Management

How do we decide what kinds of water conservation measures to implement when we don't know what future precipitation, temperatures, or population will be? Craig Kirkwood helps people make decisions when conditions are uncertain. --by Diane Boudreau

What makes some people natural leaders? Business professor Pierre Balthazard believes it's all in their heads, and he's working with neuroscientists to look into the brain and find out how. --by Jessica McCann

If you want to understand how likely doctors are to use information technology, look at how they get paid. --by Carrie Barnett

Anyone who watches television in the United States might logically conclude that this is a nation plagued by allergies, depression and arthritis. Ads for medicines to address such conditions make it seem as though ailment sufferers outnumber the healthy. But, it wasn't always so. --by Carrie Barnett

How do people manage the line between their workplace roles and their "real" personalities? ASU researchers say that getting in and out of a role may appear to be simple, but it involves complex adjustments. And sometimes the dividing line gets blurry. --by Carrie Barnett

Applying the principles of supply chain management to public health emergencies is no simple task. ASU researchers are using the Decision Theater to help visualize a complex combination of data.--by Carrie Barnett

Do people with disabilities earn less money than their able-bodied co-workers? Are they less likely to be employed? ASU researchers decided to find out. --by Carrie Barnett

Al Qaeda operatives reportedly substituted the word "wedding" for "attack" in e-mail messages. Finding these kinds of word substitutions has been a hit-or-miss process for federal investigators. It's also tough duty for corporate security pros who try to catch employee collusion. But new research from ASU shows that computer programs are capable of detecting word swaps that conceal the true meaning of e-mail messages.

"We never tell the contractor what to do, because we're hiring him to know what he's doing," says Dean Kashiwagi, director of ASU's Performance Based Studies Research Group. The group has developed a hands-off approach to managing contractors in the construction industry. The result? Lower costs, faster delivery and a higher quality finished product. --by Melissa Crytzer Fry

Maintaining the boundary between work and home has always been tricky. Cell phones, PDAs and laptops make the task even more difficult. Blake Ashforth studies the ways in which people maintain their personal/professional boundaries. --by Carrie Barnett