• Mutual Benefits: Mutual fund companies invested in by their own managers tend to perform better than those without manager ownership, according to a study covered by The Wall Street Journal. The study's co-author, Georgia Tech associate finance professor Ajay Khorana, called management ownership �good news for the shareholder.� He explained that managers who personally invest in a fund might have greater incentive to maximize returns by keeping trading costs down, among other practices. His research findings were also covered by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Miami Herald, Buffalo News, and New York Daily News, among other media outlets.

• Fistfuls of Dollars: Companies can become too fixated on cash and not enough on their future, warned Georgia Tech accounting professor Charles Mulford in a Forbes magazine article on how technology businesses without strong stocks are still generating plenty of cash for their owners. Ways to build up the cash balance include cutting back not only on capital expenditures, but also on research and development � a mixed blessing for long-term shareholders, Mulford said. To date in 2006, he's been cited or quoted nearly thirty times in the financial press. The Detroit Free Press and Arizona Republic recently ran articles crediting his lab with uncovering problems with cash flow reporting at General Motors. He was also quoted in CFO and Electronic Engineering Times.

• Broken Links: For companies, a sudden disruption in the supply chain is "like having a heart attack," said Georgia Tech operations management professor Vinod Singhal in a recent article in The Economist. "It takes a long time to recover." Singhal, whose research shows that sudden breakdowns in the supply chain result in long-lasting damage to companies' stock prices and profitability, believes that some firms are taking too lean an approach to their supply chains. "It's great when it's working, but too much leanness and meanness can actually hurt you," he said. Singhal's research findings on supply chain disruptions were also recently featured in the Bangkok Post and Canadian Transportation and Logistics. More info

• Lockstep Leadership: Chief executive officers and chief operating officers sometimes undermine each other's authority by sending mixed messages, said Georgia Tech organizational behavior professor Nate Bennett in an article in The Wall Street Journal. If the CEO and COO "get half a stride out of step, that's going to translate into trouble for the company," said Bennett, co-author of the new book Riding Shotgun: The Role of the COO. Intended as a resource to help COOs and CEOs collaborate more effectively, the book has won acclaim in such publications as The Financial Times, Industry Week, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Kansas City Star. Bennett also co-authored articles on how the COO role is often misunderstood in Chief Executive,InformationWeek, andOptimize. More info

• Optical Illusion: The Chicago Tribune and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently ran articles on research by assistant marketing professor Koert van Ittersum showing that the eyes play tricks when it comes to pouring alcohol. People � even professional bartenders � inadvertently pour 20 to 30 percent more alcohol into short, wide glasses than tall, slender ones of the same volume. "People focus their attention on the height of the liquid they are pouring and insufficiently compensate for its width," van Ittersum said in the AJC. More info

• Bigger Picture: Information technology workers increasingly need business knowledge to succeed professionally, said Saby Mitra, a Georgia Tech associate professor of information technology management, in a recent Computerworld article. "You're going to see a situation where technical knowledge is important, but it's only a small part of the picture," he said. A hybrid structure is evolving as IT and business units overlap, Mitra explained. One group will maintain standardization and consistency within the infrastructure, he said, while the other will be a decentralized organization in which business analysts in business units answer to business executives, with a dotted line to the CIO.

• Transition Time: When Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that he was giving up his to day-to-day role at Microsoft in 2008 to focus on his charitable foundation, the E-Commerce Times turned to Georgia Tech's Nate Bennett for commentary. "Over the past several years, Gates has engaged in a very deliberate process to build top management talent at Microsoft," said Bennett, a professor of organizational behavior. "There are probably very few people in a position like his with a partner as trusted as Steve Ballmer." TechNewsWorld also quoted Bennett on the transition at Microsoft.

• Business Forecast: Georgia companies are banking on sales and profit growth, reported The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But if another recession hits, many of these businesses appear better able to withstand hard times than they did in 2001, said Georgia Tech accounting professor Charles Mulford in the article. He examined the quarterly financial data of Georgia companies with market values of $250 million or more during a ten-year period. "They are not getting defensive yet," Mulford said. "They are definitely not heading for the cellar in preparation for some looming economic storm."

• Feeling the Pinch: For perspective on how rising oil prices will affect consumer prices, especially for gasoline, CBS 46 turned to Fred Allvine, marketing professor emeritus at Georgia Tech.