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Ideas By Year 2015

Spike Lee

Professor Spike Lee

A Cultural Look at Moral Purity: Wiping the Face Clean.
Moral people have a pure heart. Immoral acts feel dirty. Expressions that describe morality in terms of purity abound in English and numerous other languages. The idea is rooted in religions around the world as well.

Professors Nina Mazar and Scott Hawkins

Professors Nina Mažar & Scott Hawkins

Want honesty? Make it the easiest choice, suggests Rotman research
The temptation is always there: include every last bit of income you earned last year on your tax return -- or not?

Matthew Feinberg, Rotman School, University of Toronto

Professor Mathew Feinberg

Empathy is key to political persuasion, shows new research
It's not news that liberals and conservatives are lousy at winning each other over. But if they really care about making even modest in-roads with each other, they'll pay attention to research showing that arguments based on a political opponent's moral principles, rather than one's own, have a much better chance of success.

April Franco

Professor April Franco

Spinning out? What you’re able to take with you to your new company will determine how well you do.
To “spin out,” you better have a big team with lots of experience. When it comes to leaving a company to start your own, whether you sink or swim could depend on how many good people you can bring with you.

Sarah Kaplan

Professor Sarah Kaplan

Breakthroughs need in-depth knowledge, not just cross-collaboration
Most high-impact innovation happens when knowledge and people from different fields are brought together to create something new, previous research has found.

Professors Julie McCarthy and John Trougakos

Professors Julie McCarthy & John Trougakos

Anxiety in the Workplace Can Lead to Lower Job Performance
The effect of workplace anxiety on job performance is closely connected to the quality of relationships between employees, their bosses and their co-workers, according to a new study from the University of Toronto focusing on police officers.

Professors Agrawal & Goldfarb

Professors Ajay Agrawal & Avi Goldfarb

Tedious tasks of innovation get a boost from slack time
There’s a whole lot more to innovation than thinking up a great new idea. A new study from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management suggests that when budding entrepreneurs get time off of their normal activities to work on other things – dubbed “slack” time – they use it to complete the less exciting jobs needed to bring a novel project to life.

Craig Doidge & Alexander Dyck

Professors Craig Doidge & Alexander Dyck

Collective action by investors leads to better governance: Rotman study
When institutional investors join forces to push for change, the companies they target take notice. Researchers from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management looked at the track record of the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, a group of leading Canadian institutional investors, formed in 2002.

Nina Mazar

Professor Nina Mažar

Customers will pay more today if there's payback later, shows equal billing study
What's not to like about getting a refund? It's a possibility under equal billing plans, where consumers are charged the same amount every month for consumption-based services such as energy or water.

Professors Ole-Kristian Hope & Francesco Bova

Professors Ole-Kristian Hope & Francesco Bova

U.S. firms lowball earnings to avoid higher health insurance costs
American companies tend to report lower profits when dealing with monolithic health insurance providers, a new study shows.The finding underscores previous research suggesting the U.S. health insurance market is not as competitive as it could be because corporate customers who show rising profits are subsequently hit with higher health benefit premiums.

Andras Tilcsik

Professor András Tilcsik

Best job performance comes from match between first and later work experiences
What's better for an employee's long-term success: starting off at a company when the good times are rolling? Or, when money is tight? The answer may be neither, says a new paper. What really makes a difference is how closely the economic environment an employee lands in initially aligns with the one they end up working in later.

Christopher Liu

Professor Christopher C. Liu

Keep Your Enemies Close? Study Finds Greater Proximity to Opponents Leads to More Polarization.
Encouraging adversaries to have more interpersonal contact to find common ground may work on occasion, but not necessarily in the U.S. Senate, according to new research.


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Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
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