hen you were deciding where to get your degree, you might have looked at different program rankings as one measure to consider. But now that you have your W. P. Carey degree, do rankings still impact you? You might be surprised to learn they remain a big deal! For example, when you are on the job market, the value of your W. P. Carey degree increases with the school’s continued ascent in the rankings. Good rankings are a win-win.

You will be happy to hear that W. P. Carey has 30 programs and disciplines ranked in the Top 25 by U.S. News & World Report. That’s the most of any business school in the country! Internationally, we have also continued to climb. The Financial Times ranked our Online MBA No. 15 in the world, and the Center for World University Rankings names us No. 9 for Business.

Some of these ranking publications ask for alumni input through surveys, so keep an eye out for those. And remember, we have great options for you to continue investing in yourself through education.

Related reading:

• Rankings at a glance: wpcarey.asu.edu/rankings
• Online W. P. Carey degrees: wpcarey.asu.edu/online-programs

t the end of every semester, outstanding business graduates across disciplines join the W. P. Carey alumni community. Welcome to the next stage of your Sun Devil journey, Class of 2021! Here are three ways to ensure you’re fully benefiting from the advantages of your alma mater. Hint: These tips apply to all W. P. Carey graduates.

o you remember life before the word pandemic? Before dogs barking were common business-call sound effects? Before the phrase “you’re on mute” was heard in just about every meeting? Do you miss those days? Chances are, they’re not coming back.

What will “going to work” mean in the postpandemic age? W. P. Carey School alumni and professors weigh in on what’s ahead and what business leaders should know about managing remotely.

For organizations that sent workers home when shutdowns began and are just starting to bring people back into the office full or part time, Rick Bowers (BS Marketing ’92) says it’s time to take stock of both the work at hand and the people who do it. Bowers — president of TTI Success Insights, a company that helps other organizations maximize human potential through employee assessments and related consulting — recommended a process he calls “reboarding.”

“Reboarding is the act of reconnecting and reengaging your employees to make sure that people haven’t changed because of this significant emotional event we’ve all lived through this past year,” he explains. “It’s making sure the job a person was in before the pandemic is still the same job and making sure the person is still the same person.”

n 2003, shortly after being appointed as CEO of IBM, Sam Palmisano declined a substantial end-of-year performance bonus and insisted that a portion of it instead be shared with managers.

His altruistic actions, says Associate Professor of Accountancy Pablo Casas-Arce, were not surprising — especially for a leader focused on developing a culture of cooperation. Palmisano’s choice supports key postulates of research conducted by Casas-Arce and Asis Martinez-Jerez of Cornell University.

The pair designed a field experiment that set out to understand how, or if, leadership styles influence the success of financial incentive programs within organizations. Over four months, teams of individuals within 177 branches of a medium-sized Latin American bank competed in a series of tournaments, unaware they were part of a research study.

Each branch participated in monthly competitions and at the end of each month, the top three branches received a $2,500 performance prize to be shared among branch members. The contest was structured around the World Cup, with teams scoring “goals” for exceeding commercial sales targets.

magine you’ve been asked to host a dinner party, but you don’t know when or where it will be. You don’t know if you’ll be cooking for five people or 50. No one has told you what’s on the menu or where you can buy food. Oh, and you have no idea what your budget is. Sounds stressful, right?

Now imagine all those unknowns in a life-or-death situation — a massive earthquake or flood — and the situation gets much more serious.

That’s what Mahyar Eftekhar, associate professor of supply chain management, and Scott Webster, professor of supply chain management, address in their paper, “Prepositioning and Local Purchasing for Emergency Operations Under Budget, Demand, and Supply Uncertainty,” published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. Co-authored by Jing-Sheng Jeannette Song from Duke University, the research aims to help humanitarian organizations make decisions about their rapid-onset disaster response inventory.

ord-of-mouth (WOM) is a supernova communication tool, with companies often using traditional techniques such as referral and seeding programs to buy customer traction with WOM incentives.

Google pays business customers $15 every time they refer a new account. Other companies send targeted customers, or “seeds,” free products and pay them to write reviews and share information about the item, often through social media to attract more customers.

Yet there can be a downside to giving perks. Even though refer-a-friend incentive programs are popular, they may not work well because individuals might worry about compromising personal friendships. In addition, companies that pay for reviews are perceived as less sincere.

But according to Assistant Professor of Marketing Monika Lisjak, whose paper, “EXPRESS: How Marketing Perks Influence Word of Mouth,” was published in the Journal of Marketing, there’s a way to leverage WOM to motivate consumers to participate so that it doesn’t backfire.

ommercial real estate broker Murphy Cheatham (MRED ’07) remembers in vivid detail the conference he attended years ago at a posh Paradise Valley, Arizona, resort when he was a master’s degree student at W. P. Carey. When he glanced around the room, he came face-to-face with a stark reality about his chosen career.

“I remember looking up and it kind of put me in a weird place,” Cheatham says. “You’d think, ‘There have to be people of color here?’ But the only Black people in the room besides me were the servers.”

That wouldn’t be the last time Cheatham found himself in that situation since he jumped into the white-dominated real estate industry, working on development deals across Arizona, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas. An imposing figure at 6 foot, 6 inches, he says he has learned to overcome the subtle yet unmistakable discrimination that still looms large.

lthough its supply chain was disrupted during the beginning of the pandemic, Pivot Cycles and its president, Chris Cocalis (BS Accountancy ’92), kept business balanced when it began to boom.

Founded by Cocalis in 2007, the company designs and builds high-end performance bicycles, particularly in specialty categories like mountain, downhill, and full suspension. Pivot Cycles has headquarters in Tempe, Arizona, and assembly facilities in Germany and Taiwan.

2020 curbs cycle supply chain
April 2020 proved to be the most difficult month for Pivot Cycles. “We had to look at our sales every day, and run projections of how many days we could keep a full staff on board,” Cocalis says.

One month later, however, it was as if a light switch had been flipped on. With the world stuck at home, people began rediscovering their love for the outdoors. “We had more orders that month than the rest of 2020 so far,” Cocalis says. Thanks to what the media had been referring to as a “bike boom,” it suddenly seemed like Pivot Cycles would be OK.

lthough its supply chain was disrupted during the beginning of the pandemic, Pivot Cycles and its president, Chris Cocalis (BS Accountancy ’92), kept business balanced when it began to boom.

Founded by Cocalis in 2007, the company designs and builds high-end performance bicycles, particularly in specialty categories like mountain, downhill, and full suspension. Pivot Cycles has headquarters in Tempe, Arizona, and assembly facilities in Germany and Taiwan.

2020 curbs cycle supply chain
April 2020 proved to be the most difficult month for Pivot Cycles. “We had to look at our sales every day, and run projections of how many days we could keep a full staff on board,” Cocalis says.

One month later, however, it was as if a light switch had been flipped on. With the world stuck at home, people began rediscovering their love for the outdoors. “We had more orders that month than the rest of 2020 so far,” Cocalis says. Thanks to what the media had been referring to as a “bike boom,” it suddenly seemed like Pivot Cycles would be OK.

he sixth annual Sun Devil 100 list included 52 W. P. Carey leaders we’re proud to recognize. The Sun Devil 100 honors the top 100 fastest-growing alumni-owned or -led organizations. The Class of 2021 features organizations represented by 133 Arizona State University alumni, ranging from individual business owners to large corporations in more than two dozen industries.