwing away risk assessments that are more than 10 years old – “it’s not useful anymore. We’re in a new normal, and they’re hiring climate scientists to figure out how they can price their instruments to provide insurance.”

Week Ending Jan. 19

Jan. 18 - Financial Times - Basel Chair Backs Stringent US Proposals on Bank Capital (Jeremy Kress)
Jeremy Kress, an assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan Ross School, said that it was “nonsense” to say that banks could not afford to lend if they had higher capital requirements, pointing to banks’ recent bumper profits. Wall Street’s top four lending banks grew net income by $10bn last year, as JPMorgan Chase posted the highest annual profit ever enjoyed by an American bank.

“US regulators do not have a statutory mandate to promote the financial services industry’s international competitiveness,” he said. “They are directed to prioritise the safety and soundness of the US banking system.”

Jan. 17 - Health Advice and More - Au Contraire (Lindy Greer) 
Their idea draws upon research from Lindred (Lindy) Greer, a professor of organizational behavior then at Stanford GSB and now at Michigan Ross. Her research suggested that teams need a “skilled contrarian” to improve its effectiveness. “It’s important for teams to have a devil’s advocate who is constructive and careful in communication, who carefully and artfully facilitates discussion,” Professor Greer concluded.
Her research, conducted with Ruchi Sinha, Niranjan Janardhanan, Donald Conlon, and Jeff Edwards, found that teams with a lone dissenter outperformed teams with no dissenters, or teams where everyone dissents. The key, they believe, was not to create conflict but to help identify differences and resolve resulting conflicts in non-confrontational ways.

Jan. 14 - Financial Times - Business Schools Pushed to Provide a More Responsible Education (Andrew Hoffman)
“Business schools have lost their way,” says Prof Andy Hoffman from the University of Michigan. “Research is elevated over teaching, and research that privileges theory over practice is prioritized. We find ourselves talking to smaller and narrower academic audiences, using a language that even well-educated readers do not understand, publishing in journals they don’t read, and asking questions for which they have little concern.”