Welcome to UCLA Anderson Review’s quiz, in which we aim to extract business and life lessons from faculty research we cover each month. Should a question pique your interest, you can click through to the Review article for a full explanation of the research. Give yourself a gold star if you answer all five questions correctly, but the real reward will be encountering useful and interesting information. Comments and suggestions welcome.
1 of 5
You’re starting a business and your established competition bundles its products like cable TV companies do. Research suggests you should:
Bundle just like the competition and undercut them on price.
Offer only individual products to lure away customers who don’t want the full package.
Avoid the industry altogether, as bundling is impossible to compete against.
2 of 5
Working in teams can be great, but why, according to research, do many people claim more credit for a shared accomplishment than they deserve?
As children, in many cases, they lost out to star in the school play.
Nobody knows, but they’re to be avoided on the next big project.
They’re perfectly familiar with their own contribution, but not so much with yours, and so their account over-weights their own work.
3 of 5
Studying corporate diversity and reputation, scholars exposed an all-white-male group of subjects to information about fictional companies with varying representative employees featured. The white men:
Had positive feelings about white women featured as employees, but not women of color.
Preferred companies where only white males were featured.
Gave equal praise to companies regardless of the gender or race of employees featured.
4 of 5
Many specialized surgery centers that perform kidney transplants have branched out into liver transplants, too, in recent years. Research found:
The diversified surgery centers always have better outcomes for patients.
The diversification was bad for all patient outcomes.
Younger kidney transplant patients suffered significantly higher mortality rates at diversified clinics, but older patients’ death rates were slightly lower at those clinics.
5 of 5
In the study of sovereign debt and currencies, there is a phenomenon known as the Twin Ds. It refers to:
Demand for repayment and depression of the economy.
Default on borrowings and devaluation of a nation’s money.
Discharge of loan obligations and dividends to stockholders.