Wave of Restructuring Global Supply Chains Faculty from seven business schools across the world, including Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, executed a multi-year research effort focusing on current practices and strategies associated with the sourcing of production and trends in a global supply chain, finding a significant wave of restructuring of global supply chains across all industries. “Off-, On-, or Re-shoring: Benchmarking of Current Manufacturing Location Decisions,” studies top manufacturing companies predominantly from North America, Europe, and Japan, shedding light on how production sourcing decisions are currently being made, what drives these decisions, and what happens as a result. Read More

The Favor Request Effect: Requesting a Favor from Consumers to Seal the Deal The old adage “ask and you shall receive” is put to the test in a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. “The Favor Request Effect: Requesting a Favor from Consumers to Seal the Deal,” co-authored by Simon Blanchard, an assistant professor of marketing at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and Kurt Carlson, professor of marketing and director of the Georgetown Institute of Consumer Research, explores whether there is something simple a seller can do to close a negotiation and found consumers are more willing to accept an offer when the seller also requests a favor from them. Read More

Estimating the Cost of Justice for Adjuncts In “Estimating the Cost of Justice for Adjuncts: A Case Study in University Business Ethics,” Jason Brennan, Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Associate Professor and associate professor of ethics at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and his co-author examine the costs associated with the adjuncts’ rights movement, while attempting to measure the opportunity costs and trade-offs in doing so. The study, which was published in The Journal of Business Ethics, is the only peer-reviewed paper published on the issue of the ethics and economics of adjuncts. Read More

Are We Running In Place? Gender Diversity on U.S. Corporate Boards A woman is most likely to be appointed to a corporate board when a fellow woman departs, according to a study in the Industrial Labor Relations Review. This “gender-matching” tendency can thwart efforts to diversify the board room, because the actual composition of the board is difficult to change. “Gender Diversity on U.S. Corporate Boards: Are We Running in Place?” is co-authored by Catherine Tinsley, a professor of management at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and faculty director of the Georgetown University Women’s Leadership Institute. Read More

Diversity Challenges in Hiring NFL Head Coaches White assistant coaches in the National Football League are twice as likely to be promoted to a coordinator position than minority coaches, according to research led by Chris Rider, assistant professor of strategy at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. The Rooney Rule, established in 2003, requires NFL owners to interview a minority candidate when hiring a new head coach. However, analyses of NFL career data of more than 1,200 coaches from 1985 to 2012 suggest that little has changed for minority assistant coaches. Read More

The Right Friends in the Right Places Conventional wisdom says the more connections you have in your professional network, the more successful you will be. Decades of research haven’t gone far beyond the “more is better” mantra until now. Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology co-authored by Brooks Holtom, associate professor of management at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, finds employees who were more connected to people with strong reputations were more likely to stay. Those who were not as well connected were more likely to quit. This elevated turnover can be very costly for organizations. Read More

Georgetown Launches Problem-Driven Consumption Index The Georgetown Institute for Consumer Research, led by Professor of Marketing Kurt Carlson and Assistant Research Professor Chris Hydock, launched the Problem-Driven Consumption Index (PDCI), which uses surveys on consumers’ problems to predict their purchases. With more than two years of data, the PDCI can, by itself, significantly predict monthly retail spending. The index goes beyond measuring confidence or sentiment to study the problems in the marketplace and how consumers plan to solve them Read More

Bill Baber Appointed GASB Academic Fellow William R. Baber, accounting professor and accounting area coordinator for the McDonough School of Business, was recently appointed a 2016 academic fellow from the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). Read More