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Tomorrow is the day. After a presidential campaign like no other in a year like no other, America will either elect a new president or give U.S. President Donald Trump four more years in the White House. What will happen in possible swing states like Florida, North Carolina, Ohio or Pennsylvania? Will Arizona or Georgia impact the end result? Like all U.S. presidential elections, the balance of the Electoral College rests on just a few states. There are a few key points to cover if you are a journalist: • What were the top issues for Florida voters? • Are mail-in ballots going to be an issue? • It was all eyes on the Sunshine State in 2000 when it took weeks to know the results – what’s changed since then? • And did any candidate do or say anything in particular to sway or disappoint the Florida electorate? • What will be the deciding factor in other swing states? • Did the debates persuade undecided voters? It is going to be a busy day, and potentially a long week, as America counts its votes. If you are covering the election, then let our experts help. Kevin Wagner, Ph.D., is Florida Atlantic University’s renowned political science expert. He is here to answer all your questions and is available for interviews. Simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview today.
Is a reckoning coming to Washington's once most invincible politicians?
With all eyes on next Tuesday, America could be seeing a serious change in the make-up of the Senate and House of Representatives. With a divided country and an electorate on edge and looking for change, the usual gift of incumbency and re-election is now a far from guaranteed blessing for those Washington veterans for whom re-election is usually a given. According to NBC, there are more than a handful of high-profile and once thought to be invincible politicians on the ropes. But can popular politicians sustain the thirst for change when voters cast their ballots? Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham and even Mitch McConnell may be looking for work in 2021. It’s a fascinating angle to what has been a truly unique time in American politics. And if you are a journalist covering the election and the balance of power in Congress, then let our experts help. Dr. Stephen Farnsworth is a sought-after political commentator on subjects ranging from presidential politics to the local Virginia congressional races. He has been widely featured in national media, including The Washington Post, Reuters, The Chicago Tribune and MSNBC. Dr. Rosalyn Cooperman, associate professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington and member of Gender Watch 2018, is an expert on women in politics. Both experts are available to speak to media – simply click on either icon to arrange an interview.
MEDIA RELEASE: Stay Alert Stay Safe: Daylight saving time ends soon
CAA South Central Ontario ( CAA SCO) is reminding all motorists and pedestrians to stay alert as daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, November 1. The return to standard time means fewer daylight hours and reduced visibility for all road users. “We know that typically, in November, there is a spike in collisions between motorists and pedestrians. Road safety and pedestrian safety are a shared responsibility. Taking precautions and being aware of other road users helps us all arrive at our destinations safely,” says Raymond Chan, manager of government relations, CAA SCO. While pedestrian incidents increase every year at this time, the latest research indicates the potential for harm is even higher today due to COVID-19. Earlier this year, CAA SCO conducted a study of 1500 Ontario licenced drivers that found, because of COVID-19, people are most comfortable driving their vehicles, walking or cycling to get around over the coming months. The study also found that: Respondents were more likely walking one to three times a week before the pandemic but are more likely to walk four to seven times per week during the pandemic. These numbers are in line with a CAA National survey that also found 30 per cent of cyclists increased their activity. “Our study also showed that not yielding to cyclists/pedestrians and drivers running stop signs or red lights were the most reckless driving behaviours seen within city limits during the pandemic," says Chan. "We are facing additional challenges this year. Physical distancing means pedestrians may step out onto the road to keep their distance from others or may take longer to cross at intersections. It is important now more than ever to remind road users to follow the rules of the road and be patient." What motorists can do to stay safe: Always look for pedestrians crossing the road. Be alert and attentive while driving and yield to pedestrians who are stepping on to the road to maintain physical distancing. Mind your blind spots. Be aware of blind spots when making turns at intersections. Stay focused and vigilant behind the wheel. Avoid distractions inside and outside of your vehicle. Slow down in school zones. Reduce your speed and obey speed limits in school zones and residential neighbourhoods. Prepare for the unexpected. Residential streets and school zones have different types of obstacles, such as children playing outdoors, riding bikes, skateboarding, etc. Be cautious and considerate. Be alert around stopped transit vehicles and be courteous to pedestrians with different mobility needs that may require more time. Use your lights. Motorists should use their full lighting system when it gets dark and in low visibility situations. What pedestrians can do to stay safe: Be careful when physical distancing on the sidewalk. Try to avoid stepping out onto road and if you end up stepping on the road, ensure there are no vehicles in the lane. Always be aware of your surroundings. Avoid distractions and be alert while crossing the street and stepping onto the road. Follow the flow. Follow signals and cross at designated locations or crosswalks. Stop, look, and listen. Ensure all traffic has come to a complete stop before crossing the road. Keep an eye out. Make eye contact with motorists—never assume that drivers can see you or know your intentions. Be visible. Pedestrians should wear bright or reflective clothing or accessories at night to help with visibility. Additionally, motorists should take extra caution on Halloween as some regions could have trick or treaters and they may have the added visual restrictions of wearing a mask or face shield. CAA SCO is offering free reflector tags at CAA Stores that can be attached to backpacks and jackets. Find your nearest CAA Store here and stop by to get up to four free tags per family.
Want to save on home loans? Just talk to your peers!
For most of us, finance is complex. Yet making financial decisions is part of day-to-day life. Take mortgages. Around 60 percent of U.S. households have a home mortgage, but how many actually understand its real value? Calculating things like interest rate trade-offs or closing costs is not easy, and research finds that a majority of families make financial mistakes because they fail to understand benefits or savings that might be open to them in refinancing. There are ways to overcome this kind of “information friction”—the obstacles to understanding that make it hard for people to process complex financial ideas and concepts. One of these is education. Ensuring that people have direct access to clear information can help inform household decisions. That seems pretty basic. Another, perhaps less understood, mechanism is the “peer effect”—the way we learn from and are influenced by what our peers or colleagues say or do. A new paper published in the Review of Financial Studies by Gonzalo Maturana, associate professor of finance, takes a fresh look at how the peer effect can help households make better decisions about their mortgages. And he finds that work colleagues and associates can actually have a far greater positive impact on our financial outcomes than we might expect. Together with Jordan Nickerson from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Maturana ran a large-scale study of a particular U.S. peer group: public school teachers employed by the state of Texas. Here’s what the study found: Where there was a lot of mortgage refinancing going on among teachers in a particular school, individuals were a stunning 20.7 percent more likely to refinance their own mortgage. In other words, they were far more disposed to investigate alternatives and take advantage of the better deals on offer. The peer effect was also a critical factor in their subsequent choice of mortgage lender. Maturana and Nickerson also found that the more savings a particular peer group was making in mortgage repayments, the more refinancing activity there was in that school or teacher network. It is clear. With financial decisions, the network effect can create a positive feedback loop, said Maturana. Household finance and mortgages are top of mind and play a part in most American families – and if you are a journalist looking to cover this topic – then let our experts help. Gonzalo Maturana is an Associate Professor of Finance at the Goizueta Business School. He is an expert in the areas of corporate, household and real estate finance. Gonzalo is available to speak to media regarding this topic – simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview today.
Researchers urge: Learn from (someone else’s) experience
Measuring your performance as a business is critical. If you want to grow and be successful, you need to understand what you do well—and not so well. To paraphrase a couple of old adages, we all learn from our mistakes and our experience. But in today’s bumpy and fast-changing business landscape, measuring performance can be tough; tougher still if yours is a complex organization or industry. Whatever you’re looking at to gauge your firm’s performance—whether it’s customer satisfaction, say, or repeat purchases—your measures might well be less than perfect. And that’s because of noise—abstruse or unreliable data that makes it hard to unpack key metrics accurately and to learn from them. How successful a firm is in negotiating this performance measure noise depends on how that firm learns, said Kristy Towry, John and Lucy Cook Chair and professor of accounting at Goizueta Business School. She has led a study that looks at the way organizations and the people in them manage their learning. And she finds that we’re way more adept at cutting through the noise when we learn from each other, rather than basing our learning on our own firsthand experience. What the study found: What Towry and her colleagues found was that when there’s a lot of noise in the data we’re working with, our strategic learning is considerably improved when our learning is vicarious—that’s to say, when we learn from each other. This is down to how much of the big picture we see, said Towry. And experiential learning can make us myopic. “We know from psychology and from the results of this study that experiential learning—basing what we learn mainly off our own firsthand experience—can limit us. Experience tends to make us over-focus on what is happening in the here and now or what has just happened. We forget what happened before and don’t build that into our decision-making.” Vicarious learning, on the other hand, helps us to see the bigger picture. “When we’re learning from each other, it’s also experiential, but the learning is augmented by other people’s experience, meaning that we have a broadened perspective," said Towry. "We’re better able to see the big-picture patterns and trends.” When there’s a lot of noise and complexity to negotiate, vicarious learning helps us make better decisions. And this has huge implications for businesses operating in today’s environment. “Our world is not cut and dried at the best of times. Right now we are dealing with the COVID-19 crisis and the fallout on world economies and trade. The business context for most firms operating in this context is very far from stable, so we can assume there’s a lot of complexity and noise affecting our performance indicators. And with so much change afoot, the experiences we are all having in the workplace are what I would call fairly idiosyncratic,” said Towry. “Business leaders should be very aware of this.” To optimize strategic learning and thrive in complexity, firms need to find ways to allow vicarious learning to happen, she said. That means thinking about how to break down barriers to knowledge sharing, be they organizational silos or emerging challenges associated with things like remote working. Sharing information, insight, and understanding is essential. Kristy L. Towry is John and Lucy Cook Chair and Professor of Accounting at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. To learn more about this research or to talk with Kristy – simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.
Innovation: Should it always be a team sport?
Conventional wisdom has it that innovation is very much a team sport. To create a breakthrough innovation that is vastly more successful than its predecessors, you need to prioritize teams over the individual. That's not always the case, according to Tian Heong Chan, assistant professor of information systems & operations management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. It depends very much on the degree to which the invention can be broken down into discrete chunks of work. Chan and colleagues from INSEAD published a paper, “Revisiting the Role of Collaboration in Creating Breakthrough Inventions,” in the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management journal in 2020. In it, they look at more than one million U.S. patents for new products filed between 1985 and 2009. The majority of these patents were awarded for innovations in function—machines, processes or products that delivered some kind of utility. The others corresponded to design; in other words, the distinct visual form or aspect of a product, like Coca-Cola’s iconic curvy bottle or the Apple iPhone. Sifting these patents for breakthroughs (those ranked by citations as being in the top 5 percent of their product class), Chan and his colleagues were able to look at whether standout innovations were the product of teamwork or whether any of them had actually been developed by a lone innovator. And what they found sheds fascinating and useful new light on the dynamics undergirding the innovation process. As a rule, breakthrough functional products—those awarded patents for some kind of utility—do tend to be created by teams. But when it comes to inventions that are centered on breakthrough designs, it’s a whole different ball game. Here, the solo inventor is every bit as likely to create a breakthrough as an entire team. The study looks at a diverse cross-section of industries from computers to cars, Chan and his co-authors found that lone inventors do relatively better on these types of integral inventions. It’s a fascinating work of research – and if you are looking to know more, then let us help. Tian Heong Chan is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. He is available to speak to his research and this important topic – simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview today.
Businesses must have a strategy for a messy tomorrow
John Kim is a Senior Lecturer in Organization & Management at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. He is a management consultant with more than 20 years of experience working with executives to make difficult decisions and implement sustainable change. Recently, John published a piece that details a ‘Strategy for a messy tomorrow’ where he outlines how businesses must have a strategy development and implementation for an unpredictable business world. The piece is attached and a must read, especially in these turbulent and unpredictable economic times. In the article, he focuses on three key points: 1.Beware of False Choices “One thing we try to teach here at the business school is to be careful of false choices. Business is incredibly dynamic. Every industry is now a technology business, and the corporate playbook that evolved to protect profits is quite outdated.” Kim notes that Thomas Friedman poetically described this new normal in his 2005 book The World is Flat, and over the last 15 years, competition has only accelerated because of the explosion of two resources: cheap money and data. Kim notes that it’s a great environment to start or fund a business because interest rates have been low for the last 10+ years. There are dozens of new entrants in all industries, and all parts of the value chain, who are often well-funded, flexible, and are not weighed down by legacy business models and assets. The big winners are the customers who have increasing choice, lower prices, and great value capture. 2.The Challenging Environment From his corporate experience, Kim sees two significant challenges to strategy implementation. First, senior leaders turn over quickly. “It’s hard to have consistency of vision and leadership and implementation when there is such a movement in the C-suite with someone moving in and someone moving out every 5–6 months. So, it’s not a surprise that a lot of strategies either don’t follow through or there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and strategy gets a little bit muddled as a result.” Secondly, when the strategy does eventually make it to the ground-floor and needs to be executed, things have often moved on, and the market responses are rarely the ones you expect. Riffing on Peter Drucker’s famous quote on uncertainty, Kim explains to his students that, “Instead of trying to think of something brilliant to do tomorrow, why don’t you think of something very actionable today that prepares us for what we know will be a totally messy, crazy, unpredictable tomorrow.” 3.A Business Executive’s Response The business executive’s job is to not only set the direction, build a climate of trust, and create the energy for change—but also to be willing to test the assumptions and constraints around a given problem. Increasingly the answers will lie outside of a given industry, and thus require leaders to be broader in their horizon-scanning and more open to alternative paths forward. If you are interested in learning more about why business do indeed need a a strategy for a messy tomorrow – the let us help. John Kim is available to speak regarding this topic – simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview today.
Is this the biggest election since 1860? Let our expert explain why
The upcoming U.S. presidential election is happening in unprecedented times and during what could be the most divisive era in more than a century and a half. This week, one of the University of Connecticut’s historical experts, Manisha Sinha, was featured by CNN to explain her point that America is indeed facing its biggest election in 160 years. “The 2020 presidential election is certainly as consequential as that of 1860. It is, as Biden is fond of saying, a battle for the 'soul of America.' The fate of the American republic once again hangs in the balance. Like the slaveholders of the 1850s, Trump, his followers and enablers are in a position to pose an existential threat to American democracy. Like many slaveholders, Trump refuses to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. "If history appears first as tragedy, then as farce, the counterparts of southern secessionists and proslavery theorists today are QAnon conspiracy theorists, neo Confederates, and the right-wing Boogaloo boys. Much of the contemporary Republican Party that refuses to repudiate Trump is like those southern Whites who may not have had a direct stake in slavery but went with their states, who ultimately chose slavery before the republic. The choice -- as the Republicans of the Lincoln Project, who have broken with their party, put it -- is between America and Trump.” Dr. Sinha’s full op-ed is available on CNN.com and is a must-read for anyone looking to put this year’s election into historical context. And, if you are a journalist looking to cover this topic, let our experts help with your coverage. Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and the author of "The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition." She is available to speak with media regarding this topic – simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.
Playing dirty in 2020 – but does negative advertising actually work in elections?
2020 has been a historic year – on so many fronts. And as the summer of an election year approaches – soon we will be inundated with speeches, policies, promise and advertisements for what might be the most hotly contested and divisive election on record. Political advertising comes in many forms. Social media will be the new battle ground but hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent between now and November in traditional areas like television, radio and print. As we all know, no one ‘wants’ to go negative. In fact, most campaigns make (and soon break) their first promise to run a clean and positive campaign. But usually, the inevitable happens and the ads go negative. Now that the June primaries are in the books except for the June 23 runoffs, the countdown to November’s election is underway. You’ll gradually see more and more political advertising. On the state and national levels, most of the pitches to date have been building up a particular candidate. Negativity has not been at the level of elections in the past. Look for that to change. It was true then and it will be true now. Writing ahead of the 2018 midterm election, a reporter for InsideSources.com, Andrew Solender, cited a study shedding light on why negative advertising is so prevalent in elections. Michael Lewis and David A. Schweidel of Emory University and Yanwen Wang of the University of British Columbia initially planned to look at using social media as a tool for predicting election results. But as social media rapidly became commonplace in elections, they shifted their focus to the impact and efficacy of negative advertising, a staple of elections. “For forever, voters have expressed disgust with the level of negative advertising,” Lewis said, “but we see a lot of it. So, [the question was] does it actually work?” According to the data their study produced, it does. But under certain conditions. Looking at correlations between the volume of negative ads and the vote shares achieved by U.S. Senate candidates in 2010 and 2012, the researchers found that “while positive political advertising does not affect two-party vote share, negative political advertising has a significant positive effect on two-party vote shares.” However, they also found that the source of the ads makes a difference in the ads’ efficacy, noting “negative advertising sponsored by PACs is significantly less effective than that sponsored by the candidate or party in affecting two-party vote shares.” June 18 - The Times and Democrat The road to the White House, and just about every other elected office up for grabs this November will be under heavy scrutiny and lots of coverage. If you’re a journalist covering this topic – then let our experts help. Professor Michael Lewis is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Professor Lewis is an expert in political marketing and is available to speak to media – simply click on his icon to arrange an interview today.
October is Disability Awareness Month - contact a UMW expert if you are covering
One in four Americans lives with a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the University of Mary Washington, it’s one in eight. “With those sorts of numbers, it’s mind-boggling [that] disability doesn’t have more automatic inclusion when people think about diversity,” said UMW Professor of English Chris Foss. As the Americans with Disabilities Act’s 30th year and October’s Disability Awareness Month shine a light on one of the country’s most underrepresented groups, so does a new UMW course. Offered for the first time this fall, Intro to Disability Studies (IDS) delves into the 21st-century experience of a diverse population, exploring cognitive, sensory, mobility and other differences as just as essential to the human condition as gender and race. The 16-week course fans out across disciplines, examining disability throughout the lifespan in historical, political, social and other contexts. Years in the making, the class is team-taught by faculty and staff – from art history, education, English, historic preservation, psychology and the Office of Disability Resources (ODR) – who’ve poured their time and passion into the topic in hopes it gains traction. “It took a lot of meetings, discussion and work on Google Docs to pull this together,” said Professor of Art History Julia DeLancey, who borrows from her first-year seminar, “The Beauty Difference Gives Us,” to deliver an IDS session on how disabilities affect artists’ work. If you are a journalist looking to cover Disability Awareness Month and the Americans with Disabilities Act’s 30th year, then let the experts from the University of Mary Washington help with your story. Dr. Julia DeLancey and Dr. Chris Foss are available to speak with media about this important topic – simply click on either icon to arrange an interview today.
