When it comes to packaging, size matters. In a research paper, INSEAD Associate Professor of Marketing Pierre Chandon and co-author Nailya Ordabayeva, an INSEAD PhD student, found that changes in the shape of packaging or portions can have a big impact on our consumption patterns.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/SupersizingDownsizing080901.cfm?vid=90

Managing corporate giving

Nothing galvanises people more than a global disaster. When the Asian tsunami struck in December 2004, there was an outpouring of grief, and subsequently aid and relief was shipped to the affected countries.

A recent case study conducted by INSEAD professors Margaret Hanson and Luk Van Wassenhove with research associate Orla Stapleton chronicles the changing political and social environment of global giving in the US post-9/11.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/CorporateGiving080905.cfm?vid=86

Improving organisations through performance feedback

Performance feedback plays an important role in indicating when a firm needs to change its management strategy. It doesn't, however, indicate just what this new strategy should be, and firms do not always respond appropriately, says Henrich Greve, INSEAD Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organisational Behaviour.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/PerformanceFeedback080903.cfm

In the third part of our series of articles and interviews linked to the recent INSEAD-Wharton Research Conference on Leadership, we look at the benefits organisations can gain from upward communication – when employees feel secure enough to talk frankly to their bosses about errors and issues facing the company.

Error management:
A pre-emptive move that can reap long-term gains

Facilitating upward communication:
leaders must do more to break existing strongholds

CEO view: Wolfgang Prock-Schauer of India’s Jet Airways

As the aviation industry faces its biggest crisis in recent history because of high fuel prices and the economic slowdown, airlines are forced to do business differently as they seek to trim operating costs ruthlessly to brace themselves for tough times ahead.

“Jet Airways is working on all areas to streamline operations including cutting loss-making routes,” says Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, CEO of Jet Airways, India's largest private airline. India’s aviation industry lost $1 billion last financial year ending March 2008 and it expects to lose another $2 billion this financial year. Jet Airways’ fuel bills have increased by $50 million a month.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/CEOJetAirways.cfm?vid=85

The China Syndrome: understanding the Chinese economy

China’s economy is booming and many multinational companies are looking to tap the Asian giant’s potential. However, according to Peter Bowie, CEO of Deloitte China, foreigners wanting to do business with the Chinese appear to be ill prepared because their pre-conceived notions about China are simply outdated.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/TheChinaSyndrome080908.cfm?vid=89

Bridging the cellular divide

Since 2003, one sector in Pakistan has seen more than eight billion dollars in investment, an increase in its customer base to 52 per cent of the population from just five per cent, has contributed to some five per cent of the country’s GDP, and been responsible for the creation of up to a million jobs.

Pakistan’s telecommunications sector has, in the span of just five years, seen mobile phone subscriptions increase to 86 million from one million. In a population of 165 million, where only 4.5 million people have fixed-line telephones, the rapid expansion of the cellular market has been nothing short of a telecoms revolution.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/CellularDivide080910.cfm

Opportunities and risks in magazine publishing

Setting up a new magazine is perhaps riskier now than ever before as more and more people turn to the internet for news and entertainment. Of the thousands of magazines launched each year, most fail and only some 25 per cent survive the first year, says Chris Fodor, who has three decades of experience in magazine publishing.

Still, this has not stopped either Fodor or Jasper Becker, a former Beijing bureau chief with Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post, from defying the odds and setting up their own magazines.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/OpportunitiesRisksPublishing080909.cfm?vid=92