SPEAKER

Prof. Dean Xu
Professor of Management
Monash Business School
Monash University

ABSTRACT

Board chairs and party secretaries play different roles in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The former’s primary role is economic, namely, to improve the productivity and economic performance of the firm, whereas the latter’s role is mainly political, namely, to ensure that the firm stays loyal to the party line and contributes to the political causes of the party. We examine the effect of chair–secretary duality on pay gap and firm productivity by generating alternative hypotheses based on two opposing perspectives. The first perspective is agency theory, which predicts that duality increases pay gap and decreases productivity, while pay gap decreases productivity. The second perspective is stewardship theory combined with role theory, which predicts that duality decreases both pay gap and productivity, while pay gap increases productivity. Empirical analysis on data from 670 Chinese SOEs for the period 2005–2021 lends support to the stewardship and role theory-based predictions. We also find that the negative relationship between duality and pay gap is weaker when a firm has had poorer performance, and stronger when the region in which a firm is located has had more social unrest.

SPEAKER

Prof. Brian Wu
Professor of Strategy
Ross School of Business
University of Michigan

ABSTRACT

Digital platforms such as Amazon and Alibaba orchestrate e-commerce transactions between merchants and consumers, thereby amassing a vast reservoir of real-time granular transaction data. Analyzing this data with advanced AI technology, these platforms can discern unmet customer demand and provide this market intelligence to merchants. Such a platform strategy has the potential to benefit all parties involved—consumers can purchase desired products that were previously unavailable; merchants can increase revenue by offering desired items; and the platform can take a larger commission from the increase in transactions. Despite the growing traction this strategy has gained in practice, little academic research has explored the performance impacts and the processes at play. As an initial attempt to fill this research gap, we provide empirical evidence based on a field experiment involving 146,892 merchants that was conducted at one of the leading digital platforms in the world. Our findings shed new light on the role of AI in improving platform design and shaping industry evolution.

SPEAKER

Mr. Jino Lu
Ph.D. Candidate
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

ABSTRACT

Strategy and innovation scholars have long emphasized the crucial role of demand in driving
technological progress within a domain. However, relatively less is known about how changes in
demand conditions within a domain impact the technological progress and reallocation of
innovation resources in other domains. In this study, I argue that an increase in demand for
innovation within a domain can have negative implications for the innovation progress of firms
in adjacent domains, because it intensifies competition for knowledge workers, a critical resource
for innovation. Empirically, I exploit an unexpected environmental policy shock that led to an
exogenous increase in demand for electric vehicle (EV) technologies. I find that, following an
increase in innovation activities within the EV domain, firms in adjacent technological domains
not only experienced a decline in EV innovations but also suffered a more significant decline
(twice as much) in their own core technological domains and in their ability to explore new
technological domains. This negative effect is stronger for firms in other growing (rather than
declining) technological domains (e.g., renewable energy domains, including photovoltaic
technologies), and for firms in a related technological space but farther from the EV domain in
the product market. Further analyses suggest that this occurred because firms in adjacent
technological domains were more likely to lose inventors to firms in the EV domain. These
findings, which highlight that market and technological changes in seemingly unrelated areas can
impact firms’ resources and capabilities through competition for knowledge workers, have
implications for managers and policymakers.

SPEAKER

Dr Nur Ahmed
Postdoctoral Associate
MIT Sloan & MIT CSAIL

ABSTRACT

This study examines the tension over appropriation strategy between firms and scientists, a key human capital. Whereas scientists prefer to publish, firms tend to minimize outgoing knowledge to maintain competitive advantage. This study investigates how a tight labor market, which affords scientists higher bargaining power, can influence firm publications. Using a novel dataset of 200 million job posts and 1.1 million publications from the US Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry, I show that recruitment efforts increase the number of AI publications, but primarily in the same fields of heightened demand. For identification strategy, I exploit the variation in AI exposure at the firm level, which directly influences firm-level demand for AI talents but not AI publications. A machine learning-based approach demonstrates that to balance the trade-off between knowledge leakage and recruiting, firms publish papers that are less commercially valuable. Further mechanism tests on the use of AI research in patents and the science intensiveness of AI patents bolster our theoretical explanation. Findings underscore the importance of human capital in firms’ appropriation strategies.

SPEAKER

Prof. M.K. Chin
Associate Professor of Management
Kelley School of Business
Indiana University

ABSTRACT

Using data on psychiatric diagnoses of CEOs in Finland, we examine a) whether CEOs’ substance use disorders reduce firm performance and increase the likelihood of CEO turnover and b) whether governance practices mitigate such impacts. Our data on CEOs’ psychiatric diagnoses is unique in its details as it is obtained from the official nation-wide healthcare register, containing CEOs all-life-time clinical diagnoses for substance use disorder and for other mental disorders. Our findings offer support for our hypotheses on the direct effects of CEOs’ substance abuse as well as the interaction effects of having family board members and external monitors. Our study contributes to the strategic leadership and corporate governance literatures by introducing a novel construct—CEO’s mental health and thereby expanding their theoretical scopes.

SPEAKER

Ms. Rebekah Hong
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Maryland

ABSTRACT

Employee creativity—the generation of novel and useful ideas—is crucial for the growth and survival of organizations. In encouraging such creativity, organizations often reward employees who develop successful ideas for new products and services. As a result, employees are motivated to claim ownership over their specific creative ideas in order to get recognition for these ideas. However, I argue that such idea-claiming behaviors can be a double-edged sword as they can lead to negative perceptions by coworkers, negatively affecting coworkers’ willingness to work with the focal employee. Given that creativity is a social process, coworkers’ hesitancy to collaborate with the focal employee can put these employees’ creative careers at risk. Drawing from the Dual Perspective Model of social evaluation, I propose that while claiming ownership of creative ideas would lead to positive evaluations of the focal employee’s creative potential by their coworkers, it can also lead to coworkers perceiving such individuals as being territorial. In turn, these perceptions influence coworkers’ willingness to collaborate on subsequent creative projects with the focal employee. I then identify granting credit to others’ own ideas as a behavioral moderating factor that prompts coworkers to view one’s communication of idea ownership positively versus negatively. I propose a field study and one interactive team lab experiment and report results from the exploratory pilot study to explore this research question.

SPEAKER

Mr. Kian Siong Tey
Ph.D. Candidate
INSEAD

ABSTRACT

Disputes between group representatives are both common and difficult to resolve. Although the dispute resolution literature suggests that such disputes can be resolved when third parties intervene, it does not offer evidence-based strategies for how to manage salient group identities. This is a critical void because these disputes involve very salient group identities. The social identity literature on the other hand, suggests that simultaneously activating subgroup and superordinate identities (“dual identity”) can mitigate intergroup bias and improve relations. However, this research leaves it unclear whether and how these insights can be leveraged by third parties mediating disputes because they predominantly examined hypothetical or mild conflict settings. Integrating insights from both literatures, we propose that third parties leveraging “dual-identity mediation” (DIM) are more successful in resolving disputes because DIM helps each representative understand how their subgroup identities can co-exist within a shared superordinate identity. We test these predictions in three studies of competitive negotiations and hostile disputes. Our studies show that compared to widely used alternative interventions or no third-party intervention, DIM produces (a) better economic outcomes (Studies 1 and 2), (b) better relational outcomes and (c) more positive evaluations of the outcome and the third party (Studies 1 and 2). However, we also find that DIM no longer offers these benefits when one group’s identity is more prototypical of the superordinate identity than the other group’s identity (Study 2).

SPEAKER

Dr. Chuck Eesley
Associate Professor of Management Science and Engineering
Stanford University

ABSTRACT

The financial motivation to earn advertising revenue by spreading misinformation has been widely conjectured to be among the main reasons misinformation continues to be prevalent online. Research aimed at reducing the spread of misinformation has so far focused on user-level interventions with little emphasis on how the supply of misinformation can itself be countered. In this work, we show how online misinformation is largely financially sustained via advertising, examine how financing misinformation affects the advertisers and ad platforms involved and suggest ways of reducing the financing of misinformation. First, we find that  advertising on misinformation outlets is pervasive for companies across several industries and is amplified by digital ad platforms that automatically distribute companies’ ads across the web. Using an information provision survey experiment with a representative sample of the U.S. population, we show that people decrease their demand for a company’s products or services upon learning about its role in monetizing misinformation via online ads. Across a variety of experimental conditions, our results indicate that companies advertising on misinformation websites can face substantial backlash from consumers who discover the prevalence of such ads. To shed light on why misinformation continues to be monetized despite the potential backlash for the advertisers involved, we survey decision-makers at companies. We find that most decision-makers are unaware of their companies’ ads appearing on misinformation websites but have a strong preference to avoid appearing on such websites. Moreover, those uncertain about their role in financing misinformation increase their demand for a platform-based solution to reduce monetizing misinformation upon learning about how platforms amplify ad placement on misinformation websites. Our results suggest low-cost, scalable information-based interventions that digital platforms could implement to reduce the financial incentive to misinform and counter the supply of misinformation online.

SPEAKER

Mr Jingfeng Yin
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Illinois Chicago

ABSTRACT

While previous research has predominantly focused on the socialization processes and consequences of general newcomers who are characterized by a lack of familiarity, high reliance on others, increased propensity for mistakes and errors, and heightened levels of uncertainty and stress, the socialization of star newcomers has received less attention. Unlike general newcomers, star newcomer socialization not only involves the newcomer’s adjustment and adaptation but also instigates changes and adaptations within the team. This planned research, grounded in human capital theory, explores the mechanisms and implications of star newcomer socialization. Specifically, it examines the interactive effects between team and star newcomer adaptation on team performance. The proposal includes plans to empirically test the hypotheses using a dataset of approximately 600 star newcomers and 2,000 star newcomer-season observations from North American basketball clubs in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The anticipated findings suggest that team adaptation, triggered by star newcomer performance, is positively correlated with team performance, and that star newcomer adaptation reinforces this relationship. This research aims to contribute to the existing literature on newcomer socialization, star performers, and team dynamics and performance.

SPEAKER

Dr. Waverly Ding
Associate Professor of Management & Organization
Robert H. Smith School of Business
University of Maryland

ABSTRACT

Young technology firms grow by adding human capital, yet large-scale, longitudinal studies of how young technology firms grow their human capital capabilities remain scare. We combined Crunchbase data of young technology firms with the LinkUp data of 3.2 million historical job postings of these firms to construct a dataset of 1,826 firms founded between 2007 and 2021 (with firm-year observations spanning 2009 to 2022). We analyzed these firms’ job postings to understand antecedents of young firms’ internal capability growth strategy though the hiring of human capital. Young firms may follow a focused strategy to grow their capabilities when they concentrate their resources to hire in one or a few functional areas. In contrast, young firms may also follow a broad-scoped strategy to add human-capital capabilities in broader functional areas and grow their organization in a more balanced way. We propose a three-pronged framework for understanding where young firms fall in this spectrum. Empirical analysis reveals suggestive evidence for the influence of serial entrepreneurs, though the stronger and more robust antecedent factor appears to be related to the characteristics of the firms’ lead VC investors. Firms backed by more pro-IPO-exit VC investors are more likely to utilize a broad-scoped internal capability growth strategy via hiring while firms backed by more pro-acquisition-exit VC investors are more likely to follow a focused strategy and hire people into narrow functional areas. Financial market conditions (whether or not a young firm is operating in a hot versus cold financial market) do not have any direct effect on the firm’s capability growth scope, though they moderate the effect of VC investors.