This Month from Knowledge@Wharton

Business Wire, Sept 1, 2006

PHILADELPHIA -- Knowledge@Wharton:

Stories this month include "Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the
Desk: The Effect of Mood on Work Performance" and "ICICI's K.V. Kamath
Shapes a Business Plan in Rural India's Uncertain Financial Terrain"

    Plus: Knowledge@Wharton podcasts--Prof. Jeremy Siegel on "the
Fed's Decision to Pause Interest Rate Hikes"

This past month some of the timely stories from Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu), the Wharton School's online research and business analysis journal, include:

Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Desk: The Effect of Mood on Work Performance

While a lot of research has been done in the past two decades on work-family conflicts, few studies have looked closely at how mood affects workers' performance. Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard and co-author Steffanie Wilk wanted to find out which mood-altering events have the biggest effect, if any -- those that influence one's outlook at the start of the day, or those that nudge one's mood up or down as the workday advances. The results of Rothbard and Wilk's study are reported in their paper, "Walking in the Door: Sources and Consequences of Employee Mood on Work Performance." Among their key findings: The mood you bring with you to work has a stronger effect on the day's mood -- and on work performance -- than mood changes caused by events in the workplace. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1531.cfm

ICICI's K.V. Kamath Shapes a Business Plan in Rural India's Uncertain Financial Terrain

K. V. Kamath, CEO of India's second largest banking and financial services conglomerate, ICICI, is a man in a hurry. When he occupied the driver's seat at ICICI more than a decade ago, it was a financial institution hamstrung by political constraints. As a key member of the top team at ICICI that led the organization into new businesses such as insurance and banking, Kamath used technology effectively to pry open market expansion. Today, his top challenge is to retain the talent ICICI trains, which is keenly sought by other financial services players. In an interview with Michael Useem, Wharton professor of management and director of the school's Center for Leadership & Change Management, Kamath discusses ICICI's foray into rural banking and other challenges. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1529.cfm

From Confrontation to Experimentation: The Music Industry Is Playing a New Tune

EMI Music backs a label that turns the traditional economics of the recording industry on its head. Vivendi's Universal Music Group creates multiple pricing schemes for CDs. Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Yahoo decide to sell a single without digital rights restrictions. These moves typify a flurry of experimentation by major record labels in recent weeks, and stand in stark contrast to earlier behavior by an industry that six years ago was best known for launching anti-piracy lawsuits against Napster -- a network that originally swapped music files for free -- and individual users. Today, according to experts at Wharton, the recording industry is actively trying to create new business models as it navigates the emerging Internet-enabled landscape. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1530.cfm

Will the New Nike iPod Sport Kit Hit the Ground Running, or Hit the Wall?

Music, physical movement, technology and being cool have long gone hand in hand. Now, two iconic brands, Apple Computer and Nike, are collaborating on a new system of gizmos that take exercising and digital-music players to a new level. The Nike iPod Sport Kit allows runners and walkers to listen to songs and to record, store and share information (such as speed, distance covered and calories burned) with others about their exercise sessions. The system also "talks" to runners in real time, providing information as they jog along. Members of Wharton's marketing department say it's a winning combination that will bolster each company's image and open the door to other co-branding opportunities. But they disagree as to whether the joint effort will actually sell more iPods and Nike shoes. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1527.cfm

Promises, Lies and Apologies: Is It Possible to Restore Trust?

In the workplace, trust is essential to day-to-day business, whether it's one colleague trusting that another will do her share of a project, an employee trusting that his boss will reward him for working long hours to meet a deadline, or a customer trusting that a company will fill an order correctly and deliver it on time. The intertwining issues of trust, deception, apologies and promises are explored in a new research paper titled, "Promises and Lies: Restoring Violated Trust," by three Wharton professors who came up with a unique laboratory experiment to see what happens when trust breaks down. "While deception may be tempting because it can be used to increase short-term profits for the deceiver," the researchers note, "we find that the long-term costs of deception are very high." http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1532.cfm