Dear friends:

Although this semester has been a challenging time for Michigan State University, Spartans continue to find strength together every day. We recognize not only the tremendous amount of community support we’ve been given, enabling our students, faculty and staff to continue to show up and succeed, but also the accomplishments we’ve achieved in an extraordinary year.

In this spring 2023 issue of Broad Matters, I invite you to explore these select highlights of Broad scholarly research. Our faculty continue to inspire the future of business, offering impactful expertise on timely topics, and I hope you find their work insightful.

Warm regards,

Judith Whipple
Interim Dean

Broad College of Business

Are robot waiters the future? Some restaurants think so

You may have already seen them in restaurants: waist-high machines that can greet guests, lead them to their tables, deliver food and drinks and ferry dirty dishes to the kitchen. Some have cat-like faces and even purr when you scratch their heads. But are robot waiters the future? It’s a question the restaurant industry is increasingly trying to answer.

Karthik Namasivayam, John and Becky Duffey Professor of Hospitality Business and director of the School of Hospitality Business, spoke to the Associated Press on restaurants’ acceptance of technologies like robots and where the hospitality industry is headed.

BroadX: The science of building better boards

Over the last 10 years, organizations and governments have adopted diversity rules that require companies to either diversify their boards of directors or disclose how diversity impacts the board nomination process. Yet we have little insight as to how such rules — or, more importantly, board diversity — impacts board functioning.

In this talk, Quinetta Roberson, John A. Hannah Professor of Organizational Behavior, explores how diversity influences corporate governance and offers guidance on how companies can assemble boards that can drive performance.

To build love for your brand, focus on customer experience and innovation

Brands like Apple have extraordinarily loyal followings. Their success stems from the ability to deliver exceptional customer experiences and develop innovative products and services that customers can’t get anywhere else. Consumers don’t just like these brands — they love them. And brand love is a strong driver of profitability.

Hang Nguyen, associate professor of marketing, writes in Venture Beat on brand love as a form of connection that goes beyond just enthusiasm for a company or its products. On the Broad Matters podcast, she discussed her research and explained how brands can create these long-term relationships with their customers.

Fed’s all-clear on global supply chaos spurned by logistics watchers

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York in early March said stress on the world’s beleaguered supply chains had finally returned to normal — below normal, in fact.

Not so fast, Jason Miller, associate professor of supply chain management and interim chair of the Department of Supply Chain Management, told Bloomberg Businessweek, citing evidence of continued supply chain disruptions this spring and giving a hopeful outlook for the summer.

The Twitter cutoff in Turkey highlights the need for the platform in disasters

Twitter was blocked in Turkey on Feb. 8, amid the massive rescue operation and humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the earthquakes in southern Turkey and northern Syria two days earlier. The Twitter blackout, which was likely the result of governmental action, appeared to have impeded rescue and relief efforts.

Anjana Susarla, Omura-Saxena Professor in Responsible AI, writing for the Conversation and republished in Fast Company, explores how Twitter is used globally in disaster relief and what the loss of access to Twitter could mean for emergency response in the future.

Five things retail managers need to know about e-commerce

E-commerce — the buying and selling of goods online — has seamlessly permeated everyday life while also fundamentally changing the retail industry. For business managers, this means experimenting with new fulfillment methods and channels and constantly adapting strategies to meet ever-changing demands and shopping patterns. Of course, all of this must be done through the multilayered lens of reducing costs, improving convenience and achieving customer delight and satisfaction.

Faculty members from the Broad College of Business are working to untangle and understand these challenges and inform future strategy for businesses to succeed in this new retail reality. Simone Peinkofer and Stanley Lim, assistant professors of supply chain management, share five things retail managers need to know about e-commerce, based on their research.