Benjamin Kessler

Today's workforce might best be described in terms of tumult: Great Resignation, Great Retirement, Great Reshuffle, etc. In this "new normal," managers must learn to navigate a state of continual transition in their teams and organizations, while keeping up with day-to-day demands. Likewise, George Mason University School of Business Management Professors Sarah Wittman and Kevin Rockmann believe that it is time for scholars to change the way they think about role transitions to better align their theories with our increasingly uncertain world.

We’ve all become familiar with the pandemic-related reasons behind the upheaval in the labor market, as well as the standard-issue solutions like trying to infuse work with purpose or offering employees remote working. While these are practical suggestions, they have not restored stability to the workforce. It is our contention that any broad-brush advice for retaining employees in the current environment will be insufficient. Whether managers like it or not, employees will demand sensitivity and adjustment to their psychological needs as individuals.

George Mason University announced today that the Center for Retail Transformation at the university’s School of Business has entered into a partnership with TruRating, a customer experience and insights company with offices in London, Atlanta, and Sydney.

In her 2021 PhD dissertation, Ashley Yuckenberg, a trained journalist and assistant professor of business communications at Mason, plumbs the ethical quandaries of crisis coverage—and provides a framework for guiding journalists through them.

Long before COVID was a household word, Dr. Ajay Vinzé, now dean of Mason’s business school, helped pioneer a collaboration with public-health officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, to help predict possible outcomes of various interventions as part of research on pandemic response. Vinzé calls this nearly decade-long partnership “a major part of my research and professional journey.”

Hierarchy has its upsides and downsides. A pyramidical power structure works well for day-to-day decision making. But as the distance between the base and the tip of the pyramid increases, tensions between organizational tiers can create obstacles to reform. It’s a matter of “the unconscious dynamics of humans in groups and systems” rather than a deliberate response, says Renee Rinehart Kathawalla, a postdoctoral research fellow of management at Mason.

Rashed Hasan, executive-in-residence at George Mason University’s Business for a Better World Center (B4BW), is working to make transparent metrics and benchmarks that accurately represent stakeholder value a reality. Alongside a group of researchers and business advisors, he’s developing the Stakeholder Value Index (SVI), which he hopes will be a reliable framework for measuring business impact across the five stakeholders mentioned in the BRT Statement, as well as two additional stakeholders: the company itself and the planet.

Gregory Unruh, academic director of Mason’s brand-new chief sustainability officer certification program in Executive Development, has been training sustainability leaders for decades.

On Friday, June 3, more than 20 participants from business schools across the country joined Mason marketing faculty for a day-long Marketing Research Symposium at the IDIA Classroom Space in Vernon Smith Hall, Mason Square. In addition to research talks, there was a panel discussion on digital transformation in retail featuring three industry experts.

In business, a specialist strategy can sometimes be riskier than a generalist one. Competing in only one industry leaves firms highly vulnerable to heightened income volatility, with extreme gains and losses, often alternating in quick succession. Innovative firms, whose business models are based on heavy R&D investments with uncertain returns, are especially affected by these fluctuations. Kelly Wentland, assistant professor of accounting, discusses this issue.