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Non-work orientations are related to higher career  and life satisfaction The study shows that the salaries of people who have strong non-work orientations are not negatively affected. In addition, they are happier with their career and with life in general. When planning a career, many people take non-work orientations into account, such as family, personal interests and civic engagement. Psychologists from the University of Bern (Switzerland) have found out that people who strongly consider the role of the family in career planning report more satisfaction with their career and their lives in general. Surprisingly, non-work orientations also showed no negative effects on earnings. People differ greatly in terms of how much they consider nonwork roles, such as family, personal interests and civic engagement when making career decisions and planning their career. Up until now, it was unclear how the consideration of nonwork roles affect career success and satisfaction with life in ...

The Seven Deadly Sins of Business email : Ping pong -- constant emails back and forth creating long chains Emailing out of hours Emailing while in company Ignoring emails completely Requesting read receipts Responding immediately to an email alert Automated replies According to research just released, employees obsessed with checking their emails could be damaging their own mental health and that of their colleagues.  How? Recommended Reading Click image for details Dr Emma Russell, a senior lecturer in occupational psychology at Kingston Business School, believes she has identified the seven deadly email sins that can lead to 'negative repercussions' if not handled correctly.  She identified seven habits which can be positive if used in moderation but are likely to have a negative impact if not handled correctly. " This research reminds us that even though we think we are using strategies for dealing with our email at work, many of them can be detrimental to other goals a...

Learn from evolution  and copy and replicate rather than create new processes . There are times when a business owner decides that their current model just isn't working as they hoped it would, particularly in the early months and years.  The question becomes, should the entrepreneur just dump what they're doing now?  Or make incremental changes with an end goal in mind? Research by a University of Hertfordshire Professor of Business Studies published in 2010 states that solutions for many of today's business challenges can be found in evolutionary processes. According to Professor Geoffrey Hodgson at the University's Business School, businesses which are considering major change at the moment should proceed with caution; they could do better to learn from evolution and copy and replicate rather than create new processes. "Change needs to be experimental and cautious," said Professor Hodgson. "We have to understand the cost of change. If we look to nature...

An experienced entrepreneur or small business owner understands having to make quick decisions based on incomplete information.  In fact, it's a way of business in small operations where there is rarely time, staff, or resources to research decisions before they must be made. "It turns out there are conditions where using intuition is a good way to make the right decision," said Michael Pratt, of Boston College's Carroll School of Management. "What we found demystifies a lot of the information out there that says intuition isn't as effective as using an analytical approach." Testing intuition against analysis, Pratt and co-authors Erik Dane, of Rice University and Kevin W. Rockmann, of George Mason, found that people can trust their gut and rely on intuition when making a broad evaluation in an area where they have in-depth knowledge of the subject. Intuition has long been viewed as a less effective approach to critical reasoning when compared to the mer...

Why do you want to start a business? There is no right answer to this, but there is one motivation you might express that could be setting yourelf up for a fall if your business doesn't go as planned. For anyone starting a business because of the material wealth it might bring, you should know that being materialistic has a strong potential of making a bad event in your life even worse, according to a paper co-written by a University of Illinois expert in consumption values. Materialism: defining who you are by what you own Business professor Aric Rindfleisch says not only is materialism or defining who you are by what you own a risk your welfare, it also has the effect of making traumatic events worse.  Being materialistic can make events from terrorism to car accidents to a life-threatening illness to the failure of a business venture seem that much worse. "If you're a materialistic individu...

Are entrepreneurs a self-serving species with their own moral ideas and ethical principles? Media reports about alleged anti-social and delinquent behavior of entrepreneurs are no rarity. Such reports direct the attention towards possibly ’hidden’ anti-social tendencies in entrepreneurial types. Is it true then, that entrepreneurs are all interested in his own benefit and profit and so abandons ethical and social principles? And if so: what makes him so? Researchers from the University of Stockholm  and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) tried to answer these questions, and came to some surprising conclusions. Data from 1000 Children over 40 Years The psychologists used a Swedish study, ‘Individual Development and Adaptation‘ which followed 1,000 students living in a medium sized Swedish town over a 40-year time period comparing their later entrepreneurial activity with their social behavior earlier in life. The scientists anal...

You're the owner of a business, and you have the unpleasant task of firing an employee or terminating the contract of a supplier.  How do you do this? Tell them the bad news first?  Tell them the good news first?  Or do you construct what is known as a bad news sandwich by telling the recipient good news then the bad news then more good news? It's complicated According to researchers at the University of California, Riverside, it's complicated.  The process of giving or getting bad news is difficult for most people, particularly when news-givers feel unsure about how to proceed with the conversation, psychologists Angela M. Legg and Kate Sweeny write in "Do You Want the Good News or the Bad News First? The Nature and Consequences of News Order Preferences." "The difficulty of delivering bad news has inspired extensive popular media articles that prescribe 'best' practices for giving bad news, but these prescriptions remain largely anecdotal rather...

" AN APOCRYPHAL tale is told about Henry Ford II showing Walter Reuther, the veteran leader of the United Automobile Workers, around a newly automated car plant. ' Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues,' gibed the boss of Ford Motor Company. Without skipping a beat, Reuther replied , 'Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?'" Source: Difference Engine: Luddite legacy , The Economist Newspaper Limited, Nov 4, 2011, © The Economist Newspaper Limited, London 2011 *  *  *  *  * Who really creates new jobs? This is an especially important question given the nature of the changes current in the national and world economy brought about by globalization, he replacement of workers with intelligent machines, and the job-destroying effects of the economy over the past few years.   Government? Government affects job creation by direct hiring and or layoffs.   Since 2008, government units from largest to smallest have ...

When new technology appears, there's always someone who sees the potential and runs with it.  Here is news out of Germany about a new, potentially much more efficient way to manufacture automotive and aircraft parts, just waiting for someone to recognize the potential. Following years of research, the technology involving thixoforming, or the shaping of metals in a semi-solid state, is yielding results.  Shown here, two of the same parts for the auto industry, one created through a traditional four-step process, the other by the one-step thixoforming process .  (Credit: Image courtesy of Basque Research) Following years of research, the technology involving thixoforming, or the shaping of metals in a semi-solid state, is beginning to yield results. CIC marGUNE, the Co-operative Research Centre for High-performance Manufacturing, is exploring the possibility of modifying the current process to manufacture parts for the automotive industry, thanks to thixoforming ...

One of the more popular posts over our first year is The Seven Characteristics of a Creative Employee  along with a post on the "Messy Desk Clean Desk" Phenomena that reveals people with messy desks tend to be more creative.  Imagine that. Now, a team of researchers led by Michigan State University neuroscientist Jeremy Gray has created a quick but reliable test that can measure a person's creativity from single spoken words. The "noun-verb" test is so simple it can be done by virtually anyone anywhere -- even in an MRI machine, setting the stage for scientists to pinpoint how the brain comes up with unusually creative ideas. *  *  *  *  * Sample Noun - Verb Responses from the study To the noun, "leaf", 43.7% of participants replied, "fall."  Other common noun-verb responses include, taxi => drive 38%; coal => burn 45% and so on.  These results should lead to the development of a standardize...

You're an entrepreneur in an important meeting that could mean a big contract or create a connection important to your success. And your smartphone beeps, rings, or vibrates. Do you answer it? A new study published today in the journal Business Communication Quarterly, co-authored by Peter W. Cardon of the USC Marshall School of Business and colleagues at Howard University, is the first to provide an empirical baseline for how attitudes towards mobile phone use actually break down across gender, age, and region. With a national sample of more than 550 full-time working professionals, the study reveals what business professionals perceive as acceptable, courteous or rude use of mobile phones in the workplace. Among their findings : Three out of four people -- 76 percent -- said checking texts or emails was unacceptable behavior in business meetings. 87 percent of people said answering a call was rarely or never acceptable in business meetings. Even at more informal business lunches,...

A problem for all small business owners is getting their message out to current and prospective customers.  It is expensive, especially against larger competitors with bigger budgets. This means that any small marketer has to look for every and any advantage they can find. Such as adding or turning on captions in your video promotions, whether television ads, on-line or in-store videos. Why? New research shows that adding captions improves comprehension, not just a little, but dramatically.  And isn't that what you want your video communications to do?  Capture a prospect's attention and impart a message that the prospect remembers? According to Robert Keith Collins, an assistant professor at SF State college, discovered that captions add to student comprehension and ability to remember during a two-year tracking study of the effect of adding captions to educational videos.  " Not only were students talking about how much having the capt...

Finally, the high risk alternative is to introduce something wholly new and untested.  From talking with hundreds of prospective entrepreneurs - inventors and people with ideas for innovative new products - I realize that many people feel that this is the way to go: to invent and cash in on something the world has never seen before.  Some people I've met seem to be addicted to building better mousetraps in the misplaced hope of getting rich.  Misplaced because the sure way to get rich isn’t with a new product or service.  It's through a sales job, but that's another story for another post. The history of new product introductions is a history of abject failure, even new products from huge, multi-national firms that specialize in innovation.  The reality is that with a new product or service you are treading unknown ground from beginning to end, and any number of very minor occurrences along the way can trip you up and cost you everything...

Starting a business selling currently available products and services, or an Unstructured opportunity, is a very attractive option to many people, and is probably the most frequent alternative entrepreneurs try. People who do well in an Unstructured Opportunity tend to fit a profile best described as a Natural Entrepreneur.  These are people who are hard working, educated with a commitment to life-long learning, are well organized, and work well with others.  They tend to be most comfortable in free-wheeling situations where they make their own decisions and create their own road map to success.(To better understand whether a structured or unstructured opportunity is best for you, take my quiz,  What Form of Business is Best for You . The risk of going it alone is greater than working with a franchise or direct sales business, but it also means that you, the owner, create your own business, make your own decisions and feel that the business i...