Knowledge at Wharton

IBM. Verizon. Sears. Hewlett-Packard. Motorola. The list of corporations that have put a halt to guaranteed pension plans comes as a jolt to Baby Boom employees entering what they thought would be their peak pension-building years. At the same time new accounting rules and Congressional legislation are being drafted to close the U.S. pension-funding gap now estimated at $450 billion. While some proposals under discussion could make it easier for companies to discontinue defined-benefit plans others would create incentives to support defined-contribution programs such as 401(k) plans according to Wharton faculty and pension experts. Amid all this flux they add one thing seems certain: Pension plans have become risky business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Although it has one of the most dynamic economies in Africa Botswana also has one of the world’s highest known rates of HIV-AIDS infection. In response the Botswana government along with the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton’s Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center is helping develop a more efficient system to manage and monitor HIV/AIDS therapy. According to Ian C. MacMillan director of the Snider Center and James D. Thompson associate director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs the Botswana project illustrates a new concept called ”Societal Wealth Creation via Experimental Entrepreneurship.” By working to develop societal wealth enterprises in places like Africa MacMillan and Thompson hope to sidestep two obstacles that often plague business development around social problems -- low profitability and lack of seed funding. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When the door to a TLA Entertainment video store swings open the primary question facing most consumers shuffling inside is relatively simple: ”What movie will I take home tonight?” But to Wharton marketing professor Jehoshua Eliashberg and Wharton doctoral candidate George Knox the key question surrounding the burgeoning $12 billion home-video market goes at least one step further: Which consumers will rent their movie of choice tonight and which consumers will buy? In a study entitled ”The Consumer’s Rent vs. Buy Decision: The Case of Home-Video ” Eliashberg and Knox present a new model that they say accurately predicts the consumer’s decision to rent or buy a particular movie at a video store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Would you like to go on an Internet auction site and know how much to bid for a certain item -- and also know that you didn’t overpay for that item? How about when you sell an item in an online auction: Would you like to know what price to set that ensures you don’t leave money on the online table? Wharton marketing and statistics professor Eric T. Bradlow can’t provide specific answers. But he does offer guidance on the behavior of potential buyers in a new study entitled ”An Integrated Model for Bidding Behavior in Internet Auctions: Whether Who When and How Much ” recently published in the Journal of Marketing Research. Bradlow co-authored the study with Cornell marketing professor Young-Hoon Park. ”To the best of our knowledge this is the first attempt to model formally the behavioral aspects of bidding behavior for the entire sequence of bids in Internet auctions ” the authors write. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The chairman of the largest software house in Ghana spoke approvingly of the ”Wild West” aspects of doing business there. One of that country’s cabinet ministers saw signs that ”constitutional democracies are gaining roots” on the African continent. A prominent Nigerian lawyer spoke of profit margins all but impossible in the United States or Europe. These three panelists appeared recently at the 2005 Wharton Global Business Forum Africa Conference entitled ”Unveiling the Value; Demystifying the Risk.” Speakers described the continent as bursting with opportunities challenges and pitfalls for local and foreign companies but the emphasis was decidedly on the word ”opportunity.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s not easy being Wikipedia a free web encyclopedia created and edited by anonymous contributors. Just ask founder Jimmy Wales who has seen his creation come under fire in just a few short months as the site fends off vandalism and charges of inaccurate entries. But Wikipedia founded in 2001 as a non-profit organization has become a big enough presence that it raises a number of interesting questions including: Just how accurate is free content given recent events at Wikipedia? Does the aggregate ’wisdom of the crowd’ trump the expertise of knowledgeable individuals? Does Wikipedia’s policing mechanism work? And does the controversy over Wikipedia merely reflect further tension between old and new media? Wharton experts along with Wales offer some answers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can an industry that has spent a fortune on TV ads featuring mud wrestlers and talking frogs suddenly change its stripes to appeal to the wine-and-cheese single-malt Scotch crowd? The makers of Budweiser and other brands of beer hope so. Anheuser-Busch and its competitors are developing an industry-wide marketing campaign aimed at overhauling the image of the humble beer and staunching its declining share of the alcoholic beverage market. But Wharton faculty members say that such a radical makeover might be too tall an order even though the effort could enhance the appeal of microbreweries and perhaps some mass-market beers like Michelob that have already carved out a higher-end image. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the Gulf Coast attempts to recover from the emotional and physical scars of Hurricane Katrina the nation’s most expensive natural disaster Wharton and University of Pennsylvania faculty are raising questions about how society should assess and perceive risk and how it should compensate victims when disaster strikes. A new book entitled On Risk and Disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina by University of Pennsylvania provost Ronald J. Daniels political science professor Donald F. Kettl and Howard C. Kunreuther Wharton professor of operations and information management argues that the U.S. government has become an insurer of last resort and questions whether that unofficial policy is contributing to larger and costlier disasters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The turmoil and uncertainty among auto manufacturers and their suppliers have left people wondering when a shakeout can be expected. According to Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie and Christopher Benko director of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Automotive Institute in Detroit consolidation will take place among suppliers to a much greater extent than among carmakers which may not experience mergers and acquisitions at all in the near term but will be engaged in ever-shifting strategic alliances and joint ventures. Additionally these experts say many Western parts suppliers are under immense pressure from lower-cost Chinese parts producers and need to consolidate to strengthen their chances of survival. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Sirota co-author of The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want (Wharton School Publishing) believes far too many managers stifle employee enthusiasm across the board by using bureaucratic or punitive techniques that should be reserved for a troublesome few. Yet his book written with Louis A. Mischkind and Michael Irwin Meltzer finds that firms where employee morale is high -- such as Intuit and Barron’s -- tend to outperform competitors. In an interview with Knowledge at Wharton Sirota talks about employees’ three basic goals how to deal with employees who are ”allergic” to work and how managers can inspire greater loyalty and productivity from their workforce. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For nearly 30 years Wharton management professor Lawrence G. Hrebiniak has taken the art of business strategy and put it under a microscope. Over time he has brought one critical element into irrefutable focus: Creating strategy is easy but implementing it is very difficult. In his new book Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change (Wharton School Publishing) Hrebiniak presents a comprehensive model to help business leaders bridge the gap between strategy making and successful strategy execution. He challenges executives to recognize that making strategy work is more difficult than setting a strategic course - but also more important -- and he documents the obstacles that get in the way of successful performance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Carleton (Carly) S. Fiorina joined Hewlett-Packard as its chairman and CEO in 1999 she was widely regarded as a charismatic leader who would help HP get out of its high-tech rut. Six years later however Fiorina has been forced out of her position at HP’s helm and the company is still languishing. What happened? According to Wharton professors while Fiorina has several strengths the merger she engineered with Compaq not only failed to deliver on its promises it actually made matters worse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his 1994 best seller Stocks for the Long Run Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel showed investors that stocks rather than bonds or cash are the most profitable long-term investments and he endorsed index-style investing. But investors wanted to know more. ”I gave scores of talks across the country on Stocks for the Long Run ” Siegel recalled recently. ”The two questions I received most were: ’Which stocks for the long run?’ and ’What about the age wave and the baby boom?’” Siegel’s response was voluminous research for his new book The Future for Investors: Why the Tried and True Triumph Over the Bold and the New. Some of its conclusions surprised even him. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The days when an executive could look forward to a leisurely retirement out on the golf course are over thanks to a possible looming job shortage a graying population low savings rates and an insecure Social Security system. The impact of these factors on both workers and companies was the subject of the Symposium on Older Workers co-sponsored recently by the AARP Global Aging Program along with Wharton’s Center for Human Resources and Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research. Speakers included AARP CEO William D. Novelli Olivia Mitchell executive director of Wharton’s Pension Research Council and Thomas Dowd a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a new study that compares Fortune 100 executives in 1980 with their counterparts in 2001 Peter Cappelli director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources and colleague Monika Hamori document what many CEOs and other senior managers have no doubt already witnessed: The road to the executive suite and the characteristics of the executives who get there have changed significantly over the last two decades. Among the researchers’ findings: Today’s executives are younger more likely to be female and less likely to have Ivy League educations. They get to the executive suite faster than ever hold fewer jobs along the way spend about five years less in their current organization before being promoted and are more likely to be hired from the outside. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.