Business & Entrepreneurship

Charles W. Burson, JD, senior professor of practice at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, says that the midterm elections reflect a dramatic turn from the wave of aspiration that defined our politics in 2008 to the wave of grievance that defines these midterm elections. “The Tea Party movement is the embodiment of that phenomenon. In Missouri, this wave has put the seats of Democratic Congressmen Ike Skelton and Russ Carnahan at risk, but the same wave may have also put at risk the seat of Republican Representative Jo Ann Emerson.”

Halloween candy is a treat for many children, but for those forced to work on cocoa farms in west Africa it’s a mean and tortuous trick. Two WUSTL professors call attention to the hidden horrors of cocoa production — the base ingredient in chocolate — in an op-ed piece published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District will hold a special session at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 3, in the School of Law’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall.  

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Marion Crain, JD, the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law at Washington University In St. Louis, looks at the act’s history and says changes in the American workplace and other factors raise the question of how the NLRA will adapt in the future.

Todd T. Milbourn, PhD, was installed as the Hubert C. and Dorothy R. Moog Professor of finance Sept. 29 in a ceremony at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education and Conference Center. Milbourn, who joined the Olin Business School faculty 10 years ago, is the second to receive this title; the inaugural professorship was held by Nicholas Dopuch, PhD, currently Moog professor emeritus of accounting.

Managers and CEOs: are you ready for your close-up? A new book by Jackson Nickerson, PhD, the Frahm Family Professor of Organization and Strategy at Olin Business School, advocates the use of video for communicating from the corner office to employees throughout a business. Nickerson’s book is published by the Brookings Institution Press and will be the first in a series by Olin professors called Innovations in Leadership. 

Ready, aim your smartphone and read! The new issue of Olin Business magazine is sporting a high tech code on its cover that lets readers connect immediately to the school’s website.  Innovation and creative thinking are themes in the magazine as well as daily activities at Washington University’s top ranked business school.

The Weston Career Center at Olin Business School is not sitting on the sideline, waiting for the economy to recover, campus recruiting to pick up and unemployment to drop. Instead, the career center team has gone on the offensive to help students find jobs in non-traditional markets and help them learn how to market themselves and network in new ways. 

Greece is experiencing a financial and social crisis of epic proportions. The newest Nobel laureate in economics and a colleague at Washington University in St. Louis co-founded a blog to share ideas to rescue Greece’s economy. They’ve published a plan to overhaul Greek government and society. Will these economists become modern day Greek heros and save the country where Aristotle first pondered economics?

The American College of Bankruptcy and Washington University in St. Louis School of Law will present a lecture by James H.M. Sprayregen, JD, one of the nation’s top restructuring attorneys, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20, in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public.