A follow-up to our pre-election coverage, this discussion explored the impact of the presidential and congressional race outcomes on U.S. business and the economy, trade and foreign relations, ongoing COVID-19 recovery efforts and more. The webinar featured Kenan Institute Director of Research Christian Lundblad, Political Quotient Advisors CEO and Kenan Institute Senior Fellow Mary Moore Hamrick, U.S. Chamber Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness Executive Vice President and Senior Advisor to the Senior Executive Vice President Tom Quaadman and Kenan Institute Executive Director Greg Brown as moderator.
Kenan Institute Executive Director Greg Brown discussed the 311,000 jobs that the economy added in February during the institute’s monthly briefing March 10 and answered questions about labor participation rates and news of trouble at Silicon Valley Bank.
On Thursday, March 8, the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise’s Institute for Private Capital (IPC) hosted its 11th Annual Alternative Investments Conference (AIC) at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill.
The Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise conferred its top student honors to two UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School MBA candidates during a ceremony attended by staff, faculty, students and members of the Kenan Institute Board of Advisors Thursday, April 12.
Mark Little, executive director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and director of the institute-affiliated center NCGrowth, was recently featured on an episode of WUNC radio's The State of Things. Mark and Karla Slocum, director of the Institute of African American research, talked with host Frank Stasio about the impetus for the Black Communities Conference, and how black communities are collaborating to preserve and create vibrant futures for themselves.
Greg Brown, executive director of the Kenan Institute, has been named to Governor Roy Cooper’s new North Carolina Entrepreneurial Council, established to support policies that encourage entrepreneurship, foster economic development, and support sustainable, high-quality jobs. Brown joins Kenan Institute Board of Advisors member Thom Ruhe as the second institute member on the council.
Strategy formation is central to why some firms succeed in entrepreneurial settings while others do not. Prior research suggests that executives effectively form strategies through actions to learn about novel opportunities, and thinking to develop a holistic understanding of the complex set of activities that must fit together.
We recently introduced a research program on how firms can effectively capture fleeting opportunities using heuristics. Heuristics, we advocate, are the essence of strategy, especially in unpredictable markets where opportunities are often numerous, fast moving, and uncertain. Our emphasis on heuristics invites comparison with prominent research programs in cognitive psychology. We address this opportunity by comparing our “simple rules” heuristics approach with “heuristics-and-biases” and “fast-and-frugal” heuristics research. Collectively, the three approaches offer a rich understanding of heuristics.
Crowdsourcing as a mechanism of open innovation is a popular way for organizations to solicit ideas from external agents. Our research focuses on the relationship between examples in problem statements provided to a crowd and the subsequent number of ideas submitted by the crowd.
We examine the effect of MiFID II, which mandated the unbundling and separate pricing of analyst research in Europe beginning in 2018. We find that the requirements of MiFID II were associated with a reduction in analyst following for European firms relative to US firms, with decreases in coverage greatest for firms that were larger, older and less volatile, and had greater coverage and more accurate consensus forecasts. Remaining analysts follow fewer firms and issue fewer forecasts, consistent with increased focus, and appear to increase their efforts on the firms they continue to cover.
Innovation is essential for every organization. Yet the relationship between boards and innovation remains unclear. We argue that boards not only monitor, but also provide resources, and innovations require both proper levels of resources (skills) from the board, and appropriate forms of control.
How individuals manage, organize, and complete their tasks is central to operations management. Recent research in operations focuses on how under conditions of increasing workload individuals can increase their service time, up to a point, in order to complete work more quickly.
On Wednesday, Feb. 5, Maryann Feldman, Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina, adjunct professor of finance at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and director of the Kenan Institute-affiliated center CREATE, testified before the Subcommittee on Research and Technology, part of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The hearing, titled "America's Seed Fund: A Review of SBIR and STTR," discussed the role of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program in helping to move the results of federally funded research into commercial development and generating new economic growth.
We clarify differences among moderation, partial mediation, and full mediation and identify methodological problems related to moderation and mediation from a review of articles in Strategic Management Journal and Organization Science published from 2005 to 2014.
Across the globe, every workday people commute an average of 38 minutes each way, yet surprisingly little research has examined the implications of this daily routine for work-related outcomes. Integrating theories of boundary work, self-control, and work-family conflict, we propose that the commute to work serves as a liminal role transition between home and work roles, prompting employees to engage in boundary management strategies.
Consumer boycotts of products offer a unique context to understand the nature of consumer preferences and market dynamics. We focus on the 2012 nationwide boycott of Japanese products in China triggered by a territorial dispute and heavily influenced by historical animosity between citizens of the two countries.
Scholars have traditionally treated motivation as a value-neutral state divorced from normative considerations. Yet, research across the social sciences suggests a growing moral imperative to love work, which carries with it the social expectation of intrinsic motivation.
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.
The Kenan Institute is proud to announce the winners of the 2025 Kenan Institute Student Awards.