Dan Heath has a book on solving problems upstream. The central idea is that it is better to solve a problem nearer its source than try and solve the problem once it has fully manifested. Heath’s hard-to-disagree with advice is that it is better to stop the horror movie monster being conjured rather than having…
Author: neilbendle
Neil is an Associate Professor Marketing at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. He investigates the measurement of marketing performance, the accounting/marketing interface, and the impact of non-standard decision making in commercial and political markets.
Neil is the Chair of the Marketing Accountability Standards Board advisors. He is co-author of Marketing Metrics: The Manager’s Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance (3rd edition) Wharton School Press and is co-author of a cartoon book: Behavioural Economics for Kids.
Don’t Expect Perfect, Go For Better
I have written before about B Corp. Today I am looking at the B Corp Handbook. This is a how-to (and why-to) guide to getting registered as a B Corporation. The authors have a number of suggestions that could prove useful. One of the most important should be shown in big lights whenever people discuss…
Putting Finance And Marketing Together
Dave Stewart has written a book packed with details of the financial impact of marketing. He surveys a large number of topics extremely connected to what I write about in this blog. (This probably isn’t too surprising. Dave is chair of MASB, which I am heavily involved in). What then is good advice for putting…
Measuring Performance In Multistakeholder Firms
Jonathan Knowles and Tom Hunsaker have an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review that considers the change in thinking needed when a firm is managed for multiple stakeholders. How then to go about measuring performance in multistakeholder firms? When Money Is All that Matters For the past generation or two firms have often been…
CEOs And Sustainability
Alan Murray (CEO of Fortune Media) has a book on how business is engaging more with social issues. There are a lot of good points in there that help to illustrate business in 2022. So what can he tell us about CEOs and Sustainability? First, The Bad Points Broadly speaking I am on board with…
Not All Papers Must Feature Firm Performance
Today I’m discussing another paper that uses Total Q. I won’t spend too long on that. I have said plenty elsewhere about how bad Total Q is as a measure of firm performance. In this post, I want to somewhat sympathize with the authors of a paper that uses Total Q. I will tell a…
Ideology, Persuasion, And Going Green
A major challenge is persuading members of the public with very different worldviews to take actions aimed at the common good, such as recycling. An appeal that works for a conservative might not work on a liberal, and vice versa. What then do we know about ideology, persuasion, and going green? People Differ In What…
The Limits Of Math Models
The Limits To Growth is a fascinating piece of scientific history. It was a 1972 report by the Club Of Rome. Yes, they did seem to actively want to fuel conspiracy theorists’ fantasies with their enigmatic name. (They still exist by the way and seemed to have moved to Switzerland, which seems a little odd…
Another Total Q Mystery
I am fascinated by attempts to replace Tobin’s Q as a firm performance metric with Total Q. Both metrics are not fit for purpose. One of the most interesting things is just how terrible the arguments in favor of Total Q as a firm performance metric are. I recently highlighted problems in Du and Osmonbekov‘s “Direct effect of…
Tipping And Discrimination
In the US servers’ tips are often treated as part of their pay. Although technically voluntary the servers rely on the tips so one needs an astonishingly good reason not to tip. Despite it being a social obligation different servers do get different levels of tips so what do we know about tipping and discrimination?…
