The Find: Governance advisory firms claim they can predict the future performance of a public company by analyzing public data, but new research claims the value of their ratings is dubious at best. ...
The Find: A veteran consultant offers his top ten tips on how consultants can best serve their clients (even in spite of clients' occasional irrationality). The Source: The blog of software developer and occasional consultant, Chad Myers. The Takeaway: Techie Chad Myers uses his...
The Find: An analysis of 2,500 public companies over the last ten years shows that the rate at which CEOs get fired for poor short term financial performance is just 2.1 percent. The Source: The seventh annual CEO succession report from Booz & Company which will be...
The Find: Obesity costs U.S. companies up to $45 billion annually, according to the latest research, but expensive corporate wellness programs don't necessarily mitigate the costs. The Source: New research from The Conference Board and ING Wholesale. The Takeaway: Analysts...
The Find: Companies with excellent corporate governance records report 18 percent higher stock returns than those with poor records. The Source: A new report from the Association of British Insurers The Takeaway: Researchers at ABI studied over 600 public companies in the...
The World Economic Forum is set to kick off tomorrow in Davos, Switzerland. Top of the agenda: the looming shortage of fresh water. Pepsi Co's Chairman and CEO, Indra Nooyi, is co-chair of this year's meeting, and both her company and its soft drink rival, Coca Cola, have been out...
Back in October BNET's The View from Harvard Business was reminding companies that "if you aren't already doing some scenario planning about what a slowing or uncertain economy means to your bottom line, you are behind the game." Unfortunately, the economic outlook hasn't grown any rosier since then, and most...
When Gallup asked Americans if the earth revolves around the sun, 79% said yes. Shocked that 21% disagreed? That lack of general knowledge may be alarming, but for folks in business it might be more shocking to know that more Americans believe big business is untrustworthy than have a...
With the recent departures of Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal and Citigroup CEO Chuck Price,the question on everyone's mind is who will be the next to go. Today the Motley Fool is telling it straight by offering readers "3 CEOs Who Should Go." First up, Countrywide's Angelo...
Yesterday on InformationWeek's CIOs Uncensored blog, John Soat mused about the fate of outsourcing. 10 years after the practice exploded onto the business world, is sending work overseas growing more or less viable? Arguing for the continued viability of outsourcing is a recent InformationWeek article entitled "The...
You spend a large portion of your life sitting on a desk chair so, obviously, that chair should be pretty darn comfy. On the other hand, as a responsible consumer, you want to do your part to help the environment and make sure your kids inherit a clean, green world....
Oil's nearing $100 a barrel, and despite the stronger than expected growth rate in the third quarter, business confidence is as low as it was when the economy was just climbing out of a recession in 2002. With so many worrying statistics and gloomy predictions, it's hard to know how...
CEO compensation is a hot topic. So much so that even President Bush felt the need to question whether CEOs are worth what they're paid in his "State of the Economy" speech last Wednesday. His comment: "Government should not decide the compensation for America's corporate executives. But the salaries...
How wide and how severe will the fall out from this summer's sub-prime meltdown be? That's the question occupying a great many minds in the financial world. They've got a lot of numbers to crunch, from the rise in new jobs in September, to the markets' big rally on Monday,...
In February, the research firm Catalyst reported that after years of gains the number of women serving on boards of directors had actually declined. While that's certainly bad for diversity and raises a good number of questions as to why the trend has reversed, Catalyst has also found it is...
A quick Google search of the term 'lawyer jokes' will return over 2 million hits, which just confirms something everyone already suspected -- lawyers are not among the most popular of professionals (though, to be fair, doctor and priest jokes are just as numerous). Still, the prevailing wisdom is that...
One little remarked upon reality of this summer's housing meltdown: it alters the landscape for employment related relocations. With the real estate market in a slump, don't be surprised if your employees are reluctant to sell their homes and move. A survey out from Worldwide ERC found that: More...
The collapse of the sub-prime lending market with all its attendant effects took a lot of people by surprise this summer. (But, as we've previously blogged, not everyone.) Should we have been so surprised? Perhaps those with a vested interest in the industry were blinded by their own need to...
Last week Consumerist.com conducted a poll of its readers asking whether they thought of themselves first and foremost as consumers or citizens. It wasn't exactly scientific, but nearly 70% of people responded that they thought of themselves as citizens first. Our somewhat schizophrenic nature as American citizen/...
Today Mattel announced the third recall of toys in five weeks, this time after lead was found in over 800,000 Barbie doll accessories. The discovery of the tainted toys comes through Mattel's internal investigation of suppliers. China is responding to this and other safety scandals by launching an international PR...
