Author: Neil Schoenherr

Chairs provide great support during long meetings, but they may also be holding us back. Standing during meetings boosts the excitement around creative group processes and reduces people’s tendencies to defend their turf, according to a new Washington University in St. Louis study that used wearable sensors to measure participants’ activity levels.

A recent internal investigation of the Veterans Affairs Department has alleged that supervisors got bonuses partly by reporting low wait times for veterans waiting for care. Lamar Pierce, PhD, an expert on compensation and incentive conflict at Olin Business School, says that while employers frequently use financial incentives to motivate employees, the VA should have thought more about unintended consquences.

A Belgian company was so impressed with the efforts of a group of Olin Business School students at Washington University in St. Louis, the CEO traveled 4,300 miles to campus this spring for further interaction with the students, marking the first time an international practicum partner has visited the school.

Contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reserve’s effort to encourage banks’ lending during the recent financial crisis by providing them short-term loans worked — and, in fact, worked quite well — finds a new study by assistant professor of finance Jennifer Dlugosz and colleagues.

In preparation for an upcoming summit on working families, Robert Pollak, PhD, an expert on family economics, recently attended a meeting at the White House with other academic leaders and senior administration officials. They gathered to discuss the implications of demographic and other changes for 21st-century workplaces.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized Washington University in St. Louis for reducing its waste. Among other efforts, used cooking oil is recycled into biodiesel to fuel Bon Appétit campus delivery trucks. Here, executive chef Patrick McElroy (far right) explains the process.

A project to provide low-cost eyeglasses for people in the developing world and one to develop a cell-death detector will share $25,000 to further develop their projects as winners of the 2014 Discovery Competition. Washington University in St. Louis’ School of Engineering & Applied Science created the competition in 2012.

Hundreds of alumni, students, faculty, business leaders, entrepreneurs and friends of the university gathered May 2 and 3 to celebrate a momentous milestone in the 97-year history of Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School – the dedication of Knight Hall and Bauer Hall, the school’s new state-of-the-art buildings.

A group of a two dozen corporate leaders, including Warren Buffet, is trying to influence American companies to increase the number of women in positions of senior leadership. The effort, called the 30% Club, is an expansion of an effort in Great Britain to increase female corporate board representation there to 30 percent by the end of 2015. But can it work in the United States? Maybe, with more defined objectives, says Olin Business School’s Michelle Duguid, PhD, an expert on women in the workplace.

An undergraduate success story: Jolijt Tamanaha spent her last weeks of junior year at Washington University in St. Louis making a deal to sell a startup she co-founded called Farmplicity — an online marketplace that matches restaurants with local farmers — founded in a course through Olin Business School called The Hatchery.