14 Gayle Porter, an associate professor of management at Rutgers University in Camden, studies attitudes about work, but her comments are strictly personal. She thinks that Philadelphians tend to stay in the region for a long time. They have long memories, and like many people, they tend to remember the bad. When there's a hint of problem, they immediately assume the worst, because they remember the last bad time. But, she said, they also adjust. "It's like family," she said. If the economy does something Philadelphians don't like, "they just accept it." Other places, she said, they'd be more inclined to pick up and leave. That adjustment may come easier because Philadelphia doesn't have as many extremes in its economy - bad or good. "Maybe there is something in those extreme fluctuations that energize people a bit," she said. "But I don't see it here." Or maybe, as Bosse's boss, Brown, said in his statement about Hudson's recent findings, it's the news media. Villanova University economics professor Kishor Thanawala says the media have been relentlessly beating the recession drum, and that can't help but depress people. But, he said, we won't know whether we're in a recession until we're actually in it, because of how recessions are officially defined - two consecutive quarters of falling GDP. "What we're talking about is perception, not reality," he said. Bosse, who left Los Angeles five years earlier to come to Philadelphia, has one theory. But in proffering it, he admits that he's skating on the thinnest of ice. "I think people in Philadelphia work harder than they do in Southern California. They take their work seriously," he said. So maybe, when the news hints of trouble, "they take it harder."
Villanova School of Business 2008 Media Report