Knowledge@Wharton Business Research Journal

Declining Employee Loyalty: A Casualty of the New Workplace

If loyalty is defined as being faithful to a cause, ideal, custom, institution or product, then there seems to be a certain amount of infidelity in the workplace these days. The 10^th annual survey of employee benefits, trends and attitudes released in March by MetLife puts employee loyalty at a seven-year low and says one in three employees plans to leave his or her job by the end of the year. Wharton faculty and others look at the evolving relationship between employees and employers.

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Everyone's Problem: Looking Beyond the Wal-Mart Bribery Case

In a case that continues to reverberate across borders, Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s largest retailer, announced recently that it has started its own probe into allegations that executives at its Mexican operations made hundreds of illegal payments to help expedite the opening of new stores. According to legal and ethics experts at Wharton and elsewhere, the case raises broader questions about how multinational companies conduct business in foreign countries.

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Etsy Seeks Scale without Losing Its 'Street Fair' Aesthetic

Etsy was launched as a ragtag website for artists and craftspeople to sell their wares. Today, it has become one of the Internet's most prominent tastemakers. As the company grows, experts caution that it must be careful not to alienate its faithful shop owners and customers by going too commercial and straying from its independent, artsy roots, or by becoming bogged down in privacy and seller credibility concerns.

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State of the Unions: What It Means for Workers -- and Everyone Else

Labor unions have long had a position of prominence in American business and political life. But their influence has been on the decline in recent decades as membership ranks have dwindled. The increasing irrelevance of unions will have far-reaching implications, Wharton experts and others say, including the loss of one of the few ways that working class Americans can engage in the political process and become educated about labor laws. Corporations will feel the effects as well -- and they won't necessarily be positive, experts add.

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Investor Sentiment and Stock Prices: Explaining the Ups and Downs

Academics, traders and money managers are forever trying to figure out what makes stocks rise and fall. Some influences are clear, like the price gain after a company reports strong earnings. But other behaviors are mystifying. For example, why do shares of companies with fast asset growth sometimes do better than expected according to standard measures like earnings? And why do they sometimes do worse? New research by Wharton finance professor Robert F. Stambaugh and two colleagues shows that market-wide investor sentiment is a key influence in such stock return anomalies.

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IT Innovations Dominate 2012's 'Great Eight' Business Plans

Since launching during the height of the dot.com bubble of the early 2000s, Wharton's Business Plan Competition has seen ever increasing diversity in entries from student entrepreneurs. This year, a big theme was IT solutions for business problems, especially in the health care field, although ideas related to online marketing and education were also presented.

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