Skip to main content
Kelley School of Business Indiana University Bloomington
Kelley School of Business

Kelley offers no-cost assistance to help small Hoosier businesses shift their operations online

Posted on by George Vlahakis

 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — To help small companies in Indiana hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, the Indiana University Kelley School of Business is offering no-cost assistance to businesses needing to shift operations online, while also providing paid internship opportunities for its students.

Kelley is partnering with Indiana Small Business Development Centers and also will work with economic development centers, chambers of commerce and business hubs such as the Dimension Mill in Bloomington. The program is called the Kelley HOPE Digital Project.

“COVID-19 is having a tremendous impact on the state’s economy,” said Bipin Prabhakar, (left) chair of Information Systems Graduate Programs at the Kelley School and a Fettig/Whirlpool Fellow. “Particularly hard hit are small businesses that have traditionally operated in person, not online. For some, going online will be a lifeline to survive.”

“Businesses may not have the time, knowledge or resources to implement an online model quickly,” added Alan Dennis, the Kelley School John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems. “Even after stay-at-home orders have been lifted, many consumers will still prefer to go online. We want to help these companies by offering a no-cost service to alleviate the operational barriers created by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The goal of the program is to help small businesses establish or increase their online presence and bolster their digital capabilities. Each project will be done by students under the guidance of a faculty member or an alumnus who serves as a professional mentor. The focus will be to quickly solve a technology problem or to provide companies with new digital capability.

Projects could include creating or modifying websites or digital storefronts, making it possible for staff or customers to work with the company remotely or improving their information security. All projects will be completed within two weeks, so as many organizations can be helped as possible. All work will be done virtually through an accountable, responsible and customer-serving framework.

(more…)

Scarcity reduces consumers’ concerns about prices, research shows

Posted on by George Vlahakis

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — During the current pandemic, panicked overbuying of products such as toilet paper, cleaning products and similar items often has led to limited options for consumers and empty store shelves. What’s often left are generic or lower-priced branded products.

Ashok Lalwani

According to new research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, it may not be because consumers during this crisis are viewing higher-priced products as having better quality. A paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research finds that scarcity actually decreases consumers’ tendency to use price to judge a product’s quality.

“Scarcity is aversive and triggers the desire to compensate for the shortage, and to seek abundance,” said paper co-author Ashok Lalwani, associate professor of marketing at Kelley. “People who face scarcity are less likely to view less vs. more expensive options as belonging to different categories, and thus are open to differences at either or both ends of the price continuum.”

This is the first paper to directly show the impact of scarcity on price-quality judgments. The findings are applicable amid times of economic crisis, natural disasters and social disturbances.

“We suggest that people may not only differ in terms of how they categorize purchases, but also in terms of the extent to which they categorize, and scarcity reduces the tendency,” Lalwani said.

While consumers frequently judge the quality of a product based on its price, they change their thinking during times of scarcity and are less likely to categorize objects and less likely to use the price of a product to infer its quality, Lalwani and his co-authors found.

The business implications for managers at high-end stores or those who want to increase sales of high-priced items are numerous. Lalwani suggested that one way such managers can activate the belief that higher prices indicate higher quality is by varying context or environmental factors. This could include encouraging consumers — such as through contests or sweepstakes — to categorize assorted items by price to facilitate the use of price-tiers as a basis for judging a product’s quality.

“The same objective could also be attained by reducing consumers’ desire for abundance,” Lalwani said. “For example, inside the store, managers could have portraits, displays or ads highlighting the harmful effects of gluttony or hoarding behavior. Doing so may increase customers’ price-quality inferences and shift them from purchasing lower-priced to higher-priced goods.

“Our findings also suggest that when stronger price-quality inferences are desired, retailers are advised to avoid utilizing scarcity messages, such as ‘sale ends this week’ or ‘while supplies last,’ especially for product categories in which the proportion of high-priced items is high, as priming scarcity among consumers may decrease their price-quality inferences.”

Other authors of the paper, “The Impact of Resource Scarcity on Price-Quality Judgments,” were Hanyong Park, assistant professor of marketing at the Eli Brand College of Business at Michigan State, and David Silvera, retired associate professor of marketing at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Students ‘zoom’ to promote good mental health during annual Kelley Impact Competition

Posted on by George Vlahakis

 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Stay-at-home orders and other precautions against the coronavirus couldn’t stop organizers of the  Kelley Impact Competition from moving forward to help the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization.

This is the 10th anniversary of the Kelley Institute for Social Impact, which organized the case competition for socially-minded undergraduate students. It’s also the second year for the event, which last year aided Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County.

The top three teams receive monetary prizes, but more importantly, the winning team also receives $10,000 in seed money to support their idea and hopefully create lasting change for the client, which this year was the greater Bloomington chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Teams were asked to identify strategies that will increase the impact that the local NAMI chapter will have on the community and come up with methods to expand the reach of its message and grow its base of supporters and volunteers.

Last fall, Kelley 2011 alumnus Lance Breitstein, whose gift made the competition possible, asked the focus to be on mental health and wellness.

As part of its “Decade of Difference” celebration, the competition – which is open to all undergraduates at IU Bloomington — originally was scheduled to cap off a week of activities. As it became apparent in March that the coronavirus was going to affect campus activities, organizers moved it to April 24 and online.

Ten of the 12 original teams – each consisting of four students – remained committed. During the competition, they used Zoom to log in from all over the world — from India and China – as well as from all across the country – from Florida, California, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, New York – and, of course, Indiana. Also tuning in were 13 judges who included alumni and community partners. (more…)

Kelley and Krannert business schools partner to help IU Health manage surge of COVID-19 patients

Posted on by George Vlahakis

 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Faculty at two of Indiana’s leading business schools — Indiana and Purdue universities — are collaborating on a project with IU Health to help the health care provider manage the COVID-19 demand surge in their 16 hospitals across five regions of the state.

The interdisciplinary team of professors at IU’s Kelley School of Business and Purdue’s Krannert School of Management has been working since March 23 to develop a predictive model of the resources required for an adequate response to the pandemic. It integrates disease prediction with a sophisticated patient flow workload model.

Team co-leaders Jonathan Helm, associate professor of operations and decision technologies and Grant Thornton Scholar at Kelley, said many models for COVID-19 lack the details needed for hospitals to do operational planning.

“A lot of models out there that predict the number of ICUs and ventilators you’re going to need really are back-of-the-envelope calculations,” Helm said. “For example, patient resource requirements in Indianapolis look different from those for patients in Lafayette and Bloomington. These regions have different types of hospitals and different demographics of people they serve, and different population densities, all of which contribute to COVID-19 care resource requirements.

“We are creating a learning model of how the patients in each region of Indiana are being affected and how they differ from those in the national model.”

(more…)

Kelley School initiative results in more than 21,000 surgical masks donated to hospitals

Posted on by George Vlahakis

 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — In the fight against the novel coronavirus, a social grassroots venture started by students and faculty at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business has been working to get N95 and surgical masks to hospitals and to the life-saving doctors and nurses who need them.

The #RealHeroesNeedMasks initiative was a result of an “Idea Sprint” organized by faculty in Kelley’s management and entrepreneurship department. Since it launched March 22, the initiative already has collected and donated more than 21,000 masks to hospitals in Indiana, New Orleans, New York City and Houston, where co-founder Dr. Amani Jambhekar lives. Jambhekar is a Houston-based cancer surgeon and Kelley Direct online MBA student.

About 8,000 of those masks have arrived in Indiana, going to IU Health hospitals in Indianapolis and Bloomington and to hospitals operated by Community Health Network in Indianapolis.

The group has worked with physicians to set up safe donations at 33 outpatient clinics around the country, as well as nine distribution centers. Masks collected at those sites and from other sources soon will go to other hospitals where they are most needed, including in Chicago and Detroit and cities in New Jersey, California and Georgia.

(more…)

Student in Master of Science in Healthcare Management program is flattening the curve

Posted on by George Vlahakis

 

 

 

Launch your career with a healthcare management degree. Apply by December 1: https://kelley.iu.edu/programs/ms-healthcare-management/

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — When she enrolled in the Master of Science in Healthcare Management program at Indiana University, Cat Sartino had no idea she’d find herself on the front lines of a once-in-a-lifetime health crisis.

Back in June 2019, when the program was inaugurated, the world had never heard of COVID-19. Today, Sartino is all too familiar with the virus that has claimed lives around the globe and changed the way we live and work.

As part of the MSHM program, students are placed in immersive practicums that are more than internships. Sartino, as fate would have it, wound up in the infection prevention department at an Indianapolis hospital.

“Never in a million years did I think that we would be where we are right now,” she said. “Being at the hospital has made this pandemic so real. I am in it, fighting with my team. It’s scary, but I always think about how many people we are protecting and saving.”

On her team, Sartino is using her newfound healthcare management skills to help keep track of where COVID-19 patients are located throughout the hospital and strategically deploying personal protective equipment to those hot spot areas. It’s Sartino who is charged with reporting positive COVID-19 test results to the Indiana State Department of Health, and updating the department on any changes that occur.

(more…)

Faculty at Kelley offer their innovative and entrepreneurial expertise to fighting COVID-19

Posted on by George Vlahakis

 

 

 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Faculty at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business are using innovative methods and their personal resources in the battle against the novel coronavirus pandemic that has now affected the lives of more than 8,200 Hoosiers and nearly 590,000 people nationwide.

Many of those efforts arose from an “Idea Sprint” organized by several management and entrepreneurship professors. They pulled together more than 200 entrepreneurs, coders, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, venture capitalists and other business professionals, who worked virtually and developed 19 potential solutions for problems arising from COVID-19.

Participants came from all across the United States and Canada and from four other continents, Australia, Europe, Asia and South America. The initiative was organized in just three days and led to the development of social initiatives addressing issues such as the shortage of surgical masks, grocery stock outs, displaced workers, small business matchmaking and online educational challenges now impacting students across the country.

“We all know there are great ideas out there related to this crisis. We wanted to find a way to quickly bring entrepreneurs, medical professionals, and technologists from around the world together to work intensively on solutions,” said one of the organizers, Regan Stevenson (pictured right), assistant professor of entrepreneurship and management and the John and Donna Shoemaker Faculty Fellow. “In order to do this, we knew we needed to move fast and step outside the institutional structure to get this movement off the ground immediately.” (more…)

The latest information about how to apply to programs at the IU Kelley School of Business

Posted on by George Vlahakis

 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Recognizing the challenges and concerns presented by the ever-changing situation related to COVID-19, the Indiana University Kelley School of Business has extended deadlines for several programs and made other accommodations for applicants.

Below is information for each Kelley program:

Undergraduate Program (at IU Bloomington):

  • As stated by the IU Bloomington Office of Admissions, the deadline to reserve a seat in the undergraduate program for the upcoming fall term is June 1.
  • The latest information about admissions the Kelley Undergraduate Program is available at the program’s web site.
  • Details on virtual visit options (including one-on-one appointments) are available here for IU Bloomington and here for the Kelley School.
  • Residential Programs and Services’ web site has information about housing applications.

Full-Time MBA Program:

  • The Full-Time MBA Program, following their April 15 deadline, will continue to accept applications from domestic candidates on a rolling basis until June 1. Candidates will be given full consideration for admission and merit-based financial aid.
  • If disruptions caused by COVID-19 have delayed completion of the GMAT or GRE, candidates are welcome to submit their application prior to taking the tests. The admissions committee will begin the review process, but test scores must be submitted before a final decision is made.
  • While campus visits have been temporarily suspended, candidates are welcome to contact the program (iumba@indiana.edu) if they’d like to arrange a chat by phone or Skype with a member of the admissions team.
  • More information about the Full-Time MBA Program is available at the program’s web site.

Kelley Direct online MBA and MS Programs:

  • The application deadline for the fall 2020 cohort of the Kelley Direct Online MBA Program has been extended to July 15. In addition to experiencing the program’s on-demand virtual open house, applicants can also join admission staff for online office hours and register to attend live info sessions by visiting the Kelley Direct Programs Meet Us page.
  • The deadline for applying to Kelley Direct’s Master of Science programs is unchanged and remains Aug. 1.
  • The application deadlines for the fully online MS in Accounting via edX and MS in Information Technology Management via edX is unchanged and remains Aug. 1.

Master of Science in Information Systems:

  • Limited to applicants from undergraduate programs at Kelley, the Luddy School of Informatics and Computing and Engineering and +Kelley students (IU College of Arts and Sciences and DePauw University students only) graduating this spring with a grade point average of 3.5 or higher. Test scores may be waived.
  • Those applying must be nominated by a faculty member or academic/career advisor in writing, sent to msis@indiana.edu.
  • Deadline for applications to the MSIS is April 20 (was previously March 1). Applications will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis until the class is full.
  • More information about the MSIS Program is available at the program’s web site.

Master of Science in Finance:

  • The application deadline for the summer 2020 cohort of the residential Master of Science in Finance has been extended to April 30 from March 1. The program is set to begin with summer classes, most likely online.

Master of Science in Accounting:

  • The application deadline for the fall 2020 cohort for the Master of Science in Accounting will be extended to July 1 for U.S. students (from March 1). Test score requirements for Kelley Bloomington students and those with a GPA of 3.5 or higher will be waived. The program is set to begin in the fall with Jumpstart classes this summer, most likely online.

Kelley/Manchester Global MBA (Executive Degree Programs):

  • Students are required to submit results of the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), the Graduate Records Examinations (GRE) or the Manchester Admissions Test (MAT).  The MAT can be completed from an applicant’s home computer after receiving the link from the Alliance Manchester Business School.  The link is requested on the application. When the application is submitted, the link will be sent.
  • The standardized test requirement will not be waived, and there will not be a deadline extension.  All applicants can take the MAT and submit the application by July 1.

Graduate certificates (Executive Degree Programs):

  • Graduate certificates offered online by Executive Degree Programs do not require that applicants take the GMAT or GRE. Application deadlines for each certificate program vary and remain unchanged. More information about each certificate program is available online.

Undergraduate Program (at IUPUI):

  • As stated by the IUPUI Office of Admissions, the deadline to reserve a seat in the undergraduate program for the upcoming fall term is June 1.
  • Housing applications also will be accepted through that date, but changes to submitted preferences on the application will not be possible after May 11
  • The latest information about admissions is available at the program’s web site.

Evening MBA Program (at IUPUI):

  • The Evening MBA Program will accept applications and admit students on a rolling basis, for either the August or November cohorts. The application deadline for an August start is July 16 and the deadline for the December start is Oct. 7. While those applying are encouraged to submit application materials as early as possible, please connect with admissions staff about testing postponements or other concerns related to applications.
  • In some cases, the program may be able to review applications without all the required materials. To learn more, experience an online info session or contact the program at mbaindy@iupui.edu or 317-274-4895.

Business of Medicine Physician MBA Program:

Kelley School initiative sparks ideas from around world to address problems from coronavirus

Posted on by George Vlahakis

 

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Among the millions of Americans working from home, a group of Indiana University Kelley School of Business professors created a worldwide movement to seek solutions for problems arising from the novel coronavirus.

Their “Idea Sprint Weekend Against COVID-19” initiative was organized in just three days and led to the development of several new social initiatives addressing issues related to the COVID-19 crisis, including a shortage of surgical masks, grocery stockouts, displaced workers and online educational challenges that students are facing across the country.

About 200 people participated from around the world starting March 20, and by the evening of March 22, 19 teams had posted video pitches to the project web site, covid19ideas.org. Professors have continued to hear from teams working on launching their social ventures.

“We were at home, communicating on Zoom like everyone else, and began to think about what more we could do,” said Regan Stevenson, assistant professor of entrepreneurship and management and the John and Donna Shoemaker Faculty Fellow, who initiated the project. “With our experience helping people come up with ideas and launch social ventures, we thought we might be able create a movement to bring the entrepreneurship, tech and medical communities together to take on the COVID-19 crisis on a bigger scale than each of us could do individually.”

Stevenson and several colleagues announced an urgent open call for ideas and participants on social media March 18. While their original focus was on engaging students who had been dispersed from campus, the sign-up page was quickly inundated by a diverse group of entrepreneurs, coders, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, venture capitalists and other business professionals from the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America who wanted to be part of a community led by a common cause.

(more…)

Kelley School helps businesses navigate through the COVID-19 crisis by providing free access to journal and podcast

Posted on by George Vlahakis

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – In addition to being a public health issue, the novel coronavirus is endangering many businesses across the country and in Indiana. The Indiana University Kelley School of Business is responding to this need by providing free access to useful information through its Business Horizons journal and The ROI Podcast produced at the school at IUPUI.

Greg Fisher, the Larry and Barbara Sharpf Professor and an associate professor of entrepreneurship (pictured left), edits Business Horizons and has put together a collection past articles from the journal about how businesses can respond to this crisis.

Published bimonthly in partnership with Elsevier Ltd., Business Horizons often tackles important questions, challenges and matters facing the business arena. Elsevier is hosting the collection online and has made the included articles free for 90 days. This is a joint effort between Business Horizons and Elsevier.

“COVID-19 has created crises for many, and the ensuing social, health, and economic challenges require innovative and responsive solutions.,” Fisher said. “This is a time when we need leaders who are willing to adopt innovative business practices, scholars who embark on novel research to solve real problems, and a broad exchange of ideas to figure out ways to address challenges.

“With this in mind, we have put together a collection of articles from our archives that address issues within the five themes listed above. We hope these articles will serve as a catalyst for solving impending business challenges and for prompting new research and discourse,” he added.

(more…)

Skip to toolbar