In the final days of the campaign battle, U.S. Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, the respective Republican and Democratic nominees, have established their distinctive leadership styles. What leadership traits will the country’s next chief executive need to lead the U.S. in these troubled economic times?

With a turbulent economy, the volatile financial industry, escalating energy prices, and a presidential election in the balance, uncertainty looms large. How do you formulate strategy when you don’t know what will happen next? In the midst of a changing economy, most executives continue to use a strategy toolkit designed for yesterday’s more stable marketplace. As a result, strategies emerge that neither manage the risks nor take advantage of the opportunities that arise in highly uncertain times.

As Congress and federal regulators scramble to shore up U.S. financial institutions, leading business school faculty and staff are working to understand the evolving situation and explain it to students and alumni. Leaders at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business are helping the Smith community navigate the financial crisis. More than 200 students, faculty and staff packed Frank Auditorium in the school’s Van Munching Hall on Friday, Sept. 26 for a town-hall meeting to discuss the market meltdown, the bailout plan and the fallout rocking the U.S. economy.

It has been over a year since the credit crunch started. The effects continue to ripple through the economy. The housing market is dismal and the Federal Reserve has resorted to extraordinary measures to prop up the banking industry. The number of big corporate mergers is down sharply. Deals getting done these days are largely financed with money from overseas or from companies using their own funds. What are the lessons learned and what will be the ultimate outcomes?

The State of Maryland has recently been cited as No. 2 in the nation as a source of economic growth and the Smith School’s Center for Human Capital, Innovation and Technology (HCIT) is an important contributing driver.

College Park, Md. – Sept. 2, 2008 – The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business today announced 21 outstanding faculty members have joined the school from leading universities to start the 2008-2009 academic year.

In the 10 years that Lawrence Gordon, Ernst & Young Alumni Professor of Managerial Accounting and Information Assurance, has spent pondering the economic issues related to cybersecurity, the risks have changed significantly. Businesses and government agencies no longer have to worry about teen hackers taking a shot at their organizations for bragging rights. Instead, multinational corporations and government agencies are suffering cyber-attacks from organized crime, large-scale fraud, disgruntled employees and even terrorists.

Managing Employee Silence Research by Subra Tangirala The Mysteries of Mimicry Research by Rosellina Ferraro Revenue Management with Minimal Demand Information Research by Itir Karaesmen and Michael Ball Human Capital, Innovation and Technology Center Faculty Awards and Honors Featured Researchers Stock Options and CEO Earnings Manipulation

College Park, Md. – August 11, 2008 – Michel Wedel, PepsiCo Professor of Consumer Science at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, recently received the American Marketing Association’s Gilbert A. Churchill Award for lifetime achievement in the academic study of marketing research. Dr. Wedel received his award at the American Marketing Association’s Summer Marketing Educators’ Conference in San Diego on August 9.

College Park, Md. – June 24, 2008 – P.K. Kannan, Harvey Sanders Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, has won the John D.C. Little Award for co-authoring the paper "New Product Development Under Channel Acceptance," published in the March/April issue of Marketing Science. Kannan and his co-authors accepted the annually awarded prize and highest honor given by the College on Marketing of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) at the Marketing Science Conference on June 13.