Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/52321
RESEARCH RECOGNITIONS A Measure of Transparency AS THE 2012 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL campaign year begins, more attention will be paid to how—and how much—corporations support particular candidates. Researchers from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College–The City University of New York have created an index to show how transparent companies are about their political affiliations. The Baruch Index of Corporate Political Disclosure was created, in part, in response to a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, which allows corporations to be more active in the political campaign process. The ruling raised concerns that corporations could make undisclosed—and unlimited—contributions through trade associations, social welfare organizations, and 527 groups. Donald Schepers Naomi Gardberg Based on research by Donald Schepers, director of Zick- lin Center for Corporate Integrity, and Naomi Gardberg, associate professor of management, the Baruch Index rates S&P 100 companies from "transparent" to "opaque." A company's final rating provides a gauge of its willingness to disclose that activity in several key areas, including how easily relevant information can be found on its Web site; how it structures and discloses its policies, procedures, and corporate governance; what statements it makes about whom; how much it donates to whom; and how it makes those donations. A rating of more than 80 indicates high transparency; 61 to 80 is strong; 41 to 60 is moderate; 21 to 40 is weak; and 0 to 20 is opaque. The center's inaugural index finds that 22 percent of the S&P 100 disclose little or nothing about their political corpo- rate activities. Companies in industries where transparency is the norm scored highest, on average. For instance, the phar- maceutical and petroleum industries topped the list at 58 and 57, respec- tively. On the other hand, mining, manufacturing, and utilities scored lowest, at 16, 13, and 11, respectively. The companies rated 81 or above were Colgate-Palmolive, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Pfizer, Sara Lee, U.S. Bancorp, and Xerox. The 28 compa- nies with opaque ratings from 0 to 20 included Allstate, Amazon, Costco, Google, Halliburton, Nike, Wal-Mart, and The Walt Disney Company. While some "opaque" companies may not want to disclose informa- tion, many simply may not realize people are looking for it. "Companies might not have had many requests for information about their political activity before," says Gardberg. "In fact, when we collected our data, Google did not have a page on this topic on its Web site. Later in the year, it added one." Gardberg and Schepers plan to collect data again in January to see if the ratings of some companies have changed. Information about the 2010 Baruch Index Results Report can be found at www.baruch.cuny.edu/baruchindex/index.htm. Jude Preston, a graduate from Aston Univer- sity in the United Kingdom, and Helen Ship- ton, director of the Aston Centre for Human Resources, have received the New Thinking Prize from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development for their paper, "The Relation- ship Between Age, Stress, and Learning in Organisational Change." Their paper measured employee stress levels before and after a major IT deployment in a U.K. warehousing operation. The Academy of Management has awarded its 2011 GMAC Award to Jack Denfeld Wood, a professor at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland; Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France; and Jennifer Petrigl- ieri, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Given for the most significant contribution to graduate management education, the award recognizes their study, "Building Foundations for Leaders' Development Through the Personalization of Management Learning." Sara Rynes, the John F. Murray Professor of Management and Organizations at the Uni- versity of Iowa in Iowa City, has received the 2011 Michael R. Losey Research Award in recognition of her scholarly contributions to the field of human resource management. Rynes is especially interested in discovering why HR professionals do not believe, or act on, well- established research findings. For that reason, Rynes has focused her scholarship on the gap between HR research and practice. Donald F. Kuratko has been chosen as the inaugural recipient of the 2011 Karl Vesper Entre- preneurship Pioneer Award. The award was created in honor of Karl A. Vesper, considered a founding father of entrepreneurship education. The award recognizes Kuratko, the Jack M. Gill Chair of Entrepreneurship and executive director of the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Indiana University's Kel- ley School of Business in Bloomington, "for distinguished achievements in advancing the discipline of entrepreneurship." BizEd January/February 2012 55