Beginning Business Blog

" When people feel financially deprived they are more likely to relax their standards and transgress to improve their financial situation ." We like to think we'd stick to our ethical principles no matter what. But when people feel financially deprived -- as many did from losses suffered thanks to the last market and banking meltdown -- they are more likely to relax their moral standards and transgress to improve their financial situation. They are also more likely to judge other deprived moral offenders who do the same more leniently, says a paper to be published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes this past fall. Suggested Reading Click on image "We found that most respondents did not think financial deprivation would lead them to behave immorally," said Nina Mažar, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and one of the lead researchers of the study. "Yet, once they ac...

" Only 40 percent of Americans get enough sleep on most nights and a commonly cited reason is smartphone usage for work ." Using a smartphone to cram in more work at night results in less work the next day, indicates new research co-authored by a Michigan State University business scholar. Recommended Reading Click on image In a pair of studies surveying a broad spectrum of U.S. workers, Russell Johnson and colleagues found that people who monitored their smart phones for business purposes after 9 p.m. were more tired and were less engaged the following day on the job. "Smartphones are almost perfectly designed to disrupt sleep," said Johnson, MSU assistant professor of management who acknowledges keeping his smartphone at his bedside at night. "Because they keep us mentally engaged late into the evening, they make it hard to detach from work so we can relax and fall asleep." More than half of U.S. adults own a smartphone. Many consider the de...

The Seven Deadly Sins of Business email : Ping pong -- constant emails back and forth creating long chains Emailing out of hours Emailing while in company Ignoring emails completely Requesting read receipts Responding immediately to an email alert Automated replies According to research just released, employees obsessed with checking their emails could be damaging their own mental health and that of their colleagues.  How? Recommended Reading Click image for details Dr Emma Russell, a senior lecturer in occupational psychology at Kingston Business School, believes she has identified the seven deadly email sins that can lead to 'negative repercussions' if not handled correctly.  She identified seven habits which can be positive if used in moderation but are likely to have a negative impact if not handled correctly. " This research reminds us that even though we think we are using strategies for dealing with our email at work, many of them can be detrimen...

" Health and wealth may be more strongly connected than previously thought ." We ring in the New Year with hopes of being healthy, wealthy, and wise. A new study from researchers John W. Ayers of San Diego State University and Benjamin Althouse of the Santa Fe Institute and their colleagues suggests that health and wealth may be more strongly connected than previously thought. Suggested Reading Click on image The group examined Americans' Google search patterns and discovered that during the recent Great Recession, people searched considerably more frequently for information about health ailments. The kinds of problems indicated by the queries weren't life threatening, but they could keep someone in the bed a few days, like ulcers, headaches, and back pain. In total, the team found there were more than 200 million excess queries of this kind during the Great Recession than expected. "While it's impossible to uncover the motives for increased sear...

http://knowledge.insead.edu The Future of Business is Multi-cultural It's a fact of our changing society:  businesses, especially service businesses, that want to succeed with minority customers should consider hiring frontline employees who represent those ethnic groups, particularly when the business caters to Hispanics or Asians, a recent UT Arlington study contends. Elten Briggs, associate professor of marketing, and Detra Montoya, clinical associate professor of marketing at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business  analyzed the influence of shared ethnicity on consumer behavior using an experiment and a survey. The experiment focused on 112 Hispanic customers of a financial services firm in a major U.S. metropolitan area. The survey asked 285 Asians, Hispanics and Caucasians in a major U.S. city about marketplace experiences that could be attributed to their ethnicity. "The study showed that culture plays an important role in the interact...

Learn from evolution  and copy and replicate rather than create new processes . There are times when a business owner decides that their current model just isn't working as they hoped it would, particularly in the early months and years.  The question becomes, should the entrepreneur just dump what they're doing now?  Or make incremental changes with an end goal in mind? Research by a University of Hertfordshire Professor of Business Studies published in 2010 states that solutions for many of today's business challenges can be found in evolutionary processes. According to Professor Geoffrey Hodgson at the University's Business School, businesses which are considering major change at the moment should proceed with caution; they could do better to learn from evolution and copy and replicate rather than create new processes. "Change needs to be experimental and cautious," said Professor Hodgson. "We have to understand the cost of change. If we loo...

Why do you want to start a business? There is no right answer to this, but there is one motivation you might express that could be setting yourelf up for a fall if your business doesn't go as planned. For anyone starting a business because of the material wealth it might bring, you should know that being materialistic has a strong potential of making a bad event in your life even worse, according to a paper co-written by a University of Illinois expert in consumption values. Materialism: defining who you are by what you own Business professor Aric Rindfleisch says not only is materialism or defining who you are by what you own a risk your welfare, it also has the effect of making traumatic events worse.  Being materialistic can make events from terrorism to car accidents to a life-threatening illness to the failure of a business venture seem that much worse. "If you're a materialisti...