Research

Dr. Todd Thornock, assistant professor of accountancy, investigates how only the knowledge of peer managers’ environments, without knowing peer actions, affects managerial behavior. Utilizing a two-part experiment in a participative budgetary reporting setting, Thornock and his co-author show managers project their decision-making process onto peer managers who share similarities in role and reporting environment. These self-projected group norms create a sense of validation. In viewing themselves as one of many, managers perceive their peers’ behavior to be a mirror image of their own desired behavior.

While eviction has its negative effects on a person, research shows the extent of its consequences are minimal compared to the financial strain experienced years leading up to the eviction. Alongside that, the study showed minor impact from evictions on debt in collections, residential mobility or neighborhood poverty.

Policies in place to retrieve money from executives who profited from financial misconduct, known as clawbacks, show a variance in levels of adoption by corporations. Research indicates that some organizations who have adopted these clawback policies shifted their strategies to decrease tax revenue, while other organizations showed hesitancy to adopt the policies due to lack of guidance from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Dr. Alok Kumar, associate professor of marketing and W. W. Marshall College Professor, explores the existing literature on American multinational corporations (MNCs) within marketing. Although MNCs represent a common and complex organizational form, there is little research devoted to channel management from an MNC perspective. Aiming to address this gap, Kumar and his co-authors, including Dr. Amit Saini, professor of marketing and W. W. Marshall College Professor at Nebraska, propose an organizing framework to spur and guide further research. For practitioners, their integrative piece suggests three elements MNCs should consider in managing their foreign distribution channels: the headquarter-subsidiary relationship, the subsidiary-channel partner relationship, and the local institutions and legal differences of the countries in which the channels operate.

Dr. Julie Wu, assistant professor of finance, investigates the function of acquirer shareholder voting during mergers and acquisitions. This study shows acquirers with low institutional ownership, high deal risk and high agency costs are more likely to bypass shareholder voting, leading to lower announcement returns and higher offers. To avoid shareholder voting, acquirers increase equity issuance and cut payout in the year before the merger. Wu and her co-authors also document a positive causal effect of shareholder voting concentrated among acquirers with higher institutional ownership. The authors conclude institutional monitoring adds value and mitigates agency issues in mergers and acquisitions.

Using survey data, Dr. Laura Poppo, professor of management and Donald and Shirley Clifton Chair in Leadership, and her co-author demonstrate the necessity of both, as contracts create transparency and formalize expectations and processes. Yet, because contracts are incomplete, trust and norms such as sharing information and a collaborative working relationship are imperative.