Research Roundup: August 2022
Universities Seek Out More Private Partners
As academic leaders plan for a post-pandemic future, they are anticipating that problems will be more complex than ever before. One way educators and researchers are preparing to tackle this complexity is through partnerships with the private sector.
That’s according to a new survey of 350 university leaders, conducted jointly by P3•EDU, an invitation-only event bringing together academic and corporate leaders, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Respondents included college and university presidents, chancellors, provosts, and chief financial officers.
Of the leaders surveyed, 71 percent reported that the number of public-private partnerships on their campuses is increasing, especially for projects related to promoting mental health/telehealth (44 percent), developing campus infrastructure (43 percent), and expanding online programs (41 percent). Other project areas where higher education institutions are partnering with private organizations include skills training/boot camps, data analytics, and the commercialization of intellectual property.
Not surprisingly, the primary reason universities are seeking out private partnerships is to access competencies and services that are superior to those available on campus. However, as they do so, respondents emphasized that their institutions also have to manage challenges such as the potential for misalignment between the objectives of their partners and their missions.
“As higher education comes out of the pandemic, it’s critical that universities explore and embrace new models for innovation and impact, including partnership opportunities,” says Michelle Marks, chancellor of University of Colorado Denver, which will host the P3•EDU conference in late September. “Not only is demand for partnerships growing, but the range of partnership categories also continues to expand in both administrative and academic areas, opening new doors for the ways we benefit our communities and serve our students.”
Giving’s Impact Is Greater Than Expected
Most people would agree that engaging in random acts of kindness makes the giver feel good. But what they might not realize is just how good, according to a new study published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
The study was written by Amit Kumar, assistant professor of marketing at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas–Austin, and Nicholas Epley, John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The two researchers conducted a series of experiments designed to quantify the impact of random acts of kindness on recipients.
For one experiment, researchers approached people in Chicago’s Maggie Daley Park. There, 84 participants (performers) were given the option either to give away a cup of hot chocolate or to drink it themselves. Of this group, 75 chose to give the cup to strangers (recipients). In these cases, as researchers gave the cup to each recipient, they explained that it came courtesy of someone else.
Researchers then asked performers to rate how they thought recipients would feel, using a scale of -5 (more negative than normal) to 5 (more positive than normal) rate. Researchers also asked recipients to rate their moods after receiving the unexpected gift. The result: Performers thought recipients’ moods would come in at an average 2.7. However, recipients’ reported that their actual moods came in significantly above that mark, at an average 3.5.
Because most people underestimate the impact of their acts of kindness, they might perform fewer prosocial behaviors.
Kumar and Epley also conducted a lab experiment in which participants either received an item from the lab store or were gifted that item by another participant. Afterwards, all participants played a game in which they were asked to share 100 USD with an unknown recipient. On average, participants who had received a gift from another participant gave 48.02 USD, while those who had received their item from the store gave only 41.20 USD.
Most people view their acts of kindness in terms of the value of the act itself, not in terms of how those kindness will make others feel, explains Kumar. These “miscalibrated expectations” could lead many people to perform fewer prosocial behaviors. “Performers are not fully taking into account that their warm acts provide value from the act itself,” he says. “The fact that you’re being nice to others adds a lot of value beyond whatever the thing is.”
Some of that value might have implications far beyond the act itself. “Generosity can actually be contagious,” Kumar says in a McCombs article. “Receivers of a prosocial act can pay it forward. Kindness can actually spread.”
Employees Value Leisure Time Over Cash
When employees spend too much time at work on leisure activities, such as scrolling social media on the internet, it can cost companies billions of dollars. But managers can increase the time employees spend focused on their work by giving them more leisure time off the job, according to a study by Timo Vogelsang, an assistant professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management in Germany.
In an experiment, Vogelsang asked three groups of participants to spend two 30-minute working periods completing a task (moving sliders to randomly predetermined positions) on internet-enabled computers. At the beginning of each task, participants could click a “time-out” button and access the internet. During the experiment, they could choose how long they spent either working or on the internet.
The first group of participants received 4 EUR for each working period. The second group received 4 EUR for each period (“cash bonus”), plus a 6 EUR bonus for period one. The third group received 4 EUR for each period as well as an extra 25 minutes to use the internet in period one (“free time”).
Those in the free time group spent 60 percent less time using the internet during their working period than those in the cash bonus group. Moreover, those given additional leisure time completed more tasks than those in the cash bonus group.
This finding indicates that cash bonuses might have little effect on employees’ on-the-job leisure time or work performance—likely because employees value their time and work-life balance over money. Instead of offering cash to reduce employees’ on-the-job leisure time, managers instead might allow employees to leave early at certain times or provide extra time off during holidays.
“This study shows that time is not money when using a gift of more off-the-job leisure as a form of management control,” says Vogelsang. “Leisure time is a noteworthy alternative to cash bonuses and the various forms of non-cash bonuses currently in use.”
Vogelsang contributed to a second study recently published in Management Science that also found that money is not always the best way to incentivize employees. For this research, Vogelsang collaborated with lead author Kathrin Manthei of Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln in Cologne, Germany, and Dirk Sliwka, a research fellow at the University of Cologne. They found that offering managers cash bonuses for good performance did not result in increased profits for the organization. However, when managers were asked to report on their efforts to increase profits at meetings, organizations saw profits increase by around 7 percent.
Primary Care Doctors Don’t Have Enough Hours in the Day
Four physicians, including one business professor, have conducted a study to determine why patient outcomes have not improved at a pace with medical advancements. One reason, they find, could be the unreasonable time demands placed on primary care physicians.
Co-authors of the study include Justin Porter, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago; Cynthia Boyd, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore; M. Reza Skandari, a doctor and assistant professor of health operations at Imperial College Business School in London; and Neda Laiteerapong, an associate professor of medicine, psychiatry, and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago.
The team examined data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They used the data to create a simulation study, in which they estimated the time physicians would need to spend per patient if they followed all national recommended guidelines for preventative care, chronic disease care, and acute care.
The researchers found that primary care physicians would need to spend 26.7 hours each day just to see an average number of patients. This discrepancy can not only lead to physician burnout—it also can exacerbate a shortage of primary care physicians, as medical students choose to pursue other less stressful and more lucrative medical specialties. Moreover, when doctors don’t have the time to spend with patients, it’s often people from disadvantaged backgrounds who suffer most from lack of quality care.
By adopting a model of team-based care, primary care physicians could reduce the time they need to serve their patients each day from 26.7 hours to just 9.3 hours.
The researchers offer a solution that might address this problem, at least in part. They suggest healthcare providers adopt a model of team-based care, in which nurses, physician assistants, dietitians, counselors, and other professionals help deliver care that meets all national guidelines. The co-authors believe team-based care represents “a huge opportunity” for the medical profession to solve a daunting problem.
The researchers estimate that these other professionals could handle 65 percent of a patient’s primary are needs, reducing the time primary care physicians needed to serve their patients to just 9.3 hours per day. That would break down to 2.0 hours each day for preventative care, 3.6 hours for chronic disease care, 1.1 hours for acute care, and 2.6 hours for administrative tasks.
When surveyed, patients often complain that their doctors do not spend enough time with them or fail to follow up on their care. “I think a lot of times this is interpreted as a lack of empathy, or a lack of willingness to care for a patient,” says Porter in a University of Chicago publication. “But the reality—for the majority of doctors—is simply a lack of time.”
Online Reviews Suffer on Rainy Days
If the physical environment can affect people’s moods, can it also affect how well—or how poorly—consumers review products or services? Yes, especially when it comes to bad weather. That’s the finding of a study by Leif Brandes, a professor of marketing and strategy at the University of Lucerne, and Yaniv Dover, a senior lecturer in marketing at the Hebrew University Business School in Jerusalem.
For a study that appeared earlier this year in the Journal of Consumer Research, Brandes and Dover examined 12 years of data involving hotel bookings, online reviews, and weather conditions at both the consumer’s residence at the time of the review and the hotel at the time of the consumer’s hotel stay. They found that rainy weather at the consumer’s residence on the day the review was postedaffected the hotel’s overall review by 0.1 points.
This decrease accounted for 59 percent of the difference between hotels with overall four-star ratings and those with overall five-star ratings. Moreover, the number of reviews increased by 7 percent on rainy days.
Once managers understand that weather can impact consumer sentiment, the co-authors note, they might want to coordinate their communications with customers with weather forecasts. They also can use weather forecasts to anticipate an increase in communications from consumers. These findings “may also help firms to understand why their evaluations may see a sudden noticeable drop (e.g., from 5.2 to 5.1) from a group of recent customers,” the co-authors note.
When trying to explain a drop in ratings, hotel owners might instinctively “start looking for internal, systematic patterns during the time of stay,” Brandes and Dover add. However, they might also want to consider “external, systematic patterns during the time of review provision.”