2/23/2017 — Traditional models of operations management involve dynamic decision-making assuming optimal (Bayesian) updating. However, behavioral theory suggests that individuals exhibit bias in their beliefs and decisions. We conduct both a field study and two laboratory studies to examine the phenomena in the context of health. In particular, we examine how an individual’s prior experiences and the experiences of those around them alter the operational decisions that the individual makes.

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations
• supply chain
• technology

2/15/2017 — “Entrepreneurship as a field is remarkably multidisciplinary,” said Paige Ouimet, an associate professor of finance at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. “I think we all know this. Just look around the room.”

• KEYWORD(S):
• strategy and entrepreneurship

2/10/2017 — UNC’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and the Duke University Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) initiative have embarked on a joint initiative to build a data repository to facilitate empirical research in entrepreneurship.

• KEYWORD(S):
• strategy and entrepreneurship

2/9/2017 — We study how public and private disclosure requirements interact to influence both tax regulator enforcement and firm disclosure. We find that, following Schedule UTP, firms significantly increased the quantity and altered the content of their tax‐related disclosures, consistent with lower tax‐related proprietary costs of disclosure. Our results suggest that changes in SEC disclosure requirements altered the IRS's behavior with regard to public information acquisition, and, relatedly, changes in IRS private disclosure requirements appear to change firms’ public disclosure behavior.

• KEYWORD(S):
• financial reporting
• tax

2/6/2017 — In this paper, we examine how connecting to beneficiaries of one’s work increases performance, and argue that beneficiaries internal to an organization (i.e., one’s own colleague) can serve as an important source of motivation, even in jobs that — on the surface — may seem routine and low on potential impact. We suggest that this occurs because words of beneficiaries strengthen one’s sense of belongingness, a key driver of human behavior.

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• operations

2/1/2017 — We investigate whether firms in close customer–supplier relationships are better able to identify and implement tax avoidance strategies via supply chains. Consistent with our prediction, we find that both principal customers and their dependent suppliers avoid more taxes than other firms. Further analysis suggests that principal customers and dependent suppliers likely engage in tax strategies involving shifting profits to tax haven subsidiaries.

• KEYWORD(S):
• international tax
• supply chain

2/1/2017 — We examine the human capital of IPO-filing firms and how going public affects their labor force. IPO-filing firms have high average wages and limited industrial diversification. Moreover, we document that a successful IPO increases departures of high-skilled employees to startups and diversification though employment growth in non-core industries.

• KEYWORD(S):
• labor

2/1/2017 — We consider the inventory management problem of a firm reacting to potential change points in demand, which we define as known epochs at which the demand distribution may (or may not) abruptly change. Motivating examples include global news events (e.g., the 9/11 terrorist attacks), local events (e.g., the opening of a nearby attraction), or internal events (e.g., a product redesign).

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• economics
• innovation
• operations
• supply chain

2/1/2017 — This paper examines the relation between cognitive perceptions of management and firm valuation. We develop a composite measure of investor perception using 30-second content-filtered video clips of initial public offering (IPO) roadshow presentations. We show that this measure, designed to capture viewers’ overall perceptions of a CEO, is positively associated with pricing at all stages of the IPO (proposed price, offer price, and end of first day of trading).

• KEYWORD(S):
• accounting
• management

2/1/2017 — This paper investigates whether by exposing superiors to moral symbols, subordinates can discourage their superiors from asking them to perform unethical acts.

• KEYWORD(S):
• ethics
• organizational behavior

2/1/2017 — This study investigates how the organizational reporting structure of the university technology licensing office (TLO) and the educational background and experience of the TLO director affect the technology transfer process.

1/27/2017 — Workplace relationships are a cornerstone of management research. At the same time, there remain pressing calls for work relationships to be front and center in management literature, demanding an organizationally specific “relationship science.” This article addresses these calls by unifying multiple scholarly fields of interest to develop a comprehensive understanding of interpersonal workplace relationships.

• KEYWORD(S):
• organizational behavior
• workforce development

1/25/2017 — On October 14, 2016, the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School hosted a conference titled What’s Next, America. Convened fewer than four weeks prior to the presidential election, the objective of the forum was to allow influential business leaders, academics and policy makers to examine issues critical to the U.S. economy now and in the future. The conference offered actionable solutions to the most important economic issues facing the next administration.

• KEYWORD(S):
• aging
• inclusive development
• inequality
• innovation

1/23/2017 — This study provides evidence on whether investors value tax gross-up provisions for executives, and how the elimination of these provisions changes executive compensation. We examine the market response to tax gross-up eliminations and find investors react favorably to the removal of these provisions, suggesting that on average, investors perceived these agreements as a bad compensation practice that destroyed firm value.

• KEYWORD(S):
• equity markets
• tax

1/18/2017 — Competing technologies in emerging industries create uncertainties that discourage supplier investments. Open technology can induce supplier investments, but may also lead to intensified future competition. In this paper, we study competing manufacturers’ open-technology strategies. We show that despite the risk of intensifying future competition, open technologies by competing manufacturers may constitute an equilibrium and can indeed induce supplier investments.

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations
• technology

1/17/2017 — Why are downturns following high valuations of firms long and severe? Why do firms choose high debt when they anticipate high valuations, and underperform subsequently? We propose a theory of financing cycles where the importance of creditors’ control rights over cash flows (“pledgeability”) varies with industry liquidity.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance

1/12/2017 — Research on dyadic meta-accuracy suggests that people can accurately judge how their acquaintances feel toward them. However, existing studies have focused exclusively on positive feelings, such as liking. We present the first research on dyadic meta-accuracy for competition, a common dynamic among work colleagues.

• KEYWORD(S):
• organizational behavior

1/10/2017 — The US Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Grand Challenge and the EU Human Brain Project Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship, though seemingly similar in many dimensions, have distinct features that have been shaped by politics and institutional systems. This article documents the history of the two projects and compares their organization and funding mechanisms.

1/5/2017 — The availability of high quality and “clean” data documenting historical individual stock performance has had a profound impact on financial economics and the financial‐services industry.

• KEYWORD(S):
• real estate

1/1/2017 — In Part 1 of this article, economic incentives were estimated for relaxing the requirement that biocrude entering the refinery infrastructure be oxygen (O2)-free. It was concluded that an accurate estimate of these incentives is not possible without a significant amount of additional data. Part 2 examines key issues that must be addressed and the associated data needed for this constraint to be relaxed.

1/1/2017 — In this study, we consider the dynamics of crowdfunding project support over time. We propose that people support crowdfunding projects financially when they believe that their contribution will make an impact. Because perceptions of impact are positively related to goal proximity, we predict that support for a crowdfunding project will increase as the project funding approaches its target goal.

• KEYWORD(S):
• strategy and entrepreneurship

1/1/2017 — This paper examines how tax uncertainty created by highly aggressive tax planning affects a firm's investment decisions. The tax uncertainty that we study arises from tax choices of such inadequate merit that the firms themselves believe that they will lose if audited. Consistent with a simple model that we develop, we find that investments in fixed assets and research and development are increasing, at a decreasing rate, in the tax savings from these aggressive plans.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• tax

1/1/2017 — Self-presentation is a fundamental aspect of social life, with myriad critical outcomes dependent on others’ impressions. We identify and offer the first empirical investigation of a prevalent, yet understudied self-presentation strategy: humblebragging. Across seven studies including a week-long diary study and a field experiment, we identify humblebragging — bragging masked by a complaint or humility — as a common, conceptually distinct, and ineffective form of self-presentation.

• KEYWORD(S):
• management
• organizational behavior

1/1/2017 — With the explosion of Internet users, growing from 360 million (5.9 % of the world’s population) in 2000 to 3.4 billion (46.4 %) in 2016, the digital space is reshaping how organizations go global with their brands. Any chapter written about digital branding strategies runs the risk of obsolescence before it hits the printer. Specific digital platforms and tools for global brand building change rapidly over time.

• KEYWORD(S):
• global business
• marketing

1/1/2017 — Competition between firms to invent and patent an idea, or “patent racing,” has been much discussed in theory, but seldom analyzed empirically. This article introduces an empirical way to identify patent races, and provides the first broad-based view of them in the real world.

• KEYWORD(S):
• innovation
• strategy and entrepreneurship

12/29/2016 — In this paper we argue that task design affects rule breaking in the workplace. Specifically, we propose that task variety activates deliberative (Type 2) processes as opposed to automatic/intuitive (Type 1) processes, which, in turn, helps prevent individuals from breaking rules in order to serve their own hedonic self-interest.

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations
• strategy and entrepreneurship
• technology

12/22/2016 — How best to structure the work day is an important operational question for organizations. A key structural consideration is the effective use of breaks from work. Breaks serve the critical purpose of allowing employees to recharge, but in the short term, translate to a loss of time that usually leads to reduced productivity. We evaluate the effects of two types of breaks (expected versus unexpected), and two distinct forms of unexpected breaks, and find that unexpected breaks can, under certain conditions, yield immediate post-break performance increases.

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• operations
• organizational behavior

12/20/2016 — We evaluate the effects of two types of breaks (expected versus unexpected), and two distinct forms of unexpected breaks, and find that unexpected breaks can, under certain conditions, yield immediate post-break performance increases.

• KEYWORD(S):
• workforce development

12/17/2016 — Auditors are expected by the public and to find all financial statement fraud, even though Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS) have long held that auditors may not be able to detect all frauds. In this article, we use examples from the experience of an expert witness in numerous major fraud cases where auditors were sued for not detecting fraud to illustrate situations in which auditors can, and cannot, reasonably be expected to detect fraud.

• KEYWORD(S):
• accounting
• tax

12/5/2016 — In this paper, we build on research on the microfoundations of strategy and learning processes to study the individual underpinnings of organizational learning. We argue that once an individual has accumulated a certain amount of experience with a task, the benefit of accumulating additional experience is inferior to the benefit of deliberately articulating and codifying the experience accumulated in the past.

• KEYWORD(S):
• knowledge management
• operations
• organizational behavior

11/10/2016 — We investigate whether business ties with portfolio firms influence mutual funds' proxy voting using a comprehensive data set spanning 2003 to 2011. In contrast to prior literature, we find that business ties significantly influence pro-management voting at the level of individual pairs of fund families and firms after controlling for Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommendations and holdings.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• socioeconomics

11/1/2016 — A replication study assesses whether the results of a particular prior study can be reproduced, including in new contexts with different data. Replication studies are critical for building a cumulative body of research knowledge.

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• knowledge management
• strategy and entrepreneurship

11/1/2016 — Partial least squares (PLS) path modeling is increasingly being promoted as a technique of choice for various analysis scenarios, despite the serious shortcomings of the method. The current lack of methodological justification for PLS prompted the editors of this journal to declare that research using this technique is likely to be deck-rejected (Guide and Ketokivi, 2015).

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• organizational behavior

11/1/2016 — We model a dynamic economy with strategic complementarity among investors and government interventions that mitigate coordination failures. We establish equilibrium existence and uniqueness, and show that one intervention can affect subsequent interventions through altering public information structures. Our results suggest that optimal policy should emphasize initial interventions because coordination outcomes tend to correlate. Neglecting informational externalities of initial interventions results in over- or under-interventions.

• KEYWORD(S):
• economics
• policy

10/27/2016 — We undertake an empirical study of the impact of delay announcements on callers' abandonment behavior and the performance of a call center with two priority classes. A Cox regression analysis reveals that in this call center, callers' abandonment behavior is affected by the announcement messages heard.

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• operations

10/14/2016 — This paper examines private equity (both buyout and venture funds) performance around the globe using four data sets from leading commercial sources. For North American funds, our results echo recent research findings: buyout funds have outperformed public equities over long periods of time; in contrast, venture funds saw performance fall after spectacular results for vintages in the 1990s. For funds outside North America, buyout funds show performance similar to those in North America while venture fund performance is weaker than in North America. Venture samples outside North America are, however, relatively small and strong conclusions await further research. The similarity of performance estimates across the data sets strengthens confidence in conclusions about the results of private equity investing.

• KEYWORD(S):
• private equity
• real assets
• real estate

10/1/2016 — Crowdsourcing has been used to spur innovation and increase community engagement in public health programmes. Crowdsourcing is the process of giving individual tasks to a large group, often involving open contests and enabled through multisectoral partnerships. Here we describe one crowdsourced video intervention in which a video promoting condom use is produced through an open contest. The aim of this study is to determine whether a crowdsourced intervention is as effective as a social marketing intervention in promoting condom use among high-risk men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender male-to-female (TG) in China.

• KEYWORD(S):
• global business
• healthcare
• marketing

9/29/2016 — The benefits of internal labor markets are largest when they include industries that utilize similar worker skills, facilitating cross-industry worker reallocation and collaboration. We show that diversifying acquisitions occur more frequently among industry pairs with higher human capital transferability. Such acquisitions result in larger labor productivity gains and are less often undone in subsequent divestitures.

• KEYWORD(S):
• equity markets
• finance
• workforce development

9/24/2016 — Performance measurement and event studies frequently assume a specific stochastic process for stock returns. The purpose of this paper is to validate the predictive accuracy of various stochastic processes on data different from those used in estimating the models. The main conclusion is that multi-factor models estimated with factor analytic techniques provide more accurate forecasts than the usual market model with either an equal- or value-weighted index, and Fama–French three-factor model.

• KEYWORD(S):
• corporate finance
• investments

9/14/2016 — We propose a quantile-based measure of conditional skewness, particularly suitable for handling recalcitrant emerging market (EM) returns. The skewness of international stock market returns varies significantly across countries over time, and persists at long horizons.

• KEYWORD(S):
• emerging markets
• portfolio analysis

9/12/2016 — A typical MIDAS regression involves estimating parameters via nonlinear least squares, unless U-MIDAS is applied - which involves OLS - the latter being appealing when the sampling frequency differences are small. In this paper we propose to use OLS estimation of the MIDAS regression slope and intercept parameters combined with profiling the polynomial weighting scheme parameter(s). The use of Beta polynomials is particularly attractive for such an approach. The new procedure shares many of the desirable features of U-MIDAS, while it is not restricted to small sampling frequency differences.

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• economics

9/1/2016 — In the U.S. automobile industry, manufacturers distribute products through dealers and rental agencies. To mediate direct competition between the two intermediaries, manufacturers adopted buyback programs to repurchase used rental cars from rental agencies and redistribute them through dealers. 

• KEYWORD(S):
• supply chain

9/1/2016 — This article presents a reduced-form model that contains frailty factors to predict mortgage default and develops a novel framework to model systematic risk of mortgages. We match default rates along multiple dimensions by extending the generalized autoregressive score (GAS) models.

• KEYWORD(S):
• commercial real estate

8/26/2016 — During the 2000s, over a dozen U.S. states passed laws that prohibit healthcare employers from mandating overtime for nurses. Using a nationwide panel data set from 2004 to 2012, we find that these mandatory overtime laws reduced the service quality of nursing homes, as measured by an increase in deficiency citations. This outcome can be explained by two undesirable changes in the staffing hours of registered nurses: decreased hours of permanent nurses and increased hours of contract nurses per resident day. We observe that the increase in deficiency citations concentrates in the domains of administration and quality of care rather than quality of life, and the severity levels of the increased citations tend to be minor rather than major.

• KEYWORD(S):
• healthcare
• operations

8/23/2016 — A firm's growth and survival depends on the ability of its managers to explore for new business and knowledge; yet, exploration is challenging for most large, established firms. Extending prior research into networks and exploration, we propose that a key characteristic of managers' external networks – the extent to which their networks include relationships built using predominately individual rather than firm resources – is positively related to managers' abilities to explore for new business and knowledge in large firms.

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• management
• strategy and entrepreneurship

8/16/2016 — When modeling economic relationships it is increasingly common to encounter data sampled at different frequencies. We introduce the R package midasr which enables estimating regression models with variables sampled at different frequencies within a MIDAS regression framework put forward in work by Ghysels, Santa-Clara, and Valkanov (2002).

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• finance

8/11/2016 — In 2008, the majority of U.S. airlines began charging for the second checked bag, and then for the first checked bag. One of the often cited reasons for this action by the airlines’ executives was that this would influence customers to travel with less baggage and thus improve cost and operational performance.

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations

8/2/2016 — The panel invited women scholars to consider how feminist approaches have—and have not—made a difference in economic geography.

• KEYWORD(S):
• bias
• gender

8/2/2016 — We develop a multi-period theoretical model to characterize the relationship between a publication that ranks universities and prospective attendees -- high school students -- who might view the ranking and use it to help decide which university to attend.

• KEYWORD(S):
• marketing