“The Goizueta faculty comprises an outstanding community of accomplished scholars, educators, and leaders,” says Wei Jiang, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance, “They continually push the boundaries of knowledge and best practices.”

Join us in celebrating these faculty members for their recent honors and accolades:

Faculty Books

Gareth James, John H. Harland Dean and professor of information systems and operations Management

An Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in Python, Springer, July 2023

Jagdish Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Chaired Professor of Marketing

Customer Centric Support Services In The Digital Age: The Next Frontier Of Competitive Advantage, Palgrave Macmillan, Decemeber 2023

Wesley Longhofer, Goizueta Foundation Term Associate Professor of Organization & Management and executive academic director of the Business & Society Institute

Social Theory Re-Wired (3rd edition), Routledge, June 2023

Research and Teaching Awards

Sandy Jap, Sarah Beth Brown Professor of Marketing, is a fellow for the American Marketing Association (AMA) Fellow as of 2023. The AMA gives this distinction to members who have who have made significant contributions to the research, theory, and practice of marketing, and/or to the service and activities of the AMA over a prolonged period of time.

Jap is also the 2023 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management James M. Comer Award (2023) runner up for best contribution to Selling and Sales Management Theory, received for The Big Open Spaces in Sales Negotiation Research, with Stefanie L. Boyer.

Sergio Garate, assistant professor in the practice of finance and director of the Goizueta Real Estate Initiative, won the Jonathan Welch Award for best case study manuscript at the 2023 North American Case Research Association meeting.           

Panagiotis Adamopoulos, assistant professor of information system and operations management, won the 2023 Goizueta Business School Alumni Award for Excellence in Research. Adamopoulos also won the 2023 Emory University Goizueta Business School Research Grant.

Prasanna Parasurama, assistant professor of information system and operations management, was the 2023 runner up for the Best Responsible Research Award from the Academy of Management OMT.

Melissa Williams, associate professor of organization and management, won the 2023 Goizueta Business School Holland Award for Excellence in Research, the school’s research award at the associate professor level.

Allison Burdette, professor in the practice of business law, was awarded Poets and Quants Best Undergraduate Business School Professors Award.

Wei Jiang, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance, was elected to become the Vice President of American Finance Association (AFA), the premier association for academic finance. She will become President of AFA in 2026.

Community Service

Jesse Bockstedt, senior associate dean for graduate programs and professor of information systems and operations management, joined the board of directors for Georgia Organics Board of Directors in February 2023. He advises the CEO of the nonprofit Georgia Organics and serves on the Finance and Operations committee.

Bockstedt also joined the board of directors for Atlanta Technology Angels in January 2023. In this role, he leads and manages Atlanta Technology Angels with specific committee responsibilities for member education.

Jeffrey Byrne, assistant professor in the practice of accounting and director of master of professional accounting, joined the Board of Advisors for BidBee, LLC in April 2023.               

Peter Roberts, professor of organization and management and academic director of Specialty Coffee Programs in the Business & Society Institute, co-Founded the Research Group for Sustainable and Equitable Specialty Coffee Markets in March 2023. The group is a network of 30+ researchers from more than 25 universities and other organizations.

Tonya Smalls, assistant professor in the practice of accounting has joined the advisory board of Make-A-Wish Georgia as of May 2023.

Andrea Dittmann, Assistant Professor of Organization & Management, was named Co-Director of Research of New Blue in fall of 2023. In this role, she will be leading and cultivating collaborations between researchers and law enforcement fellows aimed at organizational reform and policy change to improve community trust.

Goizueta Business School is proud to present the accomplishments of these and other faculty members within our institution. To learn more about the teaching, specialized research, and core interests of each faculty member, check out our faculty profiles and their related publications. 

The post Goizueta Faculty Shine Bright with Latest Achievements appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Nestor is a police officer in North Carolina. Unlike many in her field, who recite interview-ready responses about wanting to be a police officer since childhood, Nestor admits that her arrival to the field of law enforcement was a serendipitous one. 

Told by teachers to start rehearsing the line “do you want fries with that?” while in high school, Nestor went to college to prove them wrong—and even graduated with a 3.9 GPA solely to prove those same people wrong—but she had absolutely no idea what to do next. When a local police department offered to put her through the police academy, her first thought was, “absolutely not.” 

“And here I am,” says Nestor, 12 years into her career, working in Special Victims Investigations as an Internet Crimes Against Children detective. 

A Calling to Serve Community 

Though she’d initially joined on a whim, Nestor stuck around and endured many growing pains, tasting some of the problematic elements of police culture firsthand. As a woman, there was particular pressure to prove herself; she resisted calling for back-up on dangerous calls for fear of being regarded as weak, and tried out for and joined the SWAT team to demonstrate her mettle.  

It took time to realize I didn’t need to make the most arrests or get the most drugs and guns to be a good cop. What was important was recognizing that I was uniquely positioned and given opportunities every single shift to make a difference in people’s lives—that is what I wanted to focus on.

Britt Nestor

Nestor found she took great pleasure in interacting with different kinds of people all day. She’s deeply fond of her community, where she is also a youth basketball coach. One of her greatest joys is being on call or working an event and hearing someone hail her from the crowd by yelling, “hey, coach!” When she landed in the Juvenile Investigations Unit, Nestor truly felt she’d found her calling. 

Still, what she’d witnessed in her profession and in the news weighed on her. And she’s not alone; while there is continued debate on the urgency and extent of changes needed, 89% percent of people are in favor of police reform, according to a CBS/YouGov poll.  

A few weeks after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Nestor’s colleague Andy Saunders called her and told her they had to do something. It felt like the tipping point.  

“I knew he was right. I needed to stop wishing and hoping police would do better and start making it happen.”  

That conversation was the spark that grew into New Blue. Founded in 2020, New Blue strives to reform the U.S. Criminal Justice system by uniting reform-minded police officers and community allies. The organization focuses on incubating crowd-sourced solutions from officers themselves, encouraging those in the field to speak up about what they think could improve relations between officers and the communities they serve.    

“Over the years I’ve had so many ideas—often addressing problems brought to light by community members—that could have made us better. But my voice was lost. I didn’t have much support from the police force standing behind me. This is where New Blue makes the difference; it’s the network of fellows, alumni, partners, mentors, and instructors I’d needed in the past.” 

Nestor and Saunders had valuable pieces of the puzzle as experienced law enforcement professionals, yet they knew they needed additional tools. What are the ethical guidelines around experimenting with new policing tactics? What does success look like, and how could they measure it? 

The Research Lens 

Over 400 miles away, another spark found kindling; like Nestor, Assistant Professor of Organization & Management Andrea Dittmann’s passion for making the world a better place is palpable. Also, like Nestor, it was an avid conversation with a colleague—Kyle Dobson—that helped bring a profound interest in police reform into focus.  

Dittmann, whose academic career began in psychology and statistics, came to this field by way of a burgeoning interest in the need for research-informed policy. Much of her research explores the ways in which socioeconomic disparities play out in the work environment, and—more broadly—how discrepancies of power shape dynamics in organizations of all kinds.  

When people imagine research in the business sector, law enforcement is unlikely to crop up in their mind. Indeed, Dittmann cites the fields of criminal justice and social work as being the traditional patrons of police research, both of which are more likely to examine the police force from the top down. 

Dittmann, however, is a micro-oriented researcher, which means she assesses organizations from the bottom up; she examines the small, lesser-studied everyday habits that come to represent an organization’s values.  

“We have a social psychology bent; we tend to focus on individual processes, or interpersonal interactions,” says Dittmann. She regards her work and that of her colleagues as a complementary perspective to help build upon the literature already available. Where Dittmann has eyes on the infantry level experience of the battleground, other researchers are observing from a bird’s eye view. Together, these angles can help complete the picture. 

And while the “office” of a police officer may look very different from what most of us see every day, the police force is—at the end of the day—an organization: “Like all organizations, they have a unique culture and specific goals or tasks that their employees need to engage in on a day-to-day basis to be effective at their jobs,” says Dittmann. 

Theory Meets Practice  

What Dittmann and Dobson needed next was a police department willing to work with them, a feat easier said than done.  

Enter Britt Nestor and New Blue.  

Kyle and I could instantly tell we had met people with the same goals and approach to reforming policing from within.

Andrea Dittmann

Dittmann was not surprised by the time it took to get permission to work with active officers.  

“Initially, many officers were distrustful of researchers. Often what they’re seeing in the news are researchers coming in, telling them all the problems that they have, and leaving. We had to reassure them that we weren’t going to leave them high and dry. If we find a problem, we’re going to tell you about it, and we’ll work on building a solution with you. And of course, we don’t assume that we have all the answers, which is why we emphasize developing research ideas through embedding ourselves in police organizations through ride-alongs and interviews.” 

After observing the same officers over years, they’re able to build rapport in ways that permit open conversations. Dittmann and Dobson now have research running in many pockets across the country, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and parts of Texas. 

The Rise of Community-Oriented Policing  

For many police departments across the nation, there is a strong push to build closer and better relationships with the communities they serve. This often translates to police officers being encouraged to engage with citizens informally and outside the context of enforcing the law. If police spent more time chatting with people at a public park or at a café, they’d have a better chance to build rapport and foster a collective sense of community caretaking—or so the thinking goes. Such work is often assigned to a particular unit within the police force. This is the fundamental principle behind community-oriented policing: a cop is part of the community, not outside or above it. 

This approach is not without controversy, as many would argue that the public is better served by police officers interacting with citizens less, not more. In light of the many high-profile instances of police brutality leaving names like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd echoing in the public’s ears, their reticence to support increased police-to-citizen interaction is understandable. 

“Sometimes when I discuss this research, people say, ‘I just don’t think that officers should approach community members at all, because that’s how things escalate.’ Kyle and I acknowledge that’s a very important debate and has its merits.” As micro-oriented researchers, however, Dittmann and Dobson forgo advocating for or dismissing broad policy. They begin with the environment handed to them and work backward.  

“The present and immediate reality is that there are officers on the street, and they’re having these interactions every day. So what can we do now to make those interactions go more smoothly? What constitutes a positive interaction with a police officer, and what does it look like in the field?” 

Good Intentions Gone Awry 

To find out, they pulled data through a variety of experiments, including live interactions, video studies and online experiments, relying heavily on observation of such police-to-citizen interactions. 

 What we wanted to do is observe the heterogeneity of police interactions and see if there’s anything that officers are already doing that seems to be working out in the field, and if we can ‘bottle that up’ and turn that into a scalable finding.

Andrea Dittmann

Dittmann and her colleagues quickly discovered a significant discrepancy between some police officers’ perceived outcome of their interactions with citizens and what those citizens reported to researchers post-interaction. 

“An officer would come back to us and they’d say it went great. Like, ‘I did what I was supposed to do, I made that really positive connection.’ And then we’d go to the community members, and we’d hear a very different story: ‘Why the heck did that officer just come up to me, I’m just trying to have a picnic in the park with my family, did I do something wrong?’” Community members reported feeling confused, harassed, or—at the worst end of the spectrum—threatened.  

The vast majority—around 75% of citizens—reported being anxious from the very beginning of the interaction. It’s not hard to imagine how an officer approaching you apropos of nothing may stir anxious thoughts: have I done something wrong? Is there trouble in the area? The situation put the cognitive burden on the citizen to figure out why they were being approached. 

The Transformational Potential of the “Transparency Statement” 

And yet, they also observed officers (“super star” police officers, as Dittmann refers to them) who seemed to be especially gifted at cultivating better responses from community members. 

What made the difference? 

“They would explain themselves right from the start and say something like, ‘Hey, I’m officer so-and-so. The reason I’m out here today is because I’m part of this new community policing unit. We’re trying to get to know the community and to better understand the issues that you’re facing.’ And that was the lightbulb moment for me and Kyle: the difference here is that some of these officers are explaining themselves very clearly, making their benevolent intention for the interaction known right from the start of the conversation.” 

Dittmann and her colleagues have coined this phenomenon the “transparency statement.” Using a tool called the Linguistic Inquiry & Word Count software and natural language processing tools, the research team was able to analyze transcripts of the conversations and tease out subconscious cues about the civilians’ emotional state, in addition to collecting surveys from them after the encounter. Some results jumped out quickly, like the fact that those people whose conversation with an officer began with a transparency statement had significantly longer conversations with them. 

The team also employed ambulatory physiological sensors, or sensors worn on the wrist that measure skin conductivity and, by proxy, sympathetic nervous system arousal. From this data, a pattern quickly emerged: citizens’ skin conductance levels piqued early after a transparency statement (while this can be a sign of stress, in this context researchers determined it to reflect “active engagement” in the conversation) and then recovered to baseline levels faster than in the control group, a pattern indicative of positive social interaction. 

Timing, too, is of the essence: according to the study, “many patrol officers typically made transparency statements only after trust had been compromised.” Stated simply, the interest police officers showed in them was “perceived as harassment” if context wasn’t provided first. 

Overall, the effect was profound: citizens who were greeted with the transparency statement were “less than half as likely to report threatened emotions.” In fact, according to the study, “twice as many community members reported feeling inspired by the end of the interaction.”  

What’s more, they found that civilians of color and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds —who may reasonably be expected to have a lower baseline level of trust of law enforcement—“may profit more from greater transparency.” 

Talk, it turns out, is not so cheap after all.  

Corporate Offices, Clinics, and Classrooms 

The implications of this research may also extend beyond the particulars of the police force. The sticky dynamics that form between power discrepancies are replicated in many environments: the classroom, between teachers and students; the office, between managers and employees; even the clinic, between medical doctors and patients. In any of these cases, a person with authority—perceived or enforceable—may try to build relationships and ask well-meaning questions that make people anxious if misunderstood. Is my boss checking in on me because she’s disappointed in my performance? Is the doctor being nice because they’re preparing me for bad news? 

“We believe that, with calibration to the specific dynamics of different work environments, transparency statements could have the potential to ease tense conversations across power disparities in contexts beyond policing,” says Dittmann.

More Research, Action, and Optimism 

What could this mean for policing down the road? 

Imagine a future where most of the community has a positive relationship with law enforcement and there is mutual trust.  

I often heard from family and friends that they’d trust the police more ‘if they were all like you.’  I can hear myself saying, ‘There are lots of police just like me!’ and I truly believe that. I believe that so many officers love people and want to serve their communities—and I believe a lot of them struggle with the same things I do. They want to see our profession do better!

Britt Nestor

“When I get a new case and I meet the survivor, and they’re old enough to talk with me, I always explain to them, ‘I work for you. How cool is that?’ And I truly believe this: I work for these kids and their families.” 

The implications run deep; a citizen may be more likely to reach out to police officers about issues in their community before they become larger problems. An officer who is not on edge may be less likely to react with force. 

Dittmann is quick to acknowledge that while the results of the transparency statement are very promising, they are just one piece of a very large story with a long and loaded history. Too many communities are under supported and overpoliced; it would be denying the gravity and complexity of the issue to suggest that there is any silver bullet solution, especially one so simple. More must be done to prevent the dynamics that lead to police violence to begin with. 

“There’s a common narrative in the media these days that it’s too late, there’s nothing that officers can do,” says Dittmann. Yet Dittmann places value on continued research, action and optimism. When a simple act on the intervention side of affairs has such profound implications, and is not expensive or difficult to implement, one can’t help but see potential.   

“Our next step now is to develop training on transparency statements, potentially for entire agencies,” says Dittmann. “If all the officers in the agency are interacting with transparency statements, then we see this bottom-up approach, with strong potential to scale. If every interaction you have with an officer in your community starts out with that transparency statement, and then goes smoothly, now we’re kind of getting to a place where we can hopefully talk about better relations, more trust in the community, at a higher, more holistic, level.” 

While the road ahead is long and uncertain, Dittmann’s optimism is boosted by one aspect of her findings: those community members who reported feeling inspired after speaking with police officers who made their benevolent intentions clear. 

That was really powerful for me and Kyle. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s worth trying to move the needle, even just a little bit.

Andrea Dittmann

Goizueta faculty apply their expertise and knowledge to solving problems that society—and the world—face. Learn more about faculty research at Goizueta.

The post Small Changes Can Save Lives: How a Police Officer’s First Words Can Transform Communities  appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

What’s a human life worth? In the days and weeks since October 7, it has often felt like very little. But amid all the death and destruction, both sides have been forced to answer this question more precisely. The taking of Israeli hostages by Hamas and the swelling of Israeli jails with Palestinians has put prisoner swaps atop the global agenda—meaning both sides must essentially “price” the value of their group members’ lives.

Early into this latest conflagration, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said the group would be willing to release all Israeli captives (approximately 240, including both soldiers and civilians) in exchange for the release of every Palestinian in Israeli custody (estimates range as high as 10,000 prisoners). While thus far rejecting this so-called “all-for-all” formula, Israel has also stated its desire to get as many of their people back as they can, with Israeli Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari stating, “We insist on getting the maximum possible. It’s been that way every day and also today.”

On November 21st, both sides ultimately settled, at least for now, on a more limited prisoner exchange. Amid a temporary week-long ceasefire, Israel released 240 Palestinian women and children in exchange for 81 Israeli women and children (Hamas separately released 23 Thai nationals and one Filipino). Hamas clarified that this 3:1 ratio would only apply to civilian women and children, and that soldiers would ‘cost’ substantially more. In 2011, Hamas and Israel agreed to a prisoner swap in which 1,027 Palestinian and Arab-Israeli prisoners were exchanged for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

The ratio of these exchanges may appear to be strategically favorable to the Palestinian side. And there is an obvious logic to groups trying to secure the release of as many of their prisoners as possible. But getting more of your group’s people back than you give up also means implicitly accepting that each one of the other group’s lives is “worth” more than one of yours. And this subtle signal, our research suggests, can involve significant hidden costs for those who “get more for less.”

Across a series of experiments we examined how people perceive lopsided prisoner exchanges. Our studies consisted of lopsided swaps both in the context of real-world conflicts (e.g., U.S.-Iran exchanges) and between fictional groups about which perceivers did not have pre-existing attitudes. On the one hand, pushing to get more of your people back for fewer of theirs could convey your commitment to the value and well-being of your group’s members. But on the other hand, agreeing to the “better” end of a lopsided trade could make others think you accept the diminished worth of each of your people’s lives relative to your adversaries’.

In one prototypical study, U.S. perceivers read one of two versions of a purportedly real news article about a prisoner exchange that was being considered by the U.S. and Iran. The articles were identical, except for the ratio of prisoners to be exchanged. In one version, the article stated that the swap would be equal: one U.S. prisoner for one Iranian prisoner. In the other version, the ratio was instead one U.S. prisoner in exchange for 20 Iranian prisoners. When perceivers were exposed to this lopsided swap agreement, they believed that Iran had lower self-worth than when the ratio was equal, and, as a consequence, they afforded the Iranian outgroup less respect.

Indeed, across our studies, we found that when groups sought to get “better” deals by pushing to get back more of their prisoners for the release of just one of the other sides’, people perceived that these groups had lower (vs. higher) self-worth. At least in the context of our studies, perceivers appeared to be more swayed by the uneven ratio of the trade than by the effort to secure the return of more of one’s prisoners. The same was true when groups instead drove down the ‘price’ paid to return one of their captives: extracting strategic value took a toll on the perceived value of the group’s lives.

Our studies also showed that being seen to have low self-worth can spark a chain of negative consequences: Perceivers who, as a result of a lopsided trade, came to believe that the group who got more back had lower self-worth also themselves came to respect that group less and say it was more acceptable to treat that group aggressively. Of note, these effects occurred whether perceivers themselves belonged to one of the groups they read about or belonged to a disinterested third party.

Blatant forms of dehumanization have been on stark display in recent weeks, with even high-ranking Israeli officials variously referring to Palestinians using terms like “savages”, “animals,” and “children of darkness.” And prior research documents how blatant dehumanization, including in the Israeli-Palestinian context, can contribute to intergroup aggression. But our results highlight another—more subtle—pathway by which we can come to see some groups’ lives as less worthy than others: inadvertent signals they send about their own self-worth. And even subtly overlooking the value of group lives matters, potentially allowing us to more easily tolerate the so-called “collateral damage” that war frequently involves.

When groups—even those relatively lacking in power, like the Palestinians—agree to trade more of their people for fewer of the other side’s, it can make outsiders—even those halfway around the world—perceive that they think less of themselves and come to think less of them, too. In a now-viral clip, Kay Burney, a Sky News presenter, explicitly identified the logic underlying our results: she asked an Israeli spokesperson whether agreeing to the 3:1 ratio implied that Israel thought Palestinian lives were worth less than Israeli lives. Indeed, it’s possible that exposure to the 3:1 swaps may have compounded Americans’ implicit tendency to conceive of Arabs and Muslims as less than fully human.

But there may be ways to circumvent this perception by intentionally affirming one’s equal worth even when engaging in numerically lopsided trades. Although Hamas currently holds many fewer Israelis than Israel does Palestinians, the “all for all” framing highlights one possible way to affirm equal worth: Framing a lopsided swap as “all for all” centers more attention on group equality—each side similarly giving up “all” those they hold—rather than on the underlying lopsided ratio.

Of note, it’s not just prisoner exchanges that send signals about how much a group values its own. Our work also revealed that undertaking costly rescue efforts—even numerically irrational ones—can signal high self-worth. In one study, participants who read about a group that chose to undertake a rescue effort to save a single hostage that had a 40% chance of killing a group of 5 rescuers (i.e., an expected value of 2 lives lost while saving 1) came to see that group as having higher self-worth than a group that decided against the risky mission (a choice that would ultimately save a greater number of lives).

It’s clear that perceivers do not make judgments about how groups value their lives—and how much they should value the lives of those groups in turn—solely based on prisoner swaps or rescue missions. And this is particularly true in a context as polarizing as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How Hamas and Israel conduct themselves in waging their conflict is likely to have a much larger effect. Still, as the Israel-Hamas war rages on with no clear end in sight, it’s critical for all of us to recognize the subtle—and sometimes paradoxical—cues that influence how we judge whose lives do and do not matter.

Goizueta faculty apply their expertise and knowledge to solving problems that society—and the world—face. Learn more about faculty research at Goizueta. 

The post The Hidden Costs of Getting More for Less in Prisoner Exchanges appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Research by Goizueta’s Andrea Dittmann, assistant professor of Organization & Management, may be about to change all of this. In a recent paper, she provides evidence of certain critical advantages that first-generation college graduates and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds can bring to organizations. And it’s all to do with the way that we work with other people.

“We know from existing studies that working-class American fare less well than others in the workplace,” says Dittmann.

“They are four times less likely to get hired into elite companies. And even when they are recruited, they earn around 17% less and they’re almost 34% less likely to get promoted into leadership roles. So the chips are stacked against them. What we don’t know is what firms lose when they fail to recruit and promote this demographic.”

To unpack this, Dittmann conducted two studies. The first looked at how working-class people with a foot on the corporate ladder see themselves in terms of specific strengths and challenges; the second at how organizational culture can shape whether these employees thrive or flounder in the workplace.

“I started by interviewing a large group of MBA students from different social backgrounds to get qualitative understanding of how class can impact employees’ experience navigating corporate working environments. In a majority of cases, MBAs from working class backgrounds were pioneers: the first in their family to get a college degree and a white collar job. I wanted to understand the kinds of difficulties they encountered and what, if any, strong points they felt they brought.”

Parsing their responses, Dittmann found that while working-class graduates struggled with more independent modalities of work, they excelled in tasks and activities that were more inter-dependent in approach. In other words, as employees, these people found it tougher to work by themselves, but outperformed their upper-class colleagues when it came to collaboration and working with others in teams.

Creating a Culture of Teamwork and Collaboration

Dittmann’s second study revealed that organizations with a culture of teamwork and collaboration were simultaneously creating better workplace experiences and getting better outcomes from working class employees, than those promoting independent or individual-focused working norms.

All of this is down to how people from different social classes live within communities, Dittmann believes.

“We know from research in social and cultural psychology that the working-class context engenders a more interdependent view of self, per se. This is probably down to things like greater scarcity of money, of resources, opportunities and even choices. When people have reduced access to these things, they are more likely to cleave together – to come together as a group to help and support each other in overcoming certain hardship.”

Middle- or upper-class groups, on the other hand, foster a much more individualistic and independent view of selfhood, says Dittmann. They are a demographic with the means to pursue personal goals and objectives; where individuals are expected to take charge, to exert influence over other people and stand out from the crowd.

“It’s clear from the employment stats, that corporate America favors this middle- or upper-class demographic. Clear from my study, too, is the likelihood that gate-keeper institutes such as business schools are environments where first-generation graduates might struggle more with independent modes of work and study – which remain the cultural ideal in most U.S. schools,” Dittmann says. “But there is so much to be gained by adopting a more inclusive approach to recruiting these kinds of candidates.”

Dittmann’s research points to the collaboration benefits that working class employees bring to organizations. And in the current context, she says, managers, HR and recruitment executives – and higher education admissions tutors – would do well to pay heed to these findings.

More Teamwork, Better Business Operations

Collaboration in the workplace has increased exponentially in the last 20 years, with research showing that up to 80% of employees’ time is dedicated to some kind of teamwork – be it brainstorms, meetings, or answering colleagues’ questions or requests. Finding better, more efficient ways to collaborate should be a priority, says Dittmann, if organizations want to perform better, and reduce the risks of churn and burnout.

“What my research and others’ is showing is that people from working class backgrounds tend towards behaviors that are more relational; that they are better at working together. If these people fail to make it into the workforce, and if they fail to find opportunities there for promotion and advancement, organizations are missing out.,” Dittmann contends. “They are missing out realizing the potential that this demographic brings. And they are missing out on opportunities to create more effective, more resilient, collaborative teams.”

We know that diverse organizations outperform others, says Dittmann. But we need to understand that diversity in terms of social class, too.

The Goizueta Business School values diversity, equity, and inclusion for every person without exception. This commitment uplifts individuals, enriches communities, and advances our mission to prepare principled leaders for the challenges and possibilities of tomorrow. Individually and collectively, we promote accountability, respect, and altruism throughout our institution. Informed by Atlanta’s history and Emory University’s place within it, our purpose is built upon positively influencing the world of business, an aim inextricable from positively influencing society itself. Learn more about our commitment to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community.

The post Will a Collaborative and Diverse Workforce Improve Business Operations? Yes. appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

But while research is starting to document how class can impede or accelerate professional success, it remains unclear why these discrepancies exist. What are the mechanisms or dynamics at play that make it so much tougher for working class people to succeed than others? 

Goizueta Business School Assistant Professor of Organization & Management Andrea Dittmann has an interesting hypothesis. She believes that employees from different backgrounds can bring inherently different strengths and weaknesses to the workplace; advantages and disadvantages that speak to certain norms governing how we think about work and leadership. And it boils down, she says, to the way we work with others. 

“People from working-class backgrounds—those with blue-collar parents, who might be the first in their family to get a college degree—typically relate a certain way to other people. They are better connected to others, more team-like in their approach, than their middle-class counterparts who see themselves as more independent or unique,” says Dittmann. 

This team spirit could be working against lower-class employees, she says, in the sense that they see themselves or are perceived by bosses as being less adept at working autonomously or as individuals within organizations; and are therefore viewed by others as less poised to advance into roles of greater responsibility. 

Across the board, working class participants did not perform as well as middle-class in tasks that involved working alone. However, when working together in group-based activities, they outperformed their middle-class counterparts—significantly so. 

On the flip side, this very capacity to work well with other people could actually give working class employees an advantage in team-based activities or cultures; an advantage that might translate into concrete benefits for organizations. 

To put this to the test, Dittmann conducted a series of studies aimed at unpacking how individuals perceive themselves within the context of work, and at the interactions that occur between employees and the workplace. Among these studies were qualitative interviews with MBA students from different social class backgrounds about their experiences navigating white-collar workplaces after graduating from college. She also ran a number of experiments to assess how well working class people performed in teams and individually, and how environments that prioritize collaborative dynamics or interdependence might produce better experiences and outcomes for employees than environments geared to working individually or independently. 

“The studies included things like randomly assigning participants from working class backgrounds to tasks that involved working alone or in teams. Among these tasks were things like giving people a survival scenario—a hypothetical situation in which they have to organize a range of resources or items in order to survive. I wanted to be able to rank participants’ success from optimal to suboptimal and see how that varied according to the setting: whether they worked independently or interdependently,” she explains “The studies also captured feedback in terms of how they perceived their own performance and skills. What I found matched the hypothesis.”

Across the board, working class participants did not perform as well as middle-class in tasks that involved working alone. However, when working together in group-based activities, they outperformed their middle-class counterparts—significantly so. 

Dittmann puts this down to “working class contexts” in the United States that inherently afford an “interdependent model of self.” These socio-economic contexts historically provide fewer financial resources, lower power and status, and limited opportunities for choice, influence or control, she says. As a consequence, people from these backgrounds tend more to be part of a group, and to rely on and work with others in order to secure more material assistance and support. Conversely, the middle or upper-class context within U.S. society, with greater economic resources and fewer environmental constraints fosters behaviors that are more independent—individuals are expected to take charge, exert influence, and stand out from others. And they are more likely to bring these “independent models of self” with them into what Dittmann calls “gateways institutions” such as colleges and business schools—and inevitably, into the world of work. 

The Catch-22 of Working Well with Others

“It’s a kind of catch-22. Working class kids don’t make it into the gateway settings of school or college as much as middle-class kids in the U.S. They are significantly underrepresented in leading business schools like Goizueta, at roughly 15% of the student population,” she notes. “So, the higher-educational context—the talent pool for corporate America—is very much geared to a different social demographic and dynamic; one that inherently favors independent work ethics and approaches and sees them as the norm. Other ways of working, collaborating, and contributing risk are being undervalued as much as they are underrepresented.” 

This is serious concern from both a societal and a business perspective, says Dittmann. 

It challenges social equity, social mobility, and fair exposure to opportunity; and it undermines the principles of meritocracy around which American society is ideally meant to be shaped. Simply put, says Dittmann, people are not getting selected for jobs that should be. And hiring these individuals should be on the radar of organizations around the country.

When Considering Diversity, Companies Stand to Benefit 

“We know that companies that are more diverse perform better than others, and diversity needs to extend to social class. What my research and others are showing is that people from a working-class background tend towards behaviors that are more relational, that they are better at working together. If they fail to make it into the workforce in a more representative fashion, companies are basically missing out on opportunities to form better teams.”

If you want good team performers in your firm, you need to think about hiring people in more inclusive ways and that means thinking about hiring the first-generation college grads as well as the middle or upper-class candidates.

Better teams make for better processes, says Dittmann. Groups of engaged and effective team players tap into diverse perspectives and fields of expertise. They are also better at taking turns to contribute, to be the protagonist, and to lead, and that means that they are better poised to surface important information, she adds. 

Organizations would do well to be more cognizant of these benefits, and think about integrating social class parameters into their inclusive recruiting processes. 

“If you want good team performers in your firm, you need to think about hiring people in more inclusive ways and that means thinking about hiring the first-generation college grads as well as the middle or upper-class candidates,” says Dittmann. “You also need to think about the way that you assess staff—whether you favor individual performance over teamwork—and how you are managing the career progression of your talent. And it’s worth remembering that collaborating with others is a core leadership skill. Leadership is a team sport too.”

Professor Dittmann discussed her social class research on the Goizueta Effect podcast.

Faculty research like Dittmann’s is a critical element in Goizueta Business School’s drive to develop principled leaders who are better prepared to engage in the business of tomorrow. Learn more about how our faculty members push boundaries by investigating vital business issues that impact our global economy. 

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Minority Board Directors Held Back by Glass Ceiling and “Myopic” Biases

Diversity remains a troubling issue in the upper echelons of U.S. business today. A stunning 81 percent of board members in top firms are white and male, according to the Standard & Poor 500 Index. So what prevents women and minority directors making it to the top? Goizueta’s Grace Pownall, professor and area coordinator of accounting,and Justin Short, assistant professor of accounting, together with Zawadi Lemayian of Washington University parsed 12 years of data on gender, ethnicity, and compensation to get insight into who holds power in U.S. board rooms. In Behavioral and Experimental Finance, research results point to two critical roadblocks that continue to stymie the career trajectory of aspiring Black, female, and minority directors: the glass ceiling effect that reduces the talent pool; and what Short et. al. call “myopic” bias entrenched in corporate America.

“The glass ceiling is a bottleneck for diverse talent,” says Short. “But we also see minority directors fail to secure promotions once they’re on the board. We conjecture that this is down to biased or myopic thinking on the part of chairs and peers.” Leaders need to be cognizant of the cut-off points that tie to ethnicity and gender in the U.S. and elsewhere, say the researchers; not least of all because of risk to innovation. “Without diversity, any organization risks deferring to group think, and sourcing creativity and ideas from the same, small pool of shared experience,” says Short. “There’s still work to be done because diversity at top levels of American business should be commonplace.”

B2B Firms Need to Smarten Up before Using AI in Procurement

Procurement, the process of buying in goods, products or services from external suppliers, is critical in the B2B market. But it’s costly, labor-intensive, and time-consuming. To speed and drive efficiencies in supply chain management, procurement managers are turning to artificial intelligence (AI). On the one hand, AI can automate the process of obtaining pricing quotes using tools like AI Assist and chat boxes. Then there’s the “smart control” that AI can leverage to identify the best potential suppliers via algorithms that collect and analyze market information.  Cut-and-dried benefits then for decision-makers? Not quite, says Goizueta’s Ruomeng Cui, assistant professor of Information Systems and Operations Management of research to appear in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. Because unless your AI system is fitted with the smart control, you run the risk of getting higher price quotes from suppliers than you would if you used human procurement purchasers. And it’s down to how suppliers interact with automated chatbots. Together with colleagues from Rutgers University and Tianjin University, Cui ran a large-scale field experiment using China’s Alibaba trading platform and integrated chat program, Aliwangwang. What they found is that suppliers essentially “discriminate” against chatbot buyers when it comes to quoting prices. “Suppliers see chatbots as lacking expertise around their products,” says Cui. “The fact they don’t have to lower prices to build professional relationships with chatbot buyers means they tend to quote higher than they would otherwise.” This effect is mitigated, however, when buyers signal to suppliers that they also use the smart control: an AI-powered recommendation system. Caveat emptor, say Cui and her co-authors: by all means use AI in your procurement processes, just be smart about it. 

Do Multinationals Enjoy an IT Advantage in Emerging Markets?

We know that digital technology helps firms compete globally. But does IT give foreign firms the edge over local businesses for exploiting opportunities in emerging markets? Yes and no, says Goizueta George S. Craft Professor in Information Systems & Operations Management Benn Konsynski, and his co-authors. Their latest paper in Journal of Management Information Systems looks at data from a large sample of local and international businesses operating in India and reveals two key insights. First, they find that foreign players using IT to boost organizational capabilities do tend to have the advantage over incumbents when it comes to partnering with other companies – a key factor in their ability to scale operations in emerging markets. However, in areas like marketing and customer services, technology gives local firms the edge over foreign competitors, likely because of superior knowledge and understanding of local markets. Konsynski and colleagues shed authoritative new light on two critical areas: how both context and contingency shape outcomes for firms leveraging digital technologies to compete; and the perhaps unforeseen challenges that await newcomers looking to expand operations in emerging markets, which remain an attractive opportunity for international companies.

If PPP Relief is so Attractive, why are so few Small Firms Taking it up?

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), part of the U.S. Government’s CARES Act, is a relief package that offers highly subsidized financing to small businesses. With anescalating value, PPP reaches deep into the pockets of Federal Reserve with the aim of helping corporate America weather the economic contraction and job losses due to the pandemic. Yet, despite the “positive shock” it represents to struggling firms, PPP uptake has been far from universal. Not only that, but a significant proportion of firms applying for PPP actually return them to the government without using them. So what’s going on? It has to do with the indirect costs imposed on borrowers, says Goizueta’s Tetyana Balyuk, assistant professor of finance, in the National Bureau of Economic Research: Working Paper. She and colleagues from Johns Hopkins Carey and Fuqua School of Business looked at publicly listed firms that applied for PPP funds using databases maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission. “These firms are worried about ex-post audits and investigations into recipients of these PPP funds, which are conducted by the government. Specifically they’re worried about subjectivity of these types of audits, and the broad powers the government has to pursue litigation.” The solution to this, she says, is to focus on the objective standards for PPP eligibility, and similarly objective standards for the conduct of ex-post audits. “Among other measures, policy-makers might want to look at delineating safe harbors to circumscribe litigation, which has been a standard practice in securities law since the 1930s.”

What are the Costs – and Opportunities – to Retailers in Returned Merchandise?

In 2018, a staggering 10% of all retail sales –around $369 billion – were returned to the original seller. For retailers, this is vastly challenging. First there’s figuring out how to respond; then there’s the huge financial loss from returned stock. And then there’s simply trying to work out what to do with unwanted merchandise and how to absorb it back into the inventory. But is there an opportunity here for retailers, too? Goizueta’s Ryan Hamilton, associate professor of marketing, and Sandy D. Jap, Sarah Beth Brown professor of marketing,believe so. Together with Wharton Professor and former dean of Goizueta Business School, Thomas S. Robertson, they’ve published their research in Journal of Retailing.

The researchers dive into literature surrounding the returns market – a market so valuable it is “ripe for more research” – and found that returns policies can build reputation, drive customer loyalty, and secure competitive advantage. “Consumers today increasingly expect to be able to return goods easily,” says Jap, “and it’s a burden for retailers. But also an opportunity to deliver a customer experience that drives brand loyalty.” For those retailers, returns provide the chance to exchange goods, or even cross or upsell to customers who return to stores or sites to bring back original purchases. The trick, says Jap, is to “get it right.”An easy returns policy may build erputation for great customer service; too lax a policy and you might end up “training” customers to make returns, she says. There’s the risk to reputation, too, in how retailers absorb or dispose of returned goods: are their policies sustainable and environmentally friendly? More to explore in the potential trade-offs here, says Jap, and she and her co-authors call for more research into this evolving stage in the purchase journey.

Achievement? It’s All in the Eye of the Beholder

There is a well-documented gap in achievement between U.S. social classes  that hurts the perception of, standing, and prospects for people from lower-class, high-school educated backgrounds, vis a vis their higher-class counterparts with college degrees. One way of attenuating this gap might be to rethink the way society measures achievement, says Goizueta Assistant Professor of Organization and Management, Andrea Dittmann. Instead of assessing people’s skills and aptitudes through the lens of individual achievement, might it not be just as helpful to measure ability based on how well people work together, as a part of a team? Together with Nicole Stephens of Kellogg and USC Marshall’s Sarah Townsend, Dittman ran four studies of outcomes for students working alone or in groups. The work published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology portrayed consistent results: when working individually, higher-class students are better able to showcase their strengths. But in groups, this advantage disappears. In fact, when people from lower-class contexts work in teams, they demonstrate unique strengths that can set them apart from more privileged counterparts. Dittman and co-authors call for gateway institutions – institutes of higher education and workplaces – to integrate these findings into practices and procedures that reflect that one style of achievement is not superior to the other, but simply different.

Is There a Case for Sharing Less Information in Financial Statements?

There’s broad consensus in the world of finance. Disaggregation – the practice of breaking down different components or sources of earnings in a financial statement – is good. After all, for investors looking to predict a company’s earnings from one year to the next, all information is good information, right? Not necessarily, says Goizueta Professor of Finance, Teri Yohn; it all depends on what type of information is being shared. Together with colleagues from Colorado, Indiana, and OSU, Yohn hypothesized that not all disaggregated components in earnings statements are heterogeneous. Not all information might be specific to one year, and that’s problematic. “Investors assume that disaggregation highlights one-off specificities that impact earnings – things like restructuring costs– but won’t have a de facto impact on the future earnings of a company,” says Yohn. However, her research, published in The Journal of Accounting Studies, shows that disaggregation also trawls up homogeneous things – the same components that impact earnings year over year. This can lead to confusion on the part of investors, and actual mistakes in forecasting future earnings. “Our paper has two clear takeaways,” Yohn says “For investors: don’t assume that disaggregation only highlights the one-offs in earnings specific to a given timeframe.” For regulators and standard-setters who have pushed for more disaggregation in recent years, Yohn and her co-authors urge deeper reflection about what type of disaggregation should be included in financial statements, or not.

Learn more about our Goizueta Business School faculty, their research, specialties, and areas of interest. #GoizuetaKnows

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Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives Jill Perry-Smith noted that the following upcoming events have special connection with Goizueta and our soon to be launched Roberto C Goizueta Business & Society Institute and Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation.

February 11 at 4 PM: “How Atlanta is Striving to Become an Economically Just and Inclusive Community”

This panel discussion explores how metro Atlanta is striving to become a more economically just and inclusive community. Moderated by Alan Anderson, Emory’s assistant vice president for university partnerships, featured panelists are Stacey Key, president and CEO, Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council, Leona Barr-Davenport, president and CEO, Atlanta Business League, and Donna M. Ennis, C.P.F. project director/operator representative SE MBDA Inner City Innovation Hub Atlanta MBDA Business & Advanced Manufacturing Centers Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute.

February 17 at 4 PM: “How Small Businesses Drive Economic Opportunity in Metro Atlanta”

This program will address the importance of investing in entrepreneurs of color in Atlanta. Moderated by Emory’s Janeria Easley, assistant professor of African American studies, featured guests include Jay Bailey, president and CEO, Russell Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Ryan Wilson, co-founder and CEO, The Gathering Spot, and Joey Womack, founder and CEO, Goodie Nation.

February 22 at 4 PM: “Faculty Showcase: Featuring Jericho Brown and Emory University’s new faculty”

Join the Office of the Provost in celebrating Black History Month through the extraordinary research, creativity, and diversity of Emory’s faculty. Featuring Goizueta’s Andrea Dittman, assistant professor of organization and management. Dittman will share insight into her research on social-class contexts in which people grow up shape their obstacles and strengths in professional workplaces.

February 25 at 4 PM: “How Emory Takes Action to Provide Access and Opportunity for Diverse Business”

This program will focus on business diversity efforts underway at Emory that are creating further access and opportunities for businesses in metro Atlanta and the region.  Moderated by Emory University’s Randy Brown, manager, Supplier Diversity Program. The Emory University panelists include Goizueta Business School’s Erin Igleheart, program director for Start:ME at the Business & Society Institute, Kevin Nash, chief procurement officer, Emory University, and Dr. Candy Tate, assistant director for Emory College Center for Creativity & Arts.

Join the discussion: Goizueta Business School is a leader among business schools as a place for thriving and growth for every person without exception. We attract, develop, and engage the best talent and equip members of our community and our partners to be principled leaders in a diverse society. Learn more about Goizueta’s ongoing commitment to shape the future of business through meaningful action in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

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Jeffrey Byrne, Assistant Professor in the Practice of Accounting

Jeffrey Byrne is an assistant professor in the practice of accounting and the director of the master of professional accountancy program. He comes to Emory via Indiana University Southeast, where he was an assistant professor of accounting, and prior to that he served as a visiting graduate professor of mergers and acquisitions at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky.

Byrne, a certified public accountant, has presented for the American Accounting Association national and regional conferences, won a Faculty Innovation in Business Education Award from the MidAmerican Business Deans Association of the AACSB and continues to provide consulting services through his company, CFO Enterprises LLC. His current research focuses on closure of private universities across the U.S., for which he’s developed a predictive index of closure. In the wake of COVID-19, his research has become particularly relevant and timely.

Prior to entering academia, Byrne was CFO for Commonwealth Manufacturing of Kentucky, a worldwide manufacturer of electrical signage for Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell. Later, he and his wife founded Plainview School, which became one of the 25 largest private preschools in the U.S. and was acquired by Bain Capital’s Bright Horizons Family Solutions.

Byrne loves being in the outdoors and watching college and professional sports with his family. “I’m a big family guy and really look forward to working with the amazing family at Goizueta.”

Andrea G. Dittmann, Assistant Professor of Organization & Management

Andrea G. Dittmann is an assistant professor of organization & management. She graduated this year from the Kellogg School of Management with a PhD in management & organization and a minor in social psychology. While at Kellogg, Dittmann won several awards and grants, including a dissertation research grant, a student travel award grant from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Wheeler Institute Award at the 2019 Trans-Atlantic Doctoral Conference for her paper “Achievement is not class-neutral,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Diversity, inequality and social class are Dittmann’s main areas of research. She has published multiple papers on these topics, such as “Social class disparities in higher education and professional workplaces: The role of cultural mismatch” in Current Directions in Psychological Science. More recently, she is investigating how the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people from lower (vs. higher) social class contexts differently across a number of important life domains, including work, social relationships and mental health.

Dittmann has previously lectured on topics including negotiations and identity and motivation while at Kellogg. Starting this fall, she will teach Principles of Organization & Management as part of the BBA core coursework.

Dittmann is an avid runner and since moving to Atlanta enjoys running along the Beltline trail.

Rajiv Garg, Associate Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management

Rajiv Garg is Goizueta’s newest associate professor of information systems & operations management. He comes to Goizueta from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was an assistant professor and continues to be a senior research fellow for their Center for Risk Management. Garg has an impressive educational history that includes a PhD in information systems & management and an MPhil in public policy & management from Carnegie Mellon; two MS degrees (computer science and electrical engineering) from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles; and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Garg’s research focuses on social data science, particularly developing novel methods or utilizing cross-disciplinary methods for analyzing information flow. His work has appeared in Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, the Journal of Management Information Systems and various peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.

Garg has experience with online teaching and is prepared for the challenges to education that COVID-19 has created. To combat the shorter attention span of online vs. in-person teaching, Garg employs surveys, games and quick breaks in his online lectures to maintain higher levels of attention, absorption and retention of information. And as far as his transition to Atlanta, Garg says he’s never felt such a warm welcome as he’s received here in the South. “I already feel a connection!” he said.

Teri Yohn, Professor of Accounting

Teri Yohn, professor of accounting, joins Goizueta most recently from the Kellogg School of Management, where she was a visiting professor. Her extensive teaching history also includes positions at Indiana University Bloomington, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Georgetown University. Here at Goizueta, she will teach Financial Reporting and Analysis to MBA students in the fall. 

Yohn holds a PhD in accounting from Indiana University and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Delaware. Her research focuses primarily on financial statement analysis and valuation, and she has published her research in many academic journals. So far this year, she has two papers forthcoming in Review of Accounting Studies and one in the Journal of Management Accounting Research. Yohn also regularly presents at conferences and universities and has served as the plenary speaker at national and international conferences. She currently serves as an editor of The Accounting Review and has served as the senior editor of Accounting Horizons.

In addition, Yohn has served as the academic fellow at the Securities and Exchange Commission, testified before the Senate on IFRS issues and served as a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel for Private Company Financial Reporting. She is currently a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Committee (FASAC).

Yohn lives with her husband and two dogs within a 15 minute walk of the business school. She enjoys running and biking in Lullwater Park and is excited to live here and explore Atlanta further.

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