The study identifies the world’s leading researchers and encompasses standardized data on citations, h-index, and a wide range of bibliometric indicators. Researchers are classified into 22 scientific fields and 174 sub-fields, drawing from Scopus data provided by Elsevier through ICSR Lab.

“Our faculty are more than educators – they are pioneering thought leaders shaping industries and redefining the future of business,” shared Gareth James, John H. Harland Dean of Goizueta Business School. “They tackle today’s most pressing challenges and uncover tomorrow’s greatest opportunities, driving positive impact throughout industry and the world.”

Introducing the World’s Top 2% Scientists

EmoryBusiness.com is proud to recognize these distinguished Goizueta faculty members among the top two percent of scholars in the world:

• Anandhi Bharadwaj, Goizueta Endowed Chair in Electronic Commerce and Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management

• Tarun Chordia, R. Howard Dobbs, Jr. Chaired Professor of Finance

• Ilia Dichev, Goizueta Foundation Chair in Financial Reporting, Professor of Accounting, and Director and Associate Dean of PhD Program

• Gareth James, John H. Harland Dean of Goizueta Business School and Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management

• Sandy Jap, Sarah Beth Brown Professor of Marketing

• Narasimhan Jegadeesh, Dean’s Distinguished Chair of Finance

• Wei Jiang, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance and Vice Dean for Faculty and Research

• Jay Shanken, Professor Emeritus (2024) in Finance

• Jagdish Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Chaired Professor of Business

Insights from Goizueta’s Distinguished Faculty

As leaders in their respective fields, our distinguished faculty members bring a wealth of knowledge, experience, and passion to Goizueta. Their journeys to academic excellence and global recognition are a testament to the school’s impact on both personal and professional growth.

EmoryBusiness.com connected with these professors to discuss their motivations, experiences, and the pivotal moments that have shaped their success.

Anandhi Bharadwaj

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: When I joined Emory in 1994, the business school was not yet named Goizueta—it was simply Emory Business School. At that time, Professor Benn Konsynski was the only other faculty member in my field, Information Systems, and it was his invitation and vision that initially drew me here. Professor Konsynski’s forward-thinking perspective on digital technology and its transformative role in the business world deeply resonated with me. His guiding vision not only inspired me to join the school but also fostered an environment that has kept me motivated to contribute to Goizueta’s growth and evolution over the years. The school’s commitment to innovation and excellence has only solidified my decision to remain a part of this vibrant community.

Q: How did Goizueta support your journey to becoming part of the top 2% of scholars worldwide?

A: Goizueta has been an incredible source of support throughout my academic career, providing both tangible and intangible resources that have significantly contributed to my success. On a tangible level, the school’s commitment to fostering a research-driven ecosystem has been invaluable—offering resources such as summer salary support, access to specialized databases, funding for conference travel, and more. On an intangible level, the vibrant academic community at Goizueta has been a constant source of inspiration. The flourishing PhD program has allowed me to collaborate with some of the brightest doctoral students, while the broader Emory network and the research ecosystem in Atlanta, with its concentration of world-class scholars across universities, have undoubtedly enriched my research journey.

Tarun Chordia

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: I moved from Vanderbilt University to Emory as an assistant professor in summer 2000. At the time Tom Robertson was the Dean and Goizueta was transitioning from a teaching to a research school while still maintaining great teaching. One of Dean Robertson’s goals was to improve the reputation of the finance area. I had a ring-side seat to what was happening in the finance department and in the school in terms of increasing the research focus of the faculty (by starting a doctoral program and subscribing to all the standard datasets). With the support of the Dean as well as the leadership in the university we were able to strategically hire senior people in the finance department such that today we are amongst the top finance departments.

Ilia Dichev

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: It was a combination of things: great university and business school, great group of faculty in my academic area (Accounting), the attraction of Atlanta as a growing, business-oriented city, which is very green and with warm weather year-round. Being appointed to the distinguished position of the Goizueta Foundation Chair of Financial Reporting was definitely a big factor (so, big thanks to The Goizueta Foundation!). Plus, the personal involvement of some key Goizueta people made it happen. Perhaps most importantly, on some gut level it just felt right.

Q: How did Goizueta support your journey to becoming part of the top 2% of scholars worldwide?

A: My most successful research project after arriving at Goizueta relied on personal access to CFOs of top companies. The dean and the alumni office at the time made most of these contacts possible. Plus, the school has top-notch working conditions all around. I am very grateful to Goizueta for the incredible opportunities to do quality work!

Gareth James

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: Goizueta Business School stood out to me as a premier institution with a compelling combination of strengths. As a Top 20 business school within a Top 20 university, Goizueta offers a world-class environment for both research and teaching. The school has built an exceptional research community, where faculty members not only produce groundbreaking work but also make a tangible impact on the business world.

Beyond the intellectual vibrancy, Goizueta provides strong financial resources that support high-caliber research, including access to top-tier data acquisition, research funding, and a rigorous PhD program. This commitment to advancing knowledge and fostering innovation makes it an ideal place for scholars who seek to push the boundaries of their fields.

Sandy Jap

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: I came to Goizueta 24 years ago after having been on the faculty at MIT. While MIT is an amazing place in and of itself, what attracted me to Goizueta was the possibility of being in a faculty group that really valued and understood the research that I wanted to do. I’m also not a big fan of winter. 

Q: How did Goizueta support your journey to becoming part of the top 2% of scholars worldwide?

A: While I have had opportunities to leave (I visited Wharton for a year), I have remained at Goizueta because it is less bureaucratic than larger schools and provides important summer and research support that many schools do. Goizueta is an entrepreneurial environment that allows me to take on new initiatives and directions as needed to advance my research. There is also a very supportive alumni base which is always willing to speak in my classes and connect me to the decision makers in their organization who would be willing to support my research with data. 

Jegadeesh Narasimhan

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: I was drawn to Goizueta because of its ambitious vision to become a leader in the field. At the time I joined, the school was making strategic hires of top scholars, strengthening its focus on rigor and academic excellence. Its growing reputation was gaining well-deserved recognition, and the school’s proposed launch of the PhD program underscored a strong commitment to long-term academic leadership. These factors offered an exciting and intellectually stimulating environment—an ideal place not only to advance my research and teaching but also to contribute to Goizueta’s progress toward its ambitious vision.

Q: How did Goizueta support your journey to becoming part of the top 2% of scholars worldwide?

A: Goizueta’s strong culture of academic excellence provided an ideal environment for impactful research. I had the privilege of working alongside colleagues who are thought leaders in the profession, engaging in stimulating intellectual exchanges. The school’s regular academic seminars brought in leading scholars, fostering a dynamic and enriching research atmosphere. The launch of the PhD program further strengthened this environment, attracting bright students and promoting vibrant research activity.

Additionally, because my research focuses on rigorous empirical testing of theory, Goizueta’s generous financial support for data and research assistance was invaluable in enabling high-quality studies. Importantly, all of us—faculty and students—collectively contributed to enhancing Goizueta’s reputation as a place of excellence. At the same time, we all benefited from its growing visibility, which expanded opportunities for collaboration and increased our scholarly impact.

Wei Jiang

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: It was a privilege to join a finance department already with three Top 2% scholars worldwide, reflecting a strong research environment and an intellectually vibrant community. I valued the opportunity to work alongside faculty whose seminal research I had studied extensively as a PhD student and cited as foundational to my own work. Being part of a department where groundbreaking ideas are developed and advanced was both inspiring and motivating.

Jay Shanken

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: The school, led by Tom Robertson, was committed to taking the (already very good) finance group to the next level and Professor Jegadeesh and I were recruited at the same time. The commitment to faculty research was backed up by a low teaching load for chaired faculty and they made me an aggressive offer. I always enjoyed working with PhD students and the fact that the school would soon be starting a PhD program in finance was definitely a consideration as well. Although Rochester’s Simon School was very strong in those days, Atlanta seemed like it would be a better place to live at that point in my life. All of these factors together resulted in my decision to move to Emory and I enjoyed my many years there. 

Q: How did Goizueta support your journey to becoming part of the top 2% of scholars worldwide?

A: It was the excellent overall academic environment and colleagues. Specifics like the low teaching load mentioned above and the nice view from my office helped.

Jagdish Sheth

Q: What inspired you to choose Goizueta?

A: There were three specific reasons. First, I wanted to move to the East Coast from the West Coast and in a moderate climate. Second, I did not want commute and wanted to have housing nearby. Finally, Emory University provided opportunities to grow the marketing area with new and innovative programs and recruit young faculty. For example, we focused on Relationship Marketing and became among the top ten marketing departments in the country.

Q: How did Goizueta support your journey to becoming part of the top 2% of scholars worldwide?

A: When I joined the Goizueta in 1991, we were an “up and coming” business school. Both President James Laney and Dean John Robson were committed to invest in professional schools and their graduate programs including the MBA and the Executive MBA programs. They had already recruited senior faculty in Finance and Management and they wanted me to lead the Marketing discipline. Over the past 30 years, Goizueta gave me opportunities both at the Goizueta and the university level to be on several committees including the Personnel Committee and Emory’s inaugural Presidential Advisory Committee (PAC). My professional growth and recognition came from the silent language of Emory culture that states that you belong here. Finally, Atlanta was emerging as a global hub city and many large companies such as Coca-Cola, Delta, UPS and Home Depot were headquartered here. Atlanta is also the capital of Georgia. This allowed me to contribute to policy work especially for the telecommunications industry.

Goizueta faculty are eminent in their respective fields, advancing global knowledge and inspiring further research. Learn more about the research projects driven by our esteemed Goizueta faculty.

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Tarun Chordia is fascinated by asset pricing and the mechanisms that undergird it. Pricing, he says, is absolutely fundamental to how capitalist economies function.

However, the pricing of securities—be they bonds, stocks, commodities or other assets—can be as perplexing as it is critical. Not least because the basic paradigm of risk and return is frequently turned on its head.

“Most of us understand it like this: the higher the risk, the higher the expected return. But in financial markets, this concept is regularly violated,” says Chordia, R. Howard Dobbs Jr. Chair and Professor in Finance. “We often see prices deviating from our theoretical models. It’s an area I’ve been researching for many years, focusing on what causes these atypical patterns or anomalies in asset pricing. It’s a really complex area, and I’m drawn to it in part because of its very complexity and the intellectual conundrums that it throws out to researchers.”

Most recently, his interest has been focused on high-frequency trading (HFT) in particular and its impact on market efficiency—whether information is absorbed into prices effectively, quickly and accurately. And it’s an area that couldn’t be more relevant. In today’s markets, more than 50 percent of trading is already being powered by computers with the capacity to submit and execute orders in fractions of a second.

Chordia wants to know if there are welfare trade-offs in terms of costs and benefits involved in this kind of trading. Because the costs, he says, are huge.

“Fast trading is super expensive. It’s immensely costly to develop the algorithms, access real-time data feeds and to build the high-speed data networks that connect the trading centers in New York, London, Chicago and other cities. In my research I address a fundamental question: does this type of expensive trading improve welfare? Does it make things better for us? Because the money spent on networks is money that could just as easily be spent elsewhere—on education, schools or hospitals.”

Since the 2008 collapse, the financial world has come under unprecedented scrutiny from the public and the media, but with innovations like HFT reshaping the markets at vast speeds and making it harder to understand who really benefits and how, questions are again being raised about regulation—specifically, whether more regulation of financial markets, high frequency traders in particular, is needed. Academia has an “absolutely central role” here in making sense of all this, says Chordia.

“It’s true that speed confers an advantage to fast traders, and HFT is highly profitable, so understandably there have been a number of market participants who have called for regulating HFTs. However, the academic literature has shown that HFT improves market quality in terms of lower trading costs, lower volatility and improved price discovery.”
Chordia and his colleagues have played a key part in bringing this understanding to light.
“First off, we’ve debunked some of the myths about just how much profit is being made in the HFT environment and about traders making a killing at everyone else’s expense. The profits simply aren’t as high as people suspected.”

This, explains Chordia, is due to competition in the markets.

“Fast trading has become much more competitive in recent years. What we’ve found is that the very mechanisms of this competition squeeze profits, even as the speed of incorporation of information into prices has increased. Profits have declined. So, for now, our prescription is: let competition work its magic in high-frequency markets, as it has in other markets.”

Getting it right sits at the heart of Chordia’s understanding of the role of academia and academics. This, and providing unbiased rigor and understanding of the data, he adds.

“Over the years my colleagues and I have presented papers making real-world contributions that can be used by all kinds of practitioners, from hedge fund managers to regulators. One example is a paper I shared with the Securities and Exchange Commission back in the late ’90s when the tick size—the minimum price increment—was fixed at 6.25 cents. We argued that this tick size was too large, creating an incentive for dealers to make massive profits out of spreads (the gap between the bid and ask price) and hampering liquidity in the market. Shortly thereafter, the tick size declined to 1 cent. So academic research can have genuine real-world impact,” he says.

“In finance, as in other fields, someone has to act as the referee. And as academics, I believe we have a duty to rigor and honesty both in the work that we do—it takes five to seven years to produce a published paper—and in sharing the results of that work with key decision-makers,” he explains. “Our world is only set to become more complex with the explosion of big data, fintech, machine-learning and systemic risk. It’s my belief that academia has a crucial role in understanding the potential of these important new fields. Science has the power to change the way we think and to move our societies and our world forward. Quite simply, it is essential.” — Áine Doris

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Managing style and product design

Mobile phones look very different now than they did ten years ago. With access to all of the design patents available from the US Patent & Trademark Office (including ones from products in the telecommunications industry), Tian Heong Chan, assistant professor of information systems & operations management, and coauthors Jürgen Mihm (INSEAD) and Manuel E. Sosa (INSEAD) show how one can cluster them according to their visual similarities. The process results in an evolutionary timeline charting the successive styles of mobile phones from “clamshell” to “touchscreen slate” and everything in between. This approach creates a novel data platform from which researchers can start testing hypotheses about how product forms evolve. With the data, the authors show that there is increasing turbulence (or unpredictability in the change in product forms) across all product categories. In other words, it is much harder now than in the past to predict what the next hot style will be based on current trends. This is especially salient in non-tech categories, such as furniture and fashion. The authors conclude that companies with the capability to manage this increasing uncertainty will have a significant competitive advantage in the future. Management Science (2017)

Relational signaling and gift giving

Prior research indicates that gift givers are motivated by competing goals. Often, they will simply select an item of the recipient’s choosing. However, gift givers are also likely to select an item on their own to help show knowledge of the recipient and further define and maintain a personal connection. Morgan Ward, assistant professor of marketing, and coauthor Susan Broniarczyk (U Texas) take the research a step further by analyzing how the closeness of a relationship further impacts the gift-giving decision when a gift registry is readily available. The duo employed five separate studies with human subjects presented with various gift-giving scenarios. The paper notes, “We find that despite their stated primary intention to please recipients, close (vs. distant) givers ultimately are more likely to ignore recipients’ explicit registry preferences in favor of freely chosen gifts.” Ward and Broniarczyk conclude that divergence from the registry was not necessarily about finding a better gift. Instead, it occurred only when givers specifically received attribution for their selection. The closeness of the personal connection resulted in a “perceptual distortion of the gift options in favor of relational-signaling gifts.” Distant givers were much more likely to pick an item from the registry, selecting gifts closely aligned with recipients’ preferences. Journal of Marketing Research (2016)

The link between corporate alliances and returns

Strategic alliances are agreements between two or more firms to pursue a set of agreed upon objectives while remaining independent organizations. Alliances are formed for a number of reasons, including licensing, marketing or distribution, development or research, technology transfer or systems integration, or some combination of the above. Tarun Chordia, R. Howard Dobbs professor of finance, and coauthors Jie Cao (Chinese U of Hong Kong) and Chen Lin (U Hong Kong) find evidence of return predictability across alliance partners. If the alliance partner or partners have high (or low) returns this month, then the firm has high (or low) returns over the next two months. Using a sample of alliances over the period 1985 to 2012, the authors find that a long-short portfolio sorted on lagged one-month returns of strategic alliance partners provides a return of over 85 basis points per month. This long-short portfolio return is robust to a number of specifications, including different adjustments for risk, controlling for different proxies for cross-autocorrelations, and excluding partnerships with customer-supplier relationships, as well as controls for industry returns. They theorize, “If investors are fully aware of the impact of strategic alliances on returns and pay attention to the firm-partner links, then the stock price of a firm should quickly adjust to price changes of its partners’ stocks.” The evidence suggests that investor inattention may be the source of a firm’s underreaction to its partners’ returns. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (2016)

Understanding the influence of mobile promotions

Michelle Andrews, assistant professor of marketing, and coauthors Jody Goehring (RetailMeNot), Sam Hui (U Houston), Joseph Pancras (U Conn), and Lance Thornswood (JCPenney) cull together divergent streams of research to provide a framework to better understand how mobile promotions influence the in-store shopping behavior of consumers. Online promotions allow merchants to reach shoppers easier and faster, enabling traditional stores to text out online discounts or highlight specific products. Merchants can also use geolocation on mobile phones to text and target shoppers once inside of their store to feature merchandise or advertise a special offer. The authors identify a number of key areas for additional research to “enable long-term, value enhancing relationships between consumers and marketers.” For instance, they note the need for a better understanding of the role of privacy concerns on personal data collection via mobile devices. Andrews and coauthors also find that a deeper investigation of such things as return on investment, loyalty programs, upselling, proximity to purchase, and global promotions are required to get a true sense of the effectiveness of mobile promotions. Journal of Interactive Marketing (2016)

Significance of pricing and product-line strategies

In new research, Ramnath Chellappa, associate professor of information systems & operations management, and coauthor Amit Mehra (U Texas) investigate the business practice of IT “versioning,” whereby a company creates different models of a product in order to charge varying prices for each one. Much research takes into account economies of scale and a company’s marginal costs—the price of making an additional unit of a product. However, Chellappa and Mehra note that companies also need to consider consumer usage costs when they decide to create various versions of the same IT product. But for IT products and services, the “costs” are not monetary. The pair note the “time commitment and physical effort” to use IT products or services. They use the example of mobile devices: “One cannot enjoy these information goods without them consuming resources such as memory and processing power.” They determine that “this consumption-related disutility” is critical to feature bundling and consumer segmentation. The researchers create a model to test the consumer cost impact, using a “digital goods firm with a unique production cost structure and agents—consumers who face resource constraints in consuming these goods.” Given the usage costs, they determine that individuals may not necessarily prefer products with more features to lower-quality items. The pair concludes “marginal cost and consumers’ usage costs have the same impact on versioning strategy.” Management Science (2017)

The impact of behavioral bias on decision-making

For business leaders, the ability to make critical decisions in a dynamic work and industry environment is essential to the success of an organization. However, Diwas KC, associate professor of information systems & operations management, and coauthors Francesca Gino (Harvard U) and Bradley R. Staats (UNC) note that behavioral traits can sometimes impact the ability to weigh new information and make a logical decision, even in the face of negative news. KC, Gino, and Staats analyze 147,000 choices made by cardiologists during a six-year period when they were presented with negative news from the FDA about drug-eluting stents used in angioplasty. The experienced cardiologists were more likely to continue using the questionable stents than their less-experienced peers, even after being informed of the problem. The role of influence also played a factor in the decision-making. They add, “Given that those who feel they are expert are less likely to react to negative news, those around them show the same tendency, thus making worse decisions than those in groups with less perceived expertise.” The seasoned cardiologists were better able to “generate counterexamples to the negative news and thus be susceptible to confirmation bias.” The authors note managers should be aware that more experience and the perception of expertise may bias decision-making. Management Science (2017)

The process behind auditor judgement

Auditors are required to use considerable judgment in their job, assessing information from a number of sources to create financial reports, critique accounting estimates, and assess a company’s internal controls over financial reporting. But an auditor’s decision-making process is not well understood. In their paper, Kathryn Kadous, professor of accounting, and coauthors Emily E. Griffith (U Wisconsin) and Donald Young 13PhD (Goizueta, Indiana U) provide a framework for researchers to better evaluate the judgment of auditors and, in turn, improve audit quality. Prior research in this area presumes that “decision makers typically engage deliberate, analytical processes to solve problems (i.e., pursue goals) that they have specifically chosen, that they limit their decision inputs to items they view as relevant, and that they have access to the details of their own cognitive processing.” The trio notes that “nonconscious goals” and “intuitive processes” are also influential in the decision-making process and in the factors driving these processes. Kadous, Griffith, and Young conclude that their framework indicates researchers approach their investigation by taking into account “conscious and nonconscious goals” and “decision makers with conflicting incentives, as well as differing capabilities.” Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory (2016)

The role of the economy on individualism

Past work has shown that as countries become wealthier, people often become more individualistic. In new research, Emily Bianchi, assistant professor of organization & management, takes the investigation a step further and finds that even subtle fluctuations in the economy are associated with changes in individualism. She finds that during good economic times, Americans are more likely to seek out ways to signal their uniqueness and individuality. For instance, during boom times, Americans tend to give their children more uncommon names and are more likely to prize autonomy and independence in child-rearing. They are also more likely to favor music featuring self-oriented lyrics. Conversely, during recessions, Americans tend to focus more on fitting in and tend to give their children more common names, listen to more relationally oriented music, and encourage their children to get along with others. Additionally, Bianchi discovered that recessions engender uncertainty, which, in turn, decreases individualism and encourages interdependence. The study results indicated that the “link between wealth and individualism is driven not only by differences in how people live, work, and learn but also by their sense of the predictability, orderliness, and certainty of the surrounding environment.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2016)

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Supply network structure and systemic risk

Demand uncertainty can present a serious challenge for any business, especially when it comes to managerial decisions on inventory. But when an economic downturn happens, the challenge becomes systemic. According to research by Nikolay Osadchiy, assistant professor of information systems & operations management, and coauthors Vishal Gaur (Cornell U) and Sridhar Seshadri (Indian School of Business), systemic risk is more greatly felt depending on where a company sits in the supply chain. The trio discovered that while an economic downturn presented a serious hurdle for retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers alike, manufacturers were more prone to systemic risk given their placement upstream in the supply chain. Manufacturers had “a more dispersed customer base,” which the authors noted was more closely “associated with higher systematic risk.” Manufacturers also experienced greater systemic risk due to the effect of aggregation of orders over time. They wrote, “A market shock in one period may affect sales over several periods due to lead times and time lags in managerial decision making.” Management Science (2015)

Repo transactions and bank risk

In a research study from Edward Owens, assistant professor of accounting, and Joanna Shuang Wu (U of Rochester), the authors examine bank reporting of short-term borrowings in the repo market. Repo borrowings, otherwise known as sale and repurchase agreements, are essentially collateralized loans known for their short-term nature. The authors note that repo borrowings are typically associated with risky trading behavior, especially due to their opaque nature and role in the recent financial crisis. Owens and Wu found that current financial reporting requirements for banks might not adequately capture a full accounting of the risks associated with a bank’s repo liabilities. Specifically, end-of-quarter balance sheets may not correctly show the risk levels from repo borrowings exhibited throughout the quarter. The researchers analyzed quarter-end deviations in bank repo borrowings to better study the risk they represent. The primary research sample for the study was pulled from “13,548 bank-quarter observations across 573 unique publicly traded bank holding companies.” The authors attribute some of the deviation to what is termed “window dressing,” a step banks might take “to temporarily reduce the reported level of repo borrowings around quarter-end reporting dates.” Expected fluctuations in bank depositor and borrower activity around the end of the quarter did factor into the deviation as well. Review of Accounting Studies (2015)

Why negotiations fail

For business leaders engaged in negotiations, it’s essential to constantly analyze and revisit their negotiation strategy to avoid many of the errors typically made in the process. In the Handbook of Conflict Management Research, Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization & management, and coauthors Brian Lucas (U of Chicago) and Leigh Thompson (Northwestern U) offer a window into negotiation methods and some of the mistakes negotiators make along the way. The trio discovered and defined three specific errors that occur in negotiations, including what they label as domain myopia, the self-preoccupation effect, and the script hijack effect. Domain myopia is described as the “tendency for negotiators to fail to see meaningful parallels across negotiation situations that might appear different on the surface, but have meaningful underlying similarities.” Hall and her coauthors also describe the self-preoccupation effect, where negotiators let their emotions win the day and subsequently lose perspective. The third scenario that they define is the script hijack effect, which they describe as “the tendency for negotiators to feel compelled to follow a script, often based on stereotypes.” According to the authors, the problems they document apply across a variety of industries. Handbook of Conflict Management Research (2014)

Increased trading activity and declining returns

Improved trading technologies are changing the markets, facilitating the boom in algorithmic trading and the growth of hedge funds. Liquidity and trading volume continue to hit record levels. In a research study, Tarun Chordia, R. Howard Dobbs Professor of Finance, and coauthors Avanidhar Subrahmanyam (UCLA) and Tong Qing (Singapore Management U) analyzed whether or not increased liquidity and the trading activity of hedge funds has had an impact on financial market anomalies. Anomalies are return patterns that are inconsistent with the basic risk-return paradigm of finance. Increased arbitrage is a possible factor in attenuating the impact of anomalies, including momentum, reversals, accruals, etc. To find the link, Chordia and his coauthors studied proxies for arbitrage trading, including “the impact of the decline in the tick size due to decimalization and the impact of hedge fund assets under management, short interest, and share turnover.” The researchers referenced a wide sampling of equity market anomalies for more than three decades to show that increased liquidity and hedge fund trading activity did ultimately result in the decrease of  the “economic and statistical significance of these anomalies.” Journal of Accounting & Economics (2014)

Investor conferences and analyst advantage

In a research paper, T. Clifton Green, associate professor of finance and doctoral area coordinator, and coauthors Russell Jame 10PhD (U of Kentucky), Stanimir Markov (Southern Methodist U), and Musa Subasi (U of Maryland) focused their investigation on broker-hosted investor conferences to determine their impact on investor research. They studied 68,194 presentations by 4,394 companies at 2,749 investor conferences led by 107 brokerages for the period January 2004 to December 2010. According to the data, Green and his coauthors concluded that brokerage research analysts were more likely to provide better research for firms that participated at their conferences. Conference-hosting brokers were more likely to provide “more informative stock recommendations and more accurate earnings forecasts” than non-hosts. They discovered that firms participating in “broker-hosted investor conferences have a closer relation with the hosting analyst than with non-hosts, resulting in more private interactions (e.g., more company visits and meetings with management) and a continual flow of value-relevant information throughout the sample period.” Journal of Financial Economics (2014)

Integrating knowledge in outsourced software development

Despite the prevalence of using outside vendors to handle a company’s software development, little is known about the best way to effectively share the knowledge critical to a project’s success among the client and vendor software team members. In research from Anandhi Bharadwaj, professor of information systems & operations management (ISOM) and Goizueta Term Chair in ISOM, and coauthor Nikhil Mehta (U of Northern Iowa), the duo determined that knowledge integration on outsourced projects is further complicated by the uncertainty often inherent in software development. Bharadwaj and Mehta analyzed 139 vendor development teams taken from sixteen Indian software companies for their research. The authors found that the manner in which software teams share and protect the information resources they have impacts the knowledge integration ability of the team. Since software teams operate under conditions of resource scarcity and dependence, team leaders need to ensure that their software development teams have not only the requisite technical skills but also the ability to import needed skills and knowledge from external sources and share it effectively within the team.  An important implication of Bharadwaj and Mehta’s research is that organizations should develop holistic performance appraisal policies that assess software developers for both intergroup and within-group activities. Journal of Management Information Systems (2015)

Identity and the digital world

According to research from Jagdish Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, and Michael Solomon (UNC), the idea of identity is evolving, impacted by the growing influence of the digital world. The authors’ groundbreaking study builds on a seminal paper from Russell Belk, written in 1988, which identified the role that possessions play in an individual’s life and how external elements are critical to how people self-identify. The duo uses Belk’s findings on consumer behavior, taking it a step further by applying his concepts to current day, with the online world in mind. Sheth and Solomon found that traditional boundaries between an individual’s offline and online life are increasingly blurred, resulting in what they term the “digital extended self.” People are creating a new sense of identity, courtesy of the information posted, the persona created, and the relationships developed online. They write, “A social footprint is the mark a consumer leaves after she occupies a specific digital space (e.g., today’s Facebook posts), while her lifestream is the ongoing record of her digital life across platforms (e.g., registrations in virtual worlds, tweets, blog posts).” Not surprisingly, the notion of just what defines a consumer is changing. User-generated content and online consumer reviews have altered the nature of relationships between the producer and consumer. The authors’ findings have critical implications for marketers looking to get a better understanding of consumer behavior. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice (2014)

Synergies between product placements and TV ads

As television watchers get inundated with commercials, the temptation to flip the channel grows. In the hopes of better connecting with consumers, advertisers are increasing their efforts to get product placements directly into TV shows. In a research study, David Schweidel, Goizueta Term Chair, Caldwell Research Fellow, and associate professor of marketing, and coauthors Natasha Zhang Foutz (U of Virginia) and Robin J. Tanner (U of Wisconsin) took a look at how the synergy between product placements and traditional commercials can keep viewers from flipping past the ad. The trio found that by simply putting a product in a television show and then immediately following it up with a commercial featuring the same product, viewers were more likely to stay tuned to the commercial. “The audience loss during the ad decreases by 5%,” they note. The effect was intensified when differing products from the same brand were shown in a program and then in a commercial immediately following the TV show. They write, “This indicates a positive synergy between the two activities that can reduce audience decline by more than 10%.” When products of different brands were featured in a television program and in a subsequent commercial, audience loss increased. Marketing Science (2014)

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