The coronavirus pandemic has shattered and shuttered businesses. As businesses gradually continue to reopen across the United States, three Olin Business School experts at Washington University in St. Louis offer insights into potential opportunities that could help businesses to emerge from the economic storm.

As areas of the country begin to relax and do away with stay-at-home orders, things will not snap back to normal for all employees and organizations. This may seem obvious, but it has huge ramifications for what employers can and should expect from employees during this time, according to an expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

A new paper by an East Asia and international business expert in the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis finds that Hong Kong’s status as a leading global financial center is secure for multiple reasons, despite prolonged protesting. China’s government will continue to support it; Hong Kong’s financial networks possess extraordinary scale and sophistication; and no viable alternative center has emerged to challenge Hong Kong as the Asia-Pacific leader. Meyer, a senior lecturer in management, puts forth his arguments in “The Hong Kong protests will not undermine it as a leading global financial centre,” published online in April in Area Development and Policy.

In the future, a global pandemic such as the magnitude of COVID-19 will not only be a foreseeable event, but also will likely change how companies model and mitigate future risks to their supply chains, says an expert on supply chain management at Washington University’s Olin Business School.

In business, simple loyalty programs can strongly increase customer retention, Washington University in St. Louis researchers have found. These Olin Business School scientists studied a loyalty program at a chain of men’s hair salons, collecting data on more than 5,500 customers. Under the program, for every $100 a customer spends, he gets a $5-off coupon.

As businesses around the country are closing their doors and transitioning to remote work, Andrew Knight, a professor of organizational behavior at Washington University’s Olin Business School, said they should expect a period of adjustment as people develop new routines, norms and shared understandings about how work will progress through a new medium.

The U.S. Senate, with significant prodding from the Trump administration, is working on a plan to directly provide cash assistance to millions of Americans amid the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts in economics and finance from Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School weigh in on how it could help housing and households and maybe pay some bills — but still not answer the problems at hand.

Olin Business School faculty at Washington University in St. Louis offer perspectives on the economic, financial and everyday business reactions to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Dennis Zhang, assistant professor of operations and manufacturing management at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, has won the 2020 Olin Award for research that creates a human-focused algorithm to improve warehouse workers’ packing time while also reducing material costs.

Leadership, at its core, is about influence. In Olin Business School’s popular MBA elective “Power and Politics,” students learn how to navigate leadership positions, which necessitates building power and gaining influence in the workplace.