Each week we collect all the MBA news that’s fit to print and provide a quick overview of the latest trending topics from top schools around the world.
Here’s your quick MBA News You Need digest for the week of July 26, 2018.
Ellevest Founder Sallie Krawcheck on Tackling Gender Investing Gap
Once dubbed the most powerful woman on Wall Street, Sallie Krawcheck is now working to redefine investing for women with her company Ellevest.
Started in 2016, Ellevest is a digital investment firm whose purpose is to help women generate wealth for themselves. It stands out in a male-dominated industry where 10 percent of fund managers, 5 percent of hedge fund managers, and 14 percent of financial advisors identify as women.
While there are a ton of people working to eliminate the gender pay gap, Krawcheck says no one is working on the gender investing gap, which could amount to more than $1 million over a woman’s life. Krawcheck now spends her time trying to get women to save until they are financial equals with men. And it’s working. Ellevest was the fastest digital financial advisor to meet $100m of assets under management. The firm now has assets totaling over $140m.
To learn more, read the full article on Management Today.
Top Tips for How Incoming MBA Students Can Prepare Now for Impending Arrival on B-School Campuses
If you’re looking to start an MBA next term the sooner you get started, the better. But before you launch yourself headfirst into pre-MBA prep, a recent Financial Times article offers a method to the madness.
For incoming MBA students, the most pressing challenges ahead have less to do with difficult coursework or demanding tutors. Instead, the most significant problem that MBA candidates often face is simply the act of becoming a student again after years of employment, which is why programs like Michigan Ross offer summer refresher courses.
The reality is many MBA students leave prep to the last minute and find themselves overwhelmed by their first semester. So, whether you need more time to understand the industries that interest you or brush up on your quantitative skills, there’s path to preparation that can help you out. Another struggle many MBA students face is the ease with which they can get too wrapped up in their GPA and miss out on valuable networking opportunities.
The key to a successful MBA career is to give yourself a head start, so you are less likely to get stressed out. To read more pre-MBA prep tips, read the full Financial Times article.
Lazy Thinking, Not Political Bias, Drives Fake News
MIT Sloan Associate Professor David Rand and the University of Regina’s Gordon Pennycook recently published a new study that illuminates what actually perpetuates fake news—a “lack of analytical thinking.”
Professor Rand writes, “Our study suggests that falling for fake news is a symptom of cognitive laziness rather than motivated reasoning or self-deception. That is, contrary to popular belief, it is not the case that people are thinking too much about the wrong things. Rather, a little thinking might go a long way to fix the problem of fake news.”
In a study that surveyed “3,446 participants to rate the accuracy of headlines from actual news stories from Facebook,” the duo found that “people who engage in more analytic thinking, as measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test, are better at discerning true from false—regardless of identified motivations or political biases.”
You can read more about the research here. The above summary was republished from its original site, metromba.com.
NYU Stern Prof on Why It’s So Hard to Buy “Just One Thing” At Target
In a recent Refinery29 article, NYU Stern School of Business Marketing Professor Tom Meyvis helped explain the “Target Effect”—or why consumers have such a strong impulse to buy more products than they intended when shopping at a big-box store.
“Stores have an idea about the path [shoppers take],” he says in an interview. “Walmart was once famous for doing things like putting Band-Aids next to fishing hooks and things like that. Something you don’t naturally associate, but once you see them there, it makes sense. So when people come in for something in one category, you can cross-sell, you can sell them something that compliments in the next product category by making sure they’re right next to each other.”
What is the so-called “Target Effect” that makes people buy more products than they intend to?
“Meyvis also notes that stores like Target have extensive data on which products customers typically buy together, and they’ll often employ those numbers to decide what should go where within the store’s layout. Some are obvious, like placing flip-flops next to sunscreen, while others are so subtle that you might not even notice what’s going on when you pick up hot sauce and Pepto Bismol in the same motion.”
You can read more of Munro’s piece with Refinery29 here. The above summary was republished from its original site, metromba.com.
Kids of Working Moms Grow Into Happy Adults, HBS Research Finds
New research from Harvard Business School Professor Kathleen McGinn found that, despite the narrative, children of working mothers are more often happier and more successful.
McGinn, the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, says, “People still have this belief that when moms are employed, it’s somehow detrimental to their children. So, our finding that maternal employment doesn’t affect kids’ happiness in adulthood is really important.”
The preliminary results of McGinn’s work were originally published three years ago, which surveyed the career success of daughters of working mothers in contrast to stay-at-home mothers. When the story reached the New York Times, however, there was some obvious blow-back, McGinn recalls:
“Many decried the research as another installment of the ‘mommy wars.’ But the most common response was from mothers who suffered guilt, self-doubt, and disapproval from others. They found our preliminary results to be welcome news.”
However, McGinn’s research, which was conducted alongside Mayra Ruiz Castro of Kingston University in the UK and Elizabeth Long Lingo of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, found that the careers of sons of working mothers were not generally affected. Instead, their attitudes were different in contrast to stay-at-home-mothers.
“Sons are influenced in other ways when their moms work. The sons of employed mothers hold significantly more egalitarian gender attitudes—even more so than the daughters of stay-at-home moms.” This finding surprised McGinn because it shows that the influence of maternal employment may even outweigh well-documented sex differences when it comes to shaping people’s mindsets about appropriate roles for men and women.
You can read more of the groundbreaking research here. The above summary was republished from its original site, metromba.com.
