Faculty Research

At the McCombs Faculty Research Speaker Series, sponsored by the Undergraduate Business Council, McCombs faculty members present their recent research and its significance to current industry and economic trends to undergraduate students. Below are a few briefs on this year’s presentations. For the complete story on each, visit http://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/news/speaker_series/past2003-2006.asp.

Bartel Finds Organizational and Employee Status Crucial to Identified Workplace
A recent national survey revealed that eight of the top 10 challenges facing CEOs pertain to attracting, retaining and managing talent. “People are increasingly seeing themselves as free agents,” said Caroline Bartel, assistant professor in the Department of Management at the McCombs School of Business. According to her research, what people do is often more important than where they do it. This makes it incredibly difficult for companies to retain talented people. Bartel explained that much of a company’s success in retaining employees is now based on how strongly workers identify with their organization.

Fairest Negotiations Are Face to Face, Says Kachelmeier
What value do board games such as Monopoly have for researchers examining the nuances of financial interplay in the real business world? According to Accounting Professor Steve Kachelmeier, “One can learn a lot from observing how people play games.” Kachelmeier presented his research on how people negotiate when real decisions and real money are at stake. He found that sellers made substantially more concessions and showed more fairness when negotiations were face-to-face. “One lesson from this research is that technology can influence behavior, as anyone who has experienced an ‘e-mail war’ can attest,” Kachelmeier said. “How you negotiate is just as important as what you negotiate.

Sarbanes-Oxley: Bitter Pill But Good Medicine, Says Prentice
In his lecture, “Sarbanes-Oxley Unfolding,” Robert Prentice, professor of information, risk, and operations management, outlined the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The act covers issues such as accounting reform, corporate responsibility, disclosure, governance, new crimes and punishments. Prentice said that while there is a consensus regarding the regulation of accounting and corporate responsibility, the decision is not simply a government movement—corporate newsmakers such as Enron and WorldCom were to blame. “Overall, it’s going to be good for capital markets in America,” he said, “but boy, is it a pain.”

Successful Brand Marketing Focuses on Stock, Says McAlister
According to Marketing Professor Leigh McAlister, Procter & Gamble’s consistent marketing of Tide over many years has resulted in a level of brand value that would endure long after all marketing ended. In her research studying the marketing dollars spent by dozens of companies, McAlister has found that successful companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Sara Lee, look past how marketing affects sales and instead focus on how marketing affects the price of the company’s stock. She said that for every dollar Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Sara Lee spend on marketing, the price of their stock goes up four dollars. “That investment is driving the value of the firm.”

Prabhudev Konana Deconstructs Outsourcing Options
When someone orders a computer from Dell.com, the PC’s parts are pre-assembled, contained within one or two boxes and shipped right to the customer’s doorstep—a simple and effective process. But Prabhudev Konana, associate professor of information, risk, and operations management, urged his audience to consider the painstaking and complex process that led to that computer’s swift delivery. “All processes are interconnected in a company,” Konana said. “If you can pull them apart, you can outsource. The question is, how do you pick the best strategy?” Though it seems illogical, Konana’s research found that when a company’s processes are easy to pull apart, the likelihood of outsourcing overseas is very low. For those companies that do choose to outsource, 75 percent of those projects did not yield the desired results.