 |
Faculty's research provides insights into many business issues. Faculty members do much more than teach. They strengthen their particular fields through research that sheds new light on important topics. Here's a sampling of some recent research contributions by your professors in the College. Proper portfolio diversification hedges risks in a volatile market.
His research showed that diversifiable risk can be reduced substantially with portfolios containing 100 or more stocks. Diversifiable risk has been increasing significantly over the last 42 years. Thus, proper portfolio diversification has gained prominence as a strategy for reducing risk in today's volatile market. The study appeared in the July 2004 edition of the AAII Journal, in print and online for subscribers at www.aaii.com, the American Association of Individual Investors. Survey helps assess the viability of start-ups.
The results of this survey can serve as a guideline for evaluating success: If more than 2,000 hours have been invested in the enterprise, it's dragging into the second year, and there's not much monthly cash flow, a reassessment is likely in order. The desire for good customer service transcends boundaries.
Thanks to the study, Gilbert can determine whether or not a potential customer will be satisfied with a product-a boon for companies looking to conduct business internationally, including those that want to franchise across cultures. The team is now developing an index for customer service. Research looks at how quality is perceived. New research by Anthony Miyazaki, assistant professor of marketing, and experts from Georgetown University and Babson College, contends that the way consumers consider price as an indicator of quality depends on the presence of other quality factors, like warranty or brand name. If that second The findings will appear this year in one of the field's four premier publications, the Journal of Consumer Research . Performance ratings may not lead to behavioral change.
Following more than a year's worth of collective effort on the part of the researchers, surgeons were presented with their performance efficiency evaluations, with benchmarked best practices, and given suggestions for improving their individual efficiency ratings. Each surgeon was shown his/her level of efficiency and the medical bills generated as a result of the procedures each performed in comparison with those of their peers. After another year, the researchers measured whether or not the surgeons' performance was affected by having received their efficiency ratings. While they noted some differences, these were not consistent or substantial. The conclusion of the exploratory study: transferring knowledge to surgeons about their performance efficiency was not enough to provoke a significant change in their professional practices and behaviors. If you're interested in the research your professors are conducting, check out Business Networks at http://business.fiu.edu/web/business_networks.htm. Each issue includes a section called "Business Insight" showcasing a professor's most recent work or summarizing his or her lifelong scholarly interests. All departments in the College are represented, so no matter your major, you'll find material that will acquaint you with the latest scholarship in your area.
|
||||||||
As an investor, you should know it's important to recognize the relationship between a stock portfolio's size and the risk it holds. Yet the subject is often misunderstood. "How Many Stocks Do You Need to Be Diversified?" by Dr. John Zdanowicz, professor of finance, analyzed almost all publicly-traded equity securities in the 504 months spanning January 1960 to December 2001. 
Over the years, Paul Reynolds, director of the College's Entrepreneurship Research Institute, has examined successful business start-ups. One study looked at business-builders at the outset of their ventures with a follow-up six to nine months later to learn which of the survey's twenty start-up activities they used and when. Almost half (46 percent) had transitioned into viable concerns. Saving money to invest, investing the money, and writing a business plan, mostly within the first three months, were the most frequently-cited factors for success. More than nine-tenths had invested their own money. That same number also developed a marketing campaign and purchased equipment and facilities. 
G. Ronald Gilbert, associate professor of management and international business, and a team of international researchers reviewed a total of 35,000 assessments from Greece, Jamaica, the United Kingdom, Scotland, Singapore, and Australia to evaluate attitudes toward customer service. They found that across cultures and industries, the same measures apply.
factor is not seen as having equal value-such as a limited versus full warranty-or if the product is an unknown brand, the product's quality perception weakens. The theory differs from what almost 100 studies over the past thirty years have found to be expected behavior-that many consumers want to be able simply to look at a product to determine its quality. If they can't, they will look to price to assess the product's worth. According to the findings, when quality cues are inconsistent-for example, one is high and the other is low-the cue that indicates high quality is invalidated, which has important implications for manufacturers and retailers. 
In "The Effects of Knowledge Management on Surgeon Behavior," published in the Journal of Health Care Finance, Dana Forgione, professor of accounting and director of the School of Accounting in the College; Chih-Chen Lee, assistant professor of accounting; Krishnamurthy Surysekar, associate professor of accounting; and Te-Wei Wang, assistant professor of decision sciences and information systems, looked at the ways hospital-based surgeons were affected by knowing the results of their performance assessments. 