Forefront

How assertive should you be? Research by Fisher's Jasmine Hu showed that informal leaders were more liked and respected when they had “a moderate amount of assertiveness and warmth.”

The proliferation of Offices of Patient Experience at some of the nation’s top facilities and leading healthcare networks is designed to improve delivery of care and patient outcomes. But do these offices actually improve patient experience? Are there certain conditions that make these offices more important in some hospital settings, and less so in others? Research by Fisher's Elliot Bendoly, Aravind Chandrasekaran and a colleague provide some answers.

Follow these steps to run today’s businesses better while preparing for a changed tomorrow, says Thomas A. Stewart, executive director of the National Center for the Middle Market.

As part of the “There’s a Better Way” podcast, Aravind Chandrasekaran, associate director of the Center for Operational Excellence, talks with Dr. Bernadette Melnyk, vice president for health promotion, university chief wellness officer, and professor and dean of the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University, to discuss prioritizing health and wellness within an organization. 

Tanya Menon urges us in her TED Talk to change our “habitual daily footpath,” which exposes us to the same daily physical environments, people and ideas.” A loss of efficiency and convenience will likely mean a gain of diversity. “A simple change in planning, a huge difference in the traffic of people and the accidental bumps in the [social] network,” she explains.

How can we truly maximize relaxation and not feel the need to be in a busy mindset? Selin Malkoc discusses hobbies and strategies to get the most out of leisure time.

Research by Fisher's Kate Keeler and her colleagues reveals the best types of music to listen to at work, and why the task at hand matters.

Preparation is the key to getting any business or community back on track after a natural disaster, and when it comes to hurricane preparation, the old adage that “failing to prepare is preparing to fail” rings very true. The Risk Institute encourages businesses to study a particular event –

Not all free time is the same. An hour seems shorter when you have another task looming and has important implications for getting things done, according to research by Fisher's Selin Malkoc and her colleagues.

The correlation between CEO turnover and gross domestic product is robust, and research from Assistant Professor of Finance Jack Liebersohn and his colleague, Heidi Packard, of the University of Michigan, demonstrates the relationship.

For many employers, taking on a leadership role in workforce development will require changes to prior practice. A recent report from The Brookings Institution and The National Center for the Middle Market helps to illustrate the types of changes that employers should consider.

As part of the “There’s a Better Way” podcast, Elliot Bendoly, distinguished professor of management sciences at Fisher, sits down to harmonize the tension between structured and creative approaches to give managers a framework for high-performance problem solving.

Selin A. Malkoc, a marketing professor at Fisher who studies how leisure can contribute to our overall happiness, says the problem with finding a hobby is compounded when so many of us “do yoga because we want to be a yoga master.” Instead, Malkoc says, it’s perfectly fine to do it just because we want to relax.

The U.S. government has begun recognizing just how much power big tech companies have quietly amassed. “The law has not yet caught up with big data analytics and so mere compliance with the law is not sufficient to protect people in the big data era,” says Dennis Hirsch, a fellow at The Risk Institute. “Data ethics is about going beyond what the law requires in order to mitigate risks to individuals, and so to the company itself."

Free shipping, one-hour delivery and pick-up in store, are all phrases consumers are seeing more and more. As part of the “There’s a Better Way” podcast, Aravind Chandrasekaran, associate director of the Center for Operational Excellence, talks with Dr. Terry Esper, associate professor of logistics at The Ohio State University, to discuss the recent changes to the field and how it's affecting the way we go about our every day lives.

If the idea of needing to dissociate from your dreary plight as someone with an abusive boss seems a little too soul-destroying to be a viable solution, studies suggest you can, in fact, fight fire with fire. Research by Fisher's Bennett Tepper, the Abramowitz Memorial Professor, found that employees with hostile bosses are better off when they respond with passive aggression.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has awarded $1.7 million to five universities, including The Ohio State University, for a wide-ranging research project designed to help the agency better understand how to employ its quality management resources when inspecting drug companies’ manufacturing operations, thus benefiting consumers.

The answer to reducing workplace injuries and managing risk in general appears to be training, according to HR leaders polled in a report from the Risk Institute at Fisher.

Employee training is the top risk-management strategy for many HR leaders, according to a report from the Risk Institute at Fisher College of Business.

As part of the “There’s a Better Way” podcast, Aravind Chandrasekaran, associate director of the Center for Operational Excellence, talks with Billy Taylor, global head of diversity and inclusion at Goodyear, to discuss the cliché that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” and to argue for why culture actually controls strategy, and how converting a company’s “my way” into “our way” leads to operational success.

Updated research by finance professor Amin Shams and his colleague, John Griffin of the University of Texas, claims that a single market whale was likely behind Bitcoin’s astronomical surge in 2017.

How can someone go from Powerball winner to completely bankrupt? Matt Sheridan, senior lecturer in finance, weighs in on how you can keep the wealth you accrue.

An anomaly, a trend or too early to tell? Economic research released the National Center for the Middle Market shows significant slowing in growth among middle market companies.

Oded Shenkar, the Ford Motor Company Chair in Global Business Management and academic director of the National Center for the Middle Market writes that any resolution to the U.S.-China trade conflict will be temporary. Sooner or later, the conflict will flare up again because of divergent interests, the fundamental differences between the U.S. and Chinese systems, and the role played by foreign direct investment in addition to trade. 

As part of the “There’s a Better Way” podcast, Aravind Chandrasekaran, associate director of the Center for Operational Excellence, talks with Katie Anderson, a lean consultant, who has studied the origin of Lean first-hand while living in Japan. Katie sat down with Aravind to discuss the differences in Lean across cultures, and how understanding the Lean origins can be beneficial when incorporating process improvement.