SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Organizations need strong leaders who can build high-quality relationships with their subordinates. But the same leaders create a liability when they exit because loyal employees will often follow them out the door. The result can be “turnover contagion.”

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — It might be the biggest but least-talked-about drag on the U.S. economy and, paradoxically, it might be why your equity portfolio looks so good, with perky stock prices, cushy buybacks and better-looking dividends. It’s called short-termism, or quarterly capitalism. It’s what happens when companies focus on returning money to shareholders each quarter, rather than spending money on productivity improvements or on research and development that could result in the next big innovation.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — If you want to meet new people, leave your “wingman” at home and go out alone. People will think you are more open-minded, curious and interested in the world and be more likely to strike up a conversation with you. That’s the finding of new research from Rebecca Ratner at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and Smith marketing PhD student Yuechen Wu. 

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Information systems professor Louiqa Raschid learned valuable lessons from her involvement in developing the Sahana Open Source system for natural disaster recovery management that was used effectively for such events as Superstorm Sandy. Currently, she’s leading an effort to monitor and avert a different disaster type — a financial crisis.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — There’s no question that internet advertising is increasingly vital for business survival. The question is: Where do you start? And how can you be sure that your advertising dollars are reaching the right audience?

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Wall Street responds to surprises, but not always in intuitive ways. Share prices go up at the firm level when a company issues a stronger than expected earnings report, which makes sense. But the opposite often happens at the aggregate level when companies collectively exceed expectations. Share prices can drop instead of rise.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — An abusive boss can make work miserable for anyone, prompting defiant employees to retaliate or flee. New research co-authored by Hui Liao at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business shows a third option.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Public companies — owned by shareholders with stock — have the advantage of being able to easily tap into financial markets when they need money, either by selling more equity as stock or often by issuing portions of their debt as bonds. Private companies — owned by the company’s founders, a management group or private investors such as a private equity group — can also sell off their debt as public bonds.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Brands like Nantucket Nectars, Ben & Jerry's, Toms Shoes, Burt's Bees and Lifeway have thrived against bigger, longer-established competitors. They’ve emphasized modest roots and played up virtues like product health benefits and their social consciousness or environmental consciousness.  Appearing resource-modest, but highly moral, they’re tapping into the adage “consumers gravitate to underdogs.”

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Social media users post millions of “likes” and comments every year on brand pages for everything from AAA to Zyrtec. That’s a potentially rich source of information for marketers trying to gauge customer sentiment, but built-in biases create challenges. New research from professor Wendy W. Moe and a colleague at the University of Maryland’s Robert H.