Management
-
How Direct Mail Delivers in the Age of Digital Marketing
Patrick George/Ikon Images The Research The author analyzed data from more than 50 distinct direct mail campaigns in a variety of categories (apparel, furniture, and outdoor goods) in partnership with a direct mail agency. He applied regression and elasticity models to isolate the impact of variables such as mail volume, industry type, and brand size…
-
How Trade Secrets Fuel the International Auto Industry
In 2001, the Chinese auto industry sold fewer than a million cars. By 2017, it was responsible for more than a third of all the cars produced or sold on earth. Quality improved, too: between 2001 and 2014, malfunction rates in domestic Chinese passenger vehicles fell by 75 percent. How did this growth happen so…
-
Is It a Coin Flip or Is It Justice? It Could Be Both.
When a case reaches trial, the judge is expected to be an impartial referee who ensures that justice is served. But new research suggests that a judge’s ultimate decision is often as arbitrary as the flip of a coin—which may actually be a sign of a healthy justice system. Centuries of legal research have shown…
-
When Banks Get Picky about Lending, the Economy May Suffer
An entrepreneur arrives at a bank and asks for funding; a family asks for a mortgage; a medium-sized business asks for a loan. Whether the bank provides financing in each case boils down to the question of lending standards. With looser standards, the borrowers are more likely to get their money, while with tighter standards,…
-
Surge Pricing in Aisle Five?
When Uber started its surge pricing policy in late 2011, outrage quickly ensued. Horror stories emerged about rides on New Year’s Eve or during snowstorms costing multiple times the standard rate—in one case, 50 times the regular fare. So when U.S. grocery retailers like Walmart and Kroger announced in 2024 that they would start using…
-
When AI Thinks Too Much Like a Human
Earlier this year, AI developer Anthropic released a new model that can spend more time “thinking” through a problem, similarly to the way a person might. Stanford and IBM developed AI “twins” of more than 1,000 people that supposedly reason and make decisions just like their real-life counterparts. The hope, for many companies in this…
-
Rethinking Human Resources through a sustainability lens
Mapping sustainability across LSE’s MSc Human Resource and Organisations curriculum. This year, we joined LSE’s Education for Sustainability (EfS) project to work on the MSc Human Resources and Organisations (HRO) programme. Our task: to explore sustainability across the programme and how it might be enhanced. Unlike most EfS projects that focus on individual courses, we…
-
AI Can Improve How Humans and Robots Work
James Yang/theispot.com The Research The authors drew on numerous publications and research projects conducted by or in cooperation with the MIT Digital Supply Chain Lab, including the following: Studies of warehouse operations and the application of technologies conducted with companies in logistics, consumer packaged goods, and retail. Academic and professional articles on machine learning applications…
-
When Good Cultures Go Bad: Stanford’s Charles O’Reilly
Stanford University’s Charles O’Reilly has spent over 50 years studying organizational behavior. In his research on why companies fail, he’s observed something troubling: The same strong cultures that drive success often become the very thing that kills companies when markets shift. Adaption is key. In a conversation with MIT Sloan’s Donald Sull, O’Reilly breaks down…
-
Owning the Room in the Age of AI
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images In an age where artificial intelligence can generate presentation scripts, polish slides, and even give feedback to the tone of your voice during rehearsal, what sets presenters apart isn’t just content, it’s presence. When the moment matters, audiences still want a real person to show up. They want to…