Research on BC fiscal management leads local news Ahead of the BC election on May 14, Associate Professor Tsur Somerville took a historic look at the performance of the provincial economy under NDP and Liberal governments. Somerville found that on average since 1991, BC fiscal performance, when compared to that of other provinces, was modestly better under the NDP. The research was featured in CBC, CTV News, The Vancouver Sun and National Post. ■
Prof. argues railroads never a substitute for pipelines Bloomberg Businessweek sought Associate Professor Garland Chow’s expertise on freight transport and security for their story on how the recent disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec has intensified the safety debate surrounding transporting oil by trains. Chow explains that while railroads can serve as a “stopgap” to move oil while pipelines are being built, they can never be a substitute for pipelines. ■
When perks don’t work Sauder research, which shows that giving a free bump in service can backfire for retailers, garnered headlines in Yahoo! Finance, The Globe and Mail and BusinessNewsDaily. “Managerial wisdom guiding service and retail industries assumes that consumers get an uptick in esteem when they’re allowed to skip a queue or get an upgrade,” says co-author Assistant Professor JoAndrea Hoegg. But the researchers proved this is not always the case, as evidenced by a series of experiments that showed consumers experience social discomfort when singled out for spontaneous special treatment. ■
Sauder researchers attempt to define design Fast Company’s design section, Co.DESIGN, covers Professor Yair Wand and PhD candidate Paul Ralph’s quest to define “the design concept.” The feature highlights the research paper, “A Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept,” cowritten by Wand and Ralph, which aims to give a scientific definition of design. “Designers in many disciplines, especially software development, suffer from common misconceptions about the nature of their work, and exploring the meaning of design can help,” says Ralph. ■
Sauder research on workplace conflicts makes global headlines A large number of international media, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, and Italy’s La Stampa, highlighted a study by Sauder PhD student Leah Sheppard, which suggests troubling perceptions exist when it comes to women involved in disputes at work. For the study, Sheppard and her coauthor Professor Karl Aquino asked experiment participants to assess one of three workplace conflict scenarios, all identical except for the names of the individuals involved. They found that when the scenario depicted female-female conflict, participants perceived there to be more negative implications than the male-male or male-female conflicts. ■
VIEWPOINTS FALL/WINTER 2013
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