News Bureau

“Paradox brands” – that is, brands that can straddle contradictory meanings or possess opposing characteristics – are more appealing to bicultural consumers in the U.S. than traditional singular-meaning brands, says new research co-written by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign business professor and consumer marketing expert Maria A. Rodas.

Participating in creative activities in support of a charitable cause induces a sense of autonomy in participants, which increases both the likelihood and the amount of donation, said Ravi Mehta, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.

Service-industry workers can be shielded from customer sexual harassment via bystander interventions from their fellow employees, says new research co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign experts who study occupational stress and employee well-being.

Different types of help-seeking at work have disparate interpersonal costs and benefits for competency measures on the job, says new research co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign experts.

Job seekers’ perceived risk of contracting and falling seriously ill from COVID-19 may take a significant mental health toll and ultimately affect their ability to secure employment, says new research co-written by Yihao Liu, a professor of labor and employment relations and of psychology at Illinois.

Meritocratic employment practices such as performance bonuses often fail to reduce gender-based pay inequality and may actually exacerbate it by allowing the status quo to remain intact at firms, says new research co-written by Eunmi Mun, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

A new paper co-written by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign economist Yilan Xu says taming domestic transmission of COVID-19 ought to be prioritized over international travel bans.

Online learning engagement can be increased by nearly one-third by simply prompting students to share course ideas instead of personal details.

As the COVID-19 pandemic recedes and employers look to restart businesses at full capacity, workers have leverage that they’re using to temporarily stay out of the labor market in certain industries, says U. of I. labor expert Robert Bruno.

The default option is an easy way to “nudge” people toward a decision, but new research co-written by University of Illinois Distinguished Fellow in psychology Benjamin X. White finds that time constraints can play an important role in influencing decisions.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated an existing child care crisis that disproportionately impacted and continues to affect working women, says Alison Dickson, a senior instructor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Current work-refusal laws are out-of-step with modern workplaces and provide meager benefits to employees who decline to work when faced with risks involving chemicals, radiation and other microscopic or invisible hazards such as COVID-19, says research from Michael LeRoy, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

A new paper co-written by business professors Ujjal Kumar Mukherjee and Sridhar Seshadri shows that rapid bulk-testing for COVID-19 along with other standard mitigation measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing were the keys to successfully reopening college campuses during the pandemic.

A new report from labor and employment relations professors Richard A. Benton and Eunmi Mun shows women and nonwhite minorities remain largely underrepresented as corporate board members in the state of Illinois relative to the state’s demographics and their respective industries, but also highlights several promising policies and practices that firms can adopt to help reduce the disparity.

New research co-written by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors Tatyana Deryugina and Benjamin M. Marx finds that people’s “altruism budget” for charitable giving is flexible and can expand.

The incidence of prolonged hiring difficulties for workers with science and technology backgrounds is consistent with persistent hiring frictions and not a “skills gap” in the labor market for information technology help desk workers, one of the largest computer occupations in the U.S., says new research by U. of I. labor professor Andrew Weaver.

As many as 61% of hourly workers in Illinois are underemployed, underscoring the need for the state to adopt a fair-workweek law, says Alison Dickson, a senior instructor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Emotional appeals in advertisements may not always help improve consumers’ immediate recall of a product, says a new paper co-written by Hayden Noel, a clinical associate professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.

The monetary value of a vaccine that could potentially bring about the end of the COVID-19 pandemic is between 5%-15% of worldwide wealth, according to a new paper co-written by Timothy Johnson, the Karl and Louise Schewe Professor of Finance at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

A country’s political system can positively or negatively affect trade union membership and influence, says a new paper co-written by J. Ryan Lamare, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

We don’t have the control we think we do in browsing the internet. Our notion of empowerment to see and find what we choose is “an illusion,” say the authors of a study – including Illinois media professor Harsh Taneja – that analyzed browsing data on a million people over one month of internet use. Corporations are “nudging” the flow of our online attention more than we realize, and often in ways that are hidden or beyond our control.

Job losses during the pandemic were substantially worse for workers in low-paying jobs, leading to a dramatic increase in wage inequality during the early months of the COVID-19 recession, according to new research co-written by University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign labor economist Eliza Forsythe.

Another round of federal stimulus checks and increased unemployment benefits would be “economic stabilizers” for the working poor during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, says U. of I. labor expert Robert Bruno.

Dominant firms in concentrated industries can play a role in job quality erosion and wage stagnation for U.S. workers, says new research co-written by U. of I. labor and employment relations professor Richard Benton and U. of I. graduate student Ki-Jung Kim.

A coronavirus-abbreviated Major League Baseball season will open amid the backdrop of significant labor tension between owners and players, says U. of I. labor historian Daniel A. Gilbert.

Mundane behaviors such as taking a daily medication can eventually create false memories of completing the task, said Dolores Albarracin, a professor of psychology and marketing at Illinois and the director of the Social Action Lab.

With the rise of globalization, geographic borders are becoming less relevant for making charitable donations, which means nonprofits and charities can make more effective pitches to donors by emphasizing higher-level concepts such as morality and idealistic values, said Carlos Torelli, a professor of business administration and the James F. Towey Faculty Fellow at Illinois.

At least one familiar brand is being retired and others are getting a rethink due to their use of Black images. Illinois advertising professor Jason Chambers explains why.

Workers with greater boundary control over their work and personal lives were better at creating a stress buffer to prevent them from falling into a negative rumination trap, says a new study co-written by a trio of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign experts who study occupational stress and employee well-being.

Although workers of all demographics have experienced job losses due to COVID-19, workers who belong to more disadvantaged groups – women, racial and ethnic minorities, younger people and the less educated – have been disproportionately affected by unemployment, according to new research co-written by Eliza Forsythe, a professor of labor and employment relations and of economics at Illinois.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied the efficacy of workplace wellness programs and found only a modest impact on employee health, health beliefs and medical utilization.

Cultural variables play an important role in perceptions of status and power in business, according to research co-written by Carlos Torelli, a professor of business administration and the James F. Towey Faculty Fellow at the Gies College of Busines at Illinois.

Epidemics such as COVID-19 are characterized by resource constraints due to sudden and unprecedented demand shocks for health care facilities and services, making the initial prevention of disease spread through testing, identification and quarantine activities more important than mitigation or curative efforts, according to research co-written by Ujjal Kumar Mukherjee, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois who studies innovation in health care.

Lack of paid sick time makes the U.S. acutely susceptible to a global health crises like COVID-19, and is part of the larger problem of tying health care to employment, says U. of I. labor expert Robert Bruno.

A new paper co-written by Yilan Xu, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, shows that the growing traffic burden in shale energy boomtowns resulted in a surge of road fatalities and severe accidents.

A firm’s decision on where to locate its branch offices has reverberations in higher education and students’ post-graduation upward income mobility, according to new research from U. of I. labor economist Russell Weinstein.

Robot-assisted surgery is a major advancement in minimally invasive surgical care delivery, making it imperative for hospitals to codify policies that leverage the quality benefits while managing the cost, says Ujjal Kumar Mukherjee, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois who studies innovation in health care.

As many newspapers decline and disappear – highlighted by two Chicago Tribune reporters recently sounding the alarm about a perceived threat to the Trib – a journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign touts the growth and viability of nonprofits and other alternatives.

Targeted advertising is coming to mainstream media, says an Illinois professor of digital media, bringing concerns about equality, division and “total surveillance.”

Scholars from the Gies College of Business at Illinois – from left, Julian Reif, Tatyana Deryugina, David Molitor and Nolan Miller – studied the effects of acute fine particulate matter exposure on mortality, health care use and medical costs among older Americans through Medicare data and changes in local wind direction.

Although luxury brands and social responsibility seem fundamentally inconsistent with each other, the two entities can coexist in the mind of the consumer, provided the brand can find someone – typically, a celebrity – who successfully embodies the two conflicting value sets, says new research co-written by Carlos Torelli, a professor of business administration and James F. Towey Faculty Fellow at Illinois.

Consumer attitudes toward private-label store brands might be driven more by social variables than price, says new research co-written by Carlos Torelli, a professor of business administration and James F. Towey Faculty Fellow at Illinois.

New research co-written by U. of I. labor economist Eliza Forsythe finds that the adoption of new technologies in office and administrative support occupations ultimately leads to more job growth in the local economy, but offers mixed benefits for the office support workers themselves.

Many nonprofits using sport to create social change may fail because their leaders lack the leadership and business skills critical to the organizations' survival, U. of I. professor Jon Welty Peachey found in a study.

Targeted financial incentives can increase the service capacity of crowdsourced delivery workers without incurring additional costs for retailers, according to new research co-written by Yuqian Xu, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.

A worker who retains legal counsel to litigate a workplace dispute in arbitration doesn’t account for the potentially countervailing effect of employers hiring their own legal counsel, says new research co-written by U. of I. labor professor Ryan Lamare.

When defusing workplace conflict, firms favor alternative dispute resolution practices that align with their underlying strategic bent, says new research co-written by U. of I. labor professor Ryan Lamare.

Urban commuters may be less likely to encounter automobile accidents if they are willing to increase trip time, researchers report. A new study from the University of Illinois introduces a tool that helps quantify the connection between traffic accidents and city road networks.

A new book by University of Illinois professor Andrew Orta studies the culture of contemporary business education and the MBA degree through the lens of a professional anthropologist.

“Personalized promotion” is a potentially lucrative opportunity for retailers to extract even more money from consumer wallets that also enhances customer satisfaction, said Yuqian Xu, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois.