Some of my papers for my doctoral work are available here. I request that you respect all copyright laws, but feel free to read them and contact me with any comments, requests, or suggestions.

Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne

This book was quite popular upon its release, but were the concepts and suggestions really new and groundbreaking or did they represent a recompilation or simple rehashing of previous ideas and advice? Without spoiling the need to read the entire paper, an extensive review of the management literature is completed and the basis for the Blue Ocean concepts are found to be mere restatements of previously popular and successful strategies.

Networking Groups and Ethics

As a pilot study to test use of various tools in sales ethics research, I conducted a survey of sales ethics sensitivity of members of a local networking group. The networking group states that it holds members to a higher standard, including ethics. Therefore, under normative social influence theory, members of the group should display higher levels of ethical sensitivity if indeed the group teaches and encourages higher levels of ethical behavior. Members were compared to people who had never been members, as well as to people who had been members and resigned from membership--known as former members. In an unusual finding, or at least one that would probably be unpopular with the management of the group, former members were found to have statistically significant higher levels of ethical sensitivity.

Withholding Information in Sales

How much information is a salesperson obligated to provide while selling? What if the information might suggest that the prospect go to a competitor? How far should a salesperson go to serve his or her employer? This is a more complicated discussion than I first thought it would be and the paper is a relatively concise presentation of several ethical philosophies and presents a decision model for when it is and is not ethical to withhold information from a prospect. Hang on, it's a rough ride.

The Impact of GDP, Unemployment Rates, and Interest Rate on New Business Start Ups

What drives new business start ups? If unemployment is high, does that drive more people to start their own business? Does prime rate--the cost of borrowing money--impact entrepreneurial decisions to start a new business? What about GDP, gross domestic product, the widest economic measure? What about consumer confidence--is it related to entrepreneurial zeal? In an economic analysis of these variables from January 1999 through September 2008, the results provide a model with relatively strong predictive capabilities for new business start ups.

The Impact of Sales Training on Objective Sales Skills Tests

Is sales training an investment or an expense? This is a great question and it should be an investment with a very short payback. While the ultimate measurement is committed sales for their respective companies, I conduct a special 15 week sales training class and test the participants before and after the class on their knowledge of what to do in various sales situations. The results show a surprisingly large gain in most scores, while some scores were reduced which reflected in many cases a difference between what I teach in the training series and what the authors of the test believe to be accurate. Who is right? Read the paper and see what you think.