Research NewsFall 2019 | NO.2

AWARDS & GRANTS A growing list of honours received by our scholars

FACULTY NEWS Stay connected with stories about our research, faculty, and alumni

JOURNAL ARTICLES Recognizing the achievements of those recently published

CONFERENCES & WORKSHOPS Information about our upcoming events and learning opportunities

MEET NEW SMITH RESEARCHERSThree recent faculty additions tell us about themselves and their work

LING YANG Assistant Professor of Accounting

Education: PhD in Accounting, University of Chicago Booth School of Business; MBA and MS in Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology; BEcon in Finance and BS in Bio engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Path to Smith: I grew up in Shenzhen, China and joined Smith in July. Before that, I was earning my PhD at Chicago Booth, and prior to that I advised institutional investors on fund manager selections.

My research: I study the regulation of financial institutions. I’m interested in this area because, first of all, it’s important. The 2008 financial crisis clearly showed that we could not rely on these institutions to discipline themselves. There’s a place for regulation in today’s financial market. Second, we do not have “clinical trials” for financial regulation. So the effects of many

rules underwritten after the crisis are unclear, which, as a researcher, excites me.

What I’m working on: I have two working projects. The first is my dissertation. It shows that banks’ activities as financial intermediaries in the real economy can affect the quality of their financial and regulatory reporting. The second project studies the risk-disciplinary effects of disclosing stress-test results as mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act.

Something else about me: I’m into outdoor activities.

LAURA REES Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour

Education: PhD in Business Administration (Management and Organizations department), Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan; AB in Economics, Harvard University. →

(above) Ling Yang

(right) Laura Rees

“The 2008 financial crisis clearly showed that we could not rely on these [financial] institutions to discipline themselves.”LING YANG

2 | Research News | Fall 2019

Path to Smith: I grew up in a small town in Kentucky. I joined the Smith faculty in July. Before that, I was assistant professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

My research: My research focuses on three major areas, all of which investigate emotions and other influences that often arise sponta-neously and without much conscious thought, but that profoundly shape individuals’ perfor-mance and well-being at work. These areas are: (1) the antecedents and consequences of complex emotion-influenced experiences — including ambivalence and authenticity — for both individuals and groups; (2) voice habit, a new theoretical construct developed by my colleagues and I that proposes an automatic perspective of voice behaviour; (3) ethical and other implications of both complex and simple emotional experiences. My research is motivated primarily by the following question: How do people make sense of and act upon complex, contradictory, and often ambiguous emotional signals in their daily work? My interest in this research area was sparked during my time as a man-agement consultant with the Boston Consult-ing Group. Many times I saw clients experi-encing complex emotional and instinctual reactions to major changes such as mergers, downsizing, large-scale strategic initiatives, and other significant disruptions. Clients often had to manage these emotions on their own, and not always with good results.

What I’m working on: I recently published a paper on individuals’ responses to others expressing anger towards them, and another paper on reactions to anger that is now in late-stage review. The first paper examines how anger from customers is received in service failure contexts. The second paper investigates how expressing anger in nego-tiations can lead to higher joint gains to the extent it prompts the other person to seek out more information about what can be done to resolve the situation.

Something else about me: I am a bourbon enthusiast and am happy to debate what the best bourbon is… although there is only one correct answer: Woodford Double Oaked!

RAGAVENDRAN (RAGA) GOPALAKRISHNAN Assistant Professor of Operations Management

Education: MS and PhD, both in Computer Science, from California Institute of Tech-nology, and B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

Path to Smith: I’m from Chennai (formerly Madras) in India and I joined the Smith faculty in July. Before that I was a Postdoc-toral Associate at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University.

My research interests are primarily in two areas: service operations management, where my focus is on studying service systems with strategic entities; and pricing and revenue management, where my focus is on designing sustainable market models for modern urban mobility. In service operations management, traditional model-ing tools only focus on the operational

aspects of performance in service systems. However, both customers and servers in many real-world systems are humans that respond to the system policies. I am excited to be working on new models that incorpo-rate such behaviour, and revisiting optimal system design after factoring in these effects. Next, urban mobility has been moving into a new era since the advent of on-demand and app-based services such as ride sharing. My research is targeted at city and local governments that are still grap-pling with the socio-economic and environ-mental consequences of these services, and helping them devise policies and regulations that effectively manage such consequences.

What I’m working on: At the moment, on extending a traditional queueing model (with exogenous arrival of customers and rate of service) to one in which both cus-tomers and servers make strategic decisions. Customers decide whether to join a queue or not based on the expected waiting time, while servers decide the rate of service based on the queue length. The system performance (e.g., number of customers served per hour) at equilibrium depends not only on the customers’ patience levels and the servers’ effort/labour costs (which a manager cannot control), but also on the operational policies, service fee charged to the customer, and the compensation paid to the servers (which a manager does control). What are the optimal operational (e.g., queue management, routing, staffing) and economic (e.g., fees, wages) policies for maximum throughput vs. maximum profit? This is joint work with Dr. Amy Ward at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Something else about me: As a gay man, I have experienced first-hand many unique hurdles facing LGBTQ students and re-searchers, both in their academic/work environment and in society. I am passionate about getting involved in any way that I can to address these hurdles and contribute to a strong support and mentoring framework for members of the LGBTQ community and their allies.

“[I’m working] on extending a traditional queueing model…to one in which both customers and servers make strategic decisions.”RAGAVENDRAN GOPALAKRISHNAN(above)

Fall 2019 | Research News | 3

Dr. Christie Hayne, Assistant Professor of Accountancy at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois and a Smith School of Business alumna, returned to Goodes Hall in June as part of the Principal’s Visiting Scholar Program.

Dr. Hayne, who earned her PhD in manage-ment from Smith in 2015, was on campus to begin the analysis phase of research she has undertaken with Dr. Pamela Murphy and doctoral candidate Pujawati (Estha) Gondowijoyo.

Interviewing inmatesTogether, they are investigating the nature of group fraud in organizations and how such fraud is first initiated. The team has travelled to five prisons across the United States in order to interview inmates convicted of group fraud. Of particular interest to the researchers is understanding what factors drive individuals to either accept or decline invitations to participate in group fraud.

Hayne says a key challenge of the study was finding inmates willing to talk about their experiences, just as it has been surprising to find that many fraudsters do not fit a single description – including a woman who ended

up in jail for falsifying lab reports to help people obtain the Medicare coverage they needed but for which they were not eligible

Smith researchHayne, who has an MBA at Memorial University, was delighted to be back at Smith, praising the school for its depth of expertise in different topics and methods, and the fact that she was able to pursue her own interests while studying.

“While it’s reasonably common to conduct archival or experimental research in accounting, qualitative research in account-ing is very rare,” says Hayne. “There are a limited number of schools in Canada [other than Smith] that offer the relevant training for interview-based research. For me, the fact that I was able to gain methods training, experience and guidance from faculty who have conducted qualitative research makes Smith a very special place.”

Smith faculty, for their part, were pleased to have Hayne back on campus. “Christie is a wonderful scholar and a great colleague,” says Dr. Murphy. “It was fun to have her here, not just for our research but also to enjoy her company.”

DR. CHRISTIE HAYNESmith alumna returns to campus as Principal’s Visiting Scholar

“There are a limited number of schools in Canada that offer the relevant training for interview-based research. For me, the fact that I was able to gain methods training, experience and guidance from faculty who have conducted qualitative research makes Smith a very special place.”DR. CHRISTIE HAYNE

4 | Research News | Fall 2019

PI: HENRY SCHNEIDER WITH KIRABO JACKSON

GRANT DETAILS: SSHRC Institutional Grant, 2 years

TOPIC: Promoting Best Practices. My co-author, Kirabo Jackson at Northwestern University, and I have been investigating the question of how to promote best practices through field experiments that we conduct-ed at a midsized auto repair chain. The best practice that we examine is the use of check-lists. Checklists have received considerable attention in the medical literature recently as a way to generate consistency in procedures and reduce mistakes (Gawande 2009). Our first field experiment involved mechanics at three randomly chosen repair shops being instructed to use car inspection checklists for one month and measuring performance changes compared to ten control shops in the same chain.

The checklists were designed to guide mechanics through a high-quality car in-spection. While mechanics were given only weak incentives to use checklists in this first experiment, mechanic used checklists on

30 percent of cars, revenue increased by 20 percent, and customers received higher quality service (the service increase occur-red among low-price repairs that benefit customers but are less profitable per hour for mechanics). In other words, mechanic performance improved dramatically from the perspectives of the firm and customers. The downside was that mechanics disliked the extra work involved. After this striking outcome, we ran a second larger experi-ment in which mechanics at six shops were randomly chosen to use checklists for six weeks. This time mechanics were paid significantly for high checklist compliance. Compared to the first experiment, checklist use was much higher, but service quality was lower.

From these two experiments, we learned that weaker incentives to use checklists generated superior outcomes versus strong er incentives. A deeper dive into the data show ed that stronger incentives increased mechanic work time on inspections but crowded out work time on actual repairs. These results illustrate how moderate incentives for best practices may have large benefits while stronger incen-tives can be counterproductive. We believe this research has valuable insights for work-place settings: (1) in which managers are implementing best practices; (2) with check-lists such as auto repair shops and other retail environments, and hospitals and other mission-critical environments; and (3) in

which workers are adopting new technology.

APPROACH: This grant’s funding will primarily go toward dissemination and feedback on ideas from experts, through conference and seminar travel. The research itself involves field experiments in the form of randomized trials at a mid-sized auto repair chain.

PI: JUE WANG

GRANT DETAILS: NSERC Discovery Grant (Individual), 5 years

TOPIC: Diagnosis, Learning and Optimization of Smart and Connected Products. Today’s smart products transmit real-time sensor data to control centres that can monitor conditions, perform remote diagnosis, and adjust configurations in real time to improve performance. Such products have revolution-ized many industries, transforming traditional manufacturers into service providers. However, sensor data imperfections make operating smart products complex. In order to learn more about a product’s true condi-tion, the control centre may choose to monitor a product for a longer period of time, invariably introducing delay. Faced with tension between learning and interven-tion, the centre must decide when to stop monitoring and what action to take in a timely and accurate fashion. This trade-off between learning and doing lies at the heart of the operations of smart and connected products. This research seeks to develop the optimal monitoring and diagnostic algorithm for smart products and gain insight into maximizing performance.

APPROACH: This research program lies in the intersection of operations research, statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Awards & Grants

Henry Schneider

Fall 2019 | Research News | 5

PI: ANTHONY GOERZEN

GRANT DETAILS: SSHRC Institutional Grant, 1 year

TOPIC: Mapping the effects of an interven-tion to improve well-being of artisanal miners within the global value chain for gold. Many multinational corporations (MNC) are keen to improve governance of their global value chains (GVC) by engaging in more responsible sourcing practices but there is very little guidance on how this can be achieved given that global value chains (GVC) often stretch across several international boundaries and involve dozens, even hundreds, of firms. As a result, the ways and means by which MNCs can improve social justice and environmental stewardship within their GVCs has become a topic of urgent interest to managers, scholars, and policy-makers.

To date, among the most important types of initiatives that MNCs have begun to rely upon to upgrade the shortcomings within their GVCs is the establishment of various “third-party interventions.” Yet, there exists little verification on whether these initiatives influence outcomes in the intended way by actually improving social and environmental performance within the GVC. In fact, recent evidence suggests that sometimes these well-intentioned initiatives actually exacerbate the problems they were intended to solve. A recently released report by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Human Rights (2018) stated that companies’ GVC practices are inadequate in that they allow various negative outcomes to persist (e.g., human rights violations such as child labour) and that since “best prac-tices are not disseminated, the result is an uneven playing field for businesses”.

Our research proposal is the first stage of an ambitious project that is intended to improve managerial practices, environmental steward-ship, and social justice.

APPROACH: To organize and begin analyzing data that is beginning to stream in from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

PI: ARCAN NALCA

GRANT DETAILS: SSHRC Institutional Grant, 2 years

TOPIC: Platform-Seller Contracts in a Demand Learning Environment. The goal of the pro-posed research project is to iden tify the economic and social consequences of con-tractual arrangements in platform-to-seller relationships in the presence of demand learning. We plan to achieve this goal by accomplishing four objectives:

1. Study a variety of information sharing arrangements by the platform such as, no information sharing, partial information sharing and full disclosure of the sales data in order to identify the equilibrium pricing and inventory decisions of competing sellers participating in an online marketplace under each arrangement.

2. Analyze and quantify the profitability of the platform and the sellers under each information sharing arrangement and derive the prevailing equilibrium information sharing strategy.

3. Identify the conditions under which the platform provides incentives to the sellers to improve their demand learning efforts.

4. Classify market parameters that will lead to an increase in consumer and social welfare through faster demand learning by

sellers, lower prices, and higher product availability using comparative statistics.

APPROACH: We will utilize analytical meth-ods from microeconomics and operations research to identify the nature of optimal and equilibrium decisions in closed form analytical expressions.

In the intermediate steps of our analysis, we will use heavy computer simulation analysis and numerical optimization techniques to create evidence of certain phenomena and thereby provide a roadmap for our theoreti-cal analysis.

PI: JACOB BROWER WITH PRAVIN NATH

GRANT DETAILS: SSHRC Institutional Grant, 1 year

TOPIC: Exploring the Relationship between Top Management Team Structure, Corpo-rate Culture, and Corporate Social Respon-sibility. The goal of this series of studies is to explore the chain of events that ulti-mately impact firm-level CSR, starting from understanding how the composition and background of TMT members influence the strategic orientations of firms over time and how, in turn, these manifest strategic orien-tations affect both the propensity toward CSR behavior by firms as well as the ultimate types of CSR that firms adopt and promote.

APPROACH: Data will be collected, format-ted, and archived from annual reports, 10K reports and statements to shareholders for each of the firms contained in the SIRI and MSCI-ESG databases for the years 2009-2019, and data on top executives will be gathered from these reports as well as ex-ternal sources such as Google, LinkedIn, and other sources. From these, we will →

Jacob Brower

6 | Research News | Fall 2019

conduct the required text and content analysis to generate the data to be used for subsequent regression modeling of the rela-tionships discussed above.

PI: ANTHONY GOERZEN

GRANT DETAILS: SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant, 1 year

TOPIC: Improving social justice and eco-nomic stewardship for artisanal miners within the cobalt global value chain in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire. In developed economies, great efforts are being made to improve working conditions and lessen environmental impact. Yet, these elements are often visibly lacking when the GVC extends into developing countries. In response, many Multinational corporations (MNC) have looked to various interventions (e.g., “Fairtrade” certification) as a solution to improve local standards of operation. However, research has shown that the vulnerable populations that are the intended target of these interventions sometimes are made worse off by these interventions. Therefore, our empirical question is how can third party interven-tions intended to improve social justice and environmental stewardship along the GVC achieve the intended purpose for the tar get population? We propose a partnership between Queen’s University and IMPACT, a Canadian non-governmental organization (NGO), to address this gap in our understand-ing by developing a research project to analyze the conditions under which social and envir-onmental performance of artisanal cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Cote D’Ivoire can be improved.

APPROACH: To organize and develop a

research partnership between Queen’s (Smith) and Impact, a Canada-based NGO.

PI: MIKHAIL NEDNIAK

GRANT DETAILS: NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award, Summer 2019

TOPIC: Predictive Modelling with Censored Data for Revenue Management. Revenue Management (RM) practice seeks to enhance a firm’s profitability by optimally managing its limited inventory. Booking control approach to RM generally consists of restricting the available number of low-profit inventory units, in order to incentivize customers to book high-profit units. In order to accurately decide how to limit these low-profit units, accurate historical demand data is needed. Historical demand data is quite easy to obtain when units are plentiful, as one can simply observe how many people submitted booking requests for a certain unit type. However, when certain unit types are full, customers cannot make booking requests as there are no units left. This causes true value of demand to be hidden in a phenomenon known as ‘censoring’. Uncensoring ap-proaches and models, under investigation in this project, will predict the hidden demand values, and thereby ‘uncensor’ it. After demand has been uncensored, auxiliary spend needs to be predicted using another predictive model. Auxiliary spend consists of optional purchases that a customer can make on top of the unit fee. This is required to determine which customers tend to be more profitable. Booking cancellations also need to be predicted, using yet another model. This is required in order to predict future capacity, which is another item that needs to be

considered when deciding how to limit units. Finally, when these three com ponents are complete, they will be integrated into a system that allows business managers to make much better decisions about how to limit low-profit units. In short, the purpose of this project is to provide a system of predictive models to allow managers to make accurate, data-driven decisions about which units to limit, and how many to limit.

APPROACH: The student will develop statis-tical models by extending approaches from the existing literature (under supervision) to the application setting. This will include three levels of modelling for, respectively, customer choice, cancelations, and auxiliary spending in the presence of data censoring

PI: RICARD GIL

GRANT DETAILS: SSHRC INSIGHT DEVELOPMENT GRANT, 2 Years

TOPIC: Efficiency in Charitable Organiza-tions and NGOs: Skill-transferability and Economies of Scale. The goal of this re-search project is to study the efficiency of NGOs and nonprofit organizations (herein also referred to as NGOs) to find out wheth-er NGOs can be reorganized to deliver their services more efficiently. This study repre-sents the first step in a larger agenda that aims to understand the organizational tradeoffs that NGOs face when delivering services. Like for-profit firms, NGOs may decide to collaborate with other organiza-tions (even for-profit firms) to exploit a competitive advantage on local expertise or delivery of specific services. When consider-ing the consequences of such decisions, NGOs may consider procuring the service themselves—the perennial “make or buy”

Fall 2019 | Research News | 7

managerial decision. To understand such decisions, this project considers how NGOs become more inefficient as they grow. Moreover, the source of inefficiency may also grow as they take on larger or more projects. Understanding the source of inefficiency may be a key ingredient in designing a policy that distributes public money to NGOs given that taxpayers expect efficiency and efficacy from publicly funded charitable projects. The same applies to philanthropic missions and foundations that engage in charitable activity.

APPROACH: Qualitative and quantitative analysis, including interviews and literature review.

Tracy Jenkin Anton Ovchinnikov

PI: TRACY JENKIN WITH ANTON OVCHINNIKOV

GRANT DETAILS: SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2 years

TOPIC: Understanding Human-AI Collabora-tions. A rising economic and social concern is how AI will impact the tasks of highly skilled workers, in particular, cognitive tasks that require significant knowledge and information processing capabilities to complete. The implications for industries and jobs focused on “knowledge work” are far reaching. For example, the decisions made by medical doctors, lawyers, and managers could soon be automated by AI.

Rather than fully automating these tasks and displacing cognitive workers, our vision is that humans will work collaboratively with AI tools to leverage their respective strengths and minimize weaknesses. How-ever, there is a limited understanding of how

this collaborative relationship between AI and humans will work. How will humans interact with AI? Or make sense of AI tool output to complete cognitive tasks effec-tively? Studies have shown that humans may dismiss the recommendations of an AI, especially if those recommendations do not align with their beliefs or are surprising. Thus, designing human-AI collaboration with attention to the cognitive processes in-volved is critically important as we integrate AI into our work processes and daily lives. Our goals are to address these questions and develop insights into how best to design the collaborative human-AI working rela-tionship.

APPROACH: An initial literature review, followed by a three-phase mixed-methods design that will include an exploratory qualitative study, a pilot test, and a field test.

Kelley Packalen Kate Rowbotham

PI: KELLEY PACKALEN WITH KATE ROWBOTHAM

GRANT DETAILS: SSHRC Institutional Grant, 2 years

TOPIC: Navigating the grey areas: Under-standing when students consider academic violations to be permissible. Prior research on cheating has identified what students do (i.e. types of violations) and how they classify (not cheating, trivial, serious) various academic violations; the research has not focused on when (i.e. under which scenarios) they engage in violations, particularly those violations, such as working collaboratively on individual assignments or sharing test information between sections, which they deem to be trivial and which occur most

frequently. As these trivial violations are difficult to catch and sanction, understand-ing factors that correlate both with more frequent academic violations as well as with scenarios under which students decide it is permissible to engage in violations (e.g. the weight of the assignment to the final grade) are germane; only once we better under-stand these correlations will we be able to introduce effective program policies and classroom pedagogy to reduce the tendency of students to engage in such violations in the first place. Moreover, prior research has established that major ethical violations tend to occur gradually with small, common viola-tions paving the way for major transgressions — the so-called slippery slope effect. Thus, being able to identify and change behaviours related to trivial violations has important implications for reducing the likelihood that students will, over time, engage in more significant forms of academic violations.

APPROACH: Our goal is to have approximately 850 Queen’s undergraduate students outside of the School of Business complete a survey on the culture around academic integrity at Queen’s University. This group will comple-ment the approximately 950 students in the business school who already completed the survey. The survey is designed to answer questions on students’ attachment to the university and department, their priorities, social support, and attitudes toward academic integrity. A key focus of our study — and one that to our knowledge is new to this area of research — is asking students to specify when it is okay to violate academic integrity (e.g. the assignment is worth a small percent of the final grade). In doing so we expect to be able to develop a nuanced understanding of how students navigate the grey areas asso-ciated with many types of academic integri-ty (e.g. unauthorized collaboration).

8 | Research News | Fall 2019

JULIAN BARLINGWins award for Supervision Excellence

Julian Barling has won the 2019 PhD-MSc Program Research Supervision Award from Smith School of Business. The award recog-nizes Smith faculty who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to educating graduate students. Nominations for the award are made by graduate students.

“It’s wonderful to know that everything you put in is appreciated,” says Dr. Barling, “and it’s kind of humbling. There is a special joy in hopefully helping people develop and grow and become what they want to be — and that’s the joy of supervision.”

Doctoral candidate Anika Cloutier, who organized Dr. Barling’s nomination, praised her supervisor’s support. “Julian is pretty much the definition of a transformational leader,” she says. “He is someone who studies lead-ership, and he completely embodies what it means to be a good leader. My reason for nominating him was that he goes above and beyond the expectations of a supervisor in every capacity.”

Student successMs. Cloutier gathered support for the nomination from a number of Dr. Barling’s current and former students, many of whom praised his dedication to regarding his stu-dents as research partners and helping them build their research networks, as well as his commitment to their academic and personal well-being.

“His encouragement early in my university education was certainly one of the strongest influences in my decision to choose an aca-demic career and he has been a role model

in how to nurture and work with graduate students in conducting research,” wrote former student Nick Turner, now a professor at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, in his letter of support.

For his part, Dr. Barling says he delights in seeing his students come into their own as researchers. “When they first come into the program, hopefully you know more than them,” he says, “but if you are successful, they will eventually know more than you about whatever they were working on. You just watch. And that’s what keeps me at it.”

“It’s wonderful to know that everything you put in is appreciated, and it’s kind of humbling. There is a special joy in hopefully helping people develop and grow and become what they want to be.”

JULIAN BARLING

Dr. Barling (below) will receive his award at a reception this fall.

Fall 2019 | Research News | 9

We recently sat down for a chat with Smith associate professors Mikhail Nediak and Ceren Kolsarici. They are working on two collaborative projects with faculty and graduate students in the Analytics and Marketing area groups. The first project, called ‘Marketing Campaign Management and Optimization’ explores how to infer what customers will buy based on their credit history. When financial institutions share information such as customer’s credit history, they can anticipate customer needs and offer products tailored to customers’ needs such as unsecured lines of credit.

Nediak and Kolsarici are also working with Jue Wang, assistant professor of manage-ment analytics, on this project, which was part of Wang’s PhD thesis that they are preparing for a journal article.

The second project Nediak and Kolsarici are working on is called, ‘The Impact of Discrimi-natory Pricing Based on Customer Risk: An Empirical Investigation using Indirect Lending through Retail Networks.’ This is part of PhD student Christopher Amaral’s draft thesis that the team has presented at several confer-ences and plans on submitting to a journal.

Starting with conversationsThe project lies at the intersection of finance, analytics and marketing, investigating how

financial institutions set their customer lending rates and also negotiate dealer incentives when they set up shop and work from companies that sell large consumer items such as car dealerships. The main research questions they are trying to address are:

1) How do financial institutions leverage customer lending and dealer incentives to position themselves well in the market?

2) How do financial institutions compete for customers and dealership placements?

Nediak and Kolsarici say that these colla-borations started with simple conversa-tions they had about the potential project topics. They then realized that they had complementary skills that could benefit the projects. Since then, they have had regular meetings to keep the collaborations alive.

The projects are funded by an NSERC Collaborative Research Development grant and they supplement this funding with grants from the Ontario Centres of Excellence Talent Edge Internship program. Nediak and Kolsarici’s advice to colleagues who are considering collaborations is to grab collaboration opportunities with other faculty and industry partners when they are available, before they are passed on to other interested parties.

Nediak and Kolsarici say that these colla borations started with simple conversations they had about the potential project topics. They then realized that they had complementary skills that could benefit the projects. Since then, they have had regular meetings to keep the collaborations alive.

Here’s to Researcher CollaborationTwo Smith faculty on their work together in management analytics, operations management and marketing

(above) Ceren Kolsarici

(right) Mikhail Nediak

10 | Research News | Fall 2019

FACULTY, STUDENTS SAY THANKS TO BILL COOPERSpecial Research Symposium Held in Retiring Professor’s Honour

Well-read and knowledgeable, a “star” researcher, a mentor, and an asset to Smith. That’s how Professor Bill Cooper’s colleagues and former students described him on the occasion of his retirement from Smith School of Business after 43 years.

On May 23, academics travelled to Kingston from across Canada, the U.S. and beyond to attend a special research symposium at Goodes Hall held in Cooper’s honour, where they shared research and told stories.

Cooper joined the faculty at Smith in 1976, specializing in organizational theory.

Probing questions“I remember that before I met Bill, his reputation proceeded him,” recalled Gail Whiteman, PhD’00, now the Rubin Chair in Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University Management School in England, sharing memories of having Cooper as her doctoral thesis supervisor. “He was seen as a scary lecturer. He asked probing ques-tions. It was a right-of-passage to survive one of Bill’s lectures — you could not be unprepared.”

Peter Gray, PhD’02, now a professor of commerce at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, praised Cooper’s ability to draw ideas out of his students. “He really made you dig to the depths of what you felt about something,” he told the symposium audience.

Brent Gallupe, professor emeritus and former associate dean-faculty at Smith, celebrated

Cooper as a research collaborator, the two having generated a body of work on electronic brainstorming over the period of a decade. “He taught me to always be open to good research ideas,” he said. “That is one of Bill Cooper’s strengths. He sees the world. He sees things other people don’t see.”

People to push youFor his part, Cooper said he appreciated the challenge of working with graduate students. “If there aren’t people to push you, it’s easy to wither and keep repeating the same thing over and over. All of the grad students I have

worked with have pushed me to learn things that I didn’t know.”

Julian Barling, who organized the research symposium, has praised Cooper’s accom-plishments, calling him “a good, old fashioned academic” who loves teaching. “He goes after the hard questions, and won’t compromise,” says Barling. “He has made an impact at Smith and I know he will be missed by faculty and students alike.”

Professor Cooper now holds the title profes-sor emeritus at Smith. He said he expects to remain an active scholar.

Fall 2019 | Research News | 11

This spring did not disappoint. First up: the Alternative Accounts Conference on May 10 and 11. Bertrand Malsch designed 23 sessions that reflected the surprising range of topics being tackled by modern accounting scholars. Researchers from Europe, the U.S., and Canada shared their findings on topics such as: the psycho analytic role of scorecards; management accounting ethnography; the misfires of social performance measures; and the challenges of audit engagements in indigenous communities.

Next up was Green Finance: New Directions in Sustainable Finance Research and Policy. Staged by the Institute of intergovernmental Relations, June 14 and 15 (and co-sponsored by Smith), Green Finance attracted a blue-chip collection of speakers from academia, the financial industry, and government. The mix of scholars and practitioners made for lively discussions on sustainable investing, climate risk and the cost of capital, the financial impacts of climate change, and the policies governments should introduce to support sustainable finance. At the conference, co-chair Sean Cleary announced the creation of Smith’s Institute for Sustainable Finance. His emphasis on the need for partnerships was warmly welcomed by the delegates.

During Green Finance, I had a spy at the Organizational Economics Conference that

was being held at the same time. Master conference impresario Jean de Bettignies once again assembled some of the best academic economists from MIT Sloan, UCLA, Michigan/ Ross, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Wharton, and elsewhere. With the typical cut-and-thrust of an academic gathering, they ably tackled topics such as the power of referential advice and the connection between corporate purpose and firm ownership.

The following week I headed to the Donald Gordon Centre for the Leading Resilient Teams conference. While individual resiliency is a well-established area of social science, team resilience is in its infancy and there’s still debate around definitions (for example, must it involve adversity?). To help advance the area, Jana Raver and Matthias Spitzmuller pulled together a program and speakers that mixed the practical (resilience at Kingston Police) and the timely (why terrorist teams are resilient) with the academic (the role of lead-ership in supporting the emergence of team resilience). Delegates left the conference with a much clearer idea of areas to explore.

And with that, I could face the summer, happily drunk on knowledge.

Alan Morantz Editor of Smith Business Insight

Conference Crawls, Smith StyleSome people enjoy their pub crawls. Me? I prefer conference crawls. The smell of plastic sleeves stuffed with name tags. The mid-afternoon stupor brought on by an overdose of PowerPoints. That’s why springtime at Smith is one of my favourite times of year.

Meetings with Diane Davies from Research ServicesDiane is in Goodes for two hours every week on Fridays (1:30pm-3:30pm) to meet with faculty and link them to funding opportunities and to share best practices. She is especially focused on helping to develop SSHRC applications.

Please contact Martha Munezhi, martha.munezhi@queensu.ca, to set up an appointment or to request an alternative appoint-ment date or time.

Introducing the Smith Business Insight Newsletter

Since 2013, Smith Business Insight has offered readers the best of business research and thought leadership coming from Smith School of Business. Now, we’re making it even easier to stay up to date on the work of Smith’s professors and global thinkers. The new Smith Business Insight newsletter delivers a curated selection of our most popular articles, podcasts and videos straight to your inbox each month. It’s easy to subscribe, and it’s free. Go to smithqueens.com/insight to sign up and start receiving your newsletter.

12 | Research News | Fall 2019

AWARDS & GRANTS

Shamel Addas (Co-applicant), Matthias Spitzmuller (Co-applicant) and Ann Frances Cameron (PI): SSHRC Insight Grant ($88,595) for “Multicommunicating during team meetings and its effect on team functioning.”

Mohamed Al Guindy (PI) and Ryan Riordan (Co-applicant): Insight Development Grant ($48,966) for “The Social Internetwork.”

Matthew Boland (PI) and Lynnette Purda (Co-applicant): SSHRC Insight Grant ($55,825) for “Consequences and motivations behind estimates in capital budgeting. Evidence from government procurement.”

Alyson Byrne (PI) and Julian Barling (Co-applicant): SSHRC Insight Grant ($143,857) for “Understanding the experience and widespread consequences of job-status leakage in traditional and non-traditional families.”

Yolande Chan with PI Wendy Cukier and other co-PIs: SSHRC Partnership Grant (Stage 1; $20,000 for 2019-2020) “International Innovation & Entrepreneurship Network, IIE-Net.”

Pam Murphy and Pujawati Gondowijoyo: Awarded a Principal’s Development Fund grant to host Christie Hayne (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign).

PROFESSORSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS

The following Smith faculty members have been awarded a new named position, or their existing position has been renewed. These positions recognize excellence in teaching, research or both.

NEW POSITIONS:• Laurence Ashworth,

Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Marketing

• Jacob Brower, Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Marketing

• Paul Calluzzo, Toller Family Fellow of Finance

• Peter Dacin, Kraft Professor of Marketing

• Evan Dudley, Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Finance

• Ricard Gil, Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Business Economics

• Matthias Spitzmuller, Distinguished Professor of Organizational Behaviour

• Tandy Thomas, Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Marketing

RENEWED POSITIONS:• Barry Cross, Distinguished

Faculty Fellow of Operations Strategy

• Olena Ivus, E. Marie Shantz Fellow of Business Economics

• Ceren Kolsarici, Ian R. Friendly Fellow of Marketing

• Veikko Thiele, Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Business Economics

• Michael Welker, Distinguished Professor of Accounting

• Ning Zhang, Commerce ’83 Fellow of Accounting

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Brohman, K.*, Addas, S.*, Dixon, J., and Pinsonneault, A. (forthcoming). Cascading Feedback: A Longitudinal Study of a Feedback Ecosystem for Telemonitoring Patients with Chronic Disease. MIS Quarterly, *Authors have contributed equally, [FT50].

de Bettignies, J.-E., and Zabojnik, J. (forthcoming). Information Sharing and Incentives in Organizations. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization.

Chan, Y. E., Denford, J.S., and Wang, J. “The Co-evolution of IT and Knowledge with Agility in Micro and Small Enterprises.” Journal of Information & Knowledge Management 18, no. 3 (2019).

Faculty News

Fall 2019 | Research News | 13

Ivus, O., and Park, W. (2019). Patent Reforms and Exporter Behaviour: Firm-level Evidence from Developing Countries. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 51: 129-147.

Jenkin, T., Chan, Y. E., and Sabherwal, R. (2019). Mutual Understanding in Information Systems Development: Changes Within and Across Projects. MIS Quarterly 43(2), pp. 649-671, [FT50].

Liebowitz, J., Chan, Y., Jenkin, T., Spicker, D., Paliszkiewicz, J., and Babiloni, F.. “If Numbers Could “Feel”: How Well Do Executives Trust Their Intuition?” Forthcoming at VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems.

Murphy, P., Wynes, M., Hahn, T., and Devine, P. (2019). Why are people honest? Internal and external motivations to report honestly. Contemporary Accounting Research, [FT50].

Ovchinnikov, A., Moritz, B., and Quiroga, B. (2019). Behavioral Ordering, Competition and Profits: An Experimental Investigation. Production and Operations Management, [FT50].

Septhon, P. (forthcoming). El Niño, La Niña, and A Cup of Joe. Energy Economics.

Thomas, T.C., Pyle, M., and Handelman, J. (forthcoming). Identification Incubators: Reflexivity in Consumer Book Clubs. Consumption, Markets & Culture.

Zhang, N., Cheng, C., Sun, W., and Ye, K. (forthcoming). The Effect of Auditing on Promoting

Exports: Evidence from Private Firms in Emerging Markets. Management Science. [FT50].

CONFERENCES AND ITEMS OF INTEREST

Addas, S.: Editorship, mini-track Co-Chair, Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Cancun, Mexico, August 2019.

Malsch, B., Daoust, L., and Couchoux, O.: Co-organizers of the Alternative Accounts Conference held at Queen’s University in May 2019.

Ahuja, S., Chan, Y. E., and Cadeddu, S.B.M. “Frugal Digital Innovation: An Ecosystem View.” In the Proceedings of the R&D Management Conference, Paris, France, June 2019.

Ahuja, S., and Chan, Y. E. “Frugal Innovation and Digitalization: A Platform Ecosystem Perspective.” In Frugal Innovation: A Cross Global Research Companion, edited by A. McMurray and G. de Waal, Routledge Publishers, 2019.

The ConversationJune 2019, Cleary, S. and Riordan, R. – Sustainable finance: Canada risks being left behind in low-carbon economy: theconversation.com/sustainable-finance-canada-risks-being-left-behind-in-low-carbon-economy-118814.

Chan, Y. has been elected to the Board of Directors, Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, effective May 2019.

Cleary, S. Co-Chaired a conference on Green Finance: New Directions in Sustainable

Finance Research and Policy with the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, June 2019.

de Bettignies, J.-E.: Organizer of Queen’s Organizational Economics Conference held at Queen’s University in June 2019.

Gagnon, L.: Appointed to serve on the Canadian Derivatives Institute’ Scientific Committee for a two year term 2019. cdi-icd.org/en/about/scientific-committee.

Ivus, O.: Research visit, University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Business and Economics, February 2019 and attended the Empirical Research Conference on Standardization at Northwestern University, Chicago, USA, May 2019. Discussant at the 12th Annual Conference on Innovation Economics. Northwestern University, Chicago, US, June 2019.

Ovchinnikov, A.: Sessional Chair, Behavioral Operations confer-ence’s Junior Scholar workshop, Eindhoven, Netherlands, July 2019.

Raver, J. and Spitzmuller, M.: Co-chaired a conference on Leading Resilient Teams at Queen’s University in June 2019.

Robitaille, N.: Invited Research Talk at Behavioral Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR) Summer Research Retreat, University of Toronto, June 2019.

Sartor, M.: Recipient of a Best Reviewer Award at the 2019 Academy of International Business Conference Annual

Meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Cameron, A.F., Addas, S., and Spitzmuller, M. “Multicommunicating During Team Meetings and Its Effects on Team Functioning.” Proceedings of the Vienna Retreat on NeuroIS, Vienna, June 2019.

Amaral, C., Kolsarici, C., and Nediak, M. “The Impact of Varying Consumer Credit Pricing by Consumer Risk: An Empirical Investigation using Indirect Lending.” Presented at the Marketing Science Conference, Rome, Italy, June 2019 and the Marketing Dynamics Conference, College Park, MD, June 2019.

Amaral, C., Kolsarici, C., and Nediak, M. “The Impact of Discriminatory Pricing Based on Consumer Risk: An Empirical Investigation Using Indirect Lending Through Retail Networks.” Empirical & Theoretical Symposium for Canadian Marketing Strategy, Vancouver, BC, May 2019.

Ashworth, L.* and Robitaille, N. “Purchase Reluctance: The Effect of Irrelevant Price Offers.” Paper presented at Southern Ontario Behavioral Decision Research Conference, Waterloo, ON, May 2019. *Presenting author

Chan Y. E., Ahuja S., Boroomand F., and Sadreddin A. “Technology Affordances in Digital Innovation Research: Quo Vadis?” In the proceedings of the 25th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), Cancun, Mexico, August 2019.

14 | Research News | Fall 2019

Cross, B. “Your customers are changing. The end of a 100-year business model.” Presented at the Production and Operations Management Society Conference, Washington, DC, May 2019 and the International Conference on New Horizons in Education, Prague, July 2019.

de Bettignies, J.-E., and Ries, J. “Product Market Competition, Managerial Talent, and Innovation.” Paper presented at the Asia-Pacific Industrial Organization Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, December 2017, the Society for Labor Economics Conference, Toronto, ON, May 2018, the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Department of Economics seminar presentation, Barcelona, Spain, March 2019, a seminar at Université Laval, Department of Economics, Quebec, QC, March 2019, and the Barcelona GSE Summer Forum, Barcelona, Spain, June 2019.

de Bettignies, J.-E., Gainullin, B., Liu, H.F., and Robinson, D.T. “The Effects of Downstream Competition on Upstream Innovation and Licensing.” Paper presented at the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics Conference, Montreal, QC, June 2018, and the Strategic Management Society Meetings, Paris, France, September 2018.

de Bettignies, J.-E., Liu, H.F., and Robinson, D.T. “Corporate Social Responsibility under Imperfect Regulatory Oversight.” Paper presented at the Strategy and Business Environment Conference,

Stanford, CA, April 2019, and Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics Conference, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2019.

Gagnon, L. “Corporate Governance, Capital Structure, and Stock Return Volatility.” Presented at the 31st Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, Sydney, Australia, December 2018.

Gagnon, L. “Do corporate governance reforms impact equity volatility? Theory and worldwide evidence.” Presented at the 46th EFA Annual Meeting, Nova School of Business and Economics, Carcavelos, August 2019.

Gondowijoyo, P., Davern, M., and Murphy, P. “Black Box Analytics and Ethical Decision Making.” Presented at the 2019 Ethics Symposium, Waterloo Centre for Accounting Ethics and CPA Canada, April 2019 and the 2019 Canadian Academic Accounting Association Conference, Ottawa, Ontario, May/June 2019.

Gondowijoyo, P. “Responses to an invitation to join group fraud: insights from self-determination theory.” Poster presentation at the Ethics Symposium, Waterloo Centre for Accounting Ethics and CPA Canada, April 2019 and Proposal Presentation, CAAA Craft of Accounting Doctoral Symposium, May/June 2019.

Goudarzi, K., and Chakrabarti, A. “How firms overcome institutional voids by drawing on their prior experience.” Paper presented at the Administrative Science Association of Canada

annual meeting, St. Catharines, ON, May 2019.

Goudarzi K., and Chakrabarti A. “How economic institutions influence the organizational interpretation of shocks.” Paper Presented at the Academy of International Business annual meeting, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 2019.

Ivus, O., and Paczos, M. “Does Canada’s foreign trade policy give innovating Canadian firms a competitive edge internation-ally?” Peer-Reviewed Policy Paper, CIGI Papers, No.214, May 2019.

Ivus, O. “Multinational Investments, Technology Transfers, and Copyright Protection.” Paper presented at the University of Western Ontario, Ivey Business School, London, ON, March 2019.

Ivus, O. “Intellectual Property Rights, Innovator Migration and Innovation.” Paper presented at the Migration, Globalization and the Knowledge Economy Workshop, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands, May 2019, and a paper presentation at the Asia Pacific Trade Seminars, Tokyo, Japan, June 2019.

Murphy, P. “Enhancing the Relevance of Audited Financial Information: How to bridge the gap by leveraging academic insights in standard setting.” Panel member, Canadian Accounting Academic Association Annual Meeting, Ottawa, June 2019.

Ovchinnikov, A. “On Product Customization and Returns.” Invited to the POMS annual meeting, Washington, DC, May

2019 and the MSOM annual meeting, Singapore, July 2019.

Ovchinnikov, A. “Which Customers are More Valuable in Dynamic Pricing Situations?” Invited to the RMP annual conference, Stanford University, June 2019, and the MSOM annual meeting, Singapore, July 2019.

Ovchinnikov, A. “Operational Challenges in Distributed Manufacturing: Managing a Virtual Factory in Kenya.” Invited to the MSOM annual meeting, Singapore, July 2019.

Ovchinnikov, A. “Quantifying Mileage-Runs: Empirical Investigation of Strategic Consumer Behavior in Premium-Status Loyalty Programs.” Invited to the Behavioral Operations conference, Eindhoven, Netherlands, July 2019.

Ovchinnikov, A. Discussant for “That’s Not Fair: Tariff Structures for Electricity Markets with Rooftop Solar.” Junior Sustainability Workshop, San Diego, CA, March 2019.

Ovchinnikov, A. Discussant for “Customized Individual Promotions: Model, Optimization and Prediction.” RMP annual conference, Stanford University, June 2019.

Ovchinnikov, A. Discussant for “How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice: Evidence from the Field and Lab.” MSOM annual meeting, Singapore, July 2019.

Packalen, K., and Rowbotham, K. “A Qualitative Exploration of

Fall 2019 | Research News | 15

Business Students’ Perceptions of Academic Integrity’s Grey Areas.” Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity, Calgary, April 2019.

Rowbotham, K., Packalen, K., and Garnier, L. “A multi-pronged approach to academic integrity awareness: methods used by a Canadian undergraduate business program.” Shaping Ethics in Academia and Society, Lithuania, June 2019.

Jiang, F., and Sartor, M. “Does corporate self-regulation matter?: An analysis of corpo-rate anti-corruption policy and foreign investment strategy.” Presented at the 2019 Academy of International Business Annual Meeting (Global Strategy, Organization and Management Track), Copenhagen, Denmark, June 2019.

Soares, D.M. “The emotionality of social enterprises: Mechanisms and challenges for generating emotional energy.” Presentation in a Divisional Paper session at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Boston, MA, August 2019.

Soares, D.M. “Craft performanc-es: How farmers and crafts vendors engage external audiences.” Paper presentation at the 35th EGOS Colloquium, Edinburgh, U.K., July 2019.

Spitzmuller, M. “Revisiting Hierarchy.” Presented at the National University of Singapore, Singapore, March 2019.

Stack, R., Cooper, T., Avery, A., Hewitt, L., and Willcott, N. “Fortis Properties: Double

Down, Develop, or Divest.” Administrative Sciences Association of Canada Conference, St. Catharines, Ontario, May 2019.

Stack, R. “A separate place: The construction of accountant identities in Newfoundland.” Emerging Scholar Consortium, Alternative Accounts Conference, Kingston, Ontario, May 2019.

Wang, W., Iverson, B., Madsen, J., and Xu, Q. “Learning by Doing: Judge Experience and Bankruptcy Outcomes.” Finance Intermediation Research Society, Savannah, GA, May 2019.

Wang, W., Chu, Y., Nguyen, H.D., Wang, J., and Wang, W. “Debt-Equity Simultaneous Holdings and Distress Resolution.” China International Finance Conference, Guangzhou, China, July 2019.

Wang, W., Eckbo, E., and Li, K. “Rent Extraction by Super-priority Lenders.” China International Finance Conference, Guangzhou, July 2019, UBC Summer Finance Conference, Vancouver, July 2019 and Invited Seminar at Western University, March 2019.

The Stephen J.R. Smith School of Business

Goodes HallQueen’s UniversityKingston, OntarioCanada K7L 3N6smith.queensu.ca

Submissions, Contact and Feedback

Annette LillyAssociate DirectorPhD, MSc and Research Programslillya@queensu.ca

The Showcase gives Smith scholars and graduate students a taste of what their colleagues are up to. During the April event, they enjoyed presentations from the Ac-counting/Finance and MIS groups.

For both Yu Hou and Wei Wang, the inter-play between finance and innovation was the driving theme. Yu talked about his re-search into the spillover effects of litigation initiated by so-called “patent trolls.” These trolls amass patents simply to claim licence fees or to sue for patent infringement. Yu (with colleagues Feng Chen and Gordon Richardson of Rotman) found that when a firm is sued by a patent troll, its at-risk technology peers also experience significant market value losses around the litigation filing date.

Wei shared his results from a study on how intellectual property is handled in bankruptcy. Working with Song Ma (Yale) and Joy Tianjiao Tong (Fuqua School of Business), Wei found that firms in bankruptcy protection sell strategically significant intellectual property to quickly raise financing rather than as a means to restructure assets.

From the MIS stream, Tracy Jenkin provided insight on why so many information systems projects seem to fail. Her research, conduct-ed with Yolande Chan and Rajiv Sabherwal (University of Arkansas), looked at how mutual understanding among key stakehold-er groups (IT managers, users, developers) changes within projects. It turns out that “sensegiving” and “sensemaking” are crucial elements of successful IS projects.

And Shamel Addas discussed the Communi-ty Paramedicine Remote Patient Monitoring pilot project that he conducted with Kathryn Brohman and Jeff Dixon. The project equipped 650 people across Ontario with technology designed to help them monitor their own health, allowing them to easily connect with paramedics when they were alerted to changes in their conditions. It led to a 26 per cent reduction in 911 calls and a 32 per cent reduction in hospital admissions.

Attendees to the Research Showcase also heard updates from Mikhail Nediak on the latest research collaborations involving the Scotiabank Centre for Customer Analytics as well as plans from Sean Cleary for the Institute for Sustainable Finance, scheduled to officially launch this fall.

From left to right: Yu Hou, Wei Wang, Tracy Jenkin, Shamel Addas, Mikhail Nediak and Sean Cleary.

Research ShowcaseFrom patent trolls to remote monitoring of health, the latest edition of the Smith Research Showcase certainly lived up to its name.