University of Southern California

Academic Units

News and Events

Victor Bennett (with Jason Snyder at UCLA, Lamar Pierce and Wash U, and Mike Toffel at HBS) just had a paper accepted for publication at Management Science: "Competition and Illicit Quality."

Abstract

Competition among firms can have many positive outcomes, including decreased prices and improved quality. Yet competition can have a darker side when firms can gain competitive advantage through illicit and corrupt activities. In this paper, we argue that competition can lead organizations to provide illicit quality that satisfies customer demand but violates laws and regulations and that this outcome is particularly likely when price competition is restricted. Using 28 million vehicle emissions tests from more than 11,000 facilities, we show that increased competition is associated with greater inspection leniency, a form of illicit quality that customers value but is illegal and socially costly. Firms with greater numbers of local competitors pass customers at considerably higher rates and are more likely to lose customers they fail to pass, suggesting that the alternatives that competition provides to customers intensify pressure to illegally provide leniency. We also show that, at least in contexts when pricing is restricted, firms use illicit quality as an entry strategy. (05/15/2012)

Nandini Rajagopalan was a faculty inductee in the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the oldest and largest interdisciplinary honor society in Academe. Phi Kappa Phi draws membership from all scholarly areas within academic institutions. Faculty membership is highly selective and based on a distinguished career as a researcher and educator. (05/10/2012)

Once again, the MOR Department dominated the Annual Marshall Faculty, Staff, and Doctoral Student Awards. At today's ceremony:

PhD Recognition: Vern Glaser and Eunice Rhee

USC Mellon Award for Mentoring (Faculty): Adlai Wertman

Golden Apple, Undergraduate Teaching: Victor Bennett and Carl Voigt

Golden Apple, Graduate Teaching: Carl Voigt for the PM Program

Marshall Award for Research Excellence: Nate Fast and Scott Wiltermuth

Evan C. Thompson Mentoring Award (Doctoral Students and Faculty): Nandini Rajagopalan

Congratulations Vern, Eunice, Adlai, Victor, Carl, Nate, Scott, and Nandini. (05/03/2012)

Peter Monge (joint with Annenberg School for Communication and Marshall School of Business) will be receiving the 2012 Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award from the International Communication Association. The award honors a scholar for sustained work on a communication research problem over an extended period and whose influence is evident on a second generation of scholars. The award committee observed that he was the "ideal candidate" for the award. They observed that his intellectual leadership can be seen in his own scholarly awards as well as a substantial number of dissertation awards earned by his students, by his substantial record of funding from the National Science Foundation and other sources, and his international visibility. The committee noted that "His work is original and has explored new concepts, terrains, and applications of communication networks in the field—including organizational communication, information systems, new technologies, and mass media. He has added theoretical richness to an area of study that was once vacuous in theory," and concluded that his "publications, his commitment to students' development, and his interdisciplinary intellectual leadership have literally changed the trajectory of network studies." (05/01/2012)

The Wall Street Journal ran a story on Gerry Tellis' recent article relating stock prices with online chatter. (04/17/2012)

The Wall Street Journal

Online Chatter That Moves Markets
By Christopher Shea

Researchers say they've figured out a way to analyze the torrent of online commentary by consumers about products in a way that lets them beat stock-market averages.
The economists analyzed nearly 350,000 reviews on Amazon.com, epinions.com, and Yahoo! Shopping in several product categories: computers, cellphones, data-storage devices, shoes and toys — 15 brands in all. Their software took note of ratings assigned by the sites' users and also measured the tone of the accompanying text, considering both generic words of praise or disfavor ("awesome," "overhyped") and product-specific language ("small" might be good for a cellphone, bad for a laptop keyboard). In rare cases when the software couldn't get a handle on the tone, the rating was done by hand, and comments of fewer than 10 words were discarded.
The best predictor of a stock-price increase was the sheer volume of user-generated commentary — an objective measure of buzz. (Online silence is what companies should fear.) Numerical or star ratings had no predictive value, nor did positive comments per se, but negative commentary hurt, as did chatter about a competitor's products. The ratio of positive to negative comments was roughly 75/25 — "which you might say shows the niceness of the American people," says Gerard J. Tellis, a professor in the Marshall School of Business, at the University of Southern California. "But the bad is far more potent."
The researchers controlled for new-product announcements, advertising dollars spent by firms, media mentions, and new-product announcements — and user-generated content still emerged as an important predictor of stock price. Making investments in the brands studied while using variables for online chatter, using a fictional $100 million portfolio, the authors beat the S&P 500 by 7.9%.
Source: "Does Chatter Really Matter? Dynamics of User-Generated Content and Stock Performance," Seshadri Tirunillai and Gerard J. Tellis,* Marketing Science (March - April)

The Management and Organization Department has done well in winning research awards from the Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

We have two winners of faculty research awards:

  • Peter Kim (joint work with doctoral student Derek Harmon)
  • Yong Paik (for joint work with Doctoral student Heejin Woo)
Vern Glaser won the Ph.D. dissertation proposal award. (04/05/2012)

Lori Yue's article (with Rao and Ingram), "Regulatory Arbitrage, Activism, and Right-to-Work States," in American Sociological Review 76: 365-385 (June 2011), has been awarded Honorable Mention in Law and Society Association's 2012 Article Prize. Lori's name will appear in the Awards Program and announced at the Law and Society Association's 2012 International Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, in June. (04/04/2012)

John Boudreau has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the California Management Review. (04/02/2012)

Gerry Tellis (joint appointment with Marketing Department) was honored as a Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) in Dallas Tx on Tuesday. (03/08/2012)

Paul Adler, received a publication in Organization Science, Vol. 23, No. 1, January–February 2012, pp. 244–266: "The Sociological Ambivalence of Bureaucracy: From Weber via Gouldner to Marx."

Abstract

Reports of the demise of the bureaucratic form of organization are greatly exaggerated, and debates about bureaucracy's functions and effects therefore persist. For many years, a broad current of organizational scholarship has taken inspiration from Max Weber's image of bureaucracy as an "iron cage" and has seen bureaucracy as profoundly ambivalent— imposing alienation as the price of efficiency. Following a path originally sketched by Alvin Gouldner [Gouldner, A. W. 1954. Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. Free Press, Glencoe, IL], some recent research has challenged this view as overly pessimistic, arguing that bureaucracy need not always be coercive but can sometimes take a form that is experienced as enabling. The present article challenges both Weber's and Gouldner's accounts, arguing that although bureaucracy's enabling role may sometimes be salient to employees, even when it is, bureaucracy typically appears to them as ambivalent—simultaneously enabling and coercive. I offer an unconventional reading of Marx as a way to make sense of this ambivalence. (02/16/2012)

Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal will publish a piece that focuses on Alex Michel's research: "Hazards of the Trade: Bankers Health." It can be viewed online at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204062704577223623824944472.html?KEYWORDS=kwoh&_nocache=1329273924250&user=welcome#articleTabs%3Darticle (02/15/2012).

Jennifer Overbeck received a hit (with Shimul Melwani and Jennifer Mueller) in the Journal of Applied Psychology: "Looking Down: The Influence of Contempt and Compassion on Emergent Leadership Categorizations."

ABSTRACT

By integrating the literatures on implicit leadership and the social functions of discrete emotions, we develop and test a theoretical model of emotion expression and leadership categorizations. Specifically, we examine the influence of two socio-comparative emotions, compassion and contempt, on assessments of leadership made both in first impression contexts and over time. To demonstrate both internal and external validity, Studies 1a and 1b provide laboratory and field evidence to show that expressing the discrete emotions of contempt and compassion positively relate to perceptions that an individual is a leader. Study 2 tests the mechanism explaining these associations. Specifically, we show that in a leadership emergence context, contempt and compassion both positively relate to perceptions that the expresser is a leader because each provides cues matching the implicit theory that leaders have higher intelligence. Our findings add to a growing body of literature focused on identifying the processes through which leaders emerge in groups, showing that emotions are one important input to this process. We discuss the implications of our findings and how they might guide future research efforts. (02/02/2012)

Eunice Rhee continues to get accolades (and funds) for work on her dissertation. She has recently been awarded the Ph.D. Dissertation Fellowship from the NASDAQ OMX Group Educational Foundation to work on her dissertation essay, "The Symbolic Management of Category Affiliations: Sense-giving, Sense-making and IPO Performance in Nascent Markets." The NASDAQ OMX Group Educational Foundation promotes learning about capital formation, financial markets and entrepreneurship through innovative educational programs. (01/30/2012)

Eunice Rhee has been awarded the Strategy Research Foundation (SRF) Dissertation Grant for her dissertation proposal, "Essays on the Symbolic Management of Category Affiliations." She will be presenting her paper as a selected panel of dissertation scholars (one of five inaugural SRF Dissertation Scholars) at the Strategic Management Society's Conference in Prague this coming October. (01/09/2012)

Yeri Cho and Nate Fast got a hit in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: "Power, Defensive Denigration, and the Assuaging Effect of Gratitude Expression."

ABSTRACT

This article examines the interactive effects of power, competency threats, and gratitude expression on the tendency to denigrate others. The results of two experiments indicate that (1) power holders whose competence has been threatened are more likely than others to denigrate interaction partners, and (2) receiving gratitude expression has self-affirming effects for insecure power holders. Experiment 1 demonstrated that high-power, but not low-power, individuals who received threatening feedback about their competence denigrated the competence of their partners. Importantly, this tendency was ameliorated when subordinates expressed gratitude for previous help provided from the power holder. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the ameliorating effect of gratitude expression on threatened power holders' tendency to denigrate subordinates is mediated by increased perceptions of social worth. Implications for research on power, gratitude expression, and the self are discussed. (01/05/2012)

Albert Han (with J. Brown, U. Washington) had a paper published in Social Psychological and Personality Science: "My Better Half: Partner Enhancement as Self-Enhancement."

ABSTRACT

People define themselves in terms of their relationship partners and they incorporate their partners into their self-concepts. Consequently, partner enhancement—viewing one's partner in excessively positive terms—might constitute an indirect form of self-enhancement when feelings of self-worth are threatened. To test this hypothesis, the authors gave participants evaluative feedback (e.g., success and failure) and then asked them to appraise themselves, their current (or most recent) relationship partner and (in Study 2) most other people. The authors found that low self-esteem participants, but not high self-esteem participants, responded to failure by exaggerating the virtues of their romantic partners. These findings highlight the flexibility of self-enhancement strategies and provide further evidence that low self-esteem people pursue indirect forms of self-enhancement in their efforts to blunt the adverse impact of adverse feedback. (11/28/2011)

Nate Fast is the lead author (with Niro Sivanathan, Nicole D. Mayer, and Adam D. Galinsky) on a recently accepted paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: "Power and Overconfident Decision-Making: The Role of Sense of Power."

ABSTRACT:

Five experiments demonstrate that experiencing power leads to overconfident decision-making. Using multiple instantiations of power, including an episodic recall task (Experiments 1-3), a measure of work-related power (Experiment 4), and assignment to high- and low-power roles (Experiment 5), power produced overconfident decisions that generated monetary losses for the powerful. The current findings, through both mediation and moderation, also highlight the central role that the sense of power plays in producing these decision-making tendencies. First, sense of power, but not mood, mediated the link between power and overconfidence (Experiment 3). Second, the link between power and overconfidence was severed when access to power was not salient to the powerful (Experiment 4) and when the powerful were made to feel personally incompetent in their domain of power (Experiment 5). These findings indicate that only when objective power leads people to feel subjectively powerful does it produce overconfident decision-making. (11/14/11)

Feng Zhu got a paper (with Ramon Casadesus-Masanell at HBS) accepted at Strategic Management Journal: "Business Model Innovation and Competitive Imitation: The Case of Sponsor-Based Business Models."

ABSTRACT:

This paper provides the first formal model of business model innovation. Our analysis focuses on sponsor-based business model innovations where a firm monetizes its product through sponsors rather than setting prices to its customer base. We analyze strategic interactions between an innovative entrant and an incumbent where the incumbent may imitate the entrant's business model innovation once it is revealed. The results suggest that an entrant needs to strategically choose whether to reveal its innovation by competing through the new business model, or conceal it by adopting a traditional business model. We also show that the value of business model innovation may be so substantial that an incumbent may prefer to compete in a duopoly rather than to remain a monopolist. (11/02/11)

Alex Michel received a hit in Administrative Science Quarterly: "Transcending Socialization: A Nine-Year Ethnography of the Body's Role in Organizational Control and Knowledge Worker Transformation."

ABSTRACT:

A nine-year ethnography reports how two investment banks' controls targeted bankers' bodies, how the bankers' relations to their bodies evolved, and what the organizational consequences were. The banks' visible values emphasized autonomy and work-life balance; their less visible embodied controls caused habitual overwork that bankers experienced as self-chosen. This paradoxical control caused conflict between bankers and their bodies, which bankers treated as unproblematic objects. The conflict generated dialectic change that cognitive control theories overlook because they neglect the body. They predict only bankers' first three years, when the banks benefited from bankers' hard work. Starting in year four, body breakdowns thwarted organizational control. Despite bankers' increased attempts to control their bodies, performance declined. Starting in year six, intensified breakdowns forced some bankers to treat their bodies as knowledgeable subjects. Because the body cannot be socialized completely, it helped bankers transcend socialization. Surprisingly, the banks benefited from this loss of control because bankers' ethics, judgment, and creativity increased.

Scott Wiltermuth received a hit in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: "Synchronous Activity Boosts Compliance with Requests to Aggress."

ABSTRACT:

An experiment demonstrates that cultural practices involving physical synchrony can emotionally bind people together, making those people more likely to comply with others' requests to engage in aggressive behavior. Participants who acted in synchrony with a confederate were more likely than were participants in the asynchronous and control conditions to comply with the confederate's request to administer a noise blast to another group of participants. Increased feelings of emotional connection with the confederate mediated the relationship between synchrony and heightened compliance with the request to engage in aggressive behavior. (10/10/11)

Scott Wiltermuth was appointed to the Editorial Board of the Academy of Management Journal. (10/03/11)

Julia Dare successfully defended her dissertation today: The (Self-)Righteous and the Meek: Commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility. Kudos to her dissertation committee of Tom Cummings (chair), Sandy Green, and Manuel Castells (Annenberg). (9/8/11)

Time Magazine recently selected Warren Bennis' classic, On Becoming a Leader (1989), as one of "The 25 Most Influential Business Management Books" that have changed the way we think about management. (8/18/11)

At the recent AOM meeting in San Antonio, Peer Fiss was presented with the Organization Science Service Award for extraordinary service to the journal. (8/18/11)

Peter Kim's paper published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2004 (with Cecily Cooper a MOR doctoral alum and D. Ferrin and K. Dirks) just won the Academy of Management, Conflict Management Division's "Most Influential Article Award" for papers published from 2003 through 2006: "Removing the shadow of suspicion: The effects of apology vs. denial for repairing ability- vs. integrity-based trust violations." (8/05/11)

Nate Fast continues his hitting streak with a paper accepted for publication (with Nir Halevy of Stanford and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern) in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: "The Destructive Nature of Power Without Status."

ABSTRACT

The current research explores how roles that possess power but lack status influence behavior toward others. Past research has primarily examined the isolated effects of having either power or status, but we propose that power and status interact to affect interpersonal behavior. Based on the notions that a) low-status is threatening and aversive and b) power frees people to act on their internal states and feelings, we hypothesized that power without status fosters demeaning behaviors toward others. To test this idea, we orthogonally manipulated both power and status and gave participants the chance to select activities for their partners to perform. As predicted, individuals in high-power/low-status roles chose more demeaning activities for their partners (e.g., bark like a dog, say "I am filthy") than did those in any other combination of power and status roles. We discuss how these results clarify, challenge, and advance the existing power and status literatures. (7/25/11)

Jennifer Overbeck (with Aarti Ivanic and Joseph C. Nunes) got a paper accepted for publication in Psychological Science: "Race and Money: The Impact of Racial Hierarchy on Willingness-to-Pay."

ABSTRACT

A deeply entrenched status hierarchy exists between African-Americans and Caucasians whereby the former often are classified as lower status. Concurrently, African-Americans face marketplace discrimination whereby they are treated as inferior and poor. Because having and spending money signify status, we explore how African-Americans may elevate their willingness-to-pay for products in order to fulfill status needs. Studies 1 and 2 find that explicit activation of race leads some African-Americans to pay more compared with what they would otherwise pay and with Caucasians. Individual differences in perceived status disadvantage and racial identification moderate this result. Study 3 shows that an overt status threat (inferior treatment in a purchasing context) similarly leads African-Americans, but not Caucasians, to pay more. This research illustrates how African-Americans whose status is threatened use spending as a way to assert status. (06/29/11)

Janet Fulk (joint with Annenberg) was elected a Fellow of the International Communication Association at its Annual Convention in Boston last week. (06/07/11)

Scott Wiltermuth (with Vanessa Bohns)* had a paper accepted at the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: "It Hurts When I Do This (or You Do That): Posture and Pain Tolerance."

ABSTRACT

Recent research (Carney, Cuddy & Yap, 2010) has shown that adopting a powerful pose changes people's hormonal levels and increases their propensity to take risks in the same ways that possessing actual power does. In the current research, we explore whether adopting physical postures associated with power, or simply interacting with others who adopt these postures, can similarly influence sensitivity to pain. We conducted two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants who adopted dominant poses displayed higher pain thresholds than those who adopted submissive or neutral poses. These findings were not explained by semantic priming. In Experiment 2, we manipulated power poses via an interpersonal interaction and found that power posing engendered a complementary (Tiedens & Fragale, 2003) embodied power experience in interaction partners. Participants who interacted with a submissive confederate displayed higher pain thresholds and greater handgrip strength than participants who interacted with a dominant confederate.

*Authors listed alphabetically. Both authors contributed equally. (06/01/11)

Peer Fiss has been elected a Representative at Large for the Organization and Management Theory Divison of the Academy of Management. (06/01/11)

Paul Adler was elected Vice President-Elect & Program Chair-Elect of the Academy of Management, the largest professional association of management scholars in the world with over 19,000 members. Paul will follow the standard progression of offices and become President of the Academy in 2014-2015. This is quite an honor and attests to Paul's scholarly eminence in our field. It is also a tribute to the MOR Department, which has now spawned four Academy Presidents, starting with Steve Kerr, Mary Ann Von Glinow, Tom Cummings, and now Paul. (05/10/11)

Lori Yue received a hit at Organization Science: "Asymmetric Effects of Fashions on the Formation and Dissolution of Networks: Board Interlocks with Internet Companies, 1996-2006."

ABSTRACT

This paper extends the contextual perspective of network evolution to account for a more complete process of network evolution by showing that the impacts of fads and fashions on the formation and dissolution of interorganizational networks are asymmetric. Building on contact theory, this paper proposes that direct contact affords a flow of knowledge that counters tendencies to social conformity. Network dissolution differs from network formation in that partners have already obtained direct information. As a result, network dissolution is not as responsive to fads and fashions as network formation, and network structures induced by fads and fashions often survive beyond the lifecycle of a fashion. An analysis of the interlocking ties of S&P 1500 firms with Internet companies from 1996 to 2006 supports the view that fads and fashions have asymmetric effects on the evolution of networks and also shows that (1) fads and fashions have a strong impact on the formation of networks but not on their dissolution, (2) the networking behaviors of organizations with direct contact are less induced by fads and fashions, and (3) the networks formed by organizations with direct contact during the heyday of a fashion survive longer. (05/09/11)

Scott Wiltermuth has been awarded a grant from USC's Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Science Initiative for his research project: "Dominance Expressions and Medical Decision Making." (05/06/11)

Once again, the MOR faculty did well in receiving research funds for entrepreneurship research from the Greif Center.

  • Feng Zhu: "Dance with the Devil: Value Capture for Complementors in Platform-Based Markets."
  • Nan Jia: "Explaining Conflict Resolution Choice Among Private Firms in China: An Analysis of Survey Data."
  • Mark Kennedy & Peer Fiss (with doctoral student Vern Glaser): "Strategic Discourse and the Structuring of New Markets."
  • Eunice Rhee (dissertation project): "Managing Category Affiliation in Nascent Markets and IPO Performance."

(05/05/11)

Michael Coombs, Kyle Mayer, and Feng Zhu won Golden Apple teaching awards. Feng Zhu won the Dean's Award for Research. Mark Young (joint with Leventhal) won the Dean's Award for Mentoring to go along with his USC Mellon Mentoring Award. (05/04/11)

Peter Monge (joint with Annenberg), Manuel Castells, and Noshir Contractor edited a special section of the International Journal of Communication entitled Network Multidimensionality in the Digital Age. It also contains an article by Contractor, Monge, and Leonardi: "Multidimensional Networks and the Dynamics of Sociomateriality: Bringing Technology Inside the Network." (04/24/11)

Sandy Green and Yuan Li MOR alum now at McGill) got a hit in the Journal of Management Studies: "Rhetorical Institutionalism: Language, Agency, and Structure in Institutional Theory Since Alvesson 1993."

ABSTRACT

In 1993, Mats Alvesson published "Organizations as Rhetoric". In his paper, Alvesson proposed that knowledge was ambiguous and thus rhetoric was critical to the construction and operation of institutions and organizations. Moreover, he argued that in such an ambiguous and thus rhetorical world, knowledge operated as an institutionalized myth and rationality surrogate. Alvesson's insights helped inspire and initiate one of the most promising and growing areas of institutional research: rhetorical institutionalism. Rhetorical institutionalism is the deployment of linguistic approaches in general and rhetorical insights in particular to explain how institutions both constrain and enable agency. In this paper, we trace these insights and discuss the benefits of continuing the integration of rhetorical ideas in institutional research. In addition, we propose and develop a rhetorical model of institutionalism and conclude with some suggestions for future research. (04/21/11)

Peer Fiss and Mark Kennedy (with Jerry Davis from Michigan) had a paper accepted for publication in Organization Science: "How Golden Parachutes Unfolded: Diffusion and Variation of a Controversial Practice."

ABSTRACT

We contribute to a growing focus on variation in diffusion processes by examining the ways in which contested practices are modified as they spread among adopters. Expanding on prior diffusion accounts, we argue that the extensiveness and similarity of a practice will vary in response to both population- and organization-level mechanisms. To examine these issues, we study variation in "golden parachute" contracts, a controversial corporate governance practice that emerged and spread widely during the hostile takeover wave of the 1980s. Using a concept network approach to analyze the composition of parachute plans, we find evidence of mechanisms that both increase and decrease extensiveness and variation of golden parachutes. Our findings hold implications for accounts of practice diffusion over contested terrain by revealing substantial variation in the course of diffusion. (04/12/11)

Warren Bennis and Mark Young (joint with Leventhal School of Accounting) have received the USC 2011 Mellon Mentoring Award; Warren for mentoring undergraduate students and Mark for mentoring graduate students. (04/11/11)

Scott Wiltermuth is on a tear. He just had another paper accepted for publication (with Lara Tiedens) at Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: "Anger and the Desire to Evaluate."

Abstract

Our results indicate that people experiencing incidental anger are more likely than people in neutral and other emotional states to prefer to perform evaluative tasks, even though their anger may bias the evaluations they make. Induced anger increased participants' desire to evaluate others' ideas (Experiment 1) and made the evaluations of those ideas more negative in valence (Experiment 2). Anger increased the appeal of evaluating ideas when evaluations were expected to be largely negative but not when evaluations were expected to be positive (Experiments 3 and 4). Mediation analyses revealed that this willingness to evaluate when angry stems from a belief that evaluating others can leave angry people in a positive mood. Because people are often free to decide when to perform the tasks required of them, this tendency may have implications for how and when ideas are evaluated. (03/31/11)

Warren Bennis' recent book, Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership (Jossey-Bass), just won the gold medal in the memoir/biography area at the 2011 AXIOM Book Awards.

Nandini Rajagopalan recently received a university-wide honor from Texas Christian University called the Cecil and Ida Green Honors Professor. It is based on the recommendation of faculty from different schools and departments at TCU who nominate scholars from their disciplines who have developed a distinguished national reputation for research in their respective fields. The university then selects a few nominees for this honor each year. This year the Neeley School of Business nominated Nandini and the university selected her to receive this illustrious honor. It included a small honorarium and a visit to TCU where Nandini presented campus-wide seminars and publishing workshops and met with a variety of faculty. (03/11/11)

Our friend and former colleague Jay Kim just got a hit in ASQ: "When Firms Become Desperate to Grow via Acquisition: The Effect of Growth Patterns and Acquisition Experience on Acquisition Premiums."

Abstract: Can firms become so desperate for growth that they overpay for acquisitions? In this paper we draw on work in behavioral learning theory and risk-taking to explore this question by developing a theory of desperation in the context of growth. We suggest two key drivers of such desperation: (1) when a firm's organic growth is low, paying handsomely for acquisitions may be one of the last remaining options for growth, and (2) when a firm becomes dependent on acquisitions for continuing growth, it becomes vulnerable to overpaying for acquisitions. While such pressures to grow via acquisition can be intense, we also test whether the benefits of acquisition experience—from both acquirers and their advisors—helps to mitigate the downside of desperation. We test these ideas in a sample of firms in the banking industry between 1994 and 2005. Our results are supportive of this theory of desperation, although our findings on the moderating role of acquisition experience highlight the preeminent role of advisor experience over acquirer experience. Taken together, this study introduces, and tests, a new theoretical perspective on firm behavior in the context of growth, and suggests how such a perspective might be applicable in other contexts as well.

Jay initially presented this paper in the MOR O&S seminar and the feedback he got turned out to be very helpful. He would especially like to thank Paul Adler, Feng Zhu, Nandini Rajagopalan, and Mark Kennedy. (02/28/11)

Students from Judith Blumenthal's Fall 2010 Retail Management class, Marketing 430 recently won the American Eagle Outfitters case competition in Pittsburgh, PA (see attached). Judith accompanied the team to the finals of the case competition, where three teams out of an original 57 teams competed for the top prize. (02/28/11)

John Boudreau was elected a Fellow of the Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology (SIOP). It will be announced at the SIOP Annual Conference in April in Chicago. (02/27/11)

Lori Yue (with Hayagreeva Rao and Paul Ingram) had a hit in the American Sociological Review: Laws of Attraction: Regulatory Arbitrage in the Face of Activism in Right-To-Work States.

Abstract: Extant research recognizes that firms exploit regulatory variations to their advantage but depicts such regulatory arbitrage as a dyadic process between firms and regulators. We extend this account by including the political rivals of a firm and suggest that firms view regulatory differences as part of a corporate political opportunity structure, and exploit regulatory variations to disadvantage their rivals. Empirically, we focus on variations in right-to-work (RTW) laws which signal the pro-business climate in a state and exist in twenty-two of the 50 American states. Using a spatial-regression discontinuity design, we analyze how Walmart locates new stores in the face of anti-Walmart activists and exploits regulatory discontinuities on the borders between RTW and non-RTW states. We find that Walmart is more likely to propose new stores at the borders of RTW states, and to open those stores if they are protested, compared to the borders of neighboring non-RTW states. We discuss implications for the study of regulation, social movements, and organizations. (02/14/11)

Paul Adler (with Clara Xiaoling Chen at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) just had an acceptance at Accounting, Organizations and Society: "Combining Creativity and Control: Understanding Individual Motivation in Large-Scale Collaborative Creativity."

Abstract: Recent research has shown that management control systems (MCS) can improve performance in contexts characterized by high levels of task uncertainty. This seems to conflict with a second stream of research, which argues that MCSs risk undermining the intrinsic motivation needed for effective performance in such settings. To solve this puzzle, we build on theories of perceived locus of causality and self-construal and develop an integrative model summarized in 15 propositions. To explicate our proposed solution and to show its robustness, we focus on the class of activities we call large-scale collaborative creativity (LSCC) — contexts where individuals face a dual challenge of demonstrating creativity and embracing the formal controls that coordinate their creative activities with others'. We argue that LSCC requires the simultaneous activation of intrinsic and identified forms of motivation, and simultaneously independent and interdependent self-construals. Against some scholarship that argues or assumes that such simultaneous combinations are infeasible, we argue that they can be fostered through appropriate attraction-selection-attrition policies and management control systems design. We also show how our propositions can enrich our understanding of motivation in other settings, where creativity and/or coordination demands are less pressing. (02/15/11)

Peter Kim (along with co-authors including former MOR alum Cecily Cooper) has an article in press in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: "Understanding the effects of substantive responses on trust following a transgression" (attached).

Abstract

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the implications of 'substantive' responses for the repair of trust following a violation and the cognitive processes that govern how and when they are effective. These studies examined two forms of substantive responses, penance and regulation, that represent different categories of trust repair attempts. The findings from Studies 1 – 3 suggest that both can be effective to the extent that they elicit the crucial mediating cognition of perceived repentance. Data from Study 2 revealed that trustors saw signals of repentance as more informative when the transgression was due to a lapse of competence than due to a lapse of integrity. Study 4 compared these substantive responses to apologies (a non-substantive response) and revealed that, despite their surface level differences, they each repaired trust through 'perceived repentance.' The paper offers an integrative framework for understanding the relationships among a range of trustor responses. (11/10/10)

Nan Jia has just won a 2010 CIBER research grant for her research: "Multinational Corporations' International Expansion and Commitments to Global Initiatives." (11/02/10)

Feng Zhu continues his impressive hit streak with a recent acceptance (with Marco Iansiti at HBS) at the Strategic Management Journal: "Entry into Platform-Based Markets."

Abstract

We develop a theoretical model to examine the relative importance of platform quality, indirect network effects, and consumer expectations on the success of entrants in platform-based markets. We find that an entrant's success depends on the strength of indirect network effects and on the consumers' discount factor for future applications. We illustrate the model's applicability by examining Xbox's entry into the video game industry. We find that Xbox had a small quality advantage over the incumbent, PlayStation 2, and the strength of indirect network effects and the consumers' discount factor, while statistically significant, fall in the region where PlayStation 2's position is unsustainable.

Available at http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~fzhu/PlatformEntry.pdf Feng would like to acknowledge his mentor, Paul, for advice and encouragement throughout the preparation and review process as well as Mark and Yong (and the participants) who led the discussions of this paper at two MOR O&S meetings. (10/19/10)

Our own Scott Wiltermuth got two terrific hits:

"Cheating More When the Spoils Are Split" Scott S. Wiltermuth Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Four experiments demonstrated that people are more likely to cheat when the benefits of doing so are split with another person, even an anonymous stranger, than when the actor alone captures all of the benefits. In three of the studies, splitting the benefits of over-reporting one's performance on a task made such over-reporting seem less unethical in the eyes of participants. Mitigated perceptions of the immorality of over-reporting performance mediated the relationship between split spoils and increased over-reporting of performance in Study 3. The studies thus showed that people may be more likely to behave dishonestly for their own benefit if they can point to benefiting others as a mitigating factor for their unethical behavior. AND "Too Much Information: The Perils of Non-Diagnostic Information in Negotiations" Scott S. Wiltermuth and Margaret A. Neale Journal of Applied Psychology

Two studies showed that possessing information about a negotiation counterpart that is irrelevant to the negotiation task can impair negotiators' effectiveness because such knowledge impedes effective information exchange. In Study 1 negotiators who possessed diagnostic and non-diagnostic forms of information were each less likely to exchange information about their preferences within the negotiation. However, only those negotiators who possessed non-diagnostic information achieved inferior negotiation outcomes as a result. In Study 2 negotiators possessing non-diagnostic information about their counterparts in electronically mediated negotiations were more likely to terminate the search for mutually beneficial outcomes prematurely and declare impasses. They were also less able to use diagnostic forms of information to make mutually beneficial trade-offs. As a result, negotiators in these dyads achieved inferior outcomes. (10/18/10)

At the recent AOM meeting in Montreal, our own Nandini Rajagopalan was presented with the AMJ Outstanding Reviewer award for the second consecutive year. The award is well deserved and attests to her enormous dedication and commitment to our profession. (08/16/10)

From John G. Matsusaka, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs: I am pleased to announce the appointment of Peer Fiss to the McAlister Associate Professorship in Business Administration.

Peer is currently Associate Professor of Management and Organization. He received his Ph.D. in management and organization and sociology from Northwestern University in 2003, and joined Marshall in 2006 after three years on the faculty at Queen's University. Peer is a management scholar who specializes in the field of strategy. He has made both methodological and substantive contributions, many revolving around the idea of framing. Peer studies how organizational practices, such as using stock option incentive plans or diversification, "diffuse" – how they are adopted, evolve, and transfer from one organization to another. Peer's empirical work employs a variety of research methods, ranging from single case studies to econometric analysis using large samples. He is also regarded as a pioneer in the use of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, a set of tools that were developed in sociology but are rapidly spreading in management.

Peer has published eight papers in top journals, eight articles in edited volumes, and has prepared a draft of a book on fuzzy-set analysis for Princeton University Press. He serves on the editorial board of five top journals in management. In 2010, he received the Western Academy of Management's prestigious Ascendant Scholar Award.

Peer is also an accomplished teacher. At the undergraduate level, he teaches the required capstone course in strategy, using a mix of cases, group projects, experiential exercises, in-class analysis of company web sites, small group discussions, and other formats. He also teaches his department's required course on organization theory for doctoral students, and has served on several dissertation committees.

Named chairs and professorships are among the highest honors bestowed by the University on our faculty. The McAlister Associate Professorship is Marshall's second early-career named professorship, and is intended to recognize scholarship with significant accomplishment and outstanding promise. Please join me in congratulating Peer on achieving this honor.

John G. Matsusaka Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs August 6, 2010

Kyle Mayer and Anthea Zhang (2001 MOR doctoral alum) will be Associate Editors of the Academy of Management Journal, the preeminent journal in the management field. Associate Editors of AMJ are a very select group of prominent scholars and play an important role in shaping research and knowledge in our field. To have two Associate Editors from the MOR family on AMJ at the same time is truly amazing and attests to the high esteem that our faculty and former doctoral students hold in Academe.(06/09/10)

Anthea Zhang (2001 MOR doctoral alum). She has won the 2010 Strategic Management Society Emerging Scholar award. It is an annual award given to the most productive/influential strategy scholar under the age of 40. The scholar's entire body of work is assessed for this award and it clearly establishes Anthea at the very top of the strategy scholarly elite. It is also a wonderful testament to the quality of our PhD program.

Congratulations to Anthea and her mentor, Nandini Rajagopalan. (06/03/10)

Nandini Rajagopalan just got a major hit (with Jenny Tian and John Haleblian, both MOR doctoral alums) at the Strategic Management Journal: "The Effects of Board Human and Social Capital on Investor Reactions to New CEO Selection."

Abstract

This study extends work on independent directors to examine the influence of their human capital and social capital on investor reactions to the board's CEO selection decision. We predict that human capital, as represented by the board's CEO experience and industry experience, and social capital, as represented by directors' co-working experience on the board and external directorship ties to other corporate boards, will influence the stock market reactions to new CEO appointments. In a sample of 208 new CEO appointment events in U.S. manufacturing firms between 1999 and 2003, we found that the stock market reacted favorably to the appointments made by boards with higher levels of human and social capital. We also found that the effect of internal social capital was stronger when the new CEO was an insider rather than an outsider. The implications of the results for director selection and CEO succession are discussed. (05/25/10)

Tom Olson was just elected to the Executive Committee of the Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management. (05/20/10)

Nan Jia's dissertation, "Political Strategies in Emerging Economies",has been selected as one of the finalists for the Dissertation Competition of the International Society for New Institutional Economics (ISNIE), a major academy for researchers studying institutions and economics. The winner of the award will be announced at the Society's annual conference in June. (05/18/10)

Our own Kyle Mayer has just been elected to the Executive Committee of the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management. (05/17/10)

Peter Kim has been awarded a grant from the Provost's Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Initiative. It will support his research on "Leaps of Faith: The Nature of Opportunistic Generalization Across Domains." (05/17/10)

From John Matsusaka, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs

I am pleased to announce the promotion of Peer Fiss to Associate Professor of Management and Organization, with tenure. Peer received his Ph.D. in management and organization and sociology from Northwestern University in 2003. He joined Marshall in 2006 after three years on the faculty at Queen's University.

Peer is a management scholar who specializes in the field of strategy. He had made both methodological and substantive contributions, many revolving around the idea of framing. Peer studies how organizational practices, such as using stock option incentive plans or diversifying operations across different countries, "diffuse" – how they are adopted, evolve, and transfer from one organization to another. While scholars traditionally assume that diffusion is mainly driven by a practice's functional consequences, for example, how a stock option plan influences the behavior of executives, Peer's research shows that diffusion also depends on the language used to justify a practice. Peer's empirical work employs a variety of research methods, ranging from single case studies to rigorous econometric analysis using large samples. He is also regarded as the pioneer in the use of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, a set of tools that were developed in sociology but are rapidly spreading in management.

Peer has eight papers published or forthcoming in top journals as well as eight other published articles. He sits on the editorial board of five(!) top journals in management. In 2010, he received the Western Academy of Management's prestigious Ascendant Scholar Award.

Peer is also an accomplished teacher. At the undergraduate level, he teaches the required capstone course in strategy, using a mix of cases, group projects, experiential exercises, in-class analysis of company web sites, small group discussions, and other formats. He also teaches MOR's required course on organization theory for doctoral students, and has served on several dissertation committees.

Please join me in congratulating Peer on his well-deserved promotion.

John Matsusaka

Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs

May 13, 2010

Sandy Green was nominated for the 2010 USC Parents Association Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Award for the second year in row! All nominees are recognized on the USC Parents Association Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Honor Roll, and the winners will be announced by President Nikias during Trojan Parents' Weekend next fall. (05/05/10)

Peer Fiss just got another big hit in the Academy of Management Journal: "Building Better Causal Theories: A Fuzzy-Set Approach to Typologies in Organization Research."

Abstract

Typologies are an important way of organizing the complex cause-effect relationships that are key building blocks of the strategy and organization literatures. Here, I develop a novel theoretical perspective of causal core and periphery based on how elements of a configuration are connected to outcomes. Using data on high-technology firms, I empirically investigate configurations based on the Miles & Snow typology using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). My findings show how the theoretical perspective developed here allows for a detailed analysis of causal core, periphery, and asymmetry, shifting the focus to mid-range theories of causal processes in typologies. (04/14/10)

Another deserving award for Jay Chok. The Marshall School of Business Ph.D. Program just selected him for the 2010 Entrepreneurship Research Award. Jay's scholastic performance, excellence in research, letters of recommendation, and academic achievements all contributed to his selection. (04/05/10)

At the forthcoming USC Academic Honors Convocation, our own Jay Chok will receive the Phi Kappa Phi All-University Honor Society's Student Recognition Award for outstanding academic work.

At the recent Western Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Peer Fiss was honored as an Ascendant Scholar, an award given to rising stars in the management field. Peer joins a long list of WAM Ascendant Scholars including Joanne Martin, Jay Barney, Connie Gersick, Kathy Eisenhardt, Tom Lee, Michael Morris, Jone Pearce, Anne Tsui, Janet Fulk, and our own Arvind Bhambri, Sue Mohrman, Peter Kim, and Nandini Rajagopalan. (04/05/10)

Nandini Rajagopalan is a recipient of the 2009-20010 USC Mellon Mentoring Award for her wise guidance and generous time mentoring faculty colleagues.(04/02/10)

Feng Zhu is on a roll! His paper (with Ramon Casadesus-Masanell at HBS) just got accepted at Management Science: "Strategies to Fight Ad-Sponsored Rivals." (03/25/10)

Abstract

We analyze the optimal strategy of a high-quality incumbent that faces a low-quality ad-sponsored competitor. In addition to competing through adjustments of tactical variables such as price or the number of ads a product carries, we allow the incumbent to consider changes in its business model. We consider four alternative business models, a subscription-based model, an ad-sponsored model, a mixed model in which the incumbent offers a product that is both subscription-based and ad-sponsored, and a dual model in which the incumbent offers two products, one based on the ad-sponsored model and the other based on the mixed business model. We show that the optimal response to an ad-sponsored rival often entails business model reconfigurations. We also find that when there is an ad-sponsored entrant, the incumbent is more likely to prefer to compete through the subscription-based or the ad-sponsored model, rather than the mixed or the dual model, because of cannibalization and endogenous vertical differentiation concerns. We discuss how our study helps improve our understanding of notions of strategy, business model, and tactics in the field of strategy.

The working paper version is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1476530.

Feng's working paper version has already had several media mentions:

Billboard of Nielsen, "Paper Outlines Business Model Strategies For Media Companies." (October 28, 2009).

Business Insider, "How To Compete With Free Products. " (September 29, 2009).

Plus he has been interviewed on the BNET:

BNET of CBS, "Can the Wall Street Journal Compete in a World of Free News? " (November 24, 2009).

BNET of CBS, "Can Your Business Win Against Ad-Sponsored Competitors." (November 17, 2009).

The Greif Center has awarded Nan Jia a grant to support her entrepreneurship research during the upcoming academic year. The Center received multiple, high-quality proposals this year and the selection of Yong's proposal for this award is a testament to the quality and potential of her work. (03/25/10)

The Greif Center has awarded Yongwook Paik a grant to support his entrepreneurship research during the upcoming academic year. The Center received multiple, high-quality proposals this year and the selection of Yong's proposal for this award is a testament to the quality and potential of his work.(03/25/10)

Our own Morgan McCall just had a paper published in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 3 (2010), 3–19: "Recasting Leadership Development." It was the focal article in this edition of the journal.

Abstract

To the extent that leadership is learned, it is learned through experience. This article begins with seven conclusions about the role of experience in leadership development, ponders the reasons that what is known is so rarely applied, suggests some ways to put experience at the center of leadership development efforts, and concludes with a series of recommendations for practice and for future research. (03/01/10)

Jennifer Overbeck (with Margaret A Neale and Cassandra L Govan) just got a paper accepted by Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: "I feel, therefore you act: Intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of emotion on negotiation as a function of social power."(02/26/10) Abstract

We examine how emotion (anger and happiness) affects value claiming and creation in a dyadic negotiation between parties with unequal power. Using a new statistical technique that analyzes individual data while controlling for dyad-level dependence, we demonstrate that anger is helpful for powerful negotiators. They feel more focused and assertive, and claim more value; the effects are intrapersonal, insofar as the powerful negotiator responds to his or her own emotional state and not to the emotional state of the counterpart. On the other hand, effects of emotion are generally not intrapersonal for low-power negotiators: these negotiators do not respond to their own emotions but can be affected by those of a powerful counterpart. They lose focus and yield value. Somewhat surprisingly, the presence of anger in the dyad appears to foster greater value creation, particularly when the powerful party is angry. Implications for the negotiation and power literatures are discussed.

Feng Zhu (with Michael Zhang at HKUST) just got a paper accepted by the American Economic Review: "Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia" (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1021450). (02/18/10)

Abstract

The literature on the private provision of public goods suggests an inverse relationship between incentives to contribute and group size. We find, however, that after an exogenous reduction of group size at Chinese Wikipedia, the unaffected contributors decrease their contributions by 41.4% on average. We attribute the cause to social effects: Contributors receive social benefits that increase with both the amount of their contributions and group size, and the shrinking group size weakens these social benefits. Consistent with our explanation, we find that the more contributors value social benefits, the more they reduce their contributions after the block.

Feng and Michael also have a paper forthcoming next month in the Journal of Marketing: "Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales: The Moderating Role of Product and Consumer Characteristics" (http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~fzhu/ZhuZhang2010.pdf).

Abstract

This article examines how product and consumer characteristics moderate the influence of online consumer reviews on product sales using data from the video game industry. The findings indicate that online reviews are more influential for less popular games and games whose players have greater Internet experience. The article shows differential impact of consumer reviews across products in the same product category and suggests that firms' online marketing strategies should be contingent on product and consumer characteristics. The authors discuss the implications of these results in light of the increased share of niche products in recent years.

Sandy Green (with G. Thomas Goodnight from Annenberg)got a hit in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, the top rhetoric journal in the world: "Rhetoric, Risk, and Markets: the Dot-Com Bubble."(02/18/10)

Abstract

Post-conventional economic theories are assembled to inquire into the contingent, mimetic symbolic and material spirals unfolding the dot-com bubble, 1992-2002. The new technologies bubble is reconstructed as a rhetorical movement across the practices of the hybrid market-industry risk culture of communications. Dot-com bubble legacies task economic criticism with developing critical capacity sufficient to address the attention driven economies of worth.

Larry Greiner had an article published in Organizational Dynamics: Management Consultants as Professionals, or Are They? (see attached). (01/20/10)

Janet Fulk and Peter Monge, along with Annenberg Ph.D. graduate Y. Connie Yuan (now an assistant professor at Cornell University), won the 2009 Dennis Gouran Research Award from the National Communication Association for the best published article of the year in group communication. "Connective and Communal Transactive Memory Systems" was published in Communication Research. The research assessed how individuals in teams make choices about when to seek and share information with teammates through direct communication with each other versus using shared databases for acquiring or sharing information. The research was based on an integration of three theories: social influence, public goods, and transactive memory.(12/08/09)

Adam Wood has passed his Qualifying Exam with flying colors.

Congratulations to Adam and his hard-working committee of Peter Carnevale (chair), Jennifer Overbeck, Peter Kim, Mark Kennedy, and Andrea Hollingshead (Annenberg). (11/11/09)

Peer Fiss is joining the Editorial Board of Administrative Science Quarterly. Along with his other board memberships in AMJ, AMR, Org Science, and SMJ, this puts Peer in pretty elite territory. (11/05/09)

Eunice Rhee has successfully passed the Qualifying Exam with flying colors. Congratulations to Eunice and her Committee of Peer Fiss (chair), Mark Kennedy, Jay Kim, Nandini Rajagopalan, and Peter Monge (10/29/09).

Our own Glenn Ault (joint with Keck School) has been appointed Associate Dean of Clinical Administration for LAC+USC. He retains his positions as Associate Medical Director, Operating Rooms, LAC+USC Medical Center, and Assistant Professor of Colorectal Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine.(10/21/09)

Our own Scott Wiltermuth had an article accepted for publication in the Academy of Management Journal.

"Who's with me? False consensus, brokerage, and ethical decision making in organizations" by Francis J. Flynn and Scott S. Wiltermuth

Abstract: We propose that members of organizations overestimate the degree to which others share their views on matters of ethics. Further, we argue that this false consensus bias is exacerbated, not mitigated, by being a broker in an advice network. That is, a higher level of betweenness centrality increases a focal individual's estimates of agreement with others on ethical issues beyond what is warranted by any actual increase in agreement. Wetest these ideas with three separate samples of graduate business students, executive students, and employees in an organization. Individuals who had higher betweenness centrality (rather than degree or closeness centrality) overestimated the extent to which their ethical judgments were in line with the judgments of their colleagues.(09/28/09)

Chailin Cummings successfully defended her dissertation today: Community Structure as Collective Identity Construction and Resource Search. Kudos to her hard working committee of Nandini Rajagopalan (Chair), Mark Kennedy, and Peter Monge from Annenberg.

Lin has taken a faculty position as Assistant Professor of Management at California State University-Long Beach.

Your husband and baby Cate are extremely proud of you (07/27/09)!

Phil More will be MOR's representative on the Marshall Faculty Council for the next two years. (07/24/09)

Our own Feng Zhu (with Ramon Casadesus-Masanell at HBS) was awarded a summer research grant from the NET Institute for their project, "Strategies to Fight Ad-sponsored Rivals." (07/10/09)

Janet Fulk and Peter Monge (with Kimberlie Stephens) had a paper published in Human Relations: "Constrained choices in alliance formations: Cupids and organizational marriages" (attached). (06/22/09)

ABSTRACT

This article develops a constrained choice model of strategic decision-making for 'cupid' alliances. Unlike voluntary alliances, cupid alliances are forged between 'target' organizations at the behest of a third 'cupid' organization that stands to benefit from creation of the alliance. Three key alliance decisions – whether to partner, with whom, and governance – are substantially curtailed by the cupid's requirements, producing a severely constrained set of strategic decisions. The conceptual model is supplemented with a case study which relies on qualitative interviews, observations and communication network data collected from principals negotiating a cupid alliance. A finding which may be unique to cupid alliances was the decline in trust over the course of the negotiation between those representatives whose organizations had no past alliance relationships. This finding is especially interesting given the fact that despite the decreased propensity for representatives to trust, an agreement was still reached.

>

Our own Paul Adler was just appointed to the Harold Quinton Chair in Business Policy. This is well deserved, very well deserved. (06/15/09)

Jay Chok has been selected to receive the Marshall School of Business' 2009 James S. Ford/Commerce Associates Ph.D. Fellowship. This prestigious award is based on Jay's scholastic performance, excellence in research, letters of recommendation, and academic achievements.(06/12/09)

Our own Sandy Green has been nominated for a 2009 USC Parents Association Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Award. All nominees are recognized on the USC Parents Association Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Honor Roll, and the winners will be presented with a monetary award by President Sample during Trojan Parents Weekend next fall.

This university-wide nomination is quite an honor and recognizes Sandy's passion and caring for education that he brings to the classroom. (05/26/09)

MOR faculty members continue to receive awards for their excellent in teaching. Arvind Bhambri and Bob Turrill won the Evan C. Thompson Teaching & Learning Innovation Award at the recent faculty/staff awards event. Mike Coombs received a Golden Apple Teaching Award at the undergraduate graduation ceremony.(05/25/09)

Peer Fiss received a solid hit (with Shahzad Ansari of Erasmus University & Ed Zajac of Northwestern University) in the Academy of Management Review: "How Practices Vary as They Diffuse: A Framework for Analysis." (05/18/09)

Abstract

We extend research on the diffusion of corporate practices by providing a framework for studying practice variation during diffusion processes. Specifically, we theorize how population-level mechanisms of diffusion link with organizational-level mechanisms of implementation that lead to the adaptation of practices. We also identify technical, cultural, and political elements of fit (or misfit) between diffusing practices and adopters and analyze how the process of attaining fit across these elements can trigger different patterns of adaptation.

The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies has just awarded the 2009 Entrepreneurship Research Award to Libby Weber. Her scholastic performance, excellence in research, letters of recommendation, and academic achievements all contributed to this honor. The award will help Libby complete her dissertation "The Right Frame of Mind for M&A: The Post-merger Impact of Deal Frames on Target Management Behavior."(04/16/09)

At the recent SIOP Conference, Ed Lawler received the Raymond A. Katzell Award in I-O Psychology. This award is given to a SIOP member who has shown to the general public the importance of work done by I-O Psychology in addressing social and workplace issues. (04/13/09)