MOR News and Events
Peer Fiss has been appointed Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Review. (01/24/11)
Peter Kim (along with co-authors including former MOR alum Cecily Cooper) has an article in press in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: “Understanding the effects of substantive responses on trust following a transgression” (attached).
Four experiments were conducted to investigate the implications of ‘substantive’ responses for the repair of trust following a violation and the cognitive processes that govern how and when they are effective. These studies examined two forms of substantive responses, penance and regulation, that represent different categories of trust repair attempts. The findings from Studies 1 – 3 suggest that both can be effective to the extent that they elicit the crucial mediating cognition of perceived repentance. Data from Study 2 revealed that trustors saw signals of repentance as more informative when the transgression was due to a lapse of competence than due to a lapse of integrity. Study 4 compared these substantive responses to apologies (a non-substantive response) and revealed that, despite their surface level differences, they each repaired trust through ‘perceived repentance.’ The paper offers an integrative framework for understanding the relationships among a range of trustor responses. (11/10/10)
Nan Jia has just won a 2010 CIBER research grant for her research: “Multinational Corporations’ International Expansion and Commitments to Global Initiatives.” (11/02/10)
Feng Zhu continues his impressive hit streak with a recent acceptance (with Marco Iansiti at HBS) at the Strategic Management Journal: “Entry into Platform-Based Markets.”
Our own Scott Wiltermuth got two terrific hits:
AND
Two studies showed that possessing information about a negotiation counterpart that is irrelevant to the negotiation task can impair negotiators’ effectiveness because such knowledge impedes effective information exchange. In Study 1 negotiators who possessed diagnostic and non-diagnostic forms of information were each less likely to exchange information about their preferences within the negotiation. However, only those negotiators who possessed non-diagnostic information achieved inferior negotiation outcomes as a result. In Study 2 negotiators possessing non-diagnostic information about their counterparts in electronically mediated negotiations were more likely to terminate the search for mutually beneficial outcomes prematurely and declare impasses. They were also less able to use diagnostic forms of information to make mutually beneficial trade-offs. As a result, negotiators in these dyads achieved inferior outcomes. (10/18/10)
At the recent AOM meeting in Montreal, our own Nandini Rajagopalan was presented with the AMJ Outstanding Reviewer award for the second consecutive year. The award is well deserved and attests to her enormous dedication and commitment to our profession. (08/16/10)
From John G. Matsusaka, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs:
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Peer Fiss to the McAlister Associate Professorship in Business Administration.
Peer is currently Associate Professor of Management and Organization. He received his Ph.D. in management and organization and sociology from Northwestern University in 2003, and joined Marshall in 2006 after three years on the faculty at Queen’s University. Peer is a management scholar who specializes in the field of strategy. He has made both methodological and substantive contributions, many revolving around the idea of framing. Peer studies how organizational practices, such as using stock option incentive plans or diversification, “diffuse” – how they are adopted, evolve, and transfer from one organization to another. Peer’s empirical work employs a variety of research methods, ranging from single case studies to econometric analysis using large samples. He is also regarded as a pioneer in the use of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, a set of tools that were developed in sociology but are rapidly spreading in management.
Peer has published eight papers in top journals, eight articles in edited volumes, and has prepared a draft of a book on fuzzy-set analysis for Princeton University Press. He serves on the editorial board of five top journals in management. In 2010, he received the Western Academy of Management’s prestigious Ascendant Scholar Award.
Peer is also an accomplished teacher. At the undergraduate level, he teaches the required capstone course in strategy, using a mix of cases, group projects, experiential exercises, in-class analysis of company web sites, small group discussions, and other formats. He also teaches his department’s required course on organization theory for doctoral students, and has served on several dissertation committees.
Named chairs and professorships are among the highest honors bestowed by the University on our faculty. The McAlister Associate Professorship is Marshall’s second early-career named professorship, and is intended to recognize scholarship with significant accomplishment and outstanding promise. Please join me in congratulating Peer on achieving this honor.
John G. Matsusaka
Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs
August 6, 2010
Kyle Mayer and Anthea Zhang (2001 MOR doctoral alum) will be Associate Editors of the Academy of Management Journal, the preeminent journal in the management field. Associate Editors of AMJ are a very select group of prominent scholars and play an important role in shaping research and knowledge in our field. To have two Associate Editors from the MOR family on AMJ at the same time is truly amazing and attests to the high esteem that our faculty and former doctoral students hold in Academe. (06/09/10)
Anthea Zhang (2001 MOR doctoral alum). She has won the 2010 Strategic Management Society Emerging Scholar award. It is an annual award given to the most productive/influential strategy scholar under the age of 40. The scholar’s entire body of work is assessed for this award and it clearly establishes Anthea at the very top of the strategy scholarly elite. It is also a wonderful testament to the quality of our PhD program.
Congratulations to Anthea and her mentor, Nandini Rajagopalan. (06/03/10)
Nandini Rajagopalan just got a major hit (with Jenny Tian and John Haleblian, both MOR doctoral alums) at the Strategic Management Journal: “The Effects of Board Human and Social Capital on Investor Reactions to New CEO Selection.”
This study extends work on independent directors to examine the influence of their human capital and social capital on investor reactions to the board’s CEO selection decision. We predict that human capital, as represented by the board’s CEO experience and industry experience, and social capital, as represented by directors’ co-working experience on the board and external directorship ties to other corporate boards, will influence the stock market reactions to new CEO appointments. In a sample of 208 new CEO appointment events in U.S. manufacturing firms between 1999 and 2003, we found that the stock market reacted favorably to the appointments made by boards with higher levels of human and social capital. We also found that the effect of internal social capital was stronger when the new CEO was an insider rather than an outsider. The implications of the results for director selection and CEO succession are discussed. (05/25/10)
Tom Olson was just elected to the Executive Committee of the Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management. (05/20/10)
Nan Jia’s dissertation, “Political Strategies in Emerging Economies”, has been selected as one of the finalists for the Dissertation Competition of the International Society for New Institutional Economics (ISNIE), a major academy for researchers studying institutions and economics. The winner of the award will be announced at the Society’s annual conference in June. (05/18/10)
Our own Kyle Mayer has just been elected to the Executive Committee of the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management. (05/17/10)
Peter Kim has been awarded a grant from the Provost’s Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Initiative. It will support his research on “Leaps of Faith: The Nature of Opportunistic Generalization Across Domains.” (05/17/10)
From John Matsusaka, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs:
I am pleased to announce the promotion of Peer Fiss to Associate Professor of Management and Organization, with tenure. Peer received his Ph.D. in management and organization and sociology from Northwestern University in 2003. He joined Marshall in 2006 after three years on the faculty at Queen’s University.
Peer is a management scholar who specializes in the field of strategy. He had made both methodological and substantive contributions, many revolving around the idea of framing. Peer studies how organizational practices, such as using stock option incentive plans or diversifying operations across different countries, “diffuse” – how they are adopted, evolve, and transfer from one organization to another. While scholars traditionally assume that diffusion is mainly driven by a practice’s functional consequences, for example, how a stock option plan influences the behavior of executives, Peer’s research shows that diffusion also depends on the language used to justify a practice. Peer’s empirical work employs a variety of research methods, ranging from single case studies to rigorous econometric analysis using large samples. He is also regarded as the pioneer in the use of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, a set of tools that were developed in sociology but are rapidly spreading in management.
Peer has eight papers published or forthcoming in top journals as well as eight other published articles. He sits on the editorial board of five(!) top journals in management. In 2010, he received the Western Academy of Management’s prestigious Ascendant Scholar Award.
Peer is also an accomplished teacher. At the undergraduate level, he teaches the required capstone course in strategy, using a mix of cases, group projects, experiential exercises, in-class analysis of company web sites, small group discussions, and other formats. He also teaches MOR’s required course on organization theory for doctoral students, and has served on several dissertation committees.
Please join me in congratulating Peer on his well-deserved promotion.
John Matsusaka
Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs
May 13, 2010
Sandy Green was nominated for the 2010 USC Parents Association Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Award for the second year in row! All nominees are recognized on the USC Parents Association Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Honor Roll, and the winners will be announced by President Nikias during Trojan Parents’ Weekend next fall. (05/05/10)
Peer Fiss just got another big hit in the Academy of Management Journal: “Building Better Causal Theories: A Fuzzy-Set Approach to Typologies in Organization Research.”
Abstract
Typologies are an important way of organizing the complex cause-effect relationships that are key building blocks of the strategy and organization literatures. Here, I develop a novel theoretical perspective of causal core and periphery based on how elements of a configuration are connected to outcomes. Using data on high-technology firms, I empirically investigate configurations based on the Miles & Snow typology using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). My findings show how the theoretical perspective developed here allows for a detailed analysis of causal core, periphery, and asymmetry, shifting the focus to mid-range theories of causal processes in typologies. (04/14/10)
Another deserving award for Jay Chok. The Marshall School of Business Ph.D. Program just selected him for the 2010 Entrepreneurship Research Award. Jay’s scholastic performance, excellence in research, letters of recommendation, and academic achievements all contributed to his selection. (04/05/10)
At the forthcoming USC Academic Honors Convocation, our own Jay Chok will receive the Phi Kappa Phi All-University Honor Society’s Student Recognition Award for outstanding academic work.
At the recent Western Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Peer Fiss was honored as an Ascendant Scholar, an award given to rising stars in the management field. Peer joins a long list of WAM Ascendant Scholars including Joanne Martin, Jay Barney, Connie Gersick, Kathy Eisenhardt, Tom Lee, Michael Morris, Jone Pearce, Anne Tsui, Janet Fulk, and our own Arvind Bhambri, Sue Mohrman, Peter Kim, and Nandini Rajagopalan. (04/05/10)
Nandini Rajagopalan is a recipient of the 2009-20010 USC Mellon Mentoring Award for her wise guidance and generous time mentoring faculty colleagues. (04/02/10)
Feng Zhu is on a roll! His paper (with Ramon Casadesus-Masanell at HBS) just got accepted at Management Science: “Strategies to Fight Ad-Sponsored Rivals.” (03/25/10)
Abstract
We analyze the optimal strategy of a high-quality incumbent that faces a low-quality ad-sponsored competitor. In addition to competing through adjustments of tactical variables such as price or the number of ads a product carries, we allow the incumbent to consider changes in its business model. We consider four alternative business models, a subscription-based model, an ad-sponsored model, a mixed model in which the incumbent offers a product that is both subscription-based and ad-sponsored, and a dual model in which the incumbent offers two products, one based on the ad-sponsored model and the other based on the mixed business model. We show that the optimal response to an ad-sponsored rival often entails business model reconfigurations. We also find that when there is an ad-sponsored entrant, the incumbent is more likely to prefer to compete through the subscription-based or the ad-sponsored model, rather than the mixed or the dual model, because of cannibalization and endogenous vertical differentiation concerns. We discuss how our study helps improve our understanding of notions of strategy, business model, and tactics in the field of strategy.
The working paper version is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1476530.
Feng’s working paper version has already had several media mentions:
Billboard of Nielsen, ”Paper Outlines Business Model Strategies For Media Companies.” (October 28, 2009).
Business Insider, ”How To Compete With Free Products. ” (September 29, 2009).
Plus he has been interviewed on the BNET:
BNET of CBS, ”Can the Wall Street Journal Compete in a World of Free News? ” (November 24, 2009).
BNET of CBS, “Can Your Business Win Against Ad-Sponsored Competitors.” (November 17, 2009).
The Greif Center has awarded Nan Jia a grant to support her entrepreneurship research during the upcoming academic year. The Center received multiple, high-quality proposals this year and the selection of Yong’s proposal for this award is a testament to the quality and potential of her work. (03/25/10)
The Greif Center has awarded Yongwook Paik a grant to support his entrepreneurship research during the upcoming academic year. The Center received multiple, high-quality proposals this year and the selection of Yong’s proposal for this award is a testament to the quality and potential of his work. (03/25/10)
Our own Morgan McCall just had a paper published in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 3 (2010), 3–19: “Recasting Leadership Development.” It was the focal article in this edition of the journal.
Abstract
To the extent that leadership is learned, it is learned through experience. This article begins with seven conclusions about the role of experience in leadership development, ponders the reasons that what is known is so rarely applied, suggests some ways to put experience at the center of leadership development efforts, and concludes with a series of recommendations for practice and for future research. (03/01/10)
Jennifer Overbeck (with Margaret A Neale and Cassandra L Govan) just got a paper accepted by Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: “I feel, therefore you act: Intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of emotion on negotiation as a function of social power.” (02/26/10)
Abstract
We examine how emotion (anger and happiness) affects value claiming and creation in a
dyadic negotiation between parties with unequal power. Using a new statistical technique that
analyzes individual data while controlling for dyad-level dependence, we demonstrate that anger is
helpful for powerful negotiators. They feel more focused and assertive, and claim more value; the
effects are intrapersonal, insofar as the powerful negotiator responds to his or her own emotional state
and not to the emotional state of the counterpart. On the other hand, effects of emotion are generally
not intrapersonal for low-power negotiators: these negotiators do not respond to their own emotions
but can be affected by those of a powerful counterpart. They lose focus and yield value. Somewhat
surprisingly, the presence of anger in the dyad appears to foster greater value creation, particularly
when the powerful party is angry. Implications for the negotiation and power literatures are discussed.
Feng Zhu (with Michael Zhang at HKUST) just got a paper accepted by the American Economic Review: "Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia" (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1021450). (02/18/10)
Abstract
The literature on the private provision of public goods suggests an inverse relationship between incentives to contribute and group size. We find, however, that after an exogenous reduction of group size at Chinese Wikipedia, the unaffected contributors decrease their contributions by 41.4% on average. We attribute the cause to social effects: Contributors receive social benefits that increase with both the amount of their contributions and group size, and the shrinking group size weakens these social benefits. Consistent with our explanation, we find that the more contributors value social benefits, the more they reduce their contributions after the block.
Feng and Michael also have a paper forthcoming next month in the Journal of Marketing: "Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales: The Moderating Role of Product and Consumer Characteristics" (http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~fzhu/ZhuZhang2010.pdf).
Abstract
This article examines how product and consumer characteristics moderate the influence of online consumer reviews on product sales using data from the video game industry. The findings indicate that online reviews are more influential for less popular games and games whose players have greater Internet experience. The article shows differential impact of consumer reviews across products in the same product category and suggests that firms’ online marketing strategies should be contingent on product and consumer characteristics. The authors discuss the implications of these results in light of the increased share of niche products in recent years.
Sandy Green (with G. Thomas Goodnight from Annenberg) got a hit in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, the top rhetoric journal in the world: “Rhetoric, Risk, and Markets: the Dot-Com Bubble.” (02/18/10)
Abstract
Post-conventional economic theories are assembled to inquire into the contingent, mimetic symbolic and material spirals unfolding the dot-com bubble, 1992-2002. The new technologies bubble is reconstructed as a rhetorical movement across the practices of the hybrid market-industry risk culture of communications. Dot-com bubble legacies task economic criticism with developing critical capacity sufficient to address the attention driven economies of worth.