Costello Research Strategic Management

Costello Research Risk Management

Costello Research Corporate Finance

Costello Research Financial Crises

Costello Research Health & Well-being at Work

Accounting Faculty Research

Research

When expressing gratitude, it’s all in the timing

Jennifer Anzaldi — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 14:42:32 +0000

When expressing gratitude, it’s all in the timing Jennifer Anzaldi Wed, 09/04/2024 - 10:42

Thanks so much for reading this article all the way to the end! No, that wasn’t an editorial error. It’s a savvy managerial motivation strategy lurking somewhere in almost every employee’s inbox or Slack channel.

Mandy O’Neill, an associate professor of management at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at �鶹��Ƶ, has discovered a potential new addition to the annals of managerial motivation techniques: anticipatory gratitude.

Mandy O'Neill

We all know that thanking people for a job well-done, or a much-needed favor, is an effective form of positive reinforcement. Psychology researchers classify gratitude as a “socially engaging emotion” that promotes prosocial behavior and strong interpersonal relationships. In the course of exploring how employees cope with high-stress or frustrating work situations, O’Neill and her co-author Hooria Jazaieri of Santa Clara University discovered an interesting wrinkle in what we thought we knew about this popular emotion: Gratitude can be used as a form of emotion regulation and, when expressed ahead of time instead of after the fact, can produce that extra “oomph” when it comes to employee resilience and persistence.

Their paper is in press at Academy of Management Discoveries.

The researchers stumbled upon the power of anticipatory gratitude while researching organizational culture and change within the intensive care units of a leading U.S. hospital. It’s difficult to imagine a more gut-wrenching, high-stakes work environment: The ICU units in question receive what one employee called “the sickest of the sickest” from throughout the region. To decompress and process their emotions after especially difficult shifts, employees routinely emailed the group using an internal listserv. O’Neill and Jazaieri were forwarded four years’ worth of messages, which they analyzed with the help of direct experience gained from extensive site visits to the hospital.

In addition to writing heartfelt outpourings of post facto gratitude, ICU colleagues thanked one another for rising to occasions that had not yet occurred. Some of these emails were pre-emptively apologetic (“I may have to take a day or two off from time to time…Thank you for your patience and understanding”). Others seemed to function as pep talks, inspiring teams to keep up the good work (“Thank you…for bringing your a-game to work every day”).

As O’Neill describes it, “The ‘thanks in advance’ phenomenon involves an awareness that you’re going to be annoyed or upset by what I’m asking you to do, so I infuse you with the positivity of that feeling you get when someone expresses gratitude to you. Think about it as an emotional buffer. It helps with the inevitable distress of the task that’s going to happen later. It makes those negative emotions less salient, less powerful, and less insidious.”

The researchers launched several follow-up studies to learn more about the effects of anticipatory gratitude. They chose a context—Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) gig-work platform—that was in many ways the polar opposite of the ICU. “You go from the ultimate interdependent work environment to the ultimate transactional work environment,” O’Neill explains.

“The ‘thanks in advance’ phenomenon involves an awareness that you’re going to be annoyed or upset by what I’m asking you to do, so I infuse you with the positivity of that feeling you get when someone expresses gratitude to you. Think about it as an emotional buffer."

The MTurk workers were assigned to solve extremely difficult puzzles. After completing the paid task, they received negative feedback about their performance and were offered the opportunity to do additional puzzles without being paid. MTurkers who had seen a message of gratitude before the main task voluntarily took on significantly more unpaid work than those who received a similar message after the paid exercise.

“What’s so compelling and surprising for us is that anyone who does work with experienced online gig worker populations knows it’s nearly impossible to induce workers to go beyond their assignment, even by 30 extra seconds, which is about what we were asking for,” O’Neill says.

Questionnaires administered during the study revealed that anticipatory gratitude enhanced feelings of communal self-worth, which contributed to the participant’s resilience, that is, their ability to “bounce back” after the initial failure. In a third study, the researchers found anticipatory gratitude was better than a related positive affect—anticipatory hope—at motivating MTurkers to persevere at (i.e., spend more time on) a different set of challenging puzzles.

At this point, the potential for managerial manipulation should be crystal clear. Indeed, it was evident even to some of the gig workers, who wrote private messages such as, “It may be partial trickery for academic purposes but it was still nice to hear.”

"Gratitude can’t be a substitute for fair pay and decent work conditions...But our findings are clear: anticipatory gratitude works; it is effective.”

For O’Neill, these findings show that gratitude is more complicated than we previously thought. “This paper is one of the very few to show that gratitude isn’t always authentic and prosocial. It can be used strategically, especially for managers,” she says.

Sincerity and strategy are not mutually exclusive. Empathic managers whose feelings of gratitude are so strong that they have to be expressed beforehand could still be taking advantage of the “thanks in advance” phenomenon.

“In all organizations, you need people to stick with difficult or thankless or boring tasks. The challenge, of course, is how to do so ethically. Gratitude can’t be a substitute for fair pay and decent work conditions, for example. But our findings are clear: anticipatory gratitude works; it is effective,” O’Neill says.

Explore Costello College of Business graduate education programs

In This Story

Olivia (Mandy) O'Neill

George �鶹��Ƶ’s government contracting center is helping the Pentagon enter the 21st century

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 30 May 2024 16:17:30 +0000

George �鶹��Ƶ’s government contracting center is helping the Pentagon enter the 21st century Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 05/30/2024 - 12:17

When the Pentagon attempts to field innovative technology, its contracting decisions are largely dictated by a process that predates personal computing. Known as the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) resourcing system, it betrays its mid-20th-century origins in its extreme emphasis on long-range management and sequential planning over more agile and rapid program execution.

Jerry McGinn

Calls for PPBE reform are nothing new in the halls of the Pentagon, but recent geopolitical threats have contributed to a general recognition within the federal government that change is badly needed to speed the development and acquisition of new military capabilities.

Hence Congress’s formation in 2022 of an independent commission tasked with closely assessing the current process and making specific recommendations for reform.

The Commission on PPBE Reform promptly engaged the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at �鶹��Ƶ as a key research partner. The center was awarded a $645,000 Department of Defense (DoD) research contract consisting of two projects.

First, the research team, headed by the center’s executive director Jerry McGinn, prepared six case studies documenting PPBE’s effect on DoD’s work with both research and development centers and industry to develop and adopt new technologies.

“We set up hypotheses and did background research on the programs,” McGinn says. “Our conclusions were based on a number of interviews with government and industry officials.”

For example, one of the case studies dealt with the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, for the development of AI-piloted combat drones. Five Air Force officials involved in CCA told the Baroni research team that PPBE complicated necessary collaborations with the Navy and other agencies, due to siloed budgeting protocols making it difficult to align priorities and make resource decisions in a timely manner.

Next, the Baroni research team turned their attention to three inter-related subtasks delving into specific rules governing PPBE’s application.

“For this project, we used a mixture of non-public DoD unclassified databases as well as information available to the general public,” says McGinn.

The researchers investigated whether PPBE should vary based on DoD’s acquisition categories or remain the same for all categories, concluding that the categories were similar enough to warrant a unified process. They were also asked to evaluate how military departments and agencies use PPBE’s various acquisition pathways, resulting in a determination that “budget justification documents, particularly for RDT&E (research, development, testing and evaluation), are overly complex, unnecessarily intricate, and lack standardization”. Finally, the researchers performed an extensive analysis of PPBE’s legal underpinnings and the wider governmental implications of reforming the process.

The team’s final report, submitted to the commission early in 2024, contained a consolidated list of dozens of findings and recommendations. In its own report issued in March 2024, the PPBE Reform Commission cited the Baroni team’s research numerous times.

“Our work played a large role in informing the Commission’s findings and reinforcing their policy recommendations,” McGinn noted. “These inputs are today being considered as Congress debates 2025 appropriations and DoD concurrently develops and vets the budget for 2026 and 2027.

Shortly after the release of the Commission’s report, the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting hosted a rollout event at �鶹��Ƶ Square featuring the Commission’s chair, vice-chair and executive director. A series of additional events around PPBE reform are being planned for the summer.

“Our report reflects the strategic vision with which George �鶹��Ƶ established this research center. Our research and analysis inform the federal government as well as the large government contracting industry here in the national capital region. Our relationships and location make the center uniquely situated to benefit policy-makers and entrepreneurs, alike,” McGinn says.

In This Story

John G. (Jerry) McGinn

Learn more about the Costello College of Business

Topics

Operations - Costello

Costello Research Government Accounting

Costello Research Innovation Strategy

Center for Government Contracting

Center for Government Contracting News

Research

�鶹��Ƶ Momentum

In Silicon Valley, human capital trumps intellectual capital

Marianne Klinker — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 16:23:12 +0000

In Silicon Valley, human capital trumps intellectual capital Marianne Klinker Mon, 01/22/2024 - 11:23

To stay competitive in the war for talent, tech companies must weigh secrecy against specificity when crafting job ads. Are they disclosing too much?

Job postings are a key tool for attracting qualified tech workers. However, companies face a dilemma: on the one hand, they want to provide enough information to attract the right candidates; on the other hand, they want to keep the information about their product development and planning private. Sometimes it is just hard to get both.

Yi Cao

In a recent paper for Contemporary Accounting Research, accounting professor Yi Cao of the Donald G. Costello College of Business at �鶹��Ƶ argues that highly competitive companies are more likely to post specific job requirements in order to find qualified workers even at the cost of potentially leaking proprietary trade secrets. (The paper was co-authored by Shijun Cheng of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Jenny Wu Tucker of the University of Florida, and Chi Wan of the University of Massachusetts Boston.)

Generally, companies reveal less information during fierce competition to avoid giving their competitors an advantage. However, Cao finds that “when the technological competition is more fierce, companies provide more information into the labor market because they have to do this in order to attract talents, which is the essential driving force of innovation. They're balancing the trade-off between not leaking secrets but not hiring the matching candidates, versus leaking some of the trade secrets while more likely to hire matching employees. So between these two trade-offs, obviously, we find that companies choose to bear the risk of leaking information in order to acquire talents.”

The benefits of quickly attracting desired tech talent outweigh the potential costs of revealing proprietary information.

To examine the relationship between technological competition and skill specificity in job postings for tech positions, the researchers used a novel job posting database provided by Burning Glass Technologies (BGT). They calculated the skill-specificity scores of the job ads based on the level of information disclosed in the skill-requirements of the job postings and the taxonomy of skills, and then aggregated it annually by firm. Cao’s paper is the first to propose a taxonomy theory-based measure of term specificity in the business field. This provides companies with a handy tool for measuring the specificity of textual documents and precisely determining how much information to disclose.

Cao uses the example of a company looking for workers with AI experience to demonstrate how the measure works. The company could post a job listing that simply says, "We are looking for someone to build machine learning tools." This is a relatively vague job posting that would not provide job seekers with detailed information about the specific skills that the company is looking for. The company could also reword the post more specifically, e.g. "We are looking for someone to use Python and decision tree algorithms for credit card risk." Alternatively, they could be even more specific with language like, "We are looking for someone who have experience with random forest algorithms to specifically apply a portfolio level of prediction of credit card defaults." This description provides job seekers with detailed information about the specific tasks and skills that the company is looking for, while at the same time revealing information about existing technology.

Cao found that on average, firms disclose an additional 27 specific skills in their job ads when facing intense technological competition. The results reveal that the benefits of quickly attracting desired tech talent outweigh the potential costs of revealing proprietary information.

The findings did not apply to job advertisements for lower-level non-tech positions, such as food preparation and cleaning staff. However, they were observable for senior non-tech positions, e.g. directors of marketing or finance. These nuances suggest that both tech and managerial talent were valuable enough to motivate a higher degree of disclosure from employers.

Additionally, the effect on disclosure was much stronger for incremental innovators—firms whose patents tended to build on past knowledge, rather than strike out in new technological directions. The researchers speculate that breakthrough innovators would have too much to lose if they were to signal their plans through job postings.

While more detailed job postings can be helpful for finding qualified workers, they also could reveal proprietary information about the company's products and strategies. Cao emphasizes, “[Companies are] basically telling the world what [they’re] trying to create. With higher level of detail you’re trying to describe, you're disclosing more information to potentially everyone. And that information is beneficial in terms of labor demand because it attracts the right employee. But it's a concern in terms of competition because you basically show cards to your opponents.”

As an accounting scholar, Cao is intrigued by the possibilities inherent in the discovery that labor-market pressures can force employers to divulge potentially compromising information. “In financial reporting, we don’t capitalize human capital; we consider it an expense,” he says. “But that’s not necessarily the case when the labor market is tight and when the labor is essential in productivity. Our paper shows how the labor market, product market, and capital market are not segregated, but connected.”

Topics

A.I. & Innovation - Costello

Accounting - Costello

Costello Research Recruiting

Costello Research Innovation Strategy

Costello Research Competitive Strategy

Accounting Faculty Research

Research

More Costello College of Business Faculty Research

Are there upsides to “overboarding”?
July 14, 2025
“Doing well by doing good”? There’s a framework for that
July 2, 2025
In the workplace, relationships equal reality
May 28, 2025
Why it doesn’t—and shouldn’t—always pay to be a super-successful CEO
May 7, 2025
Study: Left-handed CEOs are more innovative
April 29, 2025

In This Story

Yi Cao

Beyond the business case for Corporate Social Responsibility

Jennifer Anzaldi — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 12:25:31 +0000

Beyond the business case for Corporate Social Responsibility Jennifer Anzaldi Wed, 10/12/2022 - 08:25

In This Story

Lei Gao

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the business leadership agenda for more than 50 years, yet executives and corporate boards still demand to see the “business case” for CSR. Clearly, CSR’s familiarity as a concept has not translated into coherent ideas of where it fits into the cost-benefit calculations that motivate business strategy.

A forthcoming article in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis by Lei Gao, associate professor of finance at �鶹��Ƶ School of Business, Jie (Jack) He (of University of Georgia) and Juan (Julie) Wu (of University of Nebraska – Lincoln) goes beyond the business case to form cause-and-effect connections involving companies’ CSR efforts. Gao and his co-authors found that companies under negative share-price pressure have used CSR to telegraph their strong fundamentals to investors, a tactic that paid off in the marketplace. The researchers homed in on real-life scenarios where companies randomly received tougher treatment in equities markets, so that price pressure could be cleanly separated from business fundamentals. They chose to look at the arbitrarily selected pilot group of companies affected by Regulation SHO, an SEC rule that abolished the “uptick rule” for short selling – thereby potentially making these companies more attractive targets. As an additional setting, they studied companies exposed to downward pricing pressure due to mutual fund fire sales.

The companies that suffered through these forms of arbitrary adversity exhibited higher-than-average levels of CSR activity, as reflected in the MSCI KLD Stats Database. KLD reports on individual companies’ strengths and weaknesses across seven areas, including employee relations, the natural environment, and human rights. To ensure accuracy, the KLD scores were double-checked against Thomson Reuters ASSET4, a leading CSR data provider for thousands of global companies.

Gao explains that when companies are randomly swept up in forces beyond their control (such as new regulations and asset fire sales) that throw their market value into doubt, executives try to send countersignals that reflect positively on company fundamentals. And if these countersignals can help the company connect with an entirely new category of well-informed investors, so much the better.

“If I want to show I’m a better company than peers, I can do a special dividend, or a share repurchase. This is a kind of signalling that is very direct and expensive, and only reaches existing shareholders,” Gao says. “CSR is basically kind of broadcasting to so many different kinds of stakeholders, including environmentally and socially aware investors.”

These messages seemed to reach their intended targets. The researchers found that in both the Regulation SHO and mutual fund fire sale settings, socially responsible institutional investors increased their holdings of price-pressured companies that stepped up their CSR signalling.

Enlarged positions from this investor class was a main contributor to an overall decline in cost of equity capital for CSR-signalling companies. In the case of the Regulation SHO pilot stocks, capital cost declined by around 50-60 basis points, compared to non-CSR-signallers and non-pilot stocks.

CSR initiatives, then, help firms with strong fundamentals distinguish themselves from others undergoing similar pricing pressures. But that doesn’t mean CSR can be used as a smokescreen for badly run businesses, or a cynical short-term evasion.

“Companies should keep in mind that it’s not a one-and-done,” Gao says. “You have to keep working to keep these investors happy once you’ve won them over…Signalling is not cheap talk or a rumor. This is something they have committed to. They have the resources to do so, and they believe it will benefit them in the long run.”

The companies in Gao’s sample were highly incentivized to undertake CSR signalling. But the tactic would presumably work for strong companies in general, regardless of pricing pressures. When it comes to CSR, therefore, “business case” thinking may be backward. Instead of pursuing a short-term upside, well-run companies may consider CSR engagement as a way toward claiming their proper status – and the rewards that go with it – in the eyes of investors. To put it another way: Rather than vegetables swallowed down dutifully, CSR could represent the icing on the cake of success.

Topics

Finance - Costello

ESG - Costello

Finance Faculty Research

Marketing Prof Named Finalist for Prestigious Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 18:11:45 +0000

Marketing Prof Named Finalist for Prestigious Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 03/24/2022 - 14:11

In This Story

Jessica Hoppner

A paper co-authored by Jessica Hoppner, associate marketing professor at �鶹��Ƶ, has been named a finalist for the American Marketing Association’s prestigious Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award.

The annual award recognizes “an article in the Journal of Marketing Research that has made the most significant long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology and/or practice” and eligibility begins five years post-publication.

Hoppner says, “I am grateful to have our article selected as a finalist for the Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award. With each article you hope to make an impact. To have the JMR community consider our article on inequity and interdependence as one that makes a long-term contribution to the field is an absolute honor.”

The paper being recognized, “The Influence of the Structure of Interdependence on the Response to Inequity in Buyer-Supplier Relationships,” appeared in JMR in February 2017. To date, “The Influence of the Structure of Interdependence on the Response to Inequity in Buyer-Supplier Relationships” has been cited within marketing, operations and B2B journals—attesting to its interdisciplinary impact.

Saurabh Mishra, chair of the marketing research area at the business school, says, “At �鶹��Ƶ we have some of the brightest minds in marketing working on topics of high relevance to scholars and managers. Selection of Professor Hoppner’s work as a finalist for this award is a testament of the quality of her work and an honor for the marketing area and the School of Business.”

Hoppner and her collaborators, David A. Griffith of Texas A&M, Hanna S. Lee of Miami University, and Tobias Schoenherr of Michigan State University, looked into how power differences between buyers and suppliers, in addition to their relative level of dependence upon one another, affected the suppliers’ willingness to share valuable resources. Hoppner and her co-authors sent questionnaires to 1,000 Japan-based suppliers about their relationships with U.S. buyers. Their analysis identified a complicated three-way interaction between inequity, interdependence, and relative dependence that, in some cases, sharply deviated from received wisdom on resource-sharing. For example, suppliers who had the upper hand in a highly interdependent relationship did not take steps to equalize the dynamic by increasing resource-sharing, even though they could easily afford to do so. The researchers suggest a working culture that stresses competitive achievement over cooperation may have had something to do with this.

Therefore, Hoppner and her co-authors recommend that managers “consider both the limitations of magnitude of interdependence and the cultural orientation of the manager in determining managerial action.” For other academics, the paper offers novel frameworks for understanding business relationships, which, unlike standard frameworks based on equity theory, do not presume fairness as a primary motivation in workplace interactions.

Finalists for the Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award are selected by the editorial review board, associate editors, and advisory board members of JMR. A smaller group of selectors drawn from the same pool will meet in the coming weeks to choose the winner, which will be announced at the upcoming Summer AMA Academic Conference.

Topics

Costello Research Competitive Strategy

Marketing Faculty Research

How Can Companies Balance Profits With Social Responsibility?

Marianne Klinker — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 17:24:38 +0000

How Can Companies Balance Profits With Social Responsibility? Marianne Klinker Mon, 12/06/2021 - 12:24

In This Story

Toyah Miller

Sometimes, the headline says it all. In 1970, economist Milton Friedman published an essay in the New York Times titled, “A Friedman doctrine—The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” Few pieces of such brevity have been as influential. Until very recently, the Friedman Doctrine held almost uncontested sway among the leaders of large, publicly traded U.S. companies. For adherents to the doctrine, delivering shareholder returns was the paramount consideration; all other consequences of business activity were secondary.

But now, the Friedman Doctrine is facing its most serious challenge yet as modern corporations are finding increased demands from the public for accountability and performance beyond financial returns. Although the demand for corporate social responsibility has increased steadily over the past decade, this past year—amid a pandemic, economic instability, and social unrest—saw increasing instances of shareholders seeming to reject the doctrine designed to privilege their interests above all others. Proposals calling for action on climate change, sustainability, health, and human rights issues were some of the most common forms of stakeholder pushback. In fact, proposals for corporate diversity disclosure have doubled since last year. Big Oil companies are changing course on carbon emissions due to investor opposition.

Toyah Miller

It’s an exciting but also potentially confusing time for leaders, says Toyah Miller, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at �鶹��Ƶ. The call to prioritize social responsibility alongside profits can often create “an institutional contradiction” with “increased potential for conflict.” Bridging the areas of management, innovation and entrepreneurship, Miller’s research illuminates the issues that will determine whether companies succeed or fail in their newly broadened mission.

This is well-trodden territory for Miller. She began her career as an Ernst & Young consultant who loved talking strategy with top leaders of organizations such as Time Warner and Bell South. At the same time, she sought opportunities to make a difference in the wider world, not just for companies. Growing up, she saw her mother organize outreach programs to help the elderly and other vulnerable groups, driven by “a strong sense of values, connection to her community and the idea that she had a role to play even if no one assigned her that role.”

Her career crossroads came after developing educational programs for a children’s home and thinking “Could I turn this into a venture?” From there, she became fascinated by the often-overlooked questions and problems of making social entrepreneurship work. Unpacking these dilemmas would require fusing her social mission with knowledge gained from her past experience as a strategy consultant. As she terms it, “I got the PhD bug,” pursuing a doctorate at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, and later joining the faculty of University of Oklahoma, Indiana University—Kelley School of Business, and University of Texas at Dallas before coming to �鶹��Ƶ this year.

Miller’s research on social entrepreneurs shows how identity and cognition help shape their entrepreneurial strategy. “A lot of the way [social entrepreneurs] behave or react to challenges is influenced by their own background,” she says. Values, education, and work experience play a role in influencing cognitive styles and biases used to evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities. For example, an Academy of Management Review paper Miller co-authored in 2012 posited compassion as a driving force for venture creation in social entrepreneurs that encourages integrative thinking and personal commitment to a cause that even overrides traditional cost-benefit analysis. But she has also found that the emotional investment of social entrepreneurs can make them highly resistant to inevitable trade-offs between societal mission and business needs.

Now that a counterweight to the Friedman Doctrine is gathering strength, corporate managers of all stripes are encountering these trade-offs—as social entrepreneurs always have. In fact, she is exploring the newly emerging phenomena of activist CEOs that embrace the role of societal leaders, advancing social change inside and outside their organizations. CEOs of companies like Delta Airlines and others are becoming more comfortable in the social space. The good news is that social and financial objectives do not necessarily clash; in fact, they can be highly compatible. A diverse leadership team, for instance, may devise better strategies than a more homogeneous one, because “having different people with different experiences in life and different points of view...could help the firm have access to needed information to navigate change,” Miller says.

Organizational reality, though, is often more complicated than that. In a 2013 paper in Organization Science, Miller and her co-authors found that gender-diverse boards improved the ability of the firm to enact strategic change under certain conditions and not others. When the board is not experiencing a threat due to low firm performance and women directors have greater power, the relationship between board gender diversity and strategic change is the most positive. Conversely, when the board is threatened by low firm performance and women directors have greater power, the relationship between board gender diversity and strategic change is the most negative.

The study yielded two meaningful takeaways, Miller says. First, diverse perspectives can be beneficial when there is enough time to hear everyone out and integrate their contributions. In times of low performance, the needs are more pressing and time is short. The cognitive conflict induced from diversity during times of stress can immobilize board decision-making rather than aid it. Second, having women on the board made no difference one way or the other when they were not empowered.

Diversity and inclusion, then, could have good or bad effects, or no effect, depending on how it’s done. Miller recommends that leaders ask themselves, “‘How am I taking on this idea of being inclusive?’ It may need to look differently when you’re bringing people into the fold.” Miller will continue to delve into these issues as they overlap with her interests in entrepreneurship. Her ongoing research looks at entrepreneurial mentoring in accelerators by examining gender differences on feedback framing and their impact on ventures.

In her role as director of research of the Business for a Better World Center at �鶹��Ƶ’s School of Business, she hopes to promote more research at the intersection of business in society. Citing the impressive achievements of the center in its short life so far, Miller hopes to add to that track record. “My contribution is developing avenues for researchers to identify social problems or investigate how business can be used to address social problems or play a greater leadership role in society,” she says.

Topics

Costello Research Health & Well-being at Work

Costello Research Managing Change

Management Faculty Research

Determinants of International Buyout Investments

Marianne Klinker — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 19:49:50 +0000

Determinants of International Buyout Investments Marianne Klinker Fri, 12/03/2021 - 14:49

New research by Serdar Aldatmaz, assistant professor of finance, benefits organizations that are seeking to move operations overseas. In an attempt to better understand global capital formation today and in coming years, Aldatmaz, together with Greg W. Brown from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Asli Demirguc-Kunt from the World Bank, researched buyout investments across 61 countries and 19 industries over the period of 1990 – 2017.

Serdar Aldatmaz

“We found evidence that macro-economic conditions, development of stock and credit markets, and the regulatory environment in a country are all important drivers of international buyout capital flows,” says Aldatmaz. The team found evidence that countries receive more buyout investment following reductions in unemployment and expansions in stock market activity as well as following regulatory reforms related to better contract enforcement and investor protection.

Aldatmaz has been interested in studying the implications of private equity for the real economy for many years. He says the changing nature of capital markets in the United States and other major economies in recent years, including a trend toward more global private equity investment, motivated the team to study the factors that determine international private equity investments.

With this research, the team can provide forecasts on which countries may receive more buyout investment in coming years based on their models. “Given what we know about the positive implications of private equity investments on industry operations and growth, our predictions might be useful for business leaders and organizations that are considering expanding operations overseas,” says Aldatmaz.

“Based on our models, we expect countries like China, Argentina, New Zealand, and Austria to receive more buyout investment in coming years, while countries like Poland, Qatar, and Philippines are likely saturated (or even over-allocated) with buyout investment currently.”

Topics

Costello Research Private Funds

Costello Research Sustainable Operations

Finance Faculty Research

When Value Is in the Service, Not the Ownership

Marianne Klinker — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:39:30 +0000

When Value Is in the Service, Not the Ownership Marianne Klinker Tue, 11/16/2021 - 15:39

In This Story

Ioannis Bellos

It’s a cliché, but the car has shaped American history and culture since its invention. Even the American landscape evolved around the rise of the private car—train lines were abandoned as railroad tracks were pulled up in favor of highways; gas stations and motels sprang up in otherwise desolate places; and cities scrambled to design systems for getting millions of cars in and out efficiently. We could ask which came first, the car or the cultural identity related to the freedom cars provide, but, once again, the relationship Americans have with cars is changing. We still want to get from point A to point B with the speed, efficiency, and privacy cars offer, but the urge to own them privately is waning.

Ioannis Bellos

Ioannis Bellos, associate professor of information systems and operations management, began researching service design as a PhD student at Georgia Tech. When talking about his research, he quotes advertising icon Leo McGinneva who famously said, “People don’t want quarter-inch bits, they want quarter-inch holes.” That is, the customer wants what the product can do, not necessarily the product itself. Bellos was drawn to researching businesses that don’t link customer value to product ownership. Car sharing, offered through services like Car2Go, Getaround, and Zip Car, is a perfect example. “In the context of mobility, getting from point A to point B is what matters, not owning the vehicle,” says Bellos.

American car manufacturers are scrambling to reinvent themselves in many ways, from developing electric cars to driverless ones, but Bellos points out an interesting effect of car sharing: The car manufacturers are in on it and are trying to figure out the best way of not selling cars. He notes that many car-sharing companies are actually owned by manufacturers.

“Car makers, especially high-end ones, saw an opportunity for market expansion,” Bellos says. “They can reach out to more customers by providing a way to use the cars without owning them.” Car sharing offers ease of transport with the privacy of a personal car but without the headache of upkeep—giving the customer that quarter-inch hole while bypassing owning the drill altogether.

Topics

Costello Research Business Model Innovation

Costello Research Innovation Strategy

ISOM Faculty Research

Specialization Is Key for Government Contracting Industry Success

Marianne Klinker — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 18:29:14 +0000

Specialization Is Key for Government Contracting Industry Success Marianne Klinker Fri, 11/12/2021 - 13:29

In This Story

Brett Josephson

John G. (Jerry) McGinn

Brett Josephson, assistant professor of marketing, has studied government contracting since he was a PhD student. In recently published research, Josephson—together with Ju-Yeon Lee, assistant professor of marketing at Iowa State University, and Babu John Mariadoss and Jean Lynn Johnson, associate professors of marketing at Washington State University—recommended that companies focus on specialization.

Brett Josephson

Reviewing 16 years of data, Josephson and coauthors researched more than 1,300 publicly traded firms that do business with the government. Whereas diversification is often recommended for companies, this research shows that when it comes to the federal government, the more specialized a company can be, the higher the return in stock prices will be.

“Concentration is the key finding of this paper,” says Josephson. “You can’t serve all agencies. It’s very expensive. You have to concentrate on one or two within the federal government, build that core knowledge. That’s where firms see the largest increase to their stock price.”

Jerry McGinn, executive director of �鶹��Ƶ’s Center for Government Contracting, says, “Brett is doing dynamite research that is directly applicable to the $500 billion government contracting industry. His work is providing great fuel for our center, and I very much look forward to continuing collaboration with Brett and other School of Business faculty.”

Topics