Professor François Ortalo-Magné, Real Estate and Urban Land Economics, is being given the “Lauriers de la recherché” award, which translates to “research laurels,” by the mayor of Toulouse, France, for his research in real estate and economics.

Ortalo-Magné received an MS in Agricultural Technology and Management from Ecole Supérieure d’Agriculture de Purpan in Toulouse, France, and his PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota.  He holds the Robert E. Wangard chair in Real Estate at UW-Madison.  He is a fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban Economics and the Journal of Housing Economics, among other affiliations.  His work has been printed in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Journal of Urban Economics and The Review of Economic Studies.

Assistant Professor Philip Kim, Management and Human Resources, was given the 2009 “Outstanding Reviewer Award” by the Journal of Business Venturing.  Kim primarily reviewed papers in the field of entrepreneurship for the journal.

Kim earned his MA and PhD in Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his BS (Economics) and BAS (Materials Sciences) at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include entrepreneurial team and social network configurations, political economy of entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship in highly regulated industries. His research has been published in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Small Business Economics, and American Behavioral Scientist.

In a recent Investor’s Business Daily article, Professor Mason Carpenter provides tips for managers and employees on ways to deal with stress and be more effective during a down economy.

According to Carpenter, who teaches strategic management and is author of “Managing Effectively Through Tough Times,” managers should take advantage of down time by talking with customers, learning of future trends and creating necessary business solutions.

He says employees should not focus on promotions during bad economic times, but instead should look for ways to manage their own careers by taking courses and obtaining new degrees that will increase their marketability following the recession.

Read more of Professor Carpenter’s suggestions here.

Read a related article by Professor Carpenter on managing in tough times  here.

[Read more]

Companies can reduce unintended effects of downsizing, according to research conducted at the Wisconsin School of Business that was recently featured in BusinessWeek. 

The BusinessWeek article examined ways for companies to reduce the negative effects of downsizing. It included research on the topic by Charlie Trevor, an associate professor of management at the Wisconsin School of Business, and Anthony Nyberg, a former PhD candidate at Wisconsin, who is now an assistant professor at the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.  

As BusinessWeek summarized their research findings: “Companies that had a history of harboring HR practices that were aimed at assuring procedural fairness and justice—such as having an ombudsman who is designated to address employee complaints; confidential hotlines for problem resolution; the existence of grievance or appeal processes for nonunion employees, etc.—did not see their turnover heighten after a downsizing effort. Apparently, remaining employees were confident that, in such a company, the downsizing effort had been fair and unavoidable.” 

Earlier this year, Trevor and Nyberg received the Scholarly Achievement Award from the Academy of Management’s Human Resources Division for an article they authored on their research findings.  

Charlie O. Trevor

Anthony J. Nyberg

An article by Charlie Trevor and Anthony Nyberg of the Wisconsin School of Business has received the 2009 Scholarly Achievement Award (best article of the year) from the Human Resources Division of the Academy of Management for: “Keeping Your Headcount When All About You Are Losing Theirs: Downsizing, Voluntary Turnover Rates, and the Moderating Role of HR Practices.”

Trevor is an associate professor in Management and Human Resources at the Wisconsin School of Business. Nyberg  worked on the study while earning his Ph.D. from the school; he graduated in 2008 and is now an assistant professor at the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.

Their article was printed in the April/May 2008 issue of the Academy of Management Journal. In it, they describe their findings about downsizing and turnover rates at 200 companies. The research has been highlighted by U.S. News & World Report, TIME magazine, BusinessWeek and Harvard Business Review.

According to their study, downsizing can set off an exodus among retained employees that in some cases is much greater than the reduction achieved through the layoffs.

“The downsizing-turnover relationship suggests a sad irony in that employees are laid off by companies that may subsequently find themselves understaffed,” write Trevor and Nyberg in the article. “To the extent that turnover rates hinder organizational performance, the performance of downsizing companies may well suffer further through the leaving behavior that the layoffs generate.”

Perhaps the most striking finding in their study of quitting rates in some 200 companies was the considerable exodus that even a small downsizing could set off. For example, companies that laid off a mere 0.5% of their workforce sustained, on average, a turnover rate of 13%, a rate that was 2.6 percentage points higher than the average turnover rate of non-downsizing firms. In other words, an extra 2.6% of the workforce left of its own accord, more than five times more workers than were laid off.

“Employers sometimes use downsizing as a way of getting rid of undesired workers. Our findings ought to persuade them that this could very well result in the loss of even more employees whom they want to keep,” added Trevor.

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Urban Wemmerlöv, director of the Erdman Center for Operations and Technology Management at the Wisconsin School of Business, was quoted in SmartMoney Small Business on the accommodations that manufacturers are making in order to cope with the challenging economy. [Read more]

Deborah Mitchell, who teaches marketing in the Wisconsin School of Business, commented on the inappropriateness of loud TV ads in an Advertising Age article. [Read more]

Members of the real estate faculty at the Wisconsin School of Business increasingly are quoted in the national media on aspects of the nation’s challenging housing situation.

The popular business-news radio program, “Marketplace,” which airs on public radio stations nationwide, is among the national outlets that often turn to Wisconsin School of Business faculty for input on real estate issues.

Stephen Malpezzi was  recently interviewed on the role apartments may play in leading the recovery of the U.S. housing market.

Listen to or read, “Apartments lead housing market back?”

Morris Davis spoke on the impact of a possible Fed rate cut.

Listen to or read, “Will the Fed cut rates again?”

Research by Charlie O. Trevor and Anthony J. Nyberg of the Wisconsin School of Business exploring the unintended costs of downsizing continues to draw national attention.  Previously covered by BusinessWeek and U.S. News and World Report, their research mostly recently was cited in an article by Time magazine.

Read the article, “After Layoffs, There’s Survivor’s Guilt”

Hollis (Holly) A. Skaife, associate professor in Accounting and Information Systems at the Wisconsin School of Business, has been appointed to the Standards Advisory Council (SAC) of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). [Read more]

Foreign investors in real estate expect to spend significantly more around the world, particularly in the U.S., in 2009 than they did in 2008. [Read more]

Marketing faculty members of the Wisconsin School of Business again have been ranked among the most published researchers in their field. [Read more]

Research on house prices by Morris Davis, an assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics at the Wisconsin School of Business, is gathering national attention.   [Read more]