Based on research by Sharad Borle, Siddharth S. Singh and Dipak C. Jain 

• Contrary to what one might think, customers who stay with a firm longer may not spend more money than those who stay for less time.
• Determining a customer’s spending in a buying relationship will shape how managers commit marketing dollars.
• Longer spells between purchases are linked with greater risk of a customer leaving a firm.

Managers dream of keeping their customers faithful for years. Sooner or later, though, almost all consumers will go elsewhere. That’s why marketing experts scramble to predict how long a customer will stay with a company and how much money she’ll spend on it. In industry parlance, this variable is “customer lifetime value.”

The craving to know why customers stray has inspired a cottage industry in models calculating the “lifetime value” a customer brings to his or her partnership with a seller. Pinpointing when a customer starts doing business with a firm, each purchase she makes and when she quits buying all help marketers hone their efforts to keep her interested.

But customer devotion rarely runs smoothly. Higher spending, for one thing, does not necessarily correlate with longer customer relationship. Curiously, consumers who stay with a company briefly often spend more than those who stay loyal for years. So managers need to differentiate between the length of time a customer buys from them and her “lifetime value” — what she brings to that connection.

To improve companies’ predictive ability, Rice Business professor Sharad Borle and former Rice Business professor Siddharth S. Singh, along with colleague Dipak C. Jain, then of Northwestern University, created a model for predicting and testing customer lifetime value. They define this as the value a customer brings to a firm (generally measured as the revenues from her purchases), minus the firm’s costs to maintain the bond.

Past research on this topic has focused on two specific contexts: contractual and non-contractual. In a non-contractual situation, management doesn’t know exactly when customers quit buying a product, so the moment of a customer’s defection has to be inferred. Contractual situations, on the other hand, allow close monitoring of specific day-to-day factors. In contractual relationships such as automobile associations, membership-based retailers like Costco and membership-based buying relationships such as music and food clubs, managers know exactly when a relationship starts and ends, and every time a customer makes a purchase.

The researchers decided to look at elements of both contractual and non-contractual settings in their study, a scenario that had not been previously analyzed in any depth. First they looked at a membership-based direct marketing company that tracked the dates each customer joined and terminated membership. Then they examined how well different models worked in predicting customer lifetime value.

Their model predicted customers’ likelihood of ending the membership as well as their spending patterns. With this information in hand, the scholars could estimate the lifetime value of each customer every time she made a purchase.

The model proved better at predicting customer lifetime value and in targeting valuable customers than the other models to which they compared it. They also discovered that a customer’s purchase timing, purchase amount and risk of defecting are intertwined, which validated their joint-modeling approach.

To reach their conclusions, the researchers studied two random samples of data, both drawn from the population of all customers who joined a company in one particular year in the late 1990s. These data offered information about all purchases by these customers from the first day of membership to the time the consumers moved on to other pastures.

The first part of the data showed 1,000 past customers and 7,108 purchases. It traced the buying habits of these customers over their entire lifetime with the firm. The second part, consisting of another 500 past customers (a validation sample), was selected for predictive testing and to illustrate the model in action. It looked at the times between purchase, purchase amounts and the total membership lifetime of each customer.

How did loyalty correlate to spending? Not very strongly. A customer who waited longer between purchases was more likely to end her membership, yet a customer who waited longer between purchases also was likely to spend more. There was little difference between the amount of time men and women waited to buy – but when they did make a purchase, women spent less. Men and women were equally likely to end their membership with the firm.

Gauging customer value, clearly, is no simple thing. But good models that predict how and when customers spend remove some of the guesswork. It’s crucial data for any business that needs to know when customers are thinking of bolting — and how to woo them back.

Sharad Borle is an associate professor of marketing at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. 

To learn more, please see: Sing, S. S., Borle, S., & Jain, D. C. (2008). Customer lifetime value measurement. Management Science, 54(1), 100-112.

Based on research by Robert A. Westbrook, Bich N. Dang, William C. Black, Maria C. Rodriguez-Barradas and Thomas P. Giordano

• HIV now can be managed with antiviral drugs. But there are new obstacles to treating it.
• HIV patients don’t always seek regular medical care or properly taking their medicine.
• When patients are satisfied with their care, however, they’re more likely to comply with treatment plans.

Would you recommend your doctor to a friend? How do you feel about your medical care? The answers, it turns out, may predict how well you heal.

In 1987, six years after the first reported case of AIDS, the Federal Drug Administration approved a pioneering antiviral cocktail to treat the disease. Since then, medical advances have made it possible to keep HIV from becoming AIDS. Yet of the nearly 1 million people in the United States who are HIV positive, only a quarter actually achieve what clinicians call HIV “suppression,” that is, glancingly low levels of HIV in their systems.

For those who came of age during HIV’s darkest days, the issue is confounding. Now that there’s a way to manage this once-deadly disease, why do so few people use it?

In 2013, Robert A. Westbrook, a professor at the Rice Business school, joined Bich N. Dang and Thomas P. Giordano, clinicians and instructors at Baylor College of Medicine, to tackle two of the biggest challenges in HIV patient compliance. Current mainstream treatment, they knew, stresses keeping HIV-infected patients in a physician’s care and getting them to correctly follow highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART.

But both goals are surprisingly hard to achieve. Of those HIV-diagnosed patients who are linked to care, many don’t stay: Only 60 percent of HIV-positive patients seek routine clinical care. Getting patients to adhere to their antiretroviral therapy is also a conundrum: Just 55 percent of those with HAART actually take their meds as prescribed.

If clinicians and policymakers want to improve outcomes, Westbrook and his colleagues argued, caregivers will have to attack these two problem areas. Previous market research offers a clue about how to do it. In general, the studies show, patient satisfaction correlates to patient retention and medication adherence. Perhaps, the team hypothesized, patient satisfaction could influence HIV treatment as well.

To find out, the researchers analyzed survey data from almost 500 patients at two different clinics. The subjects were mostly minority and low-income patients — the population most affected by HIV, and most prone to adherence problems and worse outcomes. Their satisfaction as patients was measured by their willingness to recommend the clinic and their overall feelings about the care they got there in the 12 months before the survey.

The findings were striking. Patient satisfaction did indeed correlate with retention and adherence to HAART. This, in turn, improved HIV suppression. Based on these results, the scholars concluded that any treatment designed to improve HIV suppression also needs to factor in the patients’ experience. Caregivers can be trained in patient-centered communication. Providers can ask patients about their treatment goals and preferences — and they can ask, more frequently, if the patients have any questions. Clinics can arrange for patients to get their ongoing care with the same clinician.

Bolstered by this research, the researchers suggested that not only HIV clinics but all healthcare providers who care about better outcomes should work to promote patient satisfaction. Helping patients feel cared for, it turns out, actually helps them to heal.

Robert A. Westbrook is the William Alexander Kirkland Professor of Business at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

To learn more, please see: Dang, B. N., Westbrook, R. A., Black, W. C., Rodriguez-Barradas, M. C., & Giordano, T. P. (2013). Examining the link between patient satisfaction and adherence to HIV care: A structural equation model. PLOS ONE, 8(1).

Based on research by Utpal Dholakia, Katherine E. Loveland and Naomi Mandel 

• Longtime homeowners who stand to make a profit ask for higher selling prices on their houses than longtime homeowners in a losing position.
• Longtime owners hold out for a higher price even when a lower bid represents financial gain.
• Conversely, short-time homeowners in a profitable position ask for lower prices than owners who are selling at a loss. The reason: The short-timers are less emotionally invested in the home.

Buying a house is the biggest investment most people make in their lives. Unlike other financial transactions, though, this investment becomes emotionally laden over time, gathering not only monetary but also much harder-to-measure personal value. Your perfect neighbor who drives your kids to soccer and yells over the fence that hamburgers are served may, to a new buyer, be a loudmouthed nuisance with an overgrown lawn.

Such variables inevitably skew buyer and seller perceptions. They also throw a wrench into theories on how investors can be expected to act. Long-time homeowners, it seems, are a separate breed of investor. Their quirks can have national ramifications.

From 2006 to 2011, falling home values throughout the United States affected millions of households, in some cases plummeting 40 percent from the peak. Yet even as prices declined, a 12-month supply of homes remained for sale, twice that of a healthy market. Many homeowners continued to set unreasonably high prices given current conditions, leading to a glut of 6.2 million homes.

Using these puzzling statistics as a launching point, Rice Business Professor Utpal M. Dholakia, Katherine E. Loveland of Xavier University and Naomi Mandel of Arizona State University studied how the experience and duration of homeownership affects sellers’ initial asking prices and their willingness to change them.

Using laboratory simulations and real-life case studies in four U.S. cities, the researchers reached identical outcomes. Longtime owners, they found, asked for higher prices when they stood to profit. Short-term owners asked for lower prices when they were in the so-called “gains domain,” and higher prices when they were in a losing position.

These results contradict Prospect Theory, a foundational tenet of behavioral economics. According to the theory, if an individual is presented with two equal choices, one a loss and the other a gain, the individual will always pick financial gain.

Dholakia and his colleagues took a different approach, linking loss or gain to the experience of ownership itself. By doing so, they acknowledged that people with a positive experience with an object, in this case a home, already feel they are in the “gain domain,” before they begin negotiating.

To reach their conclusions, the researchers trawled through house listings in Phoenix, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Wilmington, excluding any that had been owned for less than a year as well as bank-owned homes and those in foreclosure or on short sale. Rather than comparing asking prices, they calculated the price premium for a home as a percentage of the home’s market value. In cases of longtime ownership, they found, homeowners in the gains domain asked for a significantly higher adjusted price premium than homeowners whose places had lost value and whose sale was going to bring a financial loss. It was a stark reversal of Prospect Theory.

For the longtime owners, the researchers reasoned, the home was no longer just a marketable commodity. It had become a physical vessel of their most cherished experiences. Prospective buyers saw square footage and comparable pricing. Prospective sellers saw more. “THIS house is special,” their asking prices announced.

Curiously, long-term homeowners in the gains domain asked for a higher premium-to-market value even when asking for a lower price would’ve still brought a profit. Was this greed? Likely not, the researchers showed. The long-time homeowners just valued their homes in ways that buyers couldn’t share.

Understanding how such emotional and financial reference points interact with length of homeownership can help real estate professionals and policymakers identify which homeowners are likely to price more aggressively than market conditions warrant. It could also lend some self-awareness to sellers themselves.

A financial gain is easy to measure. But how do you price 10 years of weekends on the couch savoring kids, dogs, and a glass of Malbec? No external reference point, Dholakia and his colleagues concluded, can put a price on those moments. It may be the true definition of home: the one place the invisible hand of the market does not touch.

Utpal M. Dholakia is the George R. Brown Professor of Marketing at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

To learn more, please see: Loveland, K. E., Mandel, N., & Dholakia, U. M. (2014). Understanding homeowners’ pricing decisions: An investigation of the role of ownership duration and financial and emotional reference points. Customer Needs and Solutions, 1(3), 225-240.

By Mike Snyder

Excerpted from “New Katy Buc-ee's has gas pumps as far as the eye can see,” originally published in the Houston Chronicle.

The familiar face towered over Interstate 10, but the beaver's goofy grin was obscured by a "Coming Soon" sign. A few days remained before the new Buc-ee's in Katy would throw open its doors to customers eager to buy gasoline and snacks after availing themselves of the famously clean, spacious bathrooms.

I drove out to the popular retailer's newest outpost over the weekend because I was intrigued by reports that it would have 100 gas pumps. The places where I buy gasoline have, at most, a dozen pumps, and I couldn't imagine what 100 gas pumps in one spot would look like (or why so many would be necessary; more on that later).

The entrances were barricaded with orange barrels, so I parked across the street and walked onto the vast property. From where I stood on the eastern edge of the parking lot, a long row of pumps stretched westward as far as I could see. It took 10 minutes to walk to the end and back.

As it turns out, the Katy Buc-ee's has 120 pumps, not counting a few devoted exclusively to diesel. I wondered if Buc-ee's executives had imagined that 120 motorists would decide to fill their tanks at the same time and place. The question revealed my ignorance of this particular niche in the realm of business strategy.

"It is clear that 'big' is their value proposition, and 120 fueling stations is a compelling way to convey it, turning the store into a shopping and stopping destination," said Utpal Dholakia, the George R. Brown Professor of Marketing at Rice University's graduate business school. "I think this sort of positioning works really well in Texas given their long history (since 1982) and beloved brand status."

Read the full story in the Houston Chronicle.

Based on research by Utpal Dholakia, Scott W. Davis and Kelly L. Haws

• A lack of self-control in one area, such as overeating, doesn’t necessarily correspond to a lack of self-control in other areas, such as overspending.
• To understand why people make bad choices, researchers need to look at specific activities rather than broad concepts such as “self-control.”
• Public policy researchers armed with precise data have a better shot at creating behavioral interventions that work.

Is indulging in a lavish dessert you shouldn’t eat the same problem as buying an expensive bag you shouldn’t buy? Past research has tended to treat all forms of potentially harmful self-indulgent behavior, from smoking to procrastinating, as shades of the same overarching issue: a lack of self-control. Lumping these behaviors together leads to the conclusion that self-control is a universal trait — something you either have or you don’t. But recent Rice research suggests that not all overindulgences are alike. Some people are stoic in the face of a Kate Spade sale but unable to resist a tempting tiramisu, and vice versa.

Rice Business professor Utpal M. Dholakia and former postdoctoral fellow Scott W. Davis collaborated with Vanderbilt University associate professor of marketing Kelly L. Haws on a study that found no evidence that people fail — or succeed — equally in all aspects of self-control. An accurate measure of self-control in eating, the team found, might not apply equally to other domains such as spending and saving. Correctly understanding the nature of self-control is crucially important for researchers, since curbing social problems such as obesity and consumer debt are of vital concern for the people they affect and the societies they undermine.

A great deal of time and money has gone into studying self-control — and its absence. But in the past, researchers have taken a one-size-fits-all approach to measuring self-control. They’ve used something called the general self-control scale, which assumes that all forms of self-control tap into the same reservoir and that, therefore, low self-control in one domain will predict similarly low self-control in others. So, for example, a compulsive buyer should also be a bing eater.

Research using this broad concept of self-control has shaped public policy. But Davis, Dholakia and Haws argue that to get more accurate, and more useful, findings, researchers need to refine their measurement tools to apply specifically to the object of their study. To gauge the potential effectiveness of a tax on sugary drinks in lowering soda consumption, for example, researchers should measure self-control in the face of fizzy, bad-for-you beverages, and not extrapolate from unhealthy habits in other areas.

Dholakia and his colleagues based their conclusions on five studies that measured self-control in shopping and eating, comparing them to levels of general self-control. They concluded that “domain-specific” measures were better at predicting behavior than general measures. People who demonstrated low levels of self-control in eating, for example, could be expected to binge eat in the future, regardless of their general self-control level.

In one study, participants were told they were testing a new eating and exercise smartphone app. They were asked to add a Snickers bar to the list of foods they planned to eat that day. For some participants, the app produced a picture of a Snickers bar and its nutritional information; for others, the app produced a picture of feet walking and the comment, “You must walk 65 minutes to burn off that Snickers bar.” Then they were asked to rate the likelihood that they would actually eat the Snickers bar.

For people with high “eating self-control,” the likelihood of indulging in the candy bar stayed roughly the same across both scenarios. But for people with low eating self-control, the likelihood of eating the Snickers was significantly higher when they were given the nutritional information instead of the exercise equivalent. “Our findings … raise the possibility that providing nutritional information may actually enhance the appeal of the Snickers bar, leading to greater desire that those lower in self-control are less equipped to handle,” the authors wrote.

These findings could help design interventions to prevent people from overeating. Current policies designed to curb sugar consumption rarely have the intended effect — and that failure, the authors suggest, could stem from a lack of understanding about what causes people to choose short-term pleasure over long-term health. The research stopped short of investigating how to actually stop people from eating too much sugar (or spending too much, gambling too much, smoking too much, etc.), but Dholakia’s team concluded that asking more targeted questions was a fundamental step in the right direction. The takeaway? Call a Kate Spade bag a Kate Spade bag, not a cupcake. Overindulging in one doesn’t mean you’ll overindulge in the other.

Utpal M. Dholakia is the George R. Brown Professor of Marketing at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

To learn more, please see: Haws, K. L., Davis, S. W., & Dholakia, U. M. (2016). Control over what? Individual differences in general versus eating and spending self-control. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 35(1), 37-57.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Sept. 15, 3:09 pm CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

I hope you’ve made it safely through the worst of the storm and its aftermath and have begun to feel the return towards normalcy. Over the last few weeks we have seen the best of our students, faculty, staff and alumni. I feel a swell of gratitude and comfort knowing that we were able to help each other during those first days by removing drywall, flooring, carpets and belongings that were damaged. Know just how much a difference you made for others simply by bringing them a meal, doing laundry and sharing a dry place to stay. Your compassion is boundless. Thank you!

Now the hard work begins. The next phase of recovery is assessing the long term. We need to listen and engage to learn what we still can and should do for our community. What do you need next to recover? How do we help?

I want to reassure you that we’re addressing continuing needs, finding solutions and, as we do this, the Dean's ARK Fund grows. Your generosity towards the Rice Business family impresses and humbles me. In the coming months, as we begin to understand the acute needs, especially of those who have been displaced, we will let you know how you can help.

Until then, we need to keep each other informed. Please continue to connect with us. Together we’ll get through this and look ahead to better, brighter days for all.

Dean Peter Rodriguez

Monday, Sept. 4, 12:01 pm CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

Today is Labor Day, in case you have lost track of the days during this crisis. I hope you are in good spirits and spending the day with family and friends. We look forward to beginning the return to normalcy.
 
We still have a great deal of recovering to do, but our community has shown remarkable resilience and support for those most affected. We will communicate our plan to make up missed classes soon, along with arrangements to accommodate those who may not be able to attend all of the rescheduled classes.
 
You have heard me talk many times about the three core principles by which I lead our school: being attentive, responsive and kind in all we do.

Appropriately enough, the first letters of these three words form the word "ARK." So when we established a fund to help the Rice Business community, it seemed fitting to call it the Dean's ARK Fund.
 
One-hundred percent of the fund proceeds will be used to support Rice Business employees, faculty, students and alumni who have been negatively impacted by Hurricane Harvey. If you are moved to do so, please donate online to this fund.
 
Thank you again for showing the strength and compassion emblematic of the Rice Business family during this challenging time.
 
See you all tomorrow,
 
Dean Peter Rodriguez

Friday, Sept. 1, 6:32 pm CDT: 

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

It’s been a privilege to hear from so many of you over the last few days. Your stories are uplifting, your efforts noble. As Labor Day approaches, the hard work continues and the recovery is ongoing.

When I arrived here at Rice Business just over a year ago, I outlined three basic principles: being attentive, responsive and kind in all we do, because with those goals in mind, good things always follow. See our video (below) about the core principles of Rice Business, filmed last fall.

Those tenets, and the acronym they form (appropriately enough for a flood: ARK), have inspired us to create the Dean's ARK Fund to help our community deal with the enormity of the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

One-hundred percent of the fund proceeds will be used to support Rice Business employees, faculty, students and alumni who have been negatively impacted by Hurricane Harvey.

Your donation can make a difference. Thank you.

Thursday, Aug. 31, 4:12 pm CDT: 

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

The clearer skies over Houston bring a welcome shift toward recovery and the Rice Business family is out in full force. We know that recovery takes hard work and that a return to normalcy is a slow process, especially for those hardest hit.

Know, too, that we are here to help — and will be for as long as it takes. I cannot fully express how inspired I am to see so many engage in selfless acts of support for strangers, neighbors and everyone in the Rice Business community. You are making all the difference for those in need and everyone in Houston.

Please email the Rice Business team at marcom@rice.edu with anything you need or can offer. Also, if you haven’t reported your status, please fill out the brief survey from Rice University at https://emergency.rice.edu/needs-assessment.

Stay strong and stay connected,

Dean Peter Rodriguez

Wednesday, Aug. 30, 4:25 pm CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez for Students, Staff and Faculty:

With the weather clearing today, recovery begins. We are grateful to those who are staying in touch, volunteering to help others and keeping us informed about the needs of classmates and colleagues.

We are working with those affected and stand ready for offers of assistance. Please email marcom@rice.edu with anything you need or can offer. Also, if you haven’t reported your status, please fill out the brief survey from Rice University at https://emergency.rice.edu/needs-assessment.

Our community is rising to the challenge of helping in this difficult time. Thank you for making a difference.  
 
Stay strong and stay connected,
 
Dean Peter Rodriguez

Tuesday, Aug. 29, 4:28 pm CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez for Students, Staff and Faculty:

Rice University and Rice Business will remain closed through Monday, Sept. 4. All classes are cancelled, all assignments are postponed.
 
Your safety remains our primary concern. We want to know about everyone's status – even if your property was not impacted by the storm. If you haven't filled out the brief survey from Rice University, please go to https://emergency.rice.edu/needs-assessment.
 
If you have flooding or are in need of assistance, please email marcom@rice.edu. We are developing a plan to match those in need with those who can help. As of right now, all students are accounted for. You will be hearing from the student leads who have been designated for each program and are assessing and coordinating needs. We are assembling a faculty/staff/student recovery team that will work together to plan our response to longer-term issues.

We’re also developing a plan for rescheduling missed classes. The schedule should be able to accommodate most students and will take care of those who cannot attend make-up classes. We will have the schedule ready by Sept. 6. Students, please also check Canvas to hear from your professor about what to prepare for next week’s classes.

Faculty, please also post in Canvas to let your students know what to prepare for next week’s classes.

As we gather more data, we are determining how our community can come together to help each other. We will recover together over the coming days, weeks and months and will have more updates about volunteer efforts soon. Thanks to so many of you for organizing outreach efforts and for offering comfort and assistance to our colleagues, classmates and others. These actions have been very helpful and can make all the difference in times of need.  
 
Best wishes to you all and please, stay connected,  
 
Dean Peter Rodriguez

Monday, Aug. 28, 4:59 pm CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

Rice University and Rice Business will remain closed on Wednesday. All Wednesday classes are canceled and assignments are postponed. Know that as we plan to eventually resume normal operations, we will prioritize your safety, support your recovery and accommodate your situations resulting from the storms and flooding.

As the storms continue, I ask you to continue reaching out through email or text to me, George Andrews, Brooke Sabo and your peers to offer aid. Assistance in these situations is inherently local as most cannot safely go far from home. Knowing where you are and who is near you can make all the difference in helping someone in need.

If you need help, resources or a place to stay, please email marcom@rice.edu so that we can connect you with another community member. Thank you to all who have reached out to offer assistance, a bed or room in your home, meals and transportation by car, truck and canoe. We are seeing the best of our community as we endure the harshness of this event.

Recovery will take time, but Rice Business, your colleagues and classmates will be here to support you in any way we can. Be safe, reach out and stay connected.

Best,

Dean Peter Rodriguez

Sunday, Aug. 27, 6:53 am CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

I am writing to let you know that classes and assignments for Tuesday are also cancelled. We will share an update on classes and assignments as soon as we are able to do so. More importantly, I am writing to let you know that our Rice family cares for each of you and stand ready to assist you. Please, respond to the email sent to you from George Andrews or Brooke Sabo to let us know your status and how we can help. Whether by email, phone, text or other means, reach out to us and to those who may be in need.
 
Stay safe, stay connected and let us know how to help.
 
Best,

— Peter

Sunday, Aug. 27, 1:55 am CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

In addition to the cancellation of classes, all assignments due on Monday are postponed. We will have more information on assignment deadlines tomorrow. For now, please make your safety and your family, friends and neighbors your top priority.

UPDATE: Sunday, Aug. 27, 9:30 am CDT:

Rice University and Rice Business will remain closed on Monday. All Monday classes are cancelled.
 
I know that last night's torrential rains have likely affected members of our community, both here on campus and across the Houston area. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by this storm. Please reach out to your neighbors and help those around you.
 
Stay safe.

Saturday, Aug. 26, 11:44 am CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

We continue to monitor Hurricane Harvey as it moves across Texas. The potential to cause damage remains high, so we urge you to stay safe and off the roads this weekend. We will notify you tomorrow afternoon about our plans for classes on Monday.
 
Please also watch for updates from Rice University.
 
Thank you.

Friday, Aug. 25, 12:13 pm CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

We are continuing to monitor conditions in the face of severe weather this weekend and next week. Here is the latest update:

McNair Hall will be locked today (Friday) at 3 pm and will stay locked through Monday. If the outcome of Hurricane Harvey is better than expected and we are able to open the school on Monday, the building will be unlocked that morning. Please note that no one is allowed to stay in the building during this time.

In addition, Rice Univesity police will be patrolling the campus to maintain safety.

We will provide additional updates during the weekend. Please stay safe.

Friday, Aug. 25, 2017, 10:00 am CDT:

Message from Rice University:

Hurricane Harvey has reached Category 2 status and continues to strengthen. The storm has slowed and is now expected to make landfall early Saturday morning. Heavy rain and wind are expected in the Houston area this weekend. Although the city of Houston is not currently recommending evacuations, there are mandatory and voluntary evacuations happening in coastal counties, which could affect traffic in Houston.

Classes at 3 p.m. or later today are canceled. The campus will close at 3 p.m. and will remain closed through 11:59 p.m. Saturday. Nonessential staff may leave at 1 p.m. today. Employees who did not to come to work today will need to use benefit time. Essential staff and ride-out teams may be asked to remain on campus to provide services to students.

Guidance for students:
Off-campus undergraduate students are welcome to move onto campus today and stay with a friend if they want to. You can eat in the serveries for free.

For graduate students, at this point we encourage you to remain in your off-campus residences. We will be monitoring weather and road conditions throughout the Houston area and will reassess this guidance as conditions change.

Guidance for faculty and staff:
If you work on the first floor or in the basement, do not leave laptops and other valuable equipment on the floor in case there is flooding in your building.

Parking:
We are checking on parking options for students and employees on campus over the weekend and will report more on this later.

The Crisis Management Team is meeting regularly to monitor weather updates and make decisions about the university's operating status for the remainder of the weekend and early next week. Updates will be communicated by email and posted on emergency.rice.edu. If an urgent communication is warranted, we will text it via Rice's emergency notification system, so please be sure your cellphone is listed correctly in your esther account.

If you have comments or questions, send an email to cmtcomment@rice.edu.

UPDATE: Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017, 6:44 pm CDT: 

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

Hurricane Harvey continues to intensify. We are following Rice University direction and will be closing the business school tomorrow afternoon at 1PM.

• All Friday morning classes and events will proceed as scheduled unless otherwise notified.
• All Friday afternoon and evening classes and all Saturday events and classes are cancelled.
• All Rice Business staff and faculty should plan to leave the campus at 1PM. See university message for full Human Resources detail.
• We will provide an update about Monday classes and events over the weekend.
• We are evaluating options for making up classes missed. We may make up cancelled classes next weekend. We will provide accommodations for those who cannot attend make-up classes.
• We will offer further updates on make-up classes as soon as we are able.
• Be safe.

Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017, 5:11 pm CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

We have just been informed that the university will be sending out a message at 6pm tonight, and we will update you at that time.

Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017, 2:06 pm CDT:

Message from Dean Peter Rodriguez:

I’m sure you are watching the weather reports on Hurricane Harvey and wondering what the next few days have in store for Houston and the Rice campus.

We are committed to keeping you informed about decisions made by the university and the business school.

By 5:00 p.m. today, we will make the decision about Friday classes and will send an email to let you know.

We will also post notices on this page, CampusGroups, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Decisions about Saturday classes will be made by noon Friday.

Be safe and stay tuned.

By Claudia Kolker

"Do you think we can get pho?” my daughter asked. Lucky to escape Harvey unscathed, we were venturing out for the first time since the deluge hit Texas. There in our favorite noodle shop, fragrant with fish sauce and basil, it was possible to imagine a Houston untouched by disaster.

But even before Hurricane Harvey, that would have been an illusion. Disaster is what brought thousands of Houstonians here in the first place. This is a city of survivors.

Houston is by now well known as the country’s most diverse city. But it is more than an immigrant hub; it’s America’s No. 1 magnet for refugees. And for anyone rocked by Harvey’s life-upending losses, those refugees and their experiences can be a monumental resource. Many are facing the flood’s ravages alongside their neighbors right now, but they are distinct because every refugee lost everything once before. And then they rebuilt.

After 20 years reporting and living in my adopted city, I've come to feel awe at its once-displaced population. Since the 1970s, more than 70,000 refugees from 78 countries have settled in Houston, all fleeing versions of the chaos unleashed by Harvey. Most lost status, work and community, along with the possessions, snapshots and love letters that tell our life stories.

They may not fit the profile you expect. In recent years, they’ve been arriving from Bhutan, Burma, Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba. During the 1980s, they poured into the city to escape death squads and guerrilla war in El Salvador and Guatemala. And in the 1970s, in the biggest influx of displaced persons in its history, Houston became home to tens of thousands of Vietnamese.

What, I wondered over my Vietnamese coffee, might they tell their fellow Houstonians right now? Mechelle Tran, the pho restaurant's 37-year-old owner, had an immediate answer. “I came here when I was 5. I have trauma amnesia, but I grew up hearing the stories,” she said. After weeks at sea, in nights so dark that waves, sky and rain were one sheet of blackness, the family landed in refugee camps in Malaysia and the Philippines. “There were a lot of parallels to Houston right now,” Tran told me. “A bottle of fish sauce was like liquid gold, because all you had were processed packaged foods. Nothing real.” Living in chronic uncertainty, sleeping on cots, her parents had zero control of their future, not just for months, but for years, until a church linked them to a host family in Houston.

Damaging as it was, the displacement changed her for the better, Tran believes. For one thing, because Houston’s community helped them start over, she and her peers are almost fanatical about community service. In addition to a work phone, she totes a separate cell for constant charity work. Last week, when her restaurant had no more food to give, Tran orchestrated a T-shirt drive for drenched Houston Police Department officers.

Seeing her parents' struggle to protect her also forged an iron resolve to honor their efforts. “You had no choice, no options, no falling back,” Tran said. “It’s grit. The kids whose parents have lost everything in the flood will see their parents rebuilding. They will have that little bit in them that says, ‘I saw Mom and Dad do this.’”

Flood survivors may also find surprising strength in seeing themselves as one striving community. Benito Juarez, who oversees immigrant affairs for the city, told me that the Latino, South Asian, African, and other refugees who settled here make it a point to band together.

“A sense of solidarity is built into their situation,” Juarez said. In most cases, the first group to arrive guides later groups through their new way of life, and helps newcomers find work and housing.

For Harvey's flood survivors, that could translate to those recovering fastest sharing services and emotional help with the hardest hit.

Taking action, especially on behalf of someone else, is a lifeline, Yani Keo, a well-known Cambodian refugee leader, believes. Keo lost more than 60 family members to the genocidal rule of Pol Pot.

Doing, Keo told me a few years ago, means surviving. So she has pushed even the most dazed newcomers to volunteer, once prodding a reluctant Afghan refugee to the airport so he could welcome an even more recent arrival.

Pitching in for others, Keo said, gives an uprooted life meaning again. Research backs this up. Post-traumatic growth, the subject of a flourishing academic field, suggests that in some circumstances, trauma builds strength. It’s not always the case, but taking action, and seeing a model of someone else's resilience, make positive change more likely.

As I sipped the last of my Vietnamese coffee, Mechelle Tran added one more thing. No one chooses to be wrenched from home, she said. But flood survivors now overwhelmed by their future may have more power than they realize.

“The minute your foot touched that boat or canoe, you made a decision,” Tran said. “You made the decision to fight.”

Claudia Kolker is the editor of Rice Business Wisdom and author of "The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn From Newcomers To America About Health, Happiness and Hope" Originally published in the LA Times.

By William M. Arnold 

This article originally appeared in The Hill and is reprinted here with permission.

Harvey, the "500-year storm," has destroyed homes across coastal Texas as far as 50 miles inland. The loss of life is not fully known, but growing. The nation's attention has quite rightly been on the human dimension.

Harvey has also disrupted energy infrastructure, oil production, refinery processing and supply chains — perhaps more than has been reported.

Just as the nation enters the Labor Day weekend, one of the heaviest travel times of the year, shortages — real and anticipated — are resulting in price spikes for gasoline. Prices at the pump tend to rise quickly, but drop slowly.

Several factors have combined to put pressure on production, refining and distribution.

As Harvey approached, offshore production was shut in as crews were moved to safety and managers took operational measures to avoid environmental damage.

The "glut" of oil in storage was being drawn down well before the storm, normally an indicator of price increases. This was facilitated by Congress when it lifted the ban on oil exports 20 months ago.

The concentration of refineries along the Gulf Coast makes the nation vulnerable to the superstorms we've had in recent years — Allison, Katrina, Ike and now Harvey. An estimated 25 percent of refining activity was halted to protect people, facilities and the environment. Some refineries in Texas are returning to operation while others in Louisiana could be at risk.

Add geopolitical risk from the crisis in Venezuela and the volatility grows. Many Gulf Coast refineries are configured to process heavy crude oil, which has low viscosity and high sulfur content. Venezuela is a major supplier of that grade.

American production has grown dramatically in recent years but much of America's new production is light, "sweet" oil. Billions of dollars would be required to reconfigure these facilities.

Getting crude oil to refineries and product to market requires the availability of tens of thousands of miles of interdependent pipelines, some of which have been impacted.

Oil production increases are a function of the "rig count," and that may flatten out as a result of the storm and its aftermath.

The supply chain of this industry is complex, and increasingly dependent on "just-in-time" availability of resources from crews to sand, water, chemicals, pipe and sophisticated equipment. The flooding of equipment and supply yards, as well as highways along the Gulf Coast, may interrupt the steady growth of oil production from the Permian Basin of West Texas to the Bakken fields of North Dakota.

A friend visiting North Dakota during the storm heard stories of how flooded equipment yards along the Gulf Coast were impacting operations 1,500 miles to the north. North Dakota counts on the summer months to get equipment into place to maintain operations.

The human dimension of the storm includes thousands of people in the oil and gas industry. When the media reports flooding in West Houston, they may be talking about the homes of staff at Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP, Halliburton and the hundreds of companies that support them. It will be challenging for them to get fully into gear after the Labor Day holiday.

The good news is that the energy industry has proved that it's resilient. Challenges from technological changes to the price collapse have tested the mettle of the industry. The more nimble players have found and implemented solutions that seemed unimaginable a few years ago.

Bill Arnold was a professor in the practice of energy management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. Previously, Arnold was Royal Dutch Shell's Washington director of international government relations and senior counsel for the Middle East, Latin America and North Africa.

By Jennifer (Jennie) Latson

Rooms normally rent for about $120 a night at a Best Western near Corpus Christi — but when Hurricane Harvey's storm surge hit, prices surged, too: to more than $320, as Austin's KXAN TV crew discovered.

Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told CNBC he'd received more than 500 complaints of price gouging related to Harvey, including quadrupled hotel room rates, $99 cases of water and gas prices of up to $10 a gallon.

Meanwhile, other businesses took a more compassionate approach. Houston institution Gallery Furniture turned its massive showrooms into shelters, while Uber offered evacuees free rides. Airbnb, the international short-term rental service, enlisted the aid of more than 1,000 hosts offering free temporary housing. Grocery chain H-E-B distributed supplies to the hardest-hit areas.

Along with food, water and shelter, some companies offered free access to that most precious of commodities in a crisis: information. Media outlets including The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chronicle dropped their paywalls; Comcast created 53,000 WiFi hotspots in and around Houston; and AT&T waived data overage fees for customers in the area.

So why do some businesses turn their backs on customers during disasters while others come to their rescue? And what are the consequences of companies' behavior in times of trouble?

There's no easy answer to the question of why some companies help out while others stand idly by — or worse. But at least some of it likely comes down to the moral views of a company's key decision-makers, according to Isaac Smith, an assistant professor of management in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.

"How broadly do they construe the scope of their moral obligations? Are they only morally obligated to have concern for the bottom line? Or do their moral obligations extend beyond shareholders to employees, customers and the communities in which they do business?" Smith asked. "The broader a given decision-maker's scope of moral concern, the more likely they will make a decision to help."

In times of crisis, these decisions make more impact than normal: People see them as indicators of what corporate leaders are truly made of, and justifiably so, says Anastasiya Zavyalova, an assistant professor of strategic management at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business.

"Catastrophes tend to bring out people's true character. And companies' leaders are a case in point," she said.

"The decisions a CEO makes during such tragedies as Harvey are likely consistent with the decisions he or she will make as a company executive. What is important for us, the stakeholders, is to pay attention to the choices firms made during Harvey and figure out if the company's actions are consistent with our beliefs and goals."

Many corporate leaders have come to the aid of the hurting Houston area in recent days. By Friday afternoon, CNN reported, companies had pledged more than $141 million in Harvey relief.

In general, more companies want to help than people might expect, Smith said.

"Despite the pervasive perception that businesses are strictly driven by self-interest and profit-maximization, there are countless examples of companies stepping up in a big way following natural disasters," he said. "Several years ago, a team of researchers analyzed the corporate social responsibility reports of 84 of the world's largest companies. They found that roughly 71 percent had engaged in disaster-relief efforts within the previous year. Though the reasons for doing so are varied, I like to think that many business decision-makers certainly get involved, at least in part, because they think it is the right thing to do — for moral or ethical reasons, if you will."

For Airbnb, which has seen an unprecedented outpouring of help from its rental hosts since Harvey hit, the decision to offer free housing during disasters didn't come from executives: It started as a groundswell of interest from the renters themselves.

In 2012, after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of the Northeast, hosts asked how they could list their properties for free to those affected. At the time, $0 wasn't an option in the Airbnb fee scale.

"We were humbled," said Laura Spanjian, Airbnb's public policy director for Texas. "Airbnb started building tools to scale these generous acts across our global community."

Kellie Bentz, head of global disaster response for Airbnb, expects the number of volunteer hosts across the Gulf Coast to climb in coming days. The company is also waiving its fees, so neither hosts nor guests will pay anything.

"Many people are benefiting from this program, and we're really grateful for the ability for our host community to offer support in this way," Bentz said. "They're super gracious and generous for doing this."

But if helping during a disaster means sacrificing profits in the short term, it can also carry long-term benefits, points out Utpal Dholakia, a marketing professor at Rice Business.

"These types of goodwill gestures are ways to create a halo around the company's brand by associating it with positive activities," Dholakia said. "Another benefit to the company is that it is a relatively inexpensive but highly visible way to show that it is connected to the community within which it operates. In academic terms, we can call it local corporate social responsibility. Most people are going to remember such good deeds long after the disaster is over and see the company in a positive light, as a member of their community."

You don't have to be a local mom-and-pop shop to reap the rewards of community goodwill. Walmart's outpouring of aid in the 2005 aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has been cited as the gold standard for corporate disaster relief: "a model for logistical efficiency and nimble disaster planning," as the Washington Post put it.

With immense resources at its disposal — including a mammoth supply chain and distribution network — Walmart proved that corporations could be a powerful force for good in a disaster, especially compared to the government agencies whose notoriously sluggish, scattered response to Katrina earned the public's ire.

Walmart's donation of $3 million in supplies and $17 million in cash to Katrina's victims came at an opportune time for the corporation, eclipsing a rash of bad publicity over lawsuits, labor issues and falling stock prices. The lesson hasn't been lost on other companies looking to divert the public's attention from negative press.

"There are many strategic advantages to getting involved, the most obvious of which is an enhanced reputation in the eyes of the general public, including potential customers. And research has also shown that employees find pride in working for companies that 'give back,' which might reduce rates of employee turnover or even increase their overall productivity," Smith said.

Not all companies can offer Walmart-level assistance, of course, even if they want to. Company size, and the degree to which they themselves are impacted by a natural disaster like Harvey, are limiting factors. But while Walmart's Herculean efforts earned lasting admiration, relatively small acts of insensitivity can evoke swift and brutal blowback.

Take the way one Houston-area Best Buy store fumbled its Harvey response by charging $42 for a case of water. A photo of the price tag went viral on social media outlets, and a public outcry ensued.

This wasn't part of a top-down policy to gouge Houston's panicked residents, Best Buy later clarified in a statement. "This was clearly a mistake in a single store," the company's media relations team wrote. "We feel terrible about this because, as a company, we are focused on helping, not hurting people affected by this terrible event. We are all deeply sorry that we gave anyone even the momentary impression that we were trying to take advantage of the situation."

It's worth worrying about, researchers say: Even a momentary impression that a company is exploiting customers can have lasting repercussions.

"While price gouging might appear on the surface like the logical capitalist response to tremendous demand and limited supply (like the Best Buy example), companies may do better over the longer term by helping those in need," said Marina Andrea Welker, an anthropology professor at Cornell who studies the relationship between business and society. "The media has a critical role to play here in calling attention to harmful practices."

And as a rule, people tend to remember bad publicity longer than they remember acts of heroism, says Zavyalova. It has a way of sticking in the public consciousness.

"It's much more difficult to shed [unwelcome] attention, because it involves a lot of negative emotions, and people are much more locked into those kinds of feelings," she said. "Even with the positive form of fame, when there's admiration and adoration, a couple of missteps will drag you down."

So will Airbnb walk away as Harvey heroes, and Best Buy as villains? It's not that simple, Smith says. While customers tend to remember corporate misdeeds longer than altruism, nothing is permanent. Outrage tends to fade over time, especially after the news media moves on to the next disaster.

"On the whole, despite concentrated sets of boycotts here or there, the general consumer seems to be fairly forgiving (if not often completely ignorant) of companies' indiscretions and exploitations," he said.

Jennifer Latson (@JennieLatson) is a writer and editor at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University and the author of "The Boy Who Loved Too Much."

This article originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle's Gray Matters blog.

By Jennifer Latson

The shine wore off quickly for Apple’s $5 billion new office space. As one Silicon Valley publication reported, the sight of the massive open office plan induced expletive-laced ire in at least one manager, who requested that a satellite office be built for his team: one with walls and doors.

It’s been nearly two decades since the 1999 movie “Office Space” lampooned cubicle culture. Since then, open offices have come to replace the beleaguered cubicle warren as the dominant workplace model. But human beings don’t seem to have gotten much happier — or more productive.

In a chapter of this year’s “Design for Health,” Jeremy Myerson and Gail Ramster, both workplace design researchers at London’s Royal College of Art, point to a disturbing and puzzling trend: “a loss of productivity and a rise in incidences of stress, depression and burnout” — a surprising development, given advances in design and technology.

Open offices weren’t a simple antidote to the angst of cubicle life, as it turned out. Numerous studies have backed up the backlash. The BBC reported earlier this year that research demonstrated people working in open offices were 15 percent less productive than their cubicled counterparts (not to mention twice as likely to get sick). Along with the increased social connection — and corresponding collaboration — designers had hoped to foster, open office spaces brought new sources of irritation for workers: higher noise levels, an increase in distractions, and a loss of privacy that left many longing for the office partitions of old.

A 2013 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, based on surveys of more than 42,000 workers in 303 office buildings, found that enclosed private offices rated highest and open office plans lowest for worker satisfaction. Open offices got the worst feedback when it came to “sound privacy.” (Uncontrollable background noise isn’t just a distraction, other studies have found: It raises epinephrine levels, a marker of stress, and leads to decreased motivation.)

But even the purported benefits of working in open offices — the potential for increased brainstorming and innovation that comes from encountering your co-workers literally everywhere you turn — didn’t register as an incentive in the 2013 study. Ratings for “ease of interaction” were the same for open and private offices. The study’s authors, Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear, both professors of architecture, design and planning at the University of Sydney in Australia, concluded, “Our results categorically contradict the industry-accepted wisdom that open-plan layout enhances communication between colleagues and improves occupants’ overall work environmental satisfaction.”

So what’s the solution? Should we make a U-turn back to the cubicles we once reviled, or is there another way forward that could boost productivity and make employees happier and more creative at work?

Jing Zhou, the Houston Endowment Professor of Management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, says the answer needs to include a blend of both private and open spaces.

“The research finds this almost paradoxical combination of needs: the need to be stimulated and the need for incubation, to sit and think,” she explained. “Open offices give you opportunities to interact with people you don’t normally talk to on a daily basis, increasing the chance of hearing something new or unusual.”

That’s a good thing, but it needs to be tempered with alone time to process the new material, she stressed.

“Even if you have lots of new ideas, you still need to think them through carefully. So open workspaces need to still ensure that people can be alone when they need to be, to focus and concentrate.”

When it comes to choosing the ideal office design, decision-makers need to consider the data — not just anecdotes about which office styles seem to have fostered innovation at other companies.

“Most of the time, companies haven’t had a careful study to compare this new office space, whatever it may be, with alternative styles, to see whether it truly enhances creativity,” Zhou said.

And the office layout itself is just one factor in employee productivity and wellbeing; the design process could be equally important. Myerson and Ramster are proponents of “co-design,” which allows workers to collaborate with designers to build offices with their needs and preferences in mind. Workers benefit not only from the end product itself, the designers argue, but also from their participation in creating it. “A ‘sense of control’ emerges from the literature as an established driver of wellbeing and happiness at work,” they write.

Even more than control, employees crave choice, according to a 2016 survey by Gensler, the world’s largest architecture and design firm. They asked more than 4,000 workers in 11 different industries about the ideal work conditions, and found that there was no one simple answer: People want different conditions at different times.

Sometimes they wanted to collaborate in open spaces; other times they preferred solitude. And ideal working conditions didn’t just comprise physical office space. The most creative, productive employees had flexibility in scheduling, to work at the times that best suited them. They also had access to amenities like gyms and child care — and, perhaps most importantly, good coffee. Companies that provided a diversity of spaces, including meeting rooms, private work areas, places to socialize, outdoor space, and access to “specialty coffee,” tended to foster more engagement and higher levels of innovation.

The ideal workspace included a significant amount of time away from the office as well. Using metrics designed to gauge innovation, leadership and creativity, Gensler’s survey found that the most innovative employees spent only 74 percent of their workweek in the office, compared to “less innovative employees,” who spent 86 percent of their time at work. Top innovators were also twice as likely to use cafeterias, coffee shops, and outdoor spaces. And they reported having twice as much choice in when and where to work, compared to lesser innovators.

The future of officing lies in variety — and the freedom to choose the right space at the right time, according to David Burkus, a professor of leadership and innovation at Oral Roberts University and the author of “Under New Management.”

“The best offices have a palette of spaces,” Burkus said. “They might have an open area but also different sizes of conference rooms. They have these things that look like miniature cubicles that you can just duck into if you need to take a phone call or something.”

In his book, Burkus points to the Gerson Lehrman Group, a New York consulting firm, as a model of the new frontier in office design.

“The entire space is a collection of various furniture types with a large coffee shop in the center of the first floor,” he writes. “In addition to the café stools and living room couches and chairs in the atrium, the office furnishings range from open tables to library-style carrels, to conference rooms big enough for large groups or small enough for just one person seeking solace.”

No one has an assigned desk; employees use lockers to store their stuff for the day. And they’re allowed to work anywhere they want, although Burkus explains that the building is organized into “neighborhoods.” Based on the type of work they do, people tend to cluster near their co-workers.

Studies bear out the efficiency of this model, Burkus said.

“The level of autonomy that people have over their workspace does correlate pretty strongly with productivity and the level of work they do,” he said.

That’s not to say that there’s no data supporting the theory that open offices spark collaboration and serendipitous innovation; there is some, Burkus said, but not enough to outweigh the drawbacks of that model. And it would be disingenuous for companies to claim that they chose the model just for its propensity to spark startup-style innovation.

“If you think redesigning your office can make your company culture into that of a startup, you are sadly mistaken,” Burkus said. “The truth is that we have an open office trend because it was cheap. Startups popularized the trend, but they did it because they were bootstrapping. Then other companies suddenly got on board, and they sold it as a promotion of collaboration and innovation. But it’s really because there’s no cheaper model — you can fit a lot of bodies in an open office.”

Creating a variegated workspace like Gerson Lehrman’s, on the other hand, is expensive.

“They have space to seat 250 people, but they only have about 100 employees,” Burkus said. “You can’t just build the same number of seats as employees, because they need to roam around. That’s the downside of this: It’s not cheap.”

With cost as a hurdle, the palette model of workspace design may never be as ubiquitous as the open office. But that doesn’t mean companies can’t give their employees more autonomy, no matter what the office layout looks like.

Even if you don’t run the company, you can harness the productivity-boosting power of autonomy by simply giving your employees more choice in when and where they work.

“If you’re the CEO and have the power to create your office, great,” Burkus said. “But if you’re a middle manager and you don’t have that say, at the very least you can create that autonomy on your team by letting workers know that they’re free to roam — they can work from home or at the library across the street, say.”

Leaving the office doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing the brainstorming benefits of face-to-face interactions, Zhou says. These can happen just as easily in the virtual realm, using a company’s IT platform or a messaging application such as Slack.

“It’s an informal way for people to share the problems they have and ways to address those problems,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be in a physical space; it’s still a way to share ideas and brainstorm. And you’re not constrained by who to invite to a brainstorming meeting or where to fit everyone. The whole company can be involved.”

The office of the future could be a mishmash of styles, or it could look identical to the office of today, but with an added layer of employee autonomy. What’s clear is that the open office is no longer trending — more likely than not, it will soon go the way of the cubicle.

“We’ve hit peak open office,” Burkus said. “We’re already on the way down.”

Jennifer Latson is an editor at Rice Business Wisdom and the author of The Boy Who Loved Too Much, a nonfiction book about a rare disorder called Williams syndrome.