At Columbia Business School, our faculty members are at the forefront of research in their respective fields, offering innovative ideas that directly impact the practice of business today. A quick glance at our publication on faculty research, CBS Insights, will give you a sense of the breadth and immediacy of the insight our professors provide.
As a student at the School, this will greatly enrich your education. In Columbia classrooms, you are at the cutting-edge of industry, studying the practices that others will later adopt and teach. As any business leader will tell you, in a competitive environment, being first puts you at a distinct advantage over your peers. Learn economic development from Ray Fisman, the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and a rising star in the field, or real estate from Chris Mayer, the Paul Milstein Professor of Real Estate, a renowned expert and frequent commentator on complex housing issues. This way, when you complete your degree, you'll be set up to succeed.
Columbia Business School in conjunction with the Office of the Dean provides its faculty, PhD students, and other research staff with resources and cutting edge tools and technology to help push the boundaries of business research.
Specifically, our goal is to seamlessly help faculty set up and execute their research programs. This includes, but is not limited to:
All these activities help to facilitate and streamline faculty research, and that of the doctoral students working with them.
The article offers the authors' views on expatriate management programs and the benefits from executives interacting with the people and institutions of the host country. The idea that international experience or interaction between foreign managers and local people will help managers become more creative, entrepreneurial, and successful is discussed. The concept of integrative complexity in bi-cultural managers which enhances job performance is mentioned.
The Kidney Case is multi-person exercise that involves the allocation of a single kidney. Students read profiles of eight candidates for the kidney and make a first allocation decision. Each candidate was designed to be high on some allocation principles but low or unknown on others (e.g., best, match, time in cue, age, personal responsibility for disease, future benefits to society, etc.). Then, students are put into groups and assigned to advocate for one of the candidates. Each group will prepare and give a 3-minute presentation on why their candidate should receive the kidney.
Emissions abatement alone cannot address the consequences of global warming for weather disasters. We model how society adapts to manage disaster risks to capital stock. Optimal adaptation — a mix of firm-level efforts and public spending — varies as society learns about the adverse consequences of global warming for disaster arrivals. Taxes on capital are needed alongside those on carbon to achieve the first best.
What are the sources of the returns to education? We study the allocation of higher education graduates from public institutions in Ohio across firms. We present three results. First, we confirm findings in the earlier literature of large pay differences across degrees. Second, we show that up to one quarter of pay premiums for higher degrees are explained by between-firm pay differences. Third, higher education degrees are associated with greater representation at the best-paying firms.
This article focuses on the role of threats in negotiations. Broadly speaking, a threat is a proposition that issues demands and warns of the costs of noncompliance. Even if neither party resorts to them, potential threats shadow most negotiations. Researchers have found that people actually evaluate their counterparts more favorably when they combine promises with threats rather than extend promises alone. Whereas promises encourage exploitation, the threat of punishment motivates cooperation.
This essay analyzes some problems that accounting standard setters confront in erecting barriers to managers bent on boosting their firms' financial reports through financial engineering (FE) activities. It also poses some unsolved research questions regarding interactions between preparers and standard setters. It starts by discussing the history of lease accounting to illustrate the institutional disadvantage of standard setters relative to preparers in their speeds of response.
We comment on Gilovich and colleagues' program of research on happiness resulting from experiential versus material purchases, and critique these authors' interpretation that people derive more happiness from experiences than from material possessions. Unlike goods, experiences cannot be purchased, and possessions versus experiences do not seem to form the endpoints of the same continuum.
In October 2013, the Affordable Care Act introduced a new insurance market — state and federal exchanges where people can purchase health insurance for themselves or their families. Although the rollout of the exchanges was disastrous, around-the-clock efforts fixed many of the biggest technical problems, and nearly 7 million people purchased insurance in the new market.
Functional accounts of hierarchy propose that hierarchy increases group coordination and reduces conflict. In contrast, dysfunctional accounts claim that hierarchy impairs performance by preventing low-ranking team members from voicing their potentially valuable perspectives and insights. The current research presents evidence for both the functional and dysfunctional accounts of hierarchy within the same dataset. Specifically, we offer empirical evidence that hierarchical cultural values affect the outcomes of teams in high-stakes environments through group processes.
This symposium will introduce and discuss how scholars can improve upon the Null Hypothesis Significance Tests (NHSTs), which are currently constraining the production of knowledge in management science. The extensive use of NHST in quantitative research has led to the accumulation of statistically significant results that are both too small to be practically relevant and so small that they are unlikely to replicate. In a field that aspires to provide useful advice to managers, we need to focus on practically important effects that are robust across a wide variety of settings.
This work examines the process of admission to a hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU). ICUs currently lack systematic admission criteria, largely because the impact of ICU admission on patient outcomes has not been well quantified. This makes evaluating the performance of candidate admission strategies difficult. Using a large patient-level data set of more than 190,000 hospitalizations across 15 hospitals, we first quantify the cost of denied ICU admission for a number of patient outcomes.
Despite the western notion of a pension as an ideal, US corporations have en-masse frozen defined benefit plans (plans where beneficiaries are guaranteed payments in retirement), and are no longer allowing employees not already enrolled in them to participate. Instead corporations have replaced these defined benefit plans with defined contribution plans, i.e. 401ks, where it is incumbent upon beneficiaries to contribute voluntarily, and assume the rate-of-return on plan assets that is afforded by the markets.
Intergroup researchers have the opportunity to access to a wide variety of methods to help deepen theoretical insights about intergroup relations. In this paper, we focus on neuroendocrine measures, as these physiological measures offer some advantages over traditional measures used in intergroup research, are noninvasive, and are relatively easy to incorporate into existing intergroup paradigms. We begin by discussing the major neuroendocrine systems in the body and their measurable biological products, emphasizing systems that have conceptual relevance to intergroup relations.
We consider the question of how should a firm optimally set a sequence of prices in order to maximize its long-term average revenue given a continuous flow of strategic customers. In particular, customers arrive over time, are strategic in timing their purchases and are heterogeneous along two dimensions: their valuation for the firm's product and their willingness to wait before purchasing or leaving. The customers' patience and valuation may be correlated in an arbitrary fashion.
In June 2013 Ooredoo was awarded one of two telecommunication licenses to operate in Myanmar — where cellphone penetration was less than 10%. Less than 18 months later, Ooredoo launched voice and data services. This case includes information on the global telecom industry, focusing on services unique to developing countries, and asks students to consider how and when Ooredoo should launch mobile financial services in the country.
Participants in matching markets face search and screening costs which prevent the market from clearing efficiently. In many settings, the rise of online matching platforms has dramatically reduced the cost of finding and contacting potential partners. While one might expect both sides of the market to benefit from reduced search costs, this is far from guaranteed. In particular, this change may force participants to screen more potential partners before finding one who is willing to accept their offer.
Researchers typically invoke theoretical assumptions to estimate mark-ups. Instead, we directly obtain mark-ups by surveying Pakistani soccer-ball producers.
We combine unique administrative and survey data to study the match between firms and managers. The data include manager characteristics, firm characteristics, detailed measures of managerial practices, and outcomes for the firm and the manager. A parsimonious model of matching and incentives generates implications that we test with our data. We use the model to illustrate how risk aversion and talent determine how firms select and motivate managers.
Despite their strong positive average returns across numerous asset classes, momentum strategies can experience infrequent and persistent strings of negative returns. These momentum crashes are partly forecastable. They occur in "panic" states — following market declines and when market volatility is high — and are contemporaneous with market rebounds. We show that the low ex-ante expected returns in panic states are consistent with a conditionally high premium attached to the option-like payoffs of past losers.
Among both laypersons and researchers, extensive use of first-person singular pronouns (i.e., I-talk) is considered a face-valid linguistic marker of narcissism. However, the assumed relation between narcissism and I-talk has yet to be subjected to a strong empirical test.
We consider a non-stationary variant of a sequential stochastic optimization problem, where the underlying cost functions may change along the horizon. We propose a measure, termed variation budget, that controls the extent of said change, and study how restrictions on this budget impact achievable performance. We identify sharp conditions under which it is possible to achieve long- run-average optimality and more refined performance measures such as rate optimality that fully characterize the complexity of such problems.
Eight studies found a robust negative relationship between the experience of power and the experience of loneliness. Dispositional power and loneliness were negatively correlated (Study 1). Experimental inductions established causality: we manipulated high versus low power through autobiographical essays, assignment to positions, or control over resources, and found that each manipulation showed that high versus low power decreased loneliness (Studies 2a–2c).
We examine the relationship between the organization of a multi-divisional firm and its ability to adapt production decisions to changes in the environment. We show that even if lower-level managers have superior information about local conditions, and incentive conflicts are negligible, a centralized organization can be better at adapting to local information than a decentralized one. As a result, and in contrast to what is commonly argued, an increase in product market competition that makes adaptation more important can favor centralization rather than decentralization.
In this paper, we discuss the role of overconfidence as an explanation for these patterns. Overconfidence means having mistaken valuations and believing in them too strongly. It might seem that actors in liquid financial markets should not be very susceptible to overconfidence, because return outcomes are measurable, providing extensive feedback. However, overconfidence has been documented among experts and professionals, including those in the finance profession.
We review limitations of the traditional paradigm for cultural research and propose an alternative framework, polyculturalism. Polyculturalism assumes that individuals' relationships to cultures are not categorical but rather are partial and plural; it also assumes that cultural traditions are not independent, sui generis lineages but rather are interacting systems. Individuals take influences from multiple cultures and thereby become conduits through which cultures can affect each other.
The construct of power is part of the structural foundation of social psychology. Two of social psychology's most seminal works — Milgram's experiments on obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963) and Zimbardo's prison experiment (Zimbardo, 1973, 1974) — involved differences in power. In more recent years, the contemporary landscape of social psychology continues to feature power prominently.
This review synthesizes research on power and morality. Although power is typically viewed as undermining the roots of moral behavior, this paper proposes power can either morally corrupt or morally elevate individuals depending on two crucial factors. First, power can trigger behavioral disinhibition. As a consequence, power fosters corruption by disinhibiting people's immoral desires, but can also encourage ethical behavior by amplifying moral impulses. Second, power leads people to focus more on their self, relative to others.
This article considers the social and psychological functions that norm-based thinking and behavior provide for the individual and the collectivity. We differentiate between two types of reference groups that provide norms: peer groups versus aspirational groups. We integrate functionalist accounts by distinguishing the functions served by the norms of different reference groups, different degrees of norm moralization, and different directions of responses to norm activation.
Of all publications on success in sales appearing in this century and many decades previously, The Challenger Sale has perhaps generated more discussion and controversy among sales leaders, strategic account program directors and strategic account managers than any other. But does this widely read and discussed volume actually represent the breakthrough that Neil Rackham suggests, or is it just an interesting examination of sales that serves mainly as an infomercial for the Corporate Executive Board (sponsor of the research) and its affiliates?
We introduce a regression-based nested Monte Carlo simulation method for the estimation of financial risk. An outer simulation level is used to generate financial risk factors and an inner simulation level is used to price securities and compute portfolio losses given risk factor outcomes. The mean squared error (MSE) of standard nested simulation converges at the rate, where measures computational effort. The proposed regression method combines information from different risk factor realizations to provide a better estimate of the portfolio loss function.
We propose that an individual's regulatory focus moderates the significant role social network density — the degree of interconnectedness among a person's social contacts — plays in shaping life satisfaction. Evidence from Study 1 indicates that participants with high prevention effectiveness reported higher life satisfaction when they were embedded in a high-density network, whereas participants with low promotion effectiveness reported lower life satisfaction when they were embedded in a low-density network.
We examined whether and why range offers (e.g., "I want $7,200 to $7,600 for my car") matter in negotiations. A selective-attention account predicts that motivated and skeptical offer-recipients focus overwhelmingly on the attractive endpoint (i.e., a buyer would hear, in effect, "I want $7,200"). In contrast, we propose a tandem anchoring account, arguing that offer-recipients are often influenced by both endpoints as they judge the offer-maker's reservation price (i.e., bottom line) as well as how polite they believe an extreme (nonaccommodating) counteroffer would be.
Selecting more effective teachers among job applicants during the hiring process could be a highly cost-effective means of improving educational quality, but there is little research that links information gathered during the hiring process to subsequent teacher performance. We study the relationship among applicant characteristics, hiring outcomes, and teacher performance in the Washington DC Public Schools (DCPS).
We predicted that experiencing emotions that reflect uncertainty about the world (e.g., worry, surprise, fear, hope), compared to certain emotions (e.g., anger, happiness, disgust, contentment), would activate the need to imbue the world with order and structure across a wide range of compensatory measures. To test this hypothesis, three experiments orthogonally manipulated the uncertainty and the valence of emotions. Experiencing uncertain emotions increased defense of government (Experiment 1) and led people to embrace conspiracies and the paranormal (Experiment 2).
We report the results of a survey conducted in November 2014 in which 29 quantitative marketing scholars from around the world reflected on the present and future of their field. The survey focused on substantive areas, methods and tools, practical and managerial relevance, doctoral training, and promotion and tenure. The results of the survey revealed several general insights on the challenges and opportunities faced by the field of quantitative marketing research.
This paper studies the causes of China's Great Famine, during which 16.5 to 45 million individuals perished in rural areas. We document that average rural food retention during the famine was too high to generate a severe famine without rural inequality in food availability; that there was significant variance in famine mortality rates across rural regions; and that rural mortality rates were positively correlated with per capita food production, a surprising pattern that is unique to the famine years.
We ask nearly 400 CFOs about the definition and drivers of earnings quality, with a special emphasis on the prevalence and detection of earnings misrepresentation. CFOs believe that the hallmarks of earnings quality are sustainability, absence of one-time items, and backing by actual cash flows. Earnings quality is determined in about equal measure by controllable factors like internal controls and corporate governance, and non-controllable factors like industry membership and macroeconomic conditions.
The current research demonstrates that authenticity is directly linked to morality. Across five experiments, we found that experiencing inauthenticity consistently led participants to feel more immoral and impure. This inauthenticity-feeling immoral link produced an increased desire to cleanse oneself and to engage in moral compensation by behaving prosocially. We established the role that impurity played in these effects through mediation and moderation.
Music has long been suggested to be a way to make people feel powerful. The current research investigated whether music can evoke a sense of power and produce power-related cognition and behavior. Initial pretests identified musical selections that generated subjective feelings of power. Experiment 1 found that music pretested to be powerful implicitly activated the construct of power in listeners. Experiments 2–4 demonstrated that power-inducing music produced three known important downstream consequences of power: abstract thinking, illusory control, and moving first.
At some point, every company makes a mistake that requires an apology — to an individual; a group of customers, employees, or business partners; or the public at large. And more often than not, companies and their leaders fail to apologize effectively, if at all, which can severely damage their reputations and their relationships with stakeholders. Companies need clearer guidelines for determining whether a mistake merits an apology and, when it does, for crafting and delivering an effective message.
Successful managers and leaders need to effectively navigate their organizational worlds, from motivating customers and employees to managing diversity to preventing and resolving conflicts. Perspective-taking is a psychological process that is particularly relevant to each of these activities. The current review critically examines perspective-taking research conducted by both management scholars and social psychologists and specifies perspective-taking's antecedents, consequences, mechanisms, and moderators, as well as identifies theoretical and/or empirical shortfalls.
We investigate the consequences of the "revolving door" for trial lawyers at the SEC's enforcement division. If future job opportunities motivate SEC lawyers to develop and/or showcase their enforcement expertise, then the revolving door phenomenon will promote more aggressive regulatory activity (the "human capital" hypothesis). In contrast, SEC lawyers can relax enforcement efforts in order to develop networking skills and/or curry favor with prospective employers at private law firms (the "rent seeking" hypothesis).
The current research examined the relationship between hierarchy and vocal acoustic cues. Using Brunswik's lens model as a framework, we explored how hierarchical rank influences the acoustic properties of a speaker's voice and how these hierarchy-based acoustic cues affect perceivers' inferences of a speaker's rank. By using objective measurements of speakers' acoustic cues and controlling for baseline cue levels, we were able to precisely capture the relationship between acoustic cues and hierarchical rank, as well as the covariation among the cues.