Knowledge@Wharton

Factual, or Warm and Fuzzy? Why Choosing the Right Words Matters

Fri, 22 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0400

People use words to communicate what they think, feel and believe. But for social psychologists, words can do far more than convey one’s thoughts and emotions. The right combination of words can...

Marie Kondo at Work: Can Your Office ‘Spark Joy’?

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 01:00:00 -0500

The cheerful Japanese organizing expert known as Marie Kondo is making many Americans think twice about how much stuff they really need in their lives. With a much buzzed-about show on Netflix and...

Hitting a Wall: How Marketing Helps Explain the Washington Stalemate

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

By now, we have all seen the drama unfolding on Capitol Hill. A government shutdown. Two sides locked in battle. An obvious stalemate. What may not be obvious is that we are witnessing classic marketing and psychology at its most successful and most unsuccessful — at the same time.

Here’s fundamental Marketing 101:

What Causes Financial Crises?

Thu, 27 Sep 2018 10:45:00 -0400

One of the great ironies of the 2008 financial crisis is that it was sparked by a product created from a historically safe investment asset: residential mortgages. In the past quarter century, delinquency rates of single-family home mortgages hovered below 3% for the most part except for the time around the Great Recession, according to...

Girls Who Invest: Building A Pipeline For Women In Finance

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 12:21:17 -0400

Knowledge@Wharton: How did Girls Who Invest get started? Janet Cowell: It was founded by a friend of mine, Seema Hingorani. She was with the New York City [retirement system] and interviewing money managers to manage money for that fund. She realized...

Are Cryptoassets A Sound Investment?

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 08:01:39 -0400

Knowledge@Wharton: Can you give us the history of bitcoin? Jack Tatar: It grew out of the financial crisis of 2008, which was when the software was created by this anonymous person, Satoshi Nakamoto. We think it was also to create a new monetary system and structure that was a little bit more democratic and more decentralized, so...

BlackRock's Diversity Chief: Do Your Employees Feel They Belong?

Fri, 18 May 2018 05:45:27 -0400

There's a famous story that when President John F. Kennedy was visiting the NASA space center in 1962, he noticed a man carrying a broom. (In some versions it's a woman mopping the floor.) Kennedy decided to introduce himself to the employee and asked what his job was. The employee, a janitor, responded...

How Amazon Delivers On Its Core Product: Convenience

Mon, 26 Mar 2018 07:11:17 -0400

Part of what makes it so easy for Amazon to offer two-day or even same-day shipping to customers is its vast network of distribution centers, which are located across the U.S. and store and ship products to their final destinations. New research from Wharton business economics and public policy professor Katja Seim takes a closer look at how significantly expanding that distribution center network over the past decade has been key to Amazon's growth strategy...

Will Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway And JPMorgan Reinvent Health Care?

Mon, 12 Feb 2018 08:38:30 -0500

The U.S. health care industry might be seeing the early signs of major shifts such as employers exerting pricing power to rein in costs; the aggressive use of technology such as drones and databases to predict, diagnose and treat diseases; and, consequently, an upending of the bargaining power of providers such as hospitals, physicians and pharmaceutical companies. All those and more are expected to...

China In 2018: What Hangs In The Balance?

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 10:01:04 -0500

China under President Xi Jinping has proven wrong its critics in the past year with strong economic growth, leadership in combating climate change and clean energy, and implementation of its "One Belt, One Road" initiative that could be a trade game changer. And while there should be more momentum in the year ahead, the country could...

Too Much Togetherness? The Downside Of Workplace Collaboration

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 09:06:24 -0500

The mere mention of keeping up with overflowing email, constant meetings, and time-sucking conference calls makes many of us groan and roll our eyes. How did we all get so busy? A major culprit is the sharp rise in cross-functional collaboration over the past several years. Today...

Why China Is Leading The Fintech Race

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 06:02:26 -0400

When it comes to the tech sector, all the action - certainly all the innovation - is in America, right? Amazon's retail transformation has made Jeff Bezos the world's wealthiest person. Google and Facebook dominate the Internet. Apple devices are as ubiquitous as Microsoft software. As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman told...

Leadership Lapses: When Is Firing The Right Response?

Thu, 14 Sep 2017 12:00:46 -0400

The sequence of events is so familiar now as to be predictable. A CEO or high-profile employee commits a blunder or transgression, a social-media campaign fans the flames of outrage, and employer and employee appear to be left with no other choice but to part ways. Are there alternatives, or have we firmly settled into a culture that prefers firings and forced resignations? After all,...

Why Developing Israel's Leviathan Gas Field Is A Mammoth Task

Mon, 28 Aug 2017 15:00:02 -0400

Suddenly, it's all happening in the Eastern Mediterranean. After years of delay, confusion and dwindling hopes, the efforts to develop the offshore natural gas Israel discovered in 2009-2010 - especially the giant Leviathan field - are back on track. This rebirth began late last year, but...

The Business Fallout From Charlottesville

Fri, 18 Aug 2017 10:48:53 -0400

President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise that he would "make America great again" by becoming the first CEO in the White House, someone who could leverage his business acumen to bolster the economy and create jobs. But his effort to get buy-in from titans of industry seems to be falling apart. A number of...

Is Desktop Dining Hurting The Restaurant Industry?

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 10:45:02 -0400

The restaurant industry is in a slump and one of the culprits is the popularity of desktop dining. Last year, the number of Americans going out to lunch hit its lowest level in four decades, according to The Wall Street Journal. The reasons:...

Why Corrupt Executives Are Rarely Prosecuted

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 06:43:52 -0400

History is rife with examples of wrongdoing in the corporate boardroom, from the early days of the Great Depression to the recent Great Recession. Besides a handful of high-profile prosecutions - think Bernie Madoff - why aren't more wrongdoing executives in prison?...

Why The Internet Knows Us Better Than We Know Ourselves

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 12:56:35 -0400

In this digitally connected era, all of us produce enormous numbers of data points every day. What we search. How we search it. What we buy, and what we read. What we like and dislike, whom we chose to associate with, and so much more - a steady stream of data that can be quantified, sifted and analyzed en masse with...

How Trash-Talking Affects Performance

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 07:04:59 -0400

Athletes do it. CEOs do it. People in the office and home do it. Trash-talking is as natural as breathing to some people. But how does it affect those who are the targets of such biting insults? That's the question Wharton visiting scholar and Georgetown professor Jeremy Yip and Maurice Schweitzer, Wharton operations, information and decisions professor, set out to answer in their latest research,...

How Uber Can Reset Its Corporate Culture

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 06:54:38 -0400

Following a months-long investigation that revealed a toxic workplace culture, Uber needs to make changes - fast. The ride-hailing company's board has agreed to follow through on the 47 recommendations made in the report from former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. For now,...

What Science Says About Achieving Peak Performance

Thu, 25 May 2017 08:03:36 -0400

Advances in cognitive neuroscience are enabling insights into the brain like never before. Neuroscientist Friederike Fabritius and Hans Hagemann, co-founder of the Munich Leadership Group, combine science with management consulting to discover which techniques for peak performance actually work, in their book...

How Behavioral Economics Could Solve America's Health Care Woes

Fri, 12 May 2017 12:20:26 -0400

Dr. Kevin Volpp, a Wharton health care management professor and director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, part of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that,...

The United Airlines Debacle And The Morality Of Capitalism

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 10:31:31 -0400

The video of the United Airlines passenger who was recently dragged out of his seat screaming from an overbooked flight was seen around the world. Since then, the debate has centered around the practice of overbooking seats in the industry and the legal responses of airlines. But morality should have a place in corporate America, according to...

Weighing The Impact Of A U.S. Border Adjustment Tax

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 07:17:39 -0500

During a recent discussion on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111, Michael Knoll, a professor and co-director of Penn Law's Center for Tax Law and Policy, and Wharton management professor Ann Harrison explained the potential implications of a border adjustment tax. Knoll said...

You're Happy And You Know It - Why You Probably Shouldn't Show It

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 06:56:29 -0500

The pursuit of happiness is so intrinsic to the American psyche that the phrase was written into the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But new research suggests that just like ice cream and chocolate cake, too much happiness can be detrimental to our well-being. Maurice Schweitzer, Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions, found that...

Who's Going To Save American Jobs?

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 06:36:41 -0500

In a speech announcing his candidacy in June 2015, Donald Trump stated, "I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created." He repeated this promise in various ways throughout the campaign. Hyperbole aside, how much can any president, or the federal government in general, directly increase job opportunities on...

The End Of Annual Performance Reviews: Are The Alternatives Any Better?

Wed, 21 Sep 2016 07:43:44 -0400

When it comes to workplace events that produce resentment and anxiety, few score higher than the big annual performance review. Calls to end this time-consuming and often unproductive practice have gone unheeded - until now. Recently,...

A New Chance For Housing Finance Reform

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 11:58:32 -0400

Even as the world contends with the most recent political-economic upheavals, from the aftermath of Brexit to mass migration, unfinished work remains from the 2008 global financial crisis. If left undone, the same stresses that led to the last U.S. housing crisis will continue to dog the financial system. Eight years have passed since...

How To Find Your Most Valuable Customers

Wed, 24 Aug 2016 08:15:09 -0400

Leading companies have always understood the importance of delighting their customers. But not all customers are of equal value, and businesses can do better by focusing on those who offer the most profitable future. To do so, companies first need to know who they are. To identify them,...

Will Tesla's Merger With SolarCity Shine?

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 07:07:26 -0400

Does Tesla, the maker of electric cars and battery storage, mesh well with SolarCity, which installs solar power systems? Elon Musk, who helped found the two companies and heads them as chairman, is convinced that their destinies are tied together as...