Management and Strategy - HKU Business School

23 September

Configuring Human-Algorithm Capability Bundles: How the Direction of Algorithmic Advancement Shapes Human Worker Deployment

SPEAKER

Mr. Shaoqin Tang
Ph.D. candidate in Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Leeds School of Business
University of Colorado Boulder

ABSTRACT

While traditional literature emphasizes the importance of deploying high-capability workers to tasks, this paper argues that the rise of algorithmic technologies enables the configuration of human-algorithm capability bundles, altering how organizations deploy workers with varying capabilities. Using a formal model, I show that the effects of algorithms on worker deployment depend on the locus of human capability and the trajectory of algorithmic capability advancement. Consider tasks comprising two complementary components. Low-capability workers underperform relative to high-capability workers in both components, but the performance gap is larger in component 1 than in component 2. When algorithmic capability advances in component 1 (“algorithmic deepening”), organizations benefit from bundling algorithms with low-capability workers to perform tasks, reducing their need for high-capability workers. Conversely, when algorithmic capability extends into component 2 (“algorithmic broadening”), organizations substitute low-capability workers with algorithms, while maintaining demand for high-capability workers. I examine these predictions by tracking the deployment of reviewers on firm-hosted open-source software projects over a period when the algorithm used in code review first deepens and later broadens its capabilities. My study has important implications for capability bundling and organization design in an age where humans increasingly interact with algorithms in task performance.

22 September

Can AI Be a Good Leader? Exploring the Effects of Artificial Intelligence Directive Leadership

SPEAKER

Ms. Ying WU
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Managerial Studies
University of Illinois Chicago

ABSTRACT

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is swiftly reconfiguring workplaces and redefining long-standing employee responsibilities, thereby establishing AI as a major influence in management. Existing research has primarily focused on human-AI collaboration, emphasizing AI’s supportive function in areas like problem resolution, decision-making, and fostering new ideas. Nevertheless, as AI’s abilities continue to advance quickly, its function is progressing past that of a simple aide, prompting inquiries into whether AI could also operate as a capable leader. Given the profound practical and theoretical importance of this subject, investigating the ramifications of AI-led management becomes crucial. Utilizing a field study and a pair of experimental studies in this proposed research, I will examine the impact of AI-driven directive leadership on various individual factors, including attitudes (like self-efficacy and cognitive strain) and behaviors (such as work performance and subjective well-being). Drawing upon the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and existing research on human-AI collaboration, I will explore to examine boundary conditions, such as AI aversion, that may either amplify or diminish the effects of instructional communication from an AI. The proposed research aims to advance the ongoing discourse on AI in management by examining individual reactions to AI in leadership roles. In doing so, it broadens existing leadership frameworks to incorporate non-human agents into leadership positions and offers practical insights for companies considering AI for supervisory functions.

22 September

Managers and the Cultural Transmission of Gender Norms

SPEAKER

Prof. Kieu-Trang Nguyen
Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
University of Melbourne

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the influence of managers from countries with different gender norms on workplace culture and gender disparities within organizations. Using data from a multinational firm operating in over 100 countries, we exploit cross-country manager rotations to estimate the impact of male managers’ gender attitudes on gender pay gaps within a team. Managers from countries with one standard deviation more progressive gender attitudes narrow the pay gap by 5 percentage points (18%), primarily by promoting women at higher rates. The effects last beyond the manager’s rotation and are concentrated in countries with more conservative gender attitudes. Managers with progressive views appear to influence the local office culture, as local managers who interact with but are not under the purview of the foreign manager begin to have smaller pay gaps in their teams. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture.

12 September

How Does Industry Shape Academic Science? Evidence from “Million Dollar Plants”

SPEAKER

Mr. Hongyuan Xia
Ph.D. candidate in Economics
Cornell University

ABSTRACT

Firms rely on academic science and actively participate in the production of scientific knowledge. However, the impact of industry on academic science remains unclear. This study utilizes the site selection decisions of “Million Dollar Plants” (MDPs) to estimate the causal effects of industry on academic science. I compare the responses of scientists in counties that successfully attracted MDPs (“winners”) with those in counties that narrowly missed out on these MDPs (“runners-up”). The arrival of an MDP in a “winner” county shifts research of local scientists toward topics relevant to the firm, but not at the expense of either the quantity or quality of their work. This shift in research direction is not primarily driven by direct funding or collaboration. Instead, it occurs immediately after the announcement but before the physical establishment of these plants and is more likely to affect scientists without prior experience in commercialization. These findings indicate that scientists are refocusing their attention toward more applied and firm-relevant research.

12 September

Patenting and Information Disclosure

SPEAKER

Ms. Xizhao Wang
PhD Candidate in Managerial Economics and Strategy
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University

ABSTRACT

Invention disclosure facilitates knowledge spillovers, supporting future progress but potentially limiting appropriability for the inventor. In this paper, I examine invention disclosure behavior by analyzing the readability of patent texts, using both traditional and novel AI-based readability scores. Using two difference-in-differences analyses, I find that following the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act and the establishment of Technology Transfer Offices, university-affiliated inventors reduced the readability of patent detailed descriptions. This decrease in readability does not extend to patent summary texts, suggesting that university inventors strategically limit information on how to make and use the invention. The findings reveal the potential for strategic disclosure behavior not just in the decision of whether to patent or keep inventions as trade secrets, but also in the degree of patent language clarity. Institutional changes lead inventors to selectively adjust the information disclosed in their patents and obfuscate core techniques. Underlying mechanisms and effects on follow-on innovation are further explored.

12 September

Up, Down, And All Around: Emotional Whiplash Expressions And Its Effects On Interpersonal Trust And Relationships At Work

SPEAKER

Ms. Emily Hsu
Ph.D. Candidate
Olin Business School
Washington University in St. Louis

ABSTRACT

Emotions are pervasive in all veins of an organization, and management scholars have published an extensive body of research on feelings at work. Yet there remains a lack of organizational research regarding how the temporal and interpersonal natures of emotions interact with one another. To bridge these disparate streams of research, I integrate extant scholarship on both topics to investigate a phenomenon I term emotional whiplash. Though an intrapersonal experience, emotional whiplash is pertinent to interpersonal interactions, as it may be expressed during interpersonal encounters and can engender important downstream consequences. I thus employ qualitative (Studies 1–2) and quantitative methods (Studies 3–4) to develop and test theory about the sociality of emotional whiplash expressions. In particular, I examine the influence of emotional whiplash expressions on trust between dyadic partners and explore its downstream impact on facets of interpersonal relationships. Across this set of studies, I highlight in particular the role of causal attributions in influencing how observers respond to others’ expressions of emotional whiplash. Through this paper, I introduce a novel type of emotional change and advance our knowledge on interpersonal emotion dynamics, as well as how and why our relationships at work may strengthen or disintegrate over the course of an interaction.

09 September

A Dynamic Perspective Of Nonstandard Worker Use In The Postcrisis Context

SPEAKER

Mr. Zhefan Huang
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Management
Warrington College of Business
University of Florida

ABSTRACT

Firm nonstandard worker use, or using employment arrangements deviating from traditional fulltime, indefinite contracts, has become a key element of contemporary human resource (HR) management. Despite extensive research on firm nonstandard worker use and its implications, however, prior studies predominantly adopt a static perspective. This approach overlooks the dynamic nature of workforce composition and potentially leads to theoretical tensions and mixed empirical findings. The current study theorizes and tests a dynamic theoretical framework of nonstandard worker use trajectories following external crises. Integrating the flexibility perspective, which highlights short-term benefits of workforce flexibility via increased nonstandard worker use, with the resource-based view, emphasizing the long-term strategic importance of firm-specific human capital fostered by standard workers, this study theorizes and examines the short- and long-term changes in nonstandard worker use and their productivity implications after external crises. Further, this study examines how HR practices enhancing the flexibility of standard workers (in accordance with the flexibility view) and the strategic importance of human capital (in accordance with the resource-based view) shape the dynamic changes in nonstandard worker use. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by providing a dynamic lens of nonstandard worker use following external crises, which helps reconcile competing theoretical perspectives and offers new insights into workforce composition management in changing external environments.

09 September

Searching for a Confidant: How Family Firms in Bangladesh Hire Professional CEOs?

SPEAKER

Ms. Priyam SARAF
Ph.D., Macro Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business (GSB)
Ph.D., Minor, Sociology, Department of Sociology
Stanford University

ABSTRACT

Inefficient professionalization among developing economy firms has long puzzled students of economic development. This paper studies how CEO professionalization unfolds among developing economy family firms, theorizing the consequences of weak legal institutions for the decisions of owners. Based on a 20-month qualitative case study of the Bangladeshi garment exports sector—using participant observations, interviews, and archival data—I argue that professionalization is more than just a search for the competent ‘best athlete’; it is fundamentally a process of comfort-seeking by owners. Owners recognize the need for professionalization in response to external pressure, but fear employee deviance in their weak institutional environments. Rather than prioritizing competence, they search for a confidant— like the outgoing family CEO. Since finding a confidant is hard, they settle for controllability, interpreted as a lower likelihood of deviance and greater ease of sanctioning, gauged in terms of salarymen motivations, structural isolation, and emotional neutrality. Controllability explains why outsiders— strangers—get hired as professional CEOs over competent, similar locals, implying a professionalization-development paradox. I discuss implications for scholarship on professionalization, development, and hiring.

09 September

The Unintended Consequences of Expanded Credit: Gendered Exits from Entrepreneurship in Mexico

SPEAKER

Mr. Grady Wallace Raines
Ph.D. Candidate in Management and Organizations
SC Johnson School of Business
Cornell University

ABSTRACT

What are the unintended consequences of lowering barriers to entrepreneurship? While prior research highlights the positive effects of lowering barriers on performance, growth and survival, this paper documents a counterintuitive effect: increased exits among marginalized entrepreneurs who are thought to benefit the most from lowering barriers. I examine this question in the context of the rapid expansion of Banco Azteca, that dramatically increased access to financing for entrepreneurs across Mexico. Leveraging municipality variation in branch openings in a difference-in-differences design, I find that the expansion enhanced firm survival and growth for male entrepreneurs while simultaneously increasing exits among female entrepreneurs, who were expected to benefit most from these changes. I explore two mechanisms driving these outcomes. First, a pull effect: expanded credit access fosters firm growth and labor demand, pulling marginalized entrepreneurs who entered entrepreneurship due labor market exclusion into formal wage employment. Second, a push effect: greater credit availability intensifies market competition, disproportionately pushing marginalized entrepreneurs out of entrepreneurship. Empirically, I present results most consistent with the pull mechanism and less consistent with the push mechanism and other alternatives. These findings show that while reducing barriers to entrepreneurship is expected to help marginalized entrepreneurs survive longer in entrepreneurship, they can also lead to higher exit rates among them, as improved employment alternatives make entrepreneurship less necessary.

03 September

Calibrated Coarsening: Designing Information for AI-Assisted Decisions

SPEAKER

Ms. Ruru (Juan Ru) HOONG
Ph.D. candidate in Business Economics
Harvard Business School

ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI) signals are increasingly deployed as human decision-making aids across many critical applications, but human cognitive biases can prevent them from improving outcomes. We propose calibrated coarsening—partitioning the signal space into fewer cells at chosen thresholds—as a way to improve decision-making outcomes while (i) ensuring humans retain final decision authority, (ii) modifying signals without deception, and (iii) adapting flexibly to various cognitive biases and decision-making contexts. Within an information disclosure framework, we derive an approximately optimal universal coarsened policy for settings where the designer does not observe the decision-maker’s information. We then empirically demonstrate this in the high-stakes context of loan approvals, showing in an incentivised randomised experiment with professional loan specialists that coarsening AI signals at the theory-derived threshold significantly improves decision-making outcomes—outperforming both the humanonly (based solely on the loan application) and uncoarsened AI (assisted with continuous AI risk-score) benchmarks. We uncover substantial decision heterogeneity amongst loan officers, and use a Bayesian hierarchical model to personalise coarsening policies, which can further improve outcomes as past data become available