News & Events

CERAWeek, the annual conference of the international energy industry in Houston, has always been a barometer of sorts for the state of the industry and its challenges and it’s less than a month away. A recurrent theme of interest to us as marketing scholars is that energy leaders, battling an all-time low level of trust, have been devising new ways to get the public back on their side.

Some behaviors tend to align with and reinforce people’s gender identity – and that includes Valentine’s Day gift-giving behavior, suggests Constance Porter, a marketing and customer relationships expert at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

An article about the Rice Business Plan Competition, which will be held April 4-6 at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business, is featured. The competition is expected to draw more than 500 teams and award prizes in excess of $1.5 million. 

“Research shows that some behaviors tend to align with and reinforce our gender-identity – and that includes Valentine’s Day gift-giving behavior,” said Constance Porter, a professor of marketing in the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. “It is well-known that men have assumed the societal role of taking on more of the gift-giving burden on Valentine’s Day. They spend more, and are more willing to go into debt to do it. 

This week's question about applying to an MBA program comes from an anonymous BusinessBecause reader. Their question is answered by Marta Andaluz, who has worked in the admissions team at The Lisbon MBA for over 10 years. Next week, George Andrews, associate dean of degree programs at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business, will be here to answer your Applicant Question of the Week.

Members of the C-suite can earn higher salaries and potentially obtain seats on their organizations' corporate boards by parroting their CEO's language style, according to a May 2018 study cited by Phys.org. For the study, researchers at the Houston-based Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business and the University of Miami Business School in Coral Gables, Fla., analyzed more than 2,300 companies' conference calls with investors and security analysts between 2002 and 2013.

Selectivity. More often than not it’s the first thing a potential business school applicant looks at when choosing where to apply. What percentage of applicants are admitted to a school? In one number, one data point, comes an answer to the essential question: What are my chances of getting in?

Here's a lesson for chief financial officers: If you talk like your boss talks, the authors of a new study have found you'll probably make more money. The paper was co-authored by Yan "Anthea" Zhang, professor and the Fayez Sarofim Vanguard Chair of Strategic Management; Robert Hoskisson, the George R. Brown Professor Emeritus of Strategic Management; and Wei Shi, who earned his doctorate in strategic management at Rice Business and is now an associate professor of management at the University of Miami Business School. It will be published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Referring to research from Rice University professor Utpal Dholakia, Claudia Kolker, Rice Business Wisdom editor, suggested that thinking of your life as less of a highway and more as circle contributes to better planning and even more saving of money, which in turns aids health.

When convincing management to consider advocating for a particular social issue, employees may think it is wise to focus on the benefits to the bottom line but making a moral argument may be a better strategy, as long as it aligns with the company’s values, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.