Media Coverage

Rutgers Business School announced on Tuesday it has launched a new Center for Women in Business to empower more women in the workplace.

The center will focus on academic research and provide resources to impact gender equity in the business world through mentoring, workshops, scholarships and conferences. It will also aim to influence change on problems such as the wage gap, provide opportunities for working women and develop women business leaders at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

Now that we’ve turned the page on another exciting year in the world of marketing and business, we should look ahead at what we can expect in marketing for this year.

Question 1: In your opinion, what are the biggest trends we’ll see in the world of marketing in 2020?

The big shift towards digital marketing and marketing analytics continues; the list of new skills necessary to succeed continues to get longer. While branding and product innovation management remain important marketing processes, omni channels and direct-to-consumer marketing continue to reshape the marketing landscape.

Sengun (Shen) Yeniyurt, Ph.D.
Rutgers Business School
Vice Chair and Dean’s Research Professor, Marketing Department

The Logistics Manager's Index, now midway through its fourth year, provides a leading indicator on the state of the U.S. economy.

While it's good to know where you've been, it's just as important to know where you are now and where you're going. It was this belief that led us to develop the Logistics Managers Index (LMI) four years ago. We believed that the logistics industry can provide an indicator of where the economy as a whole is heading.

By Zac Rogers, Dale Rogers, Ronald S. Lembke, Steven Carnovale and Sengun Yeniyurt.

If Milton Friedman’s concern was the deleterious effect on the corporation of imposing social agendas on it, Mr. Ramaswamy’s concern is precisely the opposite: the effect on the state of corporations embracing social agendas. Businesses and governments operate in separate spheres, something akin to church and state. It’s when one side tries to operate on the other’s turf that we run into trouble.

Prof. Mark Castelino
Rutgers Business School

Consumer research and ratings firm J.D. Power has released its December 2019 auto sales forecast, and the trends aren’t looking the best for the industry.
At the moment, the market appears to be tilting in favor of the consumer. But there are more questions than just whether or not to buy.

Professor Farrokh Langdana, Rutgers Business School, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

WH: Do you expect auto financing deals to improve/get worse/stay the same over the next 12 months?

FL: They will improve for sure.

WH: What steps can buyers and dealers take to make the car buying process more transparent and hassle-free?

FL: Take the negotiations out of the dealing.

WH: What tips do you have for individuals with fair or poor credit who are looking for an auto loan?

FL: Show evidence of responsibility in one's current job. Lenders need to know that you are on a stable path.

Employment remains elusive for many people with disabilities.

Mason Ameri speaks with David Brancaccio about the Americans with Disability Act passed in 1990 and the need to update it. Starting at 6:00 minutes.

Listen

Black marketing professors can foster a legacy of change.

Jerome Williams, a research center director and distinguished professor and prudential chair at Rutgers University, was an early pioneer in multicultural marketing and marketplace discrimination studies. He recently examined banking (and living) while black.

Lance McCarthy, the CEO of Global 1000, inspired the crowd at the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey gala with his keynote address, providing historical details of successful black business leaders while detailing how his firm is using what he calls the “6 C’s of Success” to build a platform for success in the community.

Attendees at the gala included Yla Eason of Rutgers University, Rutgers Business School, Education Award honoree.

“The Doctorate of Business Administration Program aims to equip graduates with tools, techniques and critical-thinking skills that can be used to solve the increasingly complex problems encountered now and in the future,” said Professor Suresh Govindaraj, the program director.

Unlike a traditional Ph.D., which focuses heavily on academic and theoretical research and prepares students almost exclusively for roles in academia, the Doctorate of Business Administration is designed as a practitioner’s doctoral for professionals with extensive managerial or technical experience who are interested in learning and applying relevant theoretical concepts to business problems and economic issues.

The Rutgers Business School is launching a Doctorate of Business Administration Program, a 60-credit program that will be offered primarily on weekends with some classes on weekday evenings.

Rutgers will offer courses in the classroom and online as the program progresses. Students are intended to earn a doctorate degree within two years.

According to Rutgers, the Doctorate of Business Administration is designed as a practitioner’s doctoral for professionals with extensive managerial or technical experience who are interested in learning and applying relevant theoretical concepts to business problems and economic issues. The program will also emphasize communications and advanced research skills so students are able to communicate abstract research concepts.

Sometimes, an MBA just isn’t enough … if that’s the situation you find yourself in, Rutgers University has a program you might want to look into, as Rutgers Business School announced Tuesday it is launching a doctorate in business administration.

The Newark-based program is aimed at providing a credential for both executives looking to move into the C-suite and ones who are hoping to move out of it and into academia.

“The Doctorate of Business Administration Program aims to equip graduates with tools, techniques and critical-thinking skills that can be used to solve the increasingly complex problems encountered now and in the future,” professor Suresh Govindaraj, program director, said in a prepared statement.

Rutgers Business School professor John M. Longo — the Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager for wealth-management firm Beacon Trust — cautioned against using endowment returns alone to judge recent changes at HMC.

“It is true that, given the data, the performance has lagged,” Longo said. “Someone might just look at the numbers and say the performance is lagging, but then you have to say, what kind of risk did they take?”

The Logistics Managers' Index (LMI) is an insightful measure that reveals underlying trends impacting the transportation sector. As mentioned in the Why you should care article, the LMI is a survey of North American logistics executives that combines eight components to gauge the health of the industry from various perspectives. The LMI is compiled by Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).

Rutgers School of Business Professor Jay Soled says the tax basis for all of a dead person’s assets become equal to the fair market value of those assets.

Business schools increasingly acknowledge that a wider range of perspectives enriches learning through group discussion, and helps prepare students to lead diverse teams. Corporate recruiters have also raised pressure on schools to enrol people from a broader array of socio-economic backgrounds, recognising the benefits of a diverse workforce.

Thirty-eight per cent of online MBA students who enrolled in the 2019 calendar year are first-generation college students, compared with approximately 10 per cent of the full-time MBA class. They are less likely to have family members who work in professions such as banking or consulting, which recruit heavily from MBA intakes, says Prof Lei Lei, dean of Rutgers Business School. Family ties can help students land jobs, so in 2018 Rutgers launched a mentoring programme to replicate them. Executives help MBA students improve their confidence, résumés and interview skills.

“First-generation college students from relatively low-income backgrounds really need this kind of help. It makes a big difference,” says Prof Lei. For example, almost all the MBA students secure summer internships.

In the task force pre-planning report, Kopp and co-chair Kevin Lyons, associate professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick and associate director of the Rutgers Energy Institute, along with 10 other science, health, engineering and public policy experts from across the university, lay out a comprehensive plan with an expanded task force, including students and staff, that will seek broad community engagement.

If you have bad credit it can be improved over time by paying off your bills by the due date. The most important step is to develop a mindset to live within your means. This step involves paying off credit cards, in full, each month. Credit cards for people with a poor credit history typically charge very high rates of interest (i.e., 20% plus).

John Longo
Professor of Professional Practice in the Finance & Economics Department at Rutgers Business School.

The Civil Rights Movement was made up of a broad coalition of civic groups, student activists, labor and religious organizations. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who advocated non-violent protest was the symbolic leader — its primary spokesperson – the face of the movement. The Movement advocated for the end to racial discrimination in state and federal laws. Its efforts resulted in, among other things, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1963, the most comprehensive civil rights measure ever passed and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Dr. King and the movement’s impact on the nation ’s conscience is without parallel. It is little wonder that a federal holiday honoring Dr. King was first proposed four days after his assassination in 1968.

The establishment of Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday did not happen immediately or easily; it required sustained herculean efforts.

The demand is there to build more houses. Baby boomers are not leaving their homes and millennials are increasingly starting families, said Morris Davis, real estate professor and academic director of the Rutgers Center for Real Estate in Newark.

But demand for new housing is most pronounced in and around the gateway cities, where there is ample employment, Davis said.

Lyneir Richardson, Rutgers-Newark CUEED Executive Director expressed, “Our intention in collaborating with ArtUp is to elevate creative people who operate in media, art and entertainment industries in Memphis. We aim to help creatives, (especially people of color) to become stronger entrepreneurs and property owners.”

The Memphis Business Hub for Creatives Program is modeled on the success of the Newark Business Hub, established by Rutgers Business School CUEED in 2016.

Says Richardson, “In Newark, creatives are participating in noteworthy business ventures. They are at the forefront of inclusive equitable economic growth initiatives and are working to own property. We expect the participants in the Memphis Hub program to do the same.”

Online disinformation is a complex problem that requires complex solutions to address it. However, a large portion of the current tools meant to combat disinformation are relatively simple and feature basic elements like “dislikes” or “likes”.

Our new tool, Proof, addresses this problem. Proof incorporates complex economic and financial methodologies to provide a platform where anyone can vote on the accuracy of online content. I founded Proof with Christopher Young, an assistant professor at Rutgers Business School. Proof uses a proprietary algorithm based on the principals of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ theory, contract theory, and the sharing economy to create an engaging, fair and scalable solution to fight disinformation.

Political and technological issues will buffet the financial services industry in 2020

Arthur Guarino, an associate professor of Professional Practice in the Department of Finance and Economics at Rutgers Business School, identified cybercurrency as an emerging banking concern. “The banking industry will eventually need to adapt to the use of bitcoin since more of its customers will make the switch,” he said. “Old-fashioned cash will still be used by many of a bank’s customers, but others will start asking for or demanding bitcoin in order to perform certain business or personal transactions.”

They had the viral content for their start-up tech company, PeduL, which connects college students with scholarships.

But Kayla Michele and Chisa Egbelu, two Rutgers graduates, needed funding after leaving their production assistant gigs at NBC in 2017.

“We needed to be introduced to the world of venture capital and what that looks like," Michele said. “We didn’t know nothing about the world of venture capital."


The door swung wide open for the young minority entrepreneurs - she’s 24, he’s 26 – when they signed up with The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development (CUEED), a program of Rutgers Business School that was formed in Newark to help small businesses in the city, spur economic development and target urban business owners.

CUEED’s executive director, Lyneir Richardson, had the Newark based company enroll in one of its programs – the Black and Latino Tech Initiative - which showed the pair how to raise money and build their brand.

The 2020-2023 Executive Board Election Results Are In!
Thank you to all of our members who cast their votes!
Now, along with the current AIB Executive Board and the AIB Secretariat, please join us in congratulating the following officers, whose terms will officially run from August 1, 2020 to July 31, 2023.
President-Elect: Farok Contractor
Vice President Program-Elect: Andrew Delios
Vice President Administration-Elect: Dana Minbaeva

Finding balance between the benefits of staying connected and being distracted by our devices can be tricky.

Consider the 2,600 times we touch our phones every day, our panic when we temporarily misplace a device, the experience of “phantom vibration syndrome” and how merely seeing a message alert can be as distracting as checking the message itself.

So how do we avoid the potential pitfalls while still reaping the benefits?

Lyneir Richardson is a man with a mission. He is executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., which has set a goal of helping 1,000 urban entrepreneurs grow their businesses through a nine-month program it runs. The program, which raised $110,000 in funding at an event in October, has enrolled about 400 entrepreneurs so far.

As packages full of toys crisscross the globe this holiday season, FedEx couriers are toting hundreds of fully cooked $20 turkeys to New York State’s 50 correctional facilities. They’re the most popular item people are sending to their incarcerated loved ones using the ordering platform Emma’s Premium Services.

Founder Anton Kogan, 32, saw a need during his eight years behind bars and created the website and app to allow inmates’ families to effortlessly send fresh food, clothing and electronics to a population that subsists on canned goods, as he puts it. Come May, the Russian immigrant plans to have completed an M.B.A. from Rutgers University while working toward $1 million in 2020 sales.

Nowadays, trust is disconcertingly low. Hollywood has been upended by the #MeToo movement and the fall of Harvey Weinstein; from Fox News to Facebook, the media is under fire for fake news and filter bubbles; and the rise of Trump, Brexit and other nationalist movements are highlighting political polarization. They may seem like unrelated issues but all are part of a larger undercurrent.

Researchers have pointed to the important role trust plays in the health of democracy. Trust has been identified as a crucial component of “political orientation” – a willingness to engage in the political process. Historically, it has been high in stable democracies. Research shows a link between democracy and trust, one that is also interconnected with life satisfaction.

Peter Methot, Associate Dean, Executive Education at Rutgers Business School

“I predict that the macro trend in executive and professional education for 2020 and beyond is the shift to meet a wider and deeper need of continuous learning (or, Lifelong Learning). For decades, we have seen the divide between formal learning in degrees earned through undergraduate and graduate programs and the informal experiences gained through non-degree certificate programs. But with the pace of change and the need for learners to manage continuous learning throughout their careers, the stacking and integration of these opportunities is being thrust on educational partners to be more learner-centric and build ecosystems of relevant learning to support their various career journeys.

The editors of NJBIZ ranked New Jersey's 50 most powerful people in Manufacturing in New Jersey. With an aim to "identify the people impacting business in New Jersey in a positive way," NJBIZ editors looked at heads of companies and organizations, legislators, educators and other leaders around the state to find those with "impressive track records of affecting change" and who are fostering growth in the manufacturing sector.

Kevin Lyons is an associate professor in the Supply Chain Management Department and director of Public Private Community Partnerships at Rutgers Business School. His research includes the integration of sustainable development and diversity criteria into local and global supply chain management and manufacturing systems, processes and operations.

Finalists on the South and West sides were announced today for a prize from a foundation headed by Penny Pritzker and her husband, Bryan Traubert.

What the finalists had in common was that they “had enough ambition to be exciting but enough meat on the bone to be real and not just dreaming,” Lyneir Richardson, one of 67 people who served as expert reviewers of the proposals, told Crain’s ahead of the announcement. Richardson, CEO of Chicago Trend, neighborhood-based retail development effort funded by the MacArthur Foundation, heads the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey.

Women’s Wealth: The Middle Way® Presents
Building Strong Women Leaders with Sangeeta Rao

Sangeeta Rao, Ph.D., Assistant Dean for Student Mentoring Programs at Rutgers University, is passionate about empowering women. Sangeeta oversees Women BUILD, a leadership program designed to give high achieving, talented women undergraduates at Rutgers Business School the opportunity to reach their full leadership potential as business students. She also co-leads a new Women’s Initiative at Rutgers Business School that seeks to build stronger connections between students, faculty, alumni, and corporations with a goal of addressing systemic gender biases in business. Join us as Sangeeta shares what mentorship means to her and the personal effect that Women BUILD has had on her life and career.

Join us every other week on Women’s Wealth: The Middle Way®, a radio show aimed at helping women navigate questions about work, money, and family. You can find us on your favorite podcast app, including Libsyn, Soundcloud, Podbean, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts.

Pharmaceutical companies face economic and political challenges in 2020

Consumers are frustrated over high drug prices, but the real problem isn’t necessarily greedy pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, insurers, or pharmacy benefit managers, said Gary Branning, an assistant professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers Business School. Instead, he argues, “it’s misaligned incentives.” “The central challenge facing the U.S. health care system is the motivation of stakeholders to earn a profit, as a result of the misaligned incentives among health care stakeholders,” Branning — who’s also president of Managed Market Resources, a health care consulting and medical communications company — wrote in an article for Am Health Drug Benefits, a trade publication. “Each stakeholder has different profit motivations that drive up the overall costs of health care.”

One of the topics Gabriela Tonietto, an assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School, researches is leisure. What we can do to make that time more enjoyable, and what happens when we push aside leisure time in an attempt to be more productive?

There’s a saying — you study what you’re not good at. I don’t know if that is accurate for me, but it is something that we all struggle with. That’s especially true if you’re a woman and there’s plenty of research to show that. I became interested in what are the strategies to be better at leisure, and in the questions of: Should we be happier? And if yes, why aren’t we?

Rutgers University management professor Oliver Sheldon, who has studied unethical behaviour, says there are different theories that could explain why parents, with seemingly all the advantages of the world, might behave this way.

Sheldon cited a 2012 joint study by researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of Toronto that found upper-class individuals behave more unethically than those in lower classes.

What are the best ways to use a business credit card?

A helpful way to answer these questions is to talk about what are not the best ways to use a business credit card. Businesses often get into trouble because they use credit cards, which are good sources of short-term liquidity, for long-term financing; that is, to finance the purchase of assets or services for which the firm will have to carry the associated credit card balance in full for a long time. Credit cards have built-in clauses; for example, the bank can lower the line of credit at any time, raise the interest rate, or even demand immediate payment of the entire balance if the borrower misses a few payments. This means that the inappropriate use of credit cards can expose the user to refinancing risk. A useful rule of thumb is to use credit cards for purchases for which you will be able to pay off the credit card balance in a reasonably short time.

Ben Sopranzetti, Ph.D., Professor of Finance, Vice Chair, Department of Finance and Economics – Rutgers Business School

Investigate the local scene before going international.

An organization called Transparency International publishes a corruption index each year ranking 180 countries and territories on a scale of one to 100, with one being very corrupt, said Denis Hamilton, an assistant professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School. “Based on the scores reported in that index, the most corrupt countries as of 2018 are in Africa or the Middle East — eight of the top 10 — and include countries such as Somalia, Syria, South Sudan, and Yemen,” he said. “I would consider it considerably risky to do business in any of these countries not only because of the corruption but from a personal safety standpoint as well. At the same time, not all countries in this region have poor scores in this index so it would not be appropriate to assume that doing business in that region altogether would be unwise.”

Why businesses should develop a checklist for going global.

Businesses of just about any size may benefit by adding overseas sales, according to experts, who suggest thinking of the move as a kind of counterweight — if domestic sales slow down, other countries may be able to take up the slack.

It’s also useful to consider political, economic and legal issues before venturing onto the global landscape, said Denis Hamilton, an assistant professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School, and a former vice president at Johnson & Johnson.

Marc Kalan, a marketing professor at Rutgers Business School, said that Toys 'R' Us is attempting to find a niche.

“They’re creating an experiential-type place. A place where they’re inviting their former customers to come and experience toys, which is something that you can’t do with traditional outlets or online," Kalan told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday.

In a recent article in Tax Notes Federal, Dan Palmon and Jay Soled, both professors at Rutgers Business School, proposed a corporate wealth tax that would supplement the existing corporate income tax. The impetus for their plan is less about income inequality, per se, and more about providing a meaningful backstop to how we currently tax corporate profits.

As Palmon and Soled see it, the need for a corporate wealth tax is born out of concern that many of the most successful corporations pay little income tax relative to the huge profits they boast about.

The loss of a community bank can negatively affect some of the “culture and connection between folks in the neighborhood" said Lyneir Richardson, assistant professor at Rutgers Business School in Newark and executive director for the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development.

But he stressed that “community banks... need to catch up to the current business model to survive.”

Checking your phone in the middle of an important task can decrease your ability to resume it successfully.

“We suspect—but haven’t yet shown definitively—that because we use our phones for so many things, many of which are addictive in their own right, seeing your phone at all sends your mind down many other pathways and makes it harder to shift back into whatever you were trying to focus on previously,” study coauthor Terri Kurtzberg, Ph.D., associate professor of management and global business at Rutgers’ Business School, told Bicycling.

Utah State University research showing that minority and women applicants seeking small business loans receive poorer treatment and more scrutiny from bank lending officers was presented at a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) symposium on Nov. 6, in Washington, D.C.

Done in partnership with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), Bone and his colleagues, which include Jerome Williams of Rutgers University and Glenn Christensen of Brigham Young University, have studied 10 years of data on the financial lending landscape for minorities and women. The research, which has been published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing and Journal of Consumer Research, was also presented in written and oral testimony in a congressional hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee in September.

Carl Goldberg is the founder and managing member of Canoe Brook Associates, a family-owned real estate consulting and development company in Roseland. The firm run by the former founding partners of Roseland Property Co. Since the inception of Roseland, Goldberg has been responsible for securing the entitlements for the development of communities throughout the Northeast with a special emphasis on urban waterfront development.

He currently serves as chairman of the New Jersey Builders Association Political Action Committee and as co-chair of the Center for Real Estate Studies at Rutgers Business School.

Two Newark high schools launched career-focused “academies” this week, bringing Superintendent Roger León closer to his vision of revitalizing the district’s traditional high schools and preparing students for college and careers.

Part of the developing curriculum features partnerships with local businesses and competitions for student to pitch their own business ideas for startup money, said John Impellizzeri, a retired Rutgers Business School professor with decades of experience in supply chain management.

Impellizzeri advises the academy and believes in the program’s power to attract more students to combat West Side’s declining enrollment and develop top talent.

“Give this a chance and it’s going to become an amazing place for young people and to cultivate not just the next generation of RBS students,” he said. “But the future CEOs, CFOs, and entrepreneurs of this world will come out of West Side High School. I can promise you that.”

The panel will be chaired by leading Urban Land Institute member Lyneir Richardson, executive director, Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Rutgers Business School, Newark, New Jersey. “We look forward to learning more about Shaw’s real estate assets, understanding the market dynamics in Raleigh and providing strategic advice to leadership at the university,” said Richardson. “The fact that Shaw is an historically black college and university, and located in a Federal Opportunity Zone, gives this work national importance at this pivotal moment.”

What should you do when it’s not possible to reduce the cost of raw materials or find new trading partners? “[Small businesses are often] dealing with the supply chain asking for higher costs that cannot be quickly passed on to customers. It means more time thinking about pricing, renegotiating and managing cash flow," says Lyneir Richardson, executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development at Rutgers Business School.

Top 40 CPA and Advisory firm Berdon LLP and Rutgers Continuous Auditing and Reporting Lab (CAR Lab) have partnered to find ways to streamline and automate the complex process of real estate company audits.

“This project aims to create a new approach to real estate assurance.” says Dr. Miklos Vasarhelyi, the director of the CAR Lab, “Auditing methodology is anachronistic and needs to be updated to not only serve as a method of assurance but also to help clients to improve their operations. Sampling and traditional risk assessment are outdated in the world of advanced analytics, AI, and big exogenous data.”

“Rutgers’ Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development has spent a decade fostering opportunities for entrepreneurs of all races,” Jeffrey Robinson, an associate professor and academic director at CUEED, said in a statement. “Racial disparities among entrepreneurs are very real and all too frequent, and it is impressive to see the Murphy administration addressing the critical issue of closing this divide.”

Best practice examples of sustainability, ethics and social purpose

Student projects

RBS was among nine U.S. schools (UC Berkeley, Wharton, Columbia, North Carolina State University, Rutgers, etc.) recognized in the Student Projects category. All submissions were assessed by a panel of expert judges.

The RBS Connect, Engage, and Opportunity Network links organizations with students to develop their talents and skills, and offers those from under-represented and underserved backgrounds opportunities in leadership and professional development. Women BUILD enrolls high-achieving undergraduate women for classes, mentoring and self-development.