A hurricane, tornado or flood that destroys homes and property goes beyond individual harm. Entire communities suffer.
In the aftermath of an event like Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the New York-New Jersey shore in fall 2012, we naturally ask how people can rebuild their lives. But on a broader level: what makes one community or region better at responding to a natural disaster and surviving its aftermath?
With the business model of the credit rating agencies in the news again, we wonder if there will be more than partial repairs.
Since U.S. Attorney Eric Holder filed suit against the market leader, Standard & Poor’s, seeking $5 billion in damages, we are about to find out.
To reach today’s savvy consumer, understanding just analytics, marketing or technology isn’t enough. You need to see the big picture.
Because while having technical expertise is nice, it’s not worth much if you can’t communicate that knowledge to others in different disciplines. That’s why top business schools like Bentley University are focusing more on improving so-called soft or civic skills, no matter what your field.
“Marissa Mayer Is Wrong.” “Horrible Bosses: Marissa Mayer’s Ban on Telecommuting at Yahoo Won’t Work.” “Marissa Mayer’s Work-From-Home Ban Is the Exact Opposite of What CEOs Should Be Doing.” These headlines reflect popular responses in the blogosphere to the Yahoo CEO’s decision to end work-from-home arrangements companywide.
It’s often said that students attend business school because they want good jobs when they graduate. Naturally enough, they tend to focus on class work that will help them reach that goal. However, classroom learning can take them only so far. As business school faculty, it’s up to us to make the necessary link between classroom theory and how it is applied in the workplace. When this link is made, students learn more and retain better. Seeing their studies “in action” makes it stick.
What should be the role of the liberal arts in business education? As we witness huge increases in the cost of formal education, every student has a right to ask what the best use of their time and investment in higher education should be. As educators, we owe it to them to justify the mix of professional training and personal enrichment we offer them.
Mohammed Yunis came up with a good idea: Give small loans to people who don’t have access to capital. A high percentage of the world’s population lives at a subsistence level. They spend all they make on food, and have none left for an “investment” that might make their microbusiness more profitable. If you could buy more bananas in the first place, your profit would be higher. If you could buy a cart, you could bring more bananas back to your village to sell than you’ve been able to carry yourself.
After 20 years at work, first in the corporate world and then building my own business, I began to think back on when I was 20 years old. A sophomore — recall that the root of the word is “wise fool” — I thought I knew a few things about what awaited me in the world. Nothing beats experience, though. Midway through a successful career, with several professional peaks and valleys, here is what I would have advised that young Bentley student when she was halfway through her college education.
The accounting profession is still suffering from old stereotypes: stagnant and boring number crunching. Mention the word “accountant” and people still picture a worker hunched over a desk, never seeing the light of day. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
On the heels of some pretty big mistakes by some pretty big companies, rules and regulations are constantly changing in all areas of accounting: the fiscal cliff caused unexpected tax law changes; the SEC continually issues guidance for reporting transactions.