Pitt Business

For Amplifying the Voiceless, Faculty Member Wins Political Engagement Award

A good business education helps students understand how to add value to a business. A great one teaches them how to add value to themselves, and others. Carrie Leana, the George H. Love Professor of Organizations and Management, specializes in both.

The Emotional Oracle Effect: Feeling the Future

Trusting your intuition isn't a bad thing. In fact, it can lead to better forecasting. New research shows that people who trusted their emotions improved their prediction accuracy in everything from the winner of American Idol to the stock market.

For Experiential Learning, Katz Professor Honored by Chancellor

The best teachers break down the walls between the classroom and the outside world. Prakash Mirchandani, recipient of a 2012 Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award, uses this approach to create engaging courses in the operations realm.

The Digital Equalizer: "Winners-Take-Some" Markets the New Norm

Format wars have occurred throughout history. George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison slugged it out over electricity. VHS and Betamax battled over home video. New research shows that, in digital goods markets, the rules of the game are changing.

Faculty Member Receives Distinguished Alumnus Award from India's Top Business School

John C. Camillus, Donald R. Beall Professor of Strategic Management at the Katz Graduate School of Business, has been awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from his post-graduate alma mater, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA).

Polish University Honors Katz Professor, a Pioneer in Mathematical Decision Making

Making the right decision on complex subjects should be more than guesswork. Thomas Saaty is the father of a mathematical method for making decisions - and he's applied it to finding peaceful solutions to world conflicts.

The Missing Link in School Reform: Cover Story by Carrie Leana, George H. Love Professor of Organizations and Management

Our research suggests that there is some truth to the predominant ideology. Teacher competence does affect student learning. Outsiders can bring fresh ideas and enthusiasm to tired systems. And principals do have a role in reform efforts. At the same time, our findings strongly suggest that in trying to improve public schools we are overselling the role of human capital and innovation from the top, while greatly undervaluing the benefits of social capital and stability at the bottom.

Barking About Commodity Price Hikes is Worse than the Bite

We've all heard the steady stream of news reports about rising commodity prices over the past several months. But these price hikes are not consuming as much of your budget as you might think, according to Sara Moeller, Associate Professor of Business Administration in the finance area.

Searching for New Growth Models

Madhavan's research looks for patterns in the way that global businesses are experimenting with new models of growth. He sees three "teraforces"-a consumption boom, urbanization, and resource congestion-that cause the need for such a radical shift. These forces create problems that need solutions, which Madhavan refers to as grand challenges, such as water and food security.

What Contributes to Software Firms' Success

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, articles about twenty-somethings becoming billionaires after selling their software companies flooded the pages of magazines, newspapers, and books. These incredible stories made it seem as if a good idea was all one needed to succeed in the software industry.

Bundling Solutions for Technology Products

R. Venkatesh, Pitt Business associate professor of business administration and area director of marketing and business economics, has been examining various forms of bundling. In a paper that appeared in a recent issue of the journal Management Science, he looked at the bundling of technology products.

A paper by David Denis, "Debt Financing and Financial Flexibility: Evidence from Pro-Active Leverage Increases" was accepted for publication in the Review of Financial Studies. The paper was co-authored with Stephen McKeon of the University of Oregon

A paper co-authored by Andrew Stephen, "Feeling the Future: The Emotional Oracle Effect," has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. It is scheduled to run in October. The paper was co-authored with Michel Tuan Pham and Leonard Lee, both of Columbia University.

Cait Lamberton's paper," When is Ours Better than Mine? A Framework for Understanding and Altering Participation in Commercial Sharing Systems," has been accepted for publication in the July edition of the Journal of Marketing.

A paper co-authored by Chris Kemerer, "Effects of Structural Complexity and Team Task Strategy on Object-Oriented Software Maintenance: An Experimental Test", has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering for publication in 2012. Kemerer wrote the paper with Narayan Ramasubbu of Singapore Management University and Jeff Hong, a PHD candidate at Singapore Management University.

A paper co-authored by Marios Panayides has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. The paper, entitled "Volume Dynamics and Multimarket Trading" was written with Pamela Moulton of Cornell University and Michael Halling of the University of Utah.