Welcome to Managing Employee Compensation. So first, a little bit about me. My name is Alan Benson and I'm an assistant professor here at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. A little bit about my past. So I've been studying human resources and compensation for a long time. I began that as an undergraduate at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. I did that when I was at Oxford University, studying abroad, working in economics. And then lastly, I did it when I got my PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloane School of Management. So what do? So, companies come to me and they say, we have this problem. We are having trouble identifying the star performers who we're losing to our competitors or, perhaps, we're having trouble deciding whether we're getting the most out of our incentive plans. So I work with these companies, I analyze their personnel data. And then I come up with ideas of how they can improve, where they can focus their efforts and their resources, and so on. And then this goes on to inform the research that I do and my teaching. So what kind of research have I done? So I've done research on incentives, on compensation, on bargaining, and I've done that in a wide variety of settings. I've done it for police, for firefighters, business-to-business salespeople, manufacturing workers, retail and salespeople and others. So after I do research with companies, kind of the deal is that we help them out with whatever issue they're coming across. Then I go to conferences, lots and lots and lots of conferences. And I publish my results in academic journals, and sometimes newspapers pick it up like the Wall Street Journal, or the LA Times, or Washington Post, or CBS News, or PBS, and some other places too. So I don't have photos from all my conferences, but I do have photos from my very first one. Here's a picture from my very first conference at Izmir in Turkey. I was invited to this conference when I was a senior as an undergraduate at Cornell. And I was invited to speak about peak level social dialog and negotiations over pay, and other terms and conditions of employment. And here you can see me as a panelist, and here's a picture of me giving my presentation. After I graduated from MIT, I started doing my teaching in compensation and benefits, negotiations, and organizational economics for undergraduate students, Master's students, MBAs, executives, and for PhD students. So here's a picture from my very first class. This is Communicating with Data, when I was a PhD candidate at MIT. When I'm not researching or teaching, you could probably find me on the ultimate Frisbee pitch. Here's a picture of me on my very first ultimate team over in Pembroke College at Oxford. And then since then I've been in a couple more teams at MIT and, of course, here in the Twin Cities. And when I'm not playing ultimate Frisbee, my wife and I like to do lots of other outdoor things, such as hiking in Alberta and Lake Superior up here in northern Minnesota. Or scrambling in California, or cross country skiing here in Minneapolis, or sailing, also upstate in Minnesota. And lastly, I'd like to thank the wonderful Coursera team here at the University of Minnesota. In particular, Dean Peterson, our wonderful cameraman. And also, Amie Norden, who helped with all the logistics of getting these videos up online. Thank you so much and I'll see you in class.