This past month some of the timely stories from Knowledge@Wharton <http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu>, the Wharton School's online research and business analysis journal include:
In the Game of Business, Playing Fair Can Actually Lead to Greater Profits
Tune into "The Apprentice," and you get an all-too-common view of business. Every week, the contestants try to impress Donald Trump by preening, cajoling and conniving. In this world, toughness is the measure of every CEO, and the boss glories in firing people and squeezing every penny out of suppliers. Yet according to John Zhang and Jagmohan Raju, both Wharton marketing professors, and Tony Haitao Cui from the University of Minnesota, many people aren't purely mercenary in their business dealings. They care about fairness -- and they should, the researchers say, because doing so can maximize their profits.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1916.cfm
A Great Bargain or a Big Rip-off? Consumers' Perceptions of Price Fairness in the U.S. and China
How do consumers react when they discover someone else bought the same product they did at a cheaper price? Do they feel differently if that someone else is a friend versus a stranger? Wharton marketing professor Lisa Bolton and two colleagues explore pricing and fairness perceptions in a new research paper, and document how attitudes are different, or in some cases similar, between consumers in China and those in the United States. The paper is titled, "Culture and Marketplace Effects on Perceived Price Fairness: China and the USA."
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1906.cfm
When Are Emerging Markets No Longer 'Emerging'?
The term "emerging markets" is now more than 25 years old and has come to define wide swaths of the world undergoing rapid economic change. Dozens of countries fall under the label even though they are evolving at their own pace and with their own twists on economic development. Now, as many emerging markets show signs of a strong and growing middle-class population, observers wonder whether the term has lost some of its meaning. What qualifies a country as "emerging"? While some say measures based on income or other statistics are critical factors, others place an increasing emphasis on the way business is conducted, with rules that are transparent and apply equally to all participants.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1911.cfm
Scott Guthrie on Microsoft's Play for Rich Internet Applications
Earlier this month, Microsoft unveiled Silverlight 2, a platform akin to Adobe's Flash designed to advance the software giant's push into the arena of rich Internet applications. One week earlier, Adobe Systems launched its "Adobe Integrated Runtime," which allows web programmers to move their software out of the browser and onto the computer's desktop. Both companies hope to establish their software as the foundation for the next generation of software development. Spearheading Microsoft's efforts is corporate vice president Scott Guthrie, who spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about his company's aspirations for Silverlight and the future of the web.
Biased Expectations: Can Accounting Tools Lead to, Rather than Prevent, Executive Mistakes?
Accounting techniques like budgeting, sales projections and financial reporting are supposed to help prevent business failures by giving managers realistic plans to guide their actions and feedback on their progress. At least that's the theory. But when Gavin Cassar, a Wharton accounting professor, tested this idea, he found something troubling: Some accounting tools not only fail to help businesspeople, but may actually lead them astray. He analyzes these conclusions in two separate research papers.
Podcasts:
Jeremy Siegel on Bear Stearns, Rate Cuts and the Looming Threat of Inflation
Physician and Administrator: How Surgeon Larry Kaiser Navigates Two Different Worlds
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Knowledge@Wharton , <http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/> is a free biweekly online resource that captures knowledge generated at Wharton through such channels as research papers, conferences, books, and interviews with faculty on current business topics, and distributes that knowledge online to a global business audience. The Knowledge@Wharton network includes more than one million subscribers and contains more than 2,000 articles and research papers in its database, with more added every week.
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