Employee Surveillance, Startup Contests, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
The Surprising Effects of Employee Surveillance – Questrom School of Business Blog
BU Questrom School of Business professor Michel Anteby recently co-authored new research that explores the ways in which increased surveillance of employees can lead “to workers’ strikes and sometimes even quitting their jobs altogether.”
The article points to a 2011 experiment where TSA managers installed cameras to monitor officers “as an attempt to stop the disappearance of baggage in airports.” According to TSA officers, they felt they “as though their managers were merely looking for a reason to discipline them.”
New BU research finds that workplace scrutiny often leads to a worse work environment, even if it is inadvertently / Photo via bu.edu
According to Anteby’s research, “under such scrutiny, one tends to lose sight of the bigger picture, which ends up with employees feeling undervalued and over scrutinized.”
You can read the full article here.
These 12 European Startups Are Using Technology to Improve Opportunities For Low-And Middle-Income Workers – MIT Sloan Newsroom
The MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy’s Global Inclusive Innovation Challenge announced its 12 European finalists, all of which are working to improve economic opportunity for workers. According to the article, “the competitors are judged on vision, impact, participation, and scalability.”
Initiative Director Erik Brynjolfsson writes, “If we employ inclusive innovation globally, it could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. We can have more wealth, better health, and widely held prosperity.”
According to the article, the European finalists will travel to “Darmstadt, Germany, in early September, where they will pitch their ideas at a regional competition. The winner of each category then goes on to compete in November during the Global Grand Prize Gala at MIT. The gala includes four $250,000 prizes, one for each category.”
The 12 European finalists, organized by category, are as follows:
Skills Development and Opportunity Matching
- Data4You, an all-ages coding boot camp.
- Jobiri, which “assists people with finding jobs through an AI-driven career adviser.”
- micro:bit, which “provides tiny programmable computers for students and teachers.”
Income Growth and Job Creation
- ABURY’s “Design meets Craft” connects “designers and artisans through a digital platform to find creative project partners, and connect with the global market.”
- mecasa is an “online platform connecting caretakers with senior individuals who need daily support.”
- ProGlove is a “smart glove designed to scan and streamline manufacturing and logistics work.”
Financial Inclusion
- hiveonline is a “mobile platform offering small- and micro-businesses administrative help and access to financial services.”
- Trezeo, which “provides a mobile financial platform for independent workers.”
- Sherpa, which “offers insurance to people who are self-employed, freelancers, contractors, and other entrepreneurs.”
Technology Access
- BLITAB, a “tactile tablet designed for blind and visually-impaired users.”
- Pangea Electronics “builds sustainable and eco-friendly technology.”
- Teqmine Analytics uses “AI to help customers with their research and development questions.”
You can read more about the event here.
Think You’re Having a Heart Attack? If You’re a Woman, Insist on a Female Physician – Harvard Business School News
New PNAS research co-authored by HBS Associate Professor Laura Huang, along with the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities’ Brad Greenwood and Washington University in St. Louis’ Seth Carnahan finds that of “more than 500,000 heart attack patients admitted to hospital emergency departments in Florida between 1991 and 2010, female patients treated by male physicians were less likely to survive than patients of either gender treated by female physicians or male patients treated by male physicians.”
Moreover, “survival rates among female patients treated by male physicians improved with an increase in the percentage of female physicians in the emergency department and an increase in the number of female patients previously treated by the physician.”
In “Patient-Physician Gender Concordance and Increased Mortality Among Female Heart Attack Patients,” the researchers write:
“These results suggest a reason why gender inequality in heart attack mortality persists: Most physicians are male, and male physicians appear to have trouble treating female patients. If female patients tend to be more challenging for male and female doctors to diagnose and treat, the patterns we document may reflect the fact that the most skillful physicians (i.e., female physicians) provide the highest return to their skills when treating the most challenging patients (i.e., female patients).”
You can read more about the research here.
Religious Spending, Taking Risks, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Shoppers with Strong Religious Beliefs Spend Less and Make Fewer Impulse Purchases – Harvard Business Review
The Harvard Business School recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review that illuminates a fascinating correlation between grocery spending and religiosity—as the latter rises, the former falls.
The researchers write, “We found that for each 20 percent increase in the number of religious adherents in a county, annual grocery sales per store decreases, on average, by about $125,000. [Our] results showed that shoppers living in more religious U.S. counties spent less money on groceries and also made fewer impulse purchases than those living in less religious U.S. counties.”
The implications of the research are vast and wide reaching, particularly for retailers. They explain further:
“Because being reminded about God increases shoppers’ frugality, they may be more sensitive to price discounts and promotions (such as “buy one, get one free”) around the time of religious holidays and observances. Getting a good deal, particularly on an impulse buy, is likely to alleviate shoppers’ heightened frugality.”
The researchers also speculate that “retailers may also allay religious shoppers’ concerns about being frugal by offering deals that demonstrate respect for their values, such as promising to donate a percentage of revenue from a particular product to a local charity.”
You can check out the full article here.
When Regulation Doesn’t Throttle Risk-Taking – Questrom School of Business Blog
New Management Science research from Questrom School of Business Accounting Professor Ana Albuquerque and Fudan University’s Julie Lei Zhu finds the positive impacts of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), which required companies to implement internal controls on financial reporting.
According to the article, “not only did filing firms not decrease their investment activities, some measures suggested that firms actually increased their investments after the reporting requirements were put into place. Filing firms also appeared to benefit in other ways. Banks typically offered filing firms larger loans with lower collateral requirements compared to non-filing firms.”
Albuquerque writes, “Credit terms improved [for filing firms], because they were disclosing more information. The benefit was higher than the cost of compliance.”
You can read more here.
These 12 startups are Re-Imagining the Latin American Workplace and Workforce – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan recently announced the 12 Latin American finalists of the its global Inclusive Innovation Challenge, all of which will travel to São Paulo, Brazil in just a few weeks “where they will pitch their ideas at the IIC Latin America Celebration.”
According to the article, “the winner of each category then goes on to compete in November during the Global Grand Prize Gala at MIT. The gala includes four $250,000 prizes, one for each category.”
Initiative Director Erik Brynjolfsson writes, “If we employ inclusive innovation globally, it could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. We can have more wealth, better health, and widely held prosperity.”
Here’s a quick overview of each of the 12 Latin American finalists:
- Interacpedia “connects university student teams with organizations to generate the development of new skills/jobs and opportunities.”
- Signa is a “platform that provides deaf people with online digital economy courses.”
- Sumá is a “fair marketing platform that connects family farmers with food buyers.”
- Alò Bodega is a “mobile app for Latin American and Asian corner stores.”
- Apli is an “artificial intelligence-enabled jobs marketplace.”
- Incluyeme is an “online job portal for people in Latin America with disabilities.”
- Grupo Nueva Economía is “developing new digital channels for small businesses and entrepreneurs.”
- Outbound Initiative “connects innovators from underrepresented regions — in this case Brazil — with business opportunities using data-combing artificial intelligence.”
- RedeDots is a “social network of more than 220,000 people engaged in the fair trade and sustainable business market.”
- LEVEE “uses machine learning, geolocation, and mobile messages to connect people with job opportunities.”
- Trocafone “aims to reduce e-waste by creating a marketplace for used electronics.”
- UnDosTres “offers Mexico residents mobile payment for services like prepaid cellphone recharging, movie ticket purchases, electricity, and phone bills.”
You can read more about the startups here.
