NewsBites

Below is a summary of some of the school's citations in prominent national and regional media. These media placements enhance the school's national reputation and help to brand it as one of the nation's top business schools.

Charles Lindsey, associate professor of marketing, spoke with the Associated Press about Major League Baseball’s struggle to get attendance back to pre-pandemic levels. Though inflation and the pandemic were straining fans’ budgets, “those are factors that are common across all sorts of recreational experiences,” Lindsey said. “Dining out, travel — a lot of those areas are back to pre-pandemic levels.” ESPN, Yahoo! Sports and others also carried the story.

Lindsey also was interviewed by CNN Business about holiday sales creep, a strategy where retailers start the holiday season in early fall with deals and decorations. “Christmas music and aesthetics and scenery affect purchase behavior,” Lindsey said. “It might give consumers an opportunity to indulge a little bit more and spend.”

Sunyee Yoon, assistant professor of marketing, discussed the relationship between impulse buying and other economic factors with The Wall Street Journal. “Increasing income inequality, along with the fear of economic recession, can make people feel that it is very hard for them to succeed,” Yoon said. “If being rich is perceived as realistically difficult, people have no reason to control their spending and save more because their financial prudence won’t bring real financial success to them.”

Kate Bezrukova, associate professor of organization and human resources, was interviewed by The Economist for a special report on mental health in the workplace. “The U.S. has seen tremendous progress in legitimizing and acknowledging that mental health is a serious issue,” she said. “We are doing pretty well compared to a lot of countries, but there is much room for improvement.”

The Wall Street Journal also spoke with Feng Gu, professor and chair of accounting and law, for a story on trends in goodwill write-downs among U.S. companies. Gu said the pandemic, inflationary pressure and supply chain disruption would likely continue to play a significant role in companies’ goodwill impairments, whether in the U.S., Europe or elsewhere. “In this environment, everybody is affected,” he said.

The New York Times quoted Michael Dambra, associate professor of accounting and law, about a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring executive pay to be linked to specific performance goals. “Companies have flexibility in reporting this pay information — and that may be problematic,” he said. Performance measures can be finessed to reflect favorably on the firm, thus defeating the SEC’s transparency goals, Dambra noted.

Natalie Simpson, professor and chair of operations management and strategy, shared her insights on disaster response with Popular Science. Low-income people, racial and ethnic minority groups, and the elderly are most at risk for disaster exposure, she said. “The dominant factor in anyone’s ability to minimally prepare for disaster is income level,” Simpson said, adding that mobility is crucial to staying safe — an additional challenge for these demographics.

Business Insider quoted James Lemoine, associate professor of organization and human resources, in a story about how employers are using artificial intelligence to catch candidates who lie in interviews. “Everything we thought we knew about work has been called into question in the last two years," Lemoine said. “In the age of the ‘Great Resignation,’ they're quitting more often, so a lot of people start to think, ‘What other rules can be broken?’”

CNBC and Re:Thinking, a podcast hosted by bestselling author Adam Grant, discussed a study by Emily Grijalva and Timothy Maynes, associate professors of organization and human resources. Their research showed that NBA teams with higher levels of narcissism had poorer coordination and lower overall performance. 

Forbes reported on a School of Management study that examined how gender influences perceptions of creativity in organizations. “Based on the findings of this research, an environment that fosters gender egalitarianism, kindness, equality and concern for others is likely to be beneficial in boosting the creativity of women and men,” said doctoral researcher Snehal Hora, who led the study with co-authors Lemoine and Grijalva.

Arun Lakshmanan, associate professor of marketing, was quoted in major media — including Bloomberg and Fortune — about the rise of so-called “authentic” social media apps, like BeReal. “When [Instagram and Facebook] first came on the scene, they were touted as a way to connect,” he said. “Then, over time, use actually correlated with greater loneliness and disengagement as the business model behind that has fueled a different sort of behavior. [These apps] are a market response to a failed need, which is the need for an authentic connection.”

MarketWatch interviewed Michael Dambra, associate professor of accounting and law, about declining investor interest in special purchase acquisition companies (SPACs). “Shareholders are pretty leery of transactions right now,” he said. “High-growth firm valuations have plummeted, and influential investors are worried about paying the earlier agreed-upon prices.”

Research by Danielle Tussing, assistant professor of organization and human resources, was cited by The Economist and Yahoo! Finance in an article titled, “The deadly sins and the workplace.” Tussing’s study found that when some people feel envious of their colleagues, they skip work or quit to avoid those feelings.

USA Today interviewed Charles Lindsey, associate professor of marketing, about why the Federal Trade Commission is stepping up enforcement efforts against false “Made in the USA” labels. “There was a fear that if you don’t enforce it, ultimately it becomes meaningless and consumers might not be willing to pay more,” Lindsey said.

Nallan Suresh, UB Distinguished Professor of Operations Management and Strategy, was quoted by The Buffalo News about how companies are working to overcome supply chain disruptions. “We need to continue with this agenda of diversifying supply chains with a sense of urgency,” Suresh said. “We may not be able to predict the next event, but we can at least predict the consequences proactively.”