CSB Commentary
AI and the Future of Human Decision Making: Winter is coming! Is it though?
By Dr. Pooya Tabesh—Will we lose our jobs to an army of intelligent machines? Will artificial intelligence (AI) systems advance to the point that human decision making becomes obsolete? Should we get prepared to defend ourselves against killer robots? Is “winter” coming? While these important questions have been around for a few decades, efforts to…
Read MoreTrade for Texas: Strength in North America
By Dr. Beverly Barrett –This spring, within two weeks, the United Kingdom has requested two extensions to determine the country’s way forward in relationship to the European Union (EU), regarding “Brexit.” Since the British popular referendum nearly three years ago, these extended deliberations remind that trade is politically charged and important given the trade rules…
Read MoreBusiness Schools and the Financial Crisis
By Dr. Hassan Shirvani—Business schools have been widely criticized for causing the recent financial crisis by teaching deeply flawed financial models and by failing to instill in their students an adequate appreciation of socially responsible behavior. As a result, many of their graduates, armed with their defective financial models and lacking in ethical standards, are accused…
Read MoreFact or Fiction? The Importance of Critical Thinking
“ “Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” The Purpose Of Education / Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,…
Read MoreDear Students: When It’s Okay to be “All About Me”
By Dr. Michele Simms—-In Daniel Pink’s book DRIVE: The Surprising Truth of What Motivates Us (2009), he includes Peter Drucker as one of seven business thinkers who get it. Drucker, the most influential management thinker of the 20th century, is cited for creating a revolution in human affairs: managing oneself. Best known for his ideas on…
Read MoreThe Knowledge Economy and the Globalization of Higher Education
By Dr. Beverly Barrett— Nearly two decades into the new millennium, the pace of technological change behind globalization continues to advance exponentially. This rapid technological progress has, in turn, necessitated the internationalization of higher education with emphasis on the development of high quality skills needed in the global knowledge economy. In my recent book Globalization…
Read MoreLiberal Arts in a Business Curriculum: “Humbug!” or “Hmmm . . .”?
By Dr. Samuel B. Condic—While there is a general acknowledgment that the liberal arts can contribute to the practice of business, the contribution is typically seen exclusively in terms of utility. For example, my business school colleagues observe that undergraduates from our own institution perform well in the MBA program in large part because they…
Read MoreEthical Character: Is a Standardized Assessment Possible?
“In order to good deeds, it matters not only what a man does, but also how he does it; to wit, that he do it from right choice and not merely from impulse or passion.” —St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II.q57.a5 By Dr. Samuel B. Condic —In the Cameron School of Business at the…
Read MoreCognitive Biases and Rational Behavior
By Dr. Hassan Shirvani—As you might have heard, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Richard Thaler for his pioneering work in the field of behavioral economics, a school of thought dedicated to the application of psychology to economics. The main point of this school is that humans are subject to too many…
Read MoreCanadian Crude Oil Blends
By Ali Oktay—Canadian crude oil blends are trading at steep discounts due to pipeline constraints. Let’s start with basics. In the chart below, you can see the different benchmark crudes lined up according to their API gravities. Canada is a major heavy oil producer, and WCS pricing has been recently hit by the pipeline constraints.…
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