olin school of business

Super Ad Bowl 2005: Super Bowl advertising will be critiqued and ranked by Olin School of Business MBA students, faculty and local advertising professionals during the game on Sunday, Feb. 6 at 5:00 p.m.

Business experts from all over the world will come to the Olin School of Business at Washington University to participate in a three-day conference on corporate governance Nov. 11 to 13. “Key Issues in Corporate Governance,” co-sponsored by the Olin School, the Center for Research in Economics and Strategy (CRES), and the Journal of Financial Intermediation, will be held at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education Center. The conference will feature two days of academic presentations and a third day devoted to panel discussions among senior corporate executives, policymakers and academics. Topics include financial markets and corporate governance regulation in the United States and similar issues in the European Union.

StewartCan Martha Stewart regain the trust of her customers or could Enron’s former chief Ken Lay get a new job under the clouds of suspicion left in the wake of their legal problems? It depends upon the match between how they respond to the allegations and the extent to which the alleged offense is perceived to involve their integrity or their competence, according to a recent study by Washington University in St. Louis professor Kurt T. Dirks and three colleagues.

The John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis will serve as the exclusive local host for a one-day leadership teleconference for business executives and entrepreneurs and other current or aspiring leaders. Top business leaders from around the globe will join former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, renowned business author Dr. Stephen Covey, business icon Donald Trump and former GE leader Jack Welch for the Tenth Annual Worldwide Luminary Series Conference, to be broadcast live Oct. 13 to the Marriott Pavilion Downtown.

MacDonaldIt is no secret that advances in technology can greatly impact the value of workers’ skills. Older workers often find the updating of complex technology uneconomic, while younger workers acquire and readily employ skills tailored to the newest technology. The result: the latter group’s productivity rises, diminishing the value of output produced by their older counterparts. A recently published study by Glenn MacDonald, Washington University’s John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Strategy, is the first to model and explain the nature and severity of this effect.

BardachKenneth C. Bardach has been named associate dean and director of ExecEdge Corporate Education at the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, announced Stuart I. Greenbaum, dean and Bank of America Professor at the Olin School. Bardach joins Olin from Case Western Reserve, where he served as associate dean of Executive Education Programs at the Weatherhead School of Management. Bardach brings more than 30 years of academic and corporate experience to his post, having twice served in executive education director positions at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, and having directed corporate management education and development programs for numerous organizations.

The recently proposed rule by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) that requires companies to treat employee stock-option compensation as an expense on corporate income statements will reduce the reported income of firms, according to Todd Milbourn, a professor of finance at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. The new rule, if finalized after a 90-day comment period, will go into effect next year.

StreeterThe European Union (EU) added 10 new member nations on May 1, enlarging the union to a total of 25 countries with a combined population of 458 million. The U.S., with a total population of 293 million is still the sole political and economic superpower of the world but may yet be challenged by the EU for that status, according to William J. Streeter, a professor of international business at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

As the Securities and Exchange Commission debates new rules that would require mutual funds to disclose how fund portfolio managers are compensated, research by two scholars at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis shows that money manager pay is more influenced by the success of their firm than the investment performance of their clients. The survey of portfolio managers finds that firm success-factors such as firm profitability have more impact on portfolio managers’ bonuses than client success factors like investment performance, though managers are more likely to be dismissed for poor investment performance.

HarringtonThe uncertain economy of the last few years has some wondering if American innovation and ingenuity is in decline, but not Kenneth Harrington and Robert Skandalaris. Harrington, director of the Skandalaris Entrepreneurship Program at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis and Skandalaris, founder and Chairman of Noble International Ltd, are collaborating on a book on entrepreneurship and find it alive and well. But in a recent article, they caution that “people, organizations, institutions, and governments that don’t have a strategy to lead in entrepreneurial innovation will be displaced or at serious risk of becoming obsolete.” The Washington University business school launches its 2004 Olin Cup Entrepreneurship Competition this month with special events, speakers, and workshops. Washington University recently received a major grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to expand entrepreneurship education campus-wide.