Beyond Grey Pinstripes

     

U. of Colorado at Boulder (Leeds)

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U. of Colorado at Boulder (Leeds) 419 UCB
Boulder, CO, 80309-0419
United States
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Demographic Information

Number of full-time MBA students (2011): 

115

Number of part-time MBA students (2011): 

50

Total duration of full-time MBA program: 

21 months

MBA faculty (Fall 2010): 

85

Females as percent of student body: 

25%


Description of MBA Program: 

Introduction

At the Leeds School of Business, we seek to address social, ethical, and environmental challenges by creating innovative market-driven solutions. With a focus on mastering business fundamentals, integrating a spirit of innovation, and building strong networks, our students are uniquely prepared to create positive social, environmental and financial results. Our learning environment is developed through a careful synthesis of program design, talented faculty, and both business and community involvement.

 

Program/Classes

Social, ethical, and environmental leadership are interwoven in all aspects of the Leeds MBA Program. In addition to offering courses such as Socially Responsible Enterprise and Sustainable Venturing, the Leeds School focuses on integrating issues such as globalization, sustainable opportunity recognition, and corporate citizenship throughout the curriculum. In addition to a number of dual degree opportunities, the MBA curriculum also has the flexibility to allow students to attend classes throughout the university. Thirty social and environmental sustainability-related classes outside the Leeds School and pre-approved for MBA credit, include areas such as law, engineering, and environmental studies. This provides the opportunity for students to develop a well-rounded perspective on social and environmental challenges and build cross functional partnerships to create solutions.

 

Events

The Leeds MBA program also demonstrates its commitment to sustainable business by hosting a number of internationally recognized competitions and events including the Conscious Capitalism Conference, Leeds Net Impact Case Competition, Clean Tech Innovation Challenge, Naturally Boulder conference and networking nights, Rocky Mountain Real Estate Challenge, and the Sustainable Opportunities Summit. Each event brings a unique approach to address social, ethical, and environmental challenges in coordination with financial success. To develop these events we have partnered with other universities as well as leading organizations such as CORE (Connected Organizations for a Responsible Economy), ICOSA, Net Impact, and NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory). These events complement the speakers, symposiums and events that are held across the university and throughout the greater Boulder/Denver area.

 

Partnerships

As demonstrated by our event partnerships, the Leeds School works with the Colorado business and research community to spur innovation. We also have the advantage of being situated among four national laboratories, in the hub of the natural foods and products industry, and surrounded by innovative socially and environmentally responsible businesses in high tech, biotech and clean energy. In addition, the Leeds School has become the conduit to help match innovation in these sectors with the rapidly developing private equity community along the Front Range of Colorado.

 

The Leeds School also works extensively with other groups throughout the University such as the two-time champion CU Boulder Solar Decathlon team, Engineers Without Borders, the Environmental Center and the university-wide Renewable and Sustainable Energy Initiative (RASEI). In partnership with the CU Technology Transfer Office, we create opportunities for MBAs to work with early stage clean technologies that are being developed within the University. Our small class size allows students to directly interact with the school’s partners, providing a springboard for later pursuits.

 

In 2009, CU Boulder was designated an Ashoka Changemaker Campus (1 of 10). Through participation in SEED@CU (Social Entrepreneurship for Equitable Development) and the Student Center for Social Innovation (SCSI), Leeds MBAs are working with students across campus and some of the world’s leading experts and practitioners in the realm of social entrepreneurship. These collaborations help develop new models for higher education and seek to give students and faculty alike the skills and mindset they need to tackle systemic problems and affect positive social change.

 

In Summary

Social, ethical, environmental and globalization issues are key drivers of the new economy. At Leeds, we provide the tools to succeed in this new economy and train leaders to identify opportunities where others see challenges.



How does the MBA program 'walk the talk' of social and environmental impact?: 

The University of Colorado is recognized as one of the nation’s most sustainable campuses. CU Boulder has achieved “leader” status from the Sustainability Endowments Institute, and was ranked #1 in The Sierra Club’s 2009 “Cool Schools” ranking for its performance in efficiency, energy, food, academics, purchasing, transportation, waste management, and administration.


In 2010, CU Boulder started using a new measurement tool – the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) – developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), to assess sustainability performance in three main areas – Education & Research, Operations &Planning, Administration, & Engagement – achieving the nation’s first STARS Gold rating.


In April 2010, CNN named CU Boulder “The greenest university in America” (http://tiny.cc/7f85b) highlighting the University’s zero-waste football games, its 10,000+ bicycles (1 for every 3 students), biodiesel buses, renewable energy and water conservation efforts, and its decades-old (and profitable!) recycling program.


The CU Environmental Center (http://ecenter.colorado.edu/) has been around for 40 years, and is the nation's largest and most accomplished student-led center of its kind. By translating student leadership into action and engaging the campus community, the Center helps CU-Boulder maintain its global leadership in sustainability. Leeds students have long served on the Environmental Center Board, and the Leeds School continues to provide innovation and leadership on campus and beyond.


Every year the Leeds School’s Deming Center and Net Impact club organize the Cleantech Venture Challenge and the Net Impact Case Competition, each held annually in our LEED-certified Koelbel building for MBA students from around the country. Many of Leeds’ sustainability-related programs partner with other institutions, on and off campus. For example, the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), an interdisciplinary joint research effort between CU Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), partners with the Leeds School, Technology Transfer Office, and other institutions on and off campus to create a hub for cleantech commercialization and start-ups.

Academic Department

Course Name: Advanced Corporate Finance
Instructor: Sanjai Bhagat

This advanced finance course gives substantial coverage to social topics. It covers the theory of asset pricing and applies it to capital budgeting, capital structure choice, mergers and acquisitions, and risk management. Lectures extensively cover corporate governance, ownership structure, effects of environmental or scandal litigation, effect of corporate values, and company performance. Included in more than 60 reading assignments are research articles on managerial behavior in mergers and acquisitions, CEO compensation, and effectiveness of corporate governance. Managerial incentives also receive extensive attention in lectures. The primary written assignment is a research paper containing original analysis on any topic covered in the curriculum, including the many that have social and environmental impacts.

Course Name: Applied Financial Management
Instructor: Ron Melicher

This course emphasizes financial decision-making and the formulation of financial strategies that will maintain and enhance business values. Students learn to prepare financial plans, make capital structure decisions, and value projects and businesses. Topics include short-term and long-term financial planning, estimating the cost of financial capital and setting target debt policies, and making valuation estimates using discounted cash flow (enterprise and equity approaches) and multiples methods. Acquisition valuation methods, leveraged buyouts, and initial public offerings also are covered.

Using the case learning method, students apply new and previously learned financial methods and practices to analyze several scenarios that include social, environmental and ethical implications. For example, the “Body Shop, International” case considers the ability of a privately held company to maintain its high standards for social responsibility (e.g., fair trade supply chain practices) when going public. The financial projections used in the case help outline some of the potential trade-offs owners and managers might face when expanding a sustainably minded business. Other cases with sustainability-related content include “FedEx vs. UPS” (labor practices); “Pressco, Inc.” (pollution effects of aging capital equipment); and “Eskimo Pie” (social considerations of acquisition-related job losses).

Course Name: Assessing Sustainable Energy Technologies
Instructor: Stephen Lawrence

This course focuses on the technological and cost fundamentals of emerging energy technologies, including solar, wind, biomass, oceanic, geothermal, hydropower, fuel cell (hydrogen), nuclear, and other more exotic energy sources. A major premise in the course is that a sustainable energy technology must both be technically feasible and economically viable. We consequently investigate the technological promise and progress of each technology, as well as its economic opportunities and challenges. At the conclusion of the course, students will have a solid technical and economic understanding of these energy technologies. Questions that will be answered include: What are the technical and economic (cost) fundamentals of important and emerging sustainable energy technologies? How can the economic and technical performance of sustainable energy technologies be measured and compared? What are the technical and economic obstacles to the widespread use of sustainable technologies? Which sustainable energy technologies show the greatest long-term economic promise? Which sustainable energy technologies are closest to commercialization?

Course Name: Business Plan Preparation
Instructor: George Deriso, Liz Snowden

In this class, student teams develop comprehensive business plans for new ventures, many of which reflect the strong interest in environmentally and socially responsible businesses characteristic of the Leeds MBA student. Recent example projects have included plans for a pre-fabricated green building material; an organic, fair-trade chai tea; a wind farm development in Chile, and a carbon-neutral lawn care business.

The course takes students from the initial concept stage to completion of a sophisticated business plan. Teams spend much of their time testing the concept by interviewing customers, users, distributors, industry experts, competitors, designers, engineers, vendors, manufacturers, consultants, and investors to answer key questions: Is the problem you are solving real? Who is the target customer? How do they make decisions? What are the essential product features? What are the unique benefits? What is the sustainable competitive advantage? Can it be profitable?

In addition, students evaluate several different types of business plans, looking closely at how they were prepared, where they were effective, and how they could be improved. Throughout the course, the instructors also pose several ethical dilemmas—both typical and unexpected—faced by entrepreneurs.

Course Name: Business Process Design
Instructor: Lori Seward

This course covers the concepts and tools to design and manage business processes. The emphasis is on modeling and analysis of process flows using common process improvement tools such as data analysis and optimization techniques, Quality Function Deployment, Life Cycle Analysis, Lean Production and Six Sigma. The latter three tools have particular relevance to assessing and reducing environmental impact (and related social impact), through waste and pollution reduction, efficiency and quality improvements in business process. Graphical simulation software Arena (and Visio) are used to create dynamic models of business processes and predict the effect of changes.

Course Name: Consulting Skills
Instructor: Wayne Boss

Provides an integrative, hands-on exercise in managing change. Develops skills in contracting, collecting, and analyzing data and writing reports. Teams practice these skills by conducting an organizational diagnosis, consulting project within an organization.

35% of the course grade is derived from the Consulting Group Field Project. Students are encouraged to reach out to Boulder's unique business community, with its emerging and world-class leaders in renewable energy and clean technology, natural foods, green building, and sustainable finance and investment. Collaboration with the newly-minted Leeds Social Impact Consultants (LSIC) group and/or the Deming Center's "Entrepreneurial Solutions" team is encouraged.

Course Name: Corporate Finance
Instructor: Jamie Zender

This course analyzes the implications of finance theory for corporate decision-making and teaches the basic skills involved in applying financial concepts to problems that include capital budgeting, capital structure, long-term financing and financial planning. The ethical, social and environmental dimensions of finance are introduced through the discussion of both historical and contemporary issues such as the ethical concerns with environmental and social externalities that are not traditionally addressed in corporate financial reports. The course also explores the various ways to calculate net present value and the advantages, disadvantages and ethical considerations of each.

Course Name: Corporate Strategy
Instructor: Sharon Matusik

The Leeds MBA capstone course is designed to integrate and build upon prior coursework in core functional areas. It is about “doing the right things” rather than just “doing things right”, to quote corporate consultant and author Peter Drucker. The course focuses on analyzing the competitive environment and how to identify and create a competitive advantage within a company. In the face of an increasingly global economy, the course also includes focused readings, case studies and discussions on international strategy and the increasing emphasis on sustainability. Specifically, what does a firm’s approach to sustainability mean to both its positioning and its sustainable competitive advantage on the domestic and global scale? How do the incorporation of values-based or potentially disruptive products or services affect a company’s market entry strategy?

The course also considers the broadening pool of stakeholders influence company decisions – shareholders, communities, employees and environmental groups. Specific cases related to ethical, social and environmental issues include GE’s Evo Project and Starbucks’ collaboration with Conservation International.

Course Name: Decision Modeling & Applications
Instructor: Thomas Vossen

This course is designed as an introduction to Decision Science, which considers the application of mathematical modeling and analysis to managerial problems. Applications of Decision Science, which is also known as Management Science or Operations Research, have proven to be extremely useful in a variety of business disciplines, from operations and marketing to accounting and finance. Increasingly, these decisions include the analysis of environmental and social issues related to the firm’s operations. The course culminates in a semester-long project wherein teams work with a local company or start-up venture to address a key operational decision facing the firm. Typically, well over half of the project groups choose to work with local, environmentally focused (e.g., renewable energy or LOHAS) companies.

Similarly, reading assignments explore issues ranging from inner-city needle exchange programs to resolving debt entanglements after a stock market crash. One such assignment looks at the Al Manakh Stock Market and analyzes how to ensure transparency in the process of settling debt and credit balances in a complex system. Other lecture topics included reverse supply chains (addressing the impact of returns management and its effect on the consumer) and "green" operations management research.

Course Name: Derivative Securities
Instructor: Natalie Moyen

The objective of the course is to introduce students to the critical concepts surrounding futures and options markets. More specifically, students acquire the analytical tools necessary to understand derivative markets, gain knowledge of its institutions, and sharpen their financial problem solving skills. Course topics cover the characteristics, valuation, and trading strategies associated with derivatives, as well as their use in risk management.

Developing a thorough understanding of derivative securities—options, futures, forwards, and swaps—requires a student’s knowledge to encompass all aspects of finance. As such, this can often lead to difficult ethical and social questions. For example, the class discusses the moral and social implications resulting from moral hazard problems, such as when a treasurer with a mandate to hedge instead decides to speculate, possibly leading to bankruptcy for the firm and subsequent problems for shareholders, employees and suppliers.

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Type of Offering

Leeds Community Outreach
Type: Community Service

Service work at:

'• Boulder County Parks and Open Space-Forest Restoration at Walker Ranch.

• City of Boulder Parks and Recreation-Removal of invasive Tamarisk along shores of Boulder Reservoir.

• Eco-Cycle-Help with Eco-Cycle’s ongoing recycling projects and services.

• Growing Gardens-Work on several ongoing projects related to organic gardening.

• Emergency Family Assistance Association (EFFA)-Food collection effort.

• Community Food Share- Work on ongoing projects at Boulder County largest food bank.

Environmental Speaker Series

• Matthew Banks, Senior Program Officer, WWF, The Business Responses to Climate Change (3/1/11)

• Jim White, Director INSTAAR, The Science and Social Impacts of Global Climate Change (3/1/11)

• John Heckman, Director, Five Winds International, ABCs of Life Cycle Analysis (2/22/11)

• Frank Prager, Vice President Environmental Affairs, Xcel Energy (2/7/11)

Real Estate Speaker Series

• Peter Pollock, Ronald Smith Fellow, Lincoln Land Institite, Land Use Planning (1/24/11)

• Marcel Arsenault, Chairman and CEO, Colorado and Santa Fe Real Estate, Real Estate Investments (3/16/10)

• David Driskell, Executive Director, Community Planning and Sustainability/City of Boulder, The Role of Government in the Real Estate Market (2/2/10)

• Chris Parr, Housing Authority of the City and County of Denver's Development Department (1/19/11)

• Tom Gougeon, Chief Development Officer, Continuum Partners (2/7/11)

• Norbert Klebl, President, GEOS Neighborhood (2/14/11)

• Aaron Miripol, Urban Land Conservancy (2/28/11)

• Sally Collins, Ecosystem Services (4/4/11)

• Paul Lander, Principal, Dakota Ridge Partnership (4/11/11)

Hunter Lovins - Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution
Date: November, 2009

Part of speaker series focused on business and sustainability. Co-author of "Natural Capitalism" and Founder/CEO of NatCap Solutions, Hunter Lovins discussed how businesses are profiting and gaining competitive advantage by "doing more, better, with less, for longer."

Ethics Speaker Series

• Jeff Peck, Principal, Promacher Consulting, Ethical Aspects of Derivatives Markets; Financial Crisis (2/7/11)

• Rob Toomey, Vice President, Director of Business Development, Speed Reading People & Type-Coach, LLC, • Personality Type and Temperament, Organizational Behavior, and Ethics (2/2/11)

• Jenna Buffalowe, Senior Consultant, Aialent US, Ethics, Personal Values in Business; Conscious Business (1/12/11)

• Corey Ciocchetti, Professor of Law, University of Denver, Ethics: Personal Purpose in Business, Practical Moral Philosophy (1/24/11)

• Heidi Ganahl, CEO, Camp Bow Wow, Inc., Applying Consumer Behavior to Marketing Strategy (4/27/10)

• Keith Tobin, Colonel, US Air Force, Eecutive Leadership in the Military (4/21/10)

• Jim Nelson, Counsel, Lindquist and Vennom, Pricing Law and Ethics (9/28/09)

Leeds Net Impact Case Competition
Type: Competition

Since 2002, Leeds has hosted the national Net Impact Case Competition, bringing together MBAs from programs around the world to work in teams to address issues of sustainability in a business context. The competition is sponsored by a different corporation each year, and cases are built around the unique sustainability issues these companies have. For the past four years, in ascending order, the sponsors have been: Shell Wind, Sun Microsystems, Vail Resorts, and Ball Corporation. Enrollment from MBA programs has been steadily increasing: over the last four years it was 45, 54, 62 and now 80 teams competing for compelling solutions for these organizations. Professional and academic judges participate each year. This competition highlights the importance of sustainability in the business world, bringing a dozen teams to Boulder, Colorado each February.

Business and Society Speaker Series

• Steven Olson, Asst Special Agent in Charge of National Security, FBI; Terrorism (4/13/11)

• Kendall Krause, MD MPH, Director for Preventative Health, Kaiser Permanente; Disease (3/16/11)

• Neil Bellefeuille, CEO, Paradigm Project (3/2/11)

• Luella Chavez D'Angelo, President, Western Union Foundation, (3/2/11)

• Don Shaffer, President and CEO, Namaste Solar (3/2/11)

• Will Toor, Boulder County Commissioner, Boulder County, Regulation (2/8/11)

• Albert Bartlett, Professor Emeritus Physics, Population (2/2/11)

• Chris Parr, Sustainability - Denver Housing Authority, (1/26/11)

• Tim Shanahan, Managing Partner, Sterling-Rice Group, Marketing research that Drives Insight (11/3/09)

• Sara Brito, Group Director, Cultural and Business Insights, Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, Using Marketing to Move Culture, (10/20/09)

• Dan Sagar, Civil Search International (10/15/09)

• Bernard Amadei, Engineers Without Borders, (Fall 2010)

• Karen Larson, Friendship Bridge (Fall 2010)

• Casey Verbeck, Touchpoint Trust Group, (Fall 2010)

• Mark Retzloff, Chairman of the Board, Aurora Organic Dairy Corporation (10/7/10)

Cleantech Venture Challenge
Type: Competition
Date: March, 2010

2010 marked the fifth year of Leeds’ Cleantech Venture Challenge. What began as a classroom event grew to become an internationally recognized business plan competition, with student teams unveiling more innovative and competitive business plans to capitalize on emerging market conditions and provide financial reward while enhancing ecological and social sustainability. Student teams submit business plans that: a) Demonstrate venture-grade, for-profit business models, practices, and/or technologies with high growth potential; and b) Provide innovative solutions, services or products that reduce environmental impacts or improve ecological sustainability. In 2011, the CVC will be combined with the campus-wide CU New Venture Challenge.

ULI Gerald D. Hines Urban Design Competition
Type: Competition

The ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition is a graduate-level annual competition that is intended to provide an interdisciplinary learning experience for real estate and design students in the United States and Canada. Self-formed student teams are asked to provide an urban design and a financially feasible strategy for a large-scale real life site that ULI has identified somewhere in the United States. Through the formation of multidisciplinary teams, the program encourages cooperation and teamwork among future real estate professionals and the many allied professions, such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, historic preservation, engineering, real estate development, finance, psychology, law, and others. Historically, sustainability issues have been an integral part of this completion.

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Speaker Series

• Blake Jones, President and CEO, Namaste Solar (3/2/11)

• Eric Blank, Community Energy (10/21/10)

• David Johnston, President, Greenbuilding.com (11/11/10)

• Michael Woodhouse, PV Technologies and Economics Analyst, NREL (12/2/10)

• Chris Klinga, Product Designer, Lumos Solar (12/2/10)

• Others...

Sustainable Opportunities Summit
Date: March, 2010

Sustainable Opportunities Summit is co-sponsored by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and trade association CORE (Committed Organizations for a Responsible Economy). Innovators in large and small companies have discovered that the global movement in sustainability opens up ways to make money and boost shareholder value. New products, new services, and new ways of doing business all represent opportunities for savvy companies. Bigger and better than ever, the 2010 Sustainable Opportunities Summit was held March 2 - 4, 2010 in the Colorado Convention Center, downtown Denver. Business, political, and academic experts from around the world talked about the global sustainability challenge and how smart companies are finding solutions and creating new financial and economic opportunity.

Across the globe, countries and communities are struggling with an increasing array of economic, environmental and social challenges. A growing population with increasing economic aspirations is placing unprecedented demands on the global economy to deliver what society needs and to deliver it without the kinds of environmental degradation and social inequities we continue to see in many parts of the world. In short, we need to quickly create a more sustainable global economy.

The 5th Annual Sustainable Opportunities Summit showcased the development of Denver, Colorado and the Rocky Mt. West as an emerging center of a new, more sustainable economy. It brought together dozens of business, political and academic experts from around the world who are leaders in both the thinking and practices that will drive the creation of a new global economic model from Denver to Dubai to Delhi.

Sustainability Speaker Series

• Jane Miller, CEO, Charter Baking Company, Entrepreneurship (2/24/11)

• Tom Gougeon, Denver Planning (Sustainability) Gates Family Foundation (2/2/11)

• Ryan Ferrero CEO and Founder, Green Garage, Sustainable Startups (10/25/10)

• Auden Schendler, Executive Director of Sustainability, Aspen Skiing Company, Change (9/9/10)

• John Ball, CEO, The Resort at Pikes Peak (12/1/09)

• Alex Bogusky, Partner, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Sustainability, Marketing, and Consumer Empowerment (11/19/10)

• Marley Hodgson, Founder and CEO, Mad Greens, Success Story (11/18/09)

• Paul Helgeson, Sustainability Coordinator, Gold 'n Plump Poultry, From Lean Production to Sustainability Action (11/17/09)

• Steve Savage, CEO, EcoProducts, Sustainable Venturing--Sustainable Consumer Products (11/10/10)

• Chris Wand, Principal, Mobius Venture Capital, Financing, 11/9/09)

• Catherine Greener, Founding Partner, Clear Green Solutions, Case Studies and Cautionary Tales in Green Marketing (10/22/10)

• Heather Dupre, President, and Kristin Apple, Founding Partner, Egg Strategy, Ideation (9/30/09)

• Anita Burke, Former Senior Advisor for Sustainability and Climate Change, Royal Dutch Shell, Competitive Advantage via Sustainable Operations Strategy (9/24/09)

• Jason Denner, Founding Principal, Point 380, LLC, Systems Thinking in Consulting (9/17/09)

• Kevin Vranes, Principal, Point 380, LLC, Local Sustainablity Policy: Impact on Business Operations, (9/10/09)

Entrepreneurial Solutions, LLC (ES)

Founded in 1998, Entrepreneurial Solutions, LLC (ES) is a unique consulting firm operated by a team of MBA students from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder. ES serves the Colorado business community by applying their skills to a broad range of projects including business and strategic plan development, business performance improvement, market research, and competitive analysis. Many of ES' consulting projects engage the highly entrepreneurial Boulder business community, addressing strategic issues involving ethical, environmental, health and social considerations.

Career Connections office

The Career Connections office in the Leeds School of Business helps students find internship and full-time positions with companies committed to social, ethical, and environmental responsibility and entrepreneurial firms in clean tech, green building, and natural products. Students tap into the wealth of talent and experience in one of the leading entrepreneurial cities in America. In collaboration with the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship the Career Connections office helps create meaningful interactions for the students in these industry sectors.

Non-Profit Consulting Opportunities

Leeds Social Impact Consultants (LSIC) provide consulting services to Boulder-area non-profits by recruiting CU graduate students with diverse skills and backgrounds. We believe that both the rigorous business training we are engaged in and our previous professional experience are of value in building stronger and more successful social enterprises. We see this as a great way to gain real-world experience, a way to apply the concepts we’ve learned in school to projects that will have a real impact, while we’re still in school. With this in mind, the primary purpose of this program is to ease the resource constraints many non-profits face.

http://leeds.colorado.edu/club/lsic

MBA/JD
MBA/MA Anthropology
MBA/MS in Environmental Studies
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Initiative (RASEI)
Business School Housing? No
Number of Faculty: 55
Contact Name: Michael Knotek
Contact Email: knotek@colorado.edu

"CU's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) a joint institute with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). RASEI is an international force in solving the energy challenge through research, education and technology commercialization. Based on extensive faculty input, CU determined that a successful initiative must be highly interdisciplinary, integrating the University's extensive research in renewable and sustainable energy with its strengths in climate and environmental science, behavioral studies, policy analysis, and entrepreneurship. RASEI reflects this integration with a three-pronged approach that emphasized discovery, transformation, and entrepreneurship.

A critical aspect of the Energy Initiative is commercialization: moving new technologies into clean and renewable energy markets as rapidly as possible. The EI’s business arm, TEAM, Transforming Energy and Markets, was created to facilitate business outreach and research commercialization. TEAM works to promote business alliances, identify and encourage new, commercial, energy technology applications, and find opportunities for additional investment in research and research products. TEAM is coordinated by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship in CU’s Leeds School of Business."

Center for Research on Consumers' Financial Decision Making
Business School Housing? Yes
Number of Faculty: 2
Contact Name: John Lynch
Contact Email: john.g.lynch@colorado.edu

Consumer welfare is strongly affected by household financial decisions large and small: choosing mortgages; saving to fund college education or retirement; using credit cards to fund current consumption; choosing how to “decumulate” savings in retirement;

Pages

Are human resource practices linked to employee misconduct?: A rational choice perspective.
Author(s): Balkin, David B.

This paper explains how well intended HR practices associated with performance appraisal and compensation can be linked to employee misconduct. Based on a rational choice perspective to ethical behavior, different types of HR configurations are likely to either increase the perceived costs or benefits of employee misconduct. This paper links specific HR configurations with both perceived costs and benefits of employee misconduct. Finally, this paper concludes with recommendations that are designed to promote both effective job performance and minimize problems of employee misconduct.

Journal Title: Human Resource Management Review Volume: 20 Edition: 4 Page Numbers: 317-326
Behavioral changes following the collaborative development of an accounting information system.
Author(s): Soderstrom, Naomi

This research examines physician response to implementation of an activity-based costing (ABC) system developed and designed with physician input. We analyze changes in resource utilization for treatment of cataract patients and find changes in practice patterns, where physicians redeployed resources toward more severely ill patients and decreased average length of stay. We also find preliminary evidence of improvement in financial performance. We contribute to research investigating the influence of user participation on accounting system success, ABC system success, and hospital accounting information systems.

Journal Title: Accounting Organizations and Society Volume: 35 Edition: 2 Page Numbers: 222-237
Channel Negotiations with Information Asymmetries: Contingent Influences of Communication and Trustworthiness Reputations.
Author(s): Chakravarti, Dipankar

This article reports three experiments that examine how communication types (informational, relational, and coercive messages) and mutual trustworthiness reputations influence sequential bargaining between an uncertain manufacturer and an informed distributor in a marketing channel. In Experiment 1, bargainers use informational and relational messages to establish a positive social tenor in the interaction. Compared with when bargainers communicate only through offers and counteroffers, explicit communication produces quicker and more efficient agreements. The effects are stronger when manufacturer uncertainty is relatively high. In Experiment 2, mutual reputations of high (versus low) trustworthiness also produce quicker and more efficient agreements. In both studies, the larger extracted surplus increases manufacturer profits without affecting distributor profits. However, contrary to economic intuition, the gains from communication accrue asymmetrically to the uninformed manufacturer. Experiment 3 shows the effects of communication type are contingent on the prevailing level (high or low) of trustworthiness reputations in the dyad. Compared with no communication, relational messages elicit the most positive (negative) outcomes when trustworthiness reputations are high (low). Informational messages have a smaller but positive impact on bargaining outcomes in both trustworthiness conditions and appear to build trust.

Journal Title: Journal of Marketing Research (American Marketing Association) Volume: 46 Edition: 4 Page Numbers: 557-572
Chief Executive Officer Equity Incentives and Accounting Irregularities.
Author(s): Jagolinzer, Alan D.

This study examines whether Chief Executive Officer (CEO) equity-based holdings and compensation provide incentives to manipulate accounting reports (resulting in accounting fraud and related ethics violations). While several prior studies have examined this important question, the empirical evidence is mixed and the existence of a link between CEO equity incentives and accounting irregularities remains an open question. Because inferences from prior studies may be confounded by assumptions inherent in research design choices, we use propensity-score matching and assess hidden (omitted variable) bias within a broader sample. In contrast to most prior research, we do not find evidence of a positive association between CEO equity incentives and accounting irregularities after matching CEOs on the observable characteristics of their contracting environments. Instead, we find some evidence that accounting irregularities occur less frequently at firms where CEOs have relatively higher levels of equity incentives.

Journal Title: Journal of Accounting Research Volume: 48 Edition: 2 Page Numbers: 225-271
Crafting sustainable work: development of personal resources.
Author(s): Balkin, David B.

The aim of this paper is to conceptualize employees' sustainable work abilities, or their long-term adaptive and proactive abilities to work, farewell at work, and contribute through working. Sustainable work is defined as to promote the development in personal resources leading to sustainable work ability. Design/methodology/approach - The conceptual paper distinguishes vital personal resources underlying an employee's sustainable work ability and categorizes these resources with the help of integral theory. Collaborative work crafting was outlined as a tool to promote the development of personal resources and sustainable work ability. Findings - Sustainable work ability depends on personal resources relating to our human nature as both individual and communal beings with both interior and exterior worlds. Work crafting may create sustainable work in which existing personal resources are benefited from, developed further through learning, or translated into novel resources. Practical implications - When formal job descriptions and preplanned job design do not work in post-industrial work, traditional job design can be replaced by collaborative work crafting, which allows development in both work and employees. Originality/value - The paper synthesizes different types of personal resources needed for sustainable working and outlines their development processes, rather than adds one more theory to explain some specific aspect of well-being, development, and functioning. The paper offers one of the first definitions of sustainable work. Keywords Employee development, Self development, Sustainability, Job design, Workability Paper type Conceptual paper.

Journal Title: Journal of Organizational Change Management Volume: 23 Edition: 5 Page Numbers: 616-632
Do Entrenched Managers Pay Their Workers More?
Author(s): Nilsson, Mattias

Analyzing a panel that matches public firms with worker-level data, we find that managerial entrenchment affects workers' pay. CEOs with more control pay their workers more, but financial incentives through cash flow rights ownership mitigate such behavior. Entrenched CEOs pay more to employees closer to them in the corporate hierarchy, geographically closer to the headquarters, and associated with conflict-inclined unions. The evidence is consistent with entrenched CEOs paying more to enjoy private benefits such as lower effort wage bargaining and improved social relations with employees. Our results show that managerial ownership and corporate governance can play an important role for employee compensation.

Journal Title: Journal of Finance Volume: 64 Edition: 1 Page Numbers: 309-339
Escaping the green prison: Entrepreneurship and the creation of opportunities for sustainable development.
Author(s): Payne, David S.

While entrepreneurial activity has been an important force for social and ecological sustainability; its efficacy is dependent upon the nature of market incentives. This limitation is sometimes explained by the metaphor of the prisoner''s dilemma, which we term the green prison. In this prison, entrepreneurs are compelled to environmentally degrading behavior due to the divergence between individual rewards and collective goals for sustainable development. Entrepreneurs, however, can escape from the green prison by altering or creating the institutions‚ norms, property rights, and legislation‚ that establish the incentives of competitive games. We provide a variety of evidence of such entrepreneurial action and discuss its implications for theory and practice.

Journal Title: Journal of Business Venturing Volume: 25 Edition: 5 Page Numbers: 464-480
If someone is watching, I'll do what I'm asked: mandatoriness, control, and information security
Author(s): Boss, R. Wayne

The article focuses on the importance of information systems (IS) security in organizations. It states that employing information security policies and procedures in organizations is a must to eliminate data theft and stealing of other confidential information. It mentions that the threat for IS is continuing to grow despite the attention of the media and trade journals in the past 10 years. It cites that most organizations address the threat by merely focusing on the computer components such as the hardware and software. It notes that to solve such threat the organizations should impose design effective IS policies and that employee cooperation and security incentives are critical to protect both individuals and the organization.

Journal Title: European Journal of Information Systems Volume: 18 Edition: 2 Page Numbers: 151-164
Pragmatic Sustainability: Translating Environmental Ethics into Competitive Advantage.
Author(s): York, Jeffrey

In this article, I propose a business paradigm that allows and enables the integration of environmental ethics into business decisions while creating a competitive advantage through the use of an ethical framework based on classical American pragmatism. Environmental ethics could be useful as an alternative paradigm for business ethics by offering new perspectives and methodologies to grant consideration of the natural environment. An approach based on classical American pragmatism provides a superior framework for businesses by focusing on experimentation and innovation, driving a long-term focus, and providing actionable clarity. Under a pragmatic approach to ethics, the choice for sustainability becomes self-evident for business performance and moral reasons.

Journal Title: Journal of Business Ethics Volume: 85 Edition: Page Numbers: 97-109
Role of Domain-Specific Facets of Perceived Organizational Support During Expatriation and Implications for Performance.
Author(s): Yao, Xin

In this study, we integrated social exchange theory with a spillover perspective to examine the relationships between two facets of perceived organizational support (POS) among expatriated managers (at Time 1), their work and general adjustment (at Time 2), affective commitment (at Time 2), and job performance (at Time 3). A longitudinal survey sampled 165 expatriate managers in China across three time periods. POS in the current assignment and in off-the-job life were found to interact with each other to predict work and general adjustment. Work and general adjustment were related to higher affective commitment by the expatriate employees, which, in turn, led to better job performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Journal Title: Organization Science Volume: 20 Edition: 3 Page Numbers: 621-634
Store Manager Performance and Satisfaction: Effects on Store Employee Performance and Satisfaction, Store Customer Satisfaction, and Store Customer Spending Growth.
Author(s): Lichtenstein, Donald R.

Based on emotional contagion theory and the value-profit chain literatures, the present study posits a number of hypotheses that show how managers in the small store, small number of employees retail context may affect store employees, customers, and potentially store performance. With data from 306 store managers, 1.615 store customer-contact employees, and 57,656 customers of a single retail chain, the authors examined relationships among store manager job satisfaction and job performance, store customer-contact employee job satisfaction and job performance, customer satisfaction with the retailer. and a customer-spending-based store performance metric (customer spending growth over a 2-year period). Via path analysis, several hypothesized direct and interaction relations among these constructs are supported. The results suggest implications for academic researchers and retail managers.

Journal Title: Journal of Applied Psychology Volume: 95 Edition: 3 Page Numbers: 530-545
The entrepreneur‚ environment nexus: Uncertainty, innovation, and allocation.
Author(s): York, Jeffrey G.

We build upon a recent stream of research that has proposed entrepreneurship as a solution to, rather than a cause of, environmental degradation. Our proposition is that under certain conditions entrepreneurs are likely to supplement, or surpass, the efforts of governments, NGOs and existing firms to achieve environmental sustainability. Entrepreneurs can contribute to solving environmental problems through helping extant institutions in achieving their goals and by creating new, more environmentally sustainable products, services and institutions. Our model illustrates how entrepreneurs 1) address environmental uncertainty, 2) provide innovation and 3) engage in resource allocation to address environmental degradation.

Journal Title: Journal of Business Venturing Volume: 25 Edition: 5 Page Numbers: 449-463
The impact of social norms on entrepreneurial action: Evidence from the environmental entrepreneurship context.
Author(s): York, Jeffrey G.

Using insights from institutional theory, sociology, and entrepreneurship we develop and test a model of the relationship between centralized and decentralized institutions on entrepreneurial activity. We suggest that both decentralized institutions that are socially determined as well as centralized institutions that are designed by governmental authorities are important in promoting firm foundings in the environmental context. In a sample of the U.S. solar energy sector we find that state-sponsored incentives, environmental consumption norms, and norms of family interdependence are related to new firm entry in this sector. Our findings also suggest that the efficacy of state-level policies in the sponsoring of entrepreneurial growth is dependent upon the social norms that prevail in the entrepreneur''s environment. We expand entrepreneurship theory and the study of institutions and the natural environment by demonstrating the integral role that social norms play in influencing the creation of new firms and by illustrating the potential effect social norms have on the effect of policy that seeks to encourage environmentally responsible economic activity.

Journal Title: Journal of Business Venturing Volume: 25 Edition: 5 Page Numbers: 493-509
Threat or coping appraisal: determinants of SMB executives' decision to adopt anti-maiware software.
Author(s): Larsen, Kai R.

The article presents a study on small- and medium-sized business (SMB) executives' organizational adoption of anti-malware software in the U.S. It mentions that a questionnaire-based field survey was carried on with 239 SMB executives in the U.S. to validate measurement instruments for the proposed model while partial least squares (PLS) method was used in the analysis of data gathered from the questionnaire method. Protection Motivation Theory was applied by the researchers and found out that threat and coping appraisal forecast the executives' intention to adopt anti-malware softwares. Anti-malware adoption decision is also influenced by social factors and budgetary issues in an organization. It adds that vendor support facilitates adoption in information technology-intensive (IT) firms.

Journal Title: European Journal of Information Systems Volume: 18 Edition: 2 Page Numbers: 177-187
Understanding Tokenism: Antecedents and Consequences of a Psychological Climate of Gender Inequity.
Author(s): Matusik, Sharon F.

Extending tokenism theory, the authors investigate psychological climate of gender inequity as a way to understand how token women experience their work environments. In the first study, responses from a sample of 155 women across varied occupations confirm the expectation that token women tend to perceive their organizational climates to be inequitable for women. The results of a second survey of 196 female managers suggest that the subjective processes of tokenism give rise to inequitable climate perceptions. Finally, the responses of 312 women in the construction industry indicate that the climate of gender inequity is related to job attitudes and behaviors.

Journal Title: Journal of Management Volume: 36 Edition: 2 Page Numbers: 482-510
Unintended Consequences of Cooperation Inducing and Maintaining Mechanisms in Public Goods Dilemmas: Sanctions and Moral Appeals.
Author(s): Xin, Yao

Research suggests that contribution to public goods (i.e. cooperation) will increase when groups use sanctions. We argue that when groups use rewards and punishments to induce members to cooperate in a social dilemma, individuals' natural propensity to cooperate may be reduced. Results from two laboratory experiments provide consistent support for our hypothesis. Specifically, we found that cooperation (in groups that adopted sanctioning systems, including both reward and punishment) decreased significantly following the removal of sanctioning systems. We also found that a moral appeal to cooperate was as effective as sanctions in inducing cooperation. Moreover, cooperation induced through appeals was more likely to sustain than that induced through sanctions. We found that people's trust in others' cooperation mediated the relationship between the use of sanctions and appeals and the level of cooperation after these inducing practices were removed. Implications of these results are discussed in the group and organizational context.

Journal Title: Group Processes & Intergroup Relations Volume: 12 Edition: 2 Page Numbers: 241-255