Business and Society with Michigan Ross

Between the Grammy Awards, the Super Bowl, and this year’s Winter Olympics, this season has been buzzing with live entertainment. On this episode of Business and Society, Michigan Ross professors Marcus Collins and Gregg Latterman sit down with Jeff Karoub to discuss the entertainment industry. Topics covered include the human connection that synchronous viewing experiences provide, the evolution of live production design for the sake of at-home audiences, and the ways music reflects the zeitgeist. Collins and Latterman delve into the inner workings of the music industry and the impact of AI, exalting the power of novelty in successful music and discussing the artist’s crucial role in finding, building, and maintaining an audience. Listen to Marcus Collins’s podcast From The Culture on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.Host: Jeff KaroubGuests: Marcus Collins and Gregg Latterman Executive Producers: Jeff Karoub and Matt TrevorAudio Engineer: Jonah BrockmanEditorial Production: Mads Henke Special thanks to Ashley Birch and Judi Melena Smelser.

On this episode of Business and Society, Michigan Ross Professor Tom Buchmueller and Professor Anand Parekh from the School of Public Health sit down with Jeff Karoub to discuss healthcare changes taking effect. Topics covered include the introduction of work requirements for Medicaid starting in 2027, the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, the Healthcare Marketplace, and the damage dealt to the Affordable Care Act. The guests speak to the link between health insurance coverage and decreased mortality, the importance of community health centers, and their experiences seeking bipartisan solutions to healthcare crises.Relevant Links:“The Impact of Health Insurance on Mortality” by Helen Levy and Thomas C. Buchmueller“How Cuts to the Insurance Marketplaces Will Harm Entrepreneurs” by Vani Agarwal, Tom Buchmueller, Helen Levy, and Wesley YinHost: Jeff KaroubGuests: Tom Buchmueller and Anand ParekhExecutive Producers: Jeff Karoub and Matt TrevorAudio Engineer: Jonah BrockmanEditorial Production: Mads Henke 

This November, tariffs are in effect and in flux, the job market is unstable, and AI continues to impact the way business is done. Consumers and businesses alike are looking out for these trends in the economy as the holiday shopping season approaches.On this episode of Business and Society, Ross professors Ari Shwayder and Michael Speigl discuss the current state of the economy, unpacking the macroeconomic data and the uncertainty surrounding it. Topics covered include the bifurcated nature of today’s economy, the ways tariffs are gradually being passed on to consumers, changes in the labor market, AI, and predictions for the upcoming holiday shopping season.

The rise of short-term contract work and freelance jobs has created a large percentage of workers who work on their own terms, outside of organizations. These freelancers find new ways to deal with autonomy in their work, walking a precarious tightrope between instability and independence. On this episode of Business and Society, Ross Professor Sue Ashford discusses her award-winning research on the gig economy. Topics covered include the connection between productivity and identity for freelancers, how they gauge their own success, and the four main factors for thriving as an independent worker: connection to people, place, purpose, and routine.The conversation ends with a discussion of how the gig economy has transformed in the five years since Ashford’s paper was published. She discusses algorithmic management, how a global pandemic brought society closer to independent work, and the future of her research.

Between 1989 and 2009, fewer than 100 women became CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. In 2014, Aparna Joshi, and her co-authors embarked on a deep dive into every one of these rare events. While the barriers to women’s success in senior roles and the negative industry reactions to their ascension have been long documented, Joshi felt these focuses failed to provide actionable knowledge. Her research thus highlights the “recipes” for women’s post-succession success, and points organizations towards a clearer path forward. On this episode of Business and Society, Professor Aparna Joshi, Michigan Ross Professor of Management and Organizations and recent recipient of the 2025 Academy of Management’s Impact Award, sits down with host JT Godfrey to discuss her research, the factors of success for women in senior leadership, and ways of creating more supportive and thriving environments. Host: JT GodfreyGuest: Aparna JoshiExecutive Producers: JT Godfrey and Jeff KaroubAudio Engineer: Jonah BrockmanEditorial Production: Mads Henke

In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, switched its drinking water supply from the Detroit system to the Flint River to save money, resulting in a decade-long public health crisis in which Flint’s residents faced lead contamination and other serious health issues. A major challenge for Flint and hundreds of cities looking to update their aging water infrastructure is efficiently and accurately predicting the location of lead pipes. Enter BlueConduit, a Ross School of Business start-up that originated the approach of using machine learning to do just that. Since the company's foundation in 2016, they've rapidly expanded, working with over 100 customer accounts spanning over 400 different towns and cities in more than 25 states.On this episode of Business and Society, Professor Eric Schwartz, co-founder of BlueConduit and associate professor of marketing at Michigan Ross, sits down with host JT Godfrey to discuss his experience tackling the Flint Water Crisis. Schwartz explains how the company’s machine learning technology works, recounts BlueConduit’s journey from beginning as a community start-up to expanding and impacting public policy, gives insights into the businesses of public utility and infrastructure, and shares his optimism in data science and marketing being used as forces for good.To learn more about the hosts, participants, resources, and research discussed in this episode, check out a full-length article for this episode at https://michiganross.umich.edu/news/podcasts/business-society. Host: JT GodfreyGuest: Eric SchwartzExecutive Producers: JT Godfrey and Jeff KaroubAudio Engineer: Jonah BrockmanEditorial Production: Mads Henke 

In the season finale of Business and Society, recorded live at the University of Michigan MaizeXBlue Conference, host Jeff Karoub sits down with a panel of experts to discuss the changing media landscape. Sarah Zimmerman, Lecturer of Business Communication at Michigan Ross and professors Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan from the College of Literature, Science, and Arts give their insights on the fragmentation of traditional mainstream media, the rise and evolving role of influencers, and the ways they expect the media landscape to continue to change in the coming years. To learn more about the hosts, participants, resources, and research discussed in this episode, check out a full-length article for this episode at https://michiganross.umich.edu/news/podcasts/business-society. Host: Jeff KaroubGuests: Professors Sarah Zimmerman, Yanna Krupnikov, and John Barry RyanExecutive Producers: JT Godfrey and Jeff KaroubAudio Engineer: Jonah BrockmanEditorial Production: Mads Henke

Professor M.S. Krishnan of Michigan Ross and Professor Shobita Parthasarathy from the Ford School of Public Policy join this episode to discuss opportunities AI brings to the business world and some of the challenges and functions in which AI needs guardrails. Topics covered include the transformation of labor, developing technology in a way that centers and serves people, and the role of AI in education. The experts discuss interacting with AI critically and with personal responsibility, in a world where widespread adoption is well underway. To learn more about the hosts, participants, resources, and research discussed in this episode, check out a full-length article for this episode at https://michiganross.umich.edu/news/podcasts/business-society. Host: Jeff KaroubGuests: Professors M.S. Krishnan and Shobita ParthasarathyExecutive Producers: JT Godfrey and Jeff KaroubAudio Engineer: Jonah BrockmanEditorial Production: Mads Henke