Many business-to-business (B2B) selling situations involve outside sales (OS) representatives (reps) interfacing with customers and inside sales (IS) rep largely supporting OS reps. Put differently, OS reps are linchpins, while IS reps generally have auxiliary roles. Perhaps for this reason, the economic value of IS reps for the B2B IS-OS selling process has received little systematic investigation. The authors propose an approach that quantifies the incremental value of IS using observational data that are commonly available in organizational customer relationship management systems.
Using a convolutional neural networks approach to process the images, this study reviews Airbnb listings in two cities and derives a descriptive model of image technical features, content, and other property attributes (e.g., price, textual information, characteristics) to predict demand at the property level.
Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellision shared the company's approach to diversity, equity and inclusion following this past summer’s social unrest. In this conversation-style format, Mr. Ellison gave a brief overview of Lowe’s anti-racism statement and reviewed specific actions the company has taken to combat racism and inequality. He shared insights on his hands-on leadership approach and how it impacts his relationships with employees and his success at Lowe’s.
Reliably detecting insider trading is a major impediment to both research and regulatory practice. Using account-level transaction data, we propose a novel approach. Specifically, after extracting several key empirical features of typical insider trading cases from existing regulatory actions, we then employ a machine learning methodology to identify suspicious insiders across our full sample.
About 27% of diabetics also suffer from depression, and the presence of co-morbid depression could increase the cost of care for diabetes by up to 100%. Several randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that physical and mental health are more likely to improve for diabetes patients suffering from depression when regular treatment for depression is provided in a primary care setting (called Collaborative Care). An important operational lever in managing Collaborative Care is the allocation of the care manager's time to enrolled patients based on their requirements, which in turn influences the revenue, costs, and patient health outcomes. We present a mathematical modeling approach that determines the optimal allocation of care manager's time and quantifies the costs and benefits of Collaborative Care.
A recent trend in corporate culture has been an increase in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs meant to increase awareness of these critical issues and support underrepresented groups and minorities in the workplace. But what exactly is DEI, and how should we approach conversations about race and discrimination? On Friday Oct. 30, our Kenan Scholars engaged in a DEI training, led by Antoinetta Mosley of I Follow the Leader LLC, to answer just that.
Networks of serial entrepreneurs, investors, and their affiliated companies play a critical role in driving entrepreneurial behavior, investor focus, and innovation hot spots within specific industry sectors and are critical for shaping the character of robust regional economies.
Employee spinouts, defined as startups founded by prior employees of an industry firm, play a critical role in firm creation and knowledge transfer. Their superior performance often arises from resources and knowledge accrued during employment in parent firms. An understudied question is whether prior employment in parent firms impacts an employee
The 2017 Workshop on North Carolina Manufacturing Data Science targets a critical gap in the emerging digital manufacturing ecosystem – achieving data-driven improvements in manufacturing processes to realize broader benefits across the factory and enterprise. It will bring together personnel from North Carolina industry, state government, University of North Carolina (UNC) General Administration, and UNC system universities to discuss current capabilities and future needs for widespread implementation.
In this paper we argue that task design affects rule breaking in the workplace. Specifically, we propose that task variety activates deliberative (Type 2) processes as opposed to automatic/intuitive (Type 1) processes, which, in turn, helps prevent individuals from breaking rules in order to serve their own hedonic self-interest.
On the afternoon of Thursday, April 25, an at-capacity crowd gathered at the Kenan Center in Chapel Hill for a fireside chat with Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of networking giant Cisco. The event was a fitting wrap-up to the 2018-19 Dean Speaker’s Series hosted by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.
Many people dream of starting their own business. But before they can make their dream a reality, one of the first and most important decisions they must make is whether to go it alone or partner with someone they may, or may not, already know. Which approach is better?
Where can a UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA student supplement classroom training with hands-on leadership and a year-long research project on a critical, real-world business issue with the guidance of the school’s distinguished faculty? Whether the subject of study is infrastructure investing, nuclear energy generation, socioeconomic disparities or venture capital funding, the Kenan Scholars program is the best venue for such an experience.
In our previous Kenan Insight, we outlined the major findings in our recent report, Seven Forces Reshaping the Economy. This week, we explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has upended education and childcare, ushering in changes to both that will last far beyond the current crisis.
This longitudinal field experiment compares two different for-profit market entry strategies with a philanthropic strategy in terms of how each influences consumer behavior in base-of-the-pyramid communities. We analyze reactions to a water purification product offered at three price points (moderate discount, deep discount, and free) in rural Malawi.
The Kenan Institute’s deep dive into stakeholder capitalism has exposed shortcomings in a key building block: ESG measurement. In this one-hour virtual session, we will convene a cross-sector group of panelists to discuss why ESG measurements matter to businesses large and small. The panelists will offer recommendations on scalable implementation, suggest how best to leverage such measures to meet the needs of different stakeholder groups, and provide tips on how to design reporting that is free from political influence and agendas.
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a significant shift in how and where we work, play and live. In this Kenan Insight, we explore which changes will be temporary and which are here to stay.
Caller abandonment could depend on their past waiting experiences. Using Cox regressions we show that callers who abandoned or waited for a shorter time in the past abandon more in the future. However, Cox regression approach does not shed light on callers’ prior belief about the duration of their delays.
We study a new class of conditional skewness models based on conditional quantiles regressions. The approach is much inspired by work of Hal White. To handle multiple horizons I consider quantile MIDAS regressions which amount to direct forecasting—as opposed to iterated forecasting—conditional skewness.
We consider an online retailer facing heterogeneous customers with initially unknown product preferences. Customers are characterized by a diverse set of demographic and transactional attributes. The retailer can personalize the customers' assortment offerings based on available profile information to maximize cumulative revenue. To that end, the retailer must estimate customer preferences by observing transaction data.