Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from New York business schools this week, including curious new findings from a recent Cornell study.
How Disclosing Sponsored Content Affects Consumer Trust in Bloggers – Johnson Business Feed
Cornell University SC Johnson Graduate School of Management Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations Sunita Sah, along with Georgetown’s Prashant Malaviya and Debora Thompson, recently co-authored new research that examines how “consumers react to disclosures of sponsorship from fashion bloggers.”
In a recent release from the Johnson Business Feed, professor Sah writes, “In contrast to much of the previous research on conflict of interest disclosures, we found that in the context-rich setting of online blogs, conflict of interest disclosures have the unanticipated consequence of increasing, rather than decreasing, consumer trust in the blogger and their expertise.”
Sah explains how the blogosphere could more effectively handle disclosures:
“If the purpose is to protect consumers by assuming they will make the necessary adjustments to the advice they receive, it’s crucial that we consider the impact of processing by readers and thoroughly understand any unintended consequences that may occur. We may just have to think harder for solutions other than disclosure to manage conflicts of interest.”
You can find more about the Cornell study here.
Round-the-Clock Work Emails Impact Health, Relationships – Lehigh College of Business and Economics Blog
New research co-authored by Lehigh University College of Business and Economics Associate Professor of Management Liuba Belkin, Virginia Tech’s William Becker, Colorado State’s Samantha A. Conroy, and Virginia Tech doctoral student Sarah Tuskey finds that “personal relationships and home life suffer for those tied to their work emails round-the-clock.”
Liuba Belkin, Ph.D., Lehigh Associate Professor of Management
According to the Lehigh College of Business and Economics Blog, the study is the first to “test the relationship between organizational expectations to monitor work-related electronic communication during non-work hours and the health and relationship satisfaction of employees and their significant others.”
Belkin notes that round-the-clock work emails are “an insidious stressor that not only increase employee anxiety, decrease their relationship satisfaction and have detrimental effects on employee health, but also that they negatively affect partner (significant other) health and marital satisfaction perceptions.”
Belkin recommends that organizations “set off-hour email windows and limit use of electronic communications outside of those windows or set up email schedules when various employees are available to respond.”
The researchers presented “Killing Me Softly: Electronic Communications Monitoring and Employee and Spouse Well-Being” at the Academy of Management annual meeting in Chicago earlier this month and is due for publication in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.
You can read the full article here.
Professor Applies Principles of Operations Management to New Areas – Rutgers Business News
The Rutgers Business School recently published a profile of Supply Chain Management Department Chair and Associate Professor Lian Qi, whose research “goes beyond the traditional supply chain domain [to explore] new and relevant [topics] related to areas of high impact.”
According to the profile, highlighted in a recent release from Rutgers Business News, Professor Qi’s research “seeks to apply operations management principles and techniques to resolve customer service issues in … healthcare service and the service operations for electric vehicles.”
In the piece, Professor Qi explains why he opted to pursue a career in academia:
“My father is a professor who has inspired my various interests since I was a child. The second reason is that after I worked as a supply chain management consultant at SAP, I wanted to study more theoretical concepts in this area. I also love to work with students. This makes me feel that I can really help many people not just help a department within a company.”
YOu can read the full interview of Qi here.