Maureen (Mimi) Morrin’s research path started with something many don’t like to think about: odors.
“As weird as it may sound,” says Morrin, “when I was in the doctoral program, I knew I wanted to do some scent research.” At the time, sensory marketing was not a term in research vernacular. In the last decade, however, Morrin has witnessed the growth of this field.
Understanding the Senses
What is it about holding a Starbucks cup that keeps customers coming back? How does the smell of a luxury car elicit an emotion? These are the types of questions Morrin and her associates explore as they determine how the senses drive consumers.
As founder and director of the Consumer Sensory Innovation Lab at the Fox School of Business, Morrin has established a collaborative setting for doctoral students, professors, and corporate managers to research the world of sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch as they relate to consumer influences. “I think that humans on some basic level need sensory input,” says Morrin. “It helps you make sense of your world—the senses tell you what’s what.”
Today, corporations want a deeper understanding of what exactly can attract customers to their stores—and what keeps them coming back. Her work with various retailers and consumer packaged goods companies has fostered growth within the center, which is funded in part by external grants. While Amazon and Jet.com are consuming more of the retail pie, Morrin says brick-and-mortar retailers have an edge when it comes to the shopping experience.
“Companies may ask, what is my competitive advantage when people can just buy my product on Amazon?” says Morrin. “But, they have the ability to impact all of our five senses—to delight us sensorially speaking.”
A Sense of Community
At the Fox School, Morrin works closely with a number of doctoral students and undergraduates. The Lab provides a venue for those who self-identify as sensory researchers and allows for information- and resource-sharing. Through projects that determine if a store’s messiness has an affect on sales or if mint-flavored snacks allay the guilt a dieter may feel on a cheat day; Morrin sees her collaborative lab as a safe zone.
“Being a doctoral student can be very stressful and you often feel isolated, because you’re essentially learning how to be an independent researcher,” says Morrin. “Those who have been in the program longer are able to help junior students—it makes them feel like they’re a part of something.”
Across All Boards
On days Morrin is not running sensory experiments or encouraging questions on consumer decisions in her class lectures, she is deeply involved in the research community. Earlier this year, Morrin was invited to join the editorial review boards of the Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Consumer Affairs, and became an associate editor at the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
“I benefit from being a reviewer because I am able to see where the field is moving,” says Morrin. “The more reviewing you do, the better you get at detecting the bigger picture as a researcher.”
With a behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of marketing, Morrin has seen her unique interest in sensory inputs become a mainstream trend. Though she is excited that more people are studying the field, Morrin’s passion for sensory research is not a fad.
“Whether it’s in or out, I’m here to stay.”
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A roundup of media mentions featuring faculty and staff from the Fox School of Business and the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management.
Fox School in Financial Times
Recently, business schools are weaving into their curriculum study in neuroscience. Fox’s Dr. Angelika Dimoka, the director of Temple’s Center for Neural Decision Making, speaks with Financial Times about Fox’s PhD program in this space. Read more>>
Leading by example
The Philadelphia Eagles’ Brandon Brooks, a Super Bowl champion, is also a champion of mental health awareness. Honors students in a leadership course led by Fox’s Dr. Crystal Harold invited Brooks to Alter Hall to speak with Fox students at a de-stress event. 6 ABC and student newspaper The Temple News provide coverage. Read more>>
‘Performing at the highest level’
Fox’s Dr. Crystal Harold is among the recipients of Temple University’s annual teaching, research, and creativity awards. Temple Now, the university’s weekly newsletter, announces all of the 2018 awardees. Read more>>
Technically Philly | April 9, 2018
Three leaders of a local venture firm—including its CEO—have stepped down recently, amid calls from its investor groups for speedier returns on its stake sell-offs. Fox’s Dr. TL Hill provides subject-matter expertise on these processes. Read more>>
The Legal Intelligencer | April 5, 2018
Fox’s James Lammendola contributes an op-ed to The Legal Intelligencer, detailing a nonprecedential opinion by the Superior Court. Read more>>
Sydney Morning Herald | April 3, 2018An editorial in Australia’s second-largest daily newspaper discusses the pitfalls of a current marketing strategy, and it cites the research work of Fox’s Dr. Joydeep Srivastava. Read more>>
Media requests: Please send requests to Christopher A. Vito, associate director of communications & media relations, Temple University’s Fox School of Business, at cvito@temple.edu
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Dean Richard Deeg Wins “Paper of the Decade” for IB Research
April 16, 2018 //
In the Venn Diagram of sociologists and international business researchers, Dr. Richard Deeg sits right in the middle.
This June, Dr. Deeg, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, will receive the Journal of International Business Studies Decade Award from the Academy of International Business for his 2008 paper that encouraged scholars to think about international business in a more holistic way.
“My interest in business has been within the political context,” says Deeg, formerly chair of the Department of Political Science. “I want to know how businesses are organized, regulated, and structured, and how this impacts other segments of society.”
Since 1996, the Decade Award has honored the most influential article in international business (IB) in the previous ten-year period. Dr. Deeg is the second Temple University researcher to receive the award, the first since Dr. Arvind Parkhe, Laura H. Carnell Professor and chair of the Department of Strategic Management in the Fox School, in 2001.
Deeg and his co-author, Gregory Jackson of the Free University of Berlin, compared two international business approaches in their paper, “Comparing capitalisms: understanding institutional diversity and its implications for international business.”
First, a variable-based approach, which was and remains common in IB literature, focuses on individual aspects of a country in order to understand how an outside firm may be affected. For example, executives may examine a country’s legal framework, which may not be as strong as in their home country or may favor different activities over others, to learn how it would impact decisions made in the new country.
Deeg presented “comparative capitalism” as an alternative viewpoint in IB, an approach frequently used in political science and sociology. “We were advocating a holistic approach,” says Deeg. “We said, don’t just compare property rights, and how they might be different and how that might affect our business. You also have to think about how the whole system in a different country works.”
The paper did not present one approach as superior than the other; rather, they were meant to be used as complementary. The variables-based approach, which using specific characteristics of an economic landscape, lends itself well to quantitative studies. The comparative capitalism approach, on the other hand, is helpful in understanding the way these institutions interact.
“Since 2008, there has been a lot more research in examining institutions,” says Ram Mudambi, Frank M. Speakman Professor of Strategy at the Fox School. “While it existed before this paper, it would be fair to say that institutional context has seen an increase in interest in IB literature over the last decade.”
Deeg uses his political science background to view the existing IB literature in a unique light, and he advises others to do the same. “My advice, particularly to young researchers, is to break outside your preordained professional circles and societies, and venture into ones that overlap.”
Since being named Dean of the College of Liberal Arts in September 2016, Deeg has recognized the value of translating research insights outside of academia.
“How do we take the ivory tower work we do and connect it to the city? The Fox School is certainly thinking that way, and we’re trying to invest as well,” says Deeg. “It’s a way to give back to the city, but it’s also a way to launch the students.”
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Nobody likes a tattletale.
Since our days on elementary school playgrounds, we have been conditioned to avoid tattling. The possibility of being declared the class snitch has kept many school children’s lips tightly sealed—and, sadly, that attitude continues in the professional world today.
Dr. Leora Eisenstadt, assistant professor in the Department of Legal Studies at the Fox School of Business, once asked her undergraduate students in a business law and ethics class a simple question: Would they be willing to oust the firm they worked for, knowing there was fraudulent activity occurring?
Out of 22 students, only one said yes.
For the students who decided to stay quiet, their choice was not ddue to a lack of morality, but rather a fear of not recovering from the act of whistleblowing.
“Whistleblowing involves speaking out against an organization that you see doing something illegal, corrupt, or harmful to the general public,” says Eisenstadt. “Whistleblowers are often the subject of retaliation—once you come forward, you are likely to face termination or some other adverse employment action.”
Eisenstadt and co-author Dr. Jennifer Pacella of Baruch College confront the laws regarding whistleblowers in their paper, “Whistleblowers Need Not Apply,” which has been accepted for publication by the American Business Law Journal. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, retaliation against someone who complains of discrimination is prohibited. In contrast, the “swiss cheese” laws covering whistleblowing often provide little to no protection for the tipsters, who are likely to be ostracized and blacklisted from their company or even industry after the story breaks.
After reviewing the Whistleblowers Protection Act, Dodd–Frank Act, Sarbanes–Oxley Act, and the False Claims Act, Eisenstadt and her co-author uncovered many of the loopholes that would inherently exclude whistleblowers from potential support. Although the laws prohibit retaliation to some extent, three out of four statutes do not protect whistleblowers from future employers’ prejudices.
While whistleblowers may be lauded by the public as a righteous and ethical individual who brought down a corrupt company, new employers are likely to see them as disloyal troublemakers.
“Beyond losing your job, the main reason people won’t come forward as whistleblowers is that they know they could be blackballed in the industry and face an extraordinarily difficult time finding future employment,” says Eisenstadt. “Sometimes, that is even more traumatizing than losing your present job.”
While anti-discrimination law clearly prohibits retaliation against job applicants, whistleblowers are typically left out in the rain. Eisenstadt and Pacella, in the first article to examine the lack of legal protections for whistleblowers who are applying for new jobs, propose a way to change that.
“We are arguing that Congress needs to step in and amend each of these federal statutes to provide protection for whistleblower applicants,” says Eisenstadt. “Our reform proposal is remarkably simple: take the language that’s in Title VII (and the decades of court interpretations that come with it) and add it to the whistleblower statutes.”
By adding the phrase “and job applicants,” Eisenstadt argues that this would end the problem of courts’ varying and unclear interpretations and create stronger protections for a vulnerable group. With clear statutory language detailing protections available to whistleblowers, courts can more fairly apply the law to the many types of whistleblowing cases that occur in both private and public settings.
“This is a problem that requires legislative action and not something the courts can do on their own,” says Eisenstadt.
With their hopes set to send their research to legislatures once published, the future of whistleblowers may become more positive—and maybe those 21 students who stayed quiet will eventually speak up.
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Media Hit List: The Best Travel Credit Card, Saxbys Launches New Scholarship, and More
April 11, 2018 //
A roundup of media mentions featuring faculty and staff from the Fox School of Business and the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management.
Inside Higher Ed quotes Fox prof
How can colleges and universities encourage even the most-resistant faculty members to digitize their in-classroom courses for online programs? Inside Higher Ed addresses this in a Q&A with national online-learning leaders, including Fox School’s Dr. Darin Kapanjie. Read more >>
Saxbys, STHM, and scholarships
Philadelphia Business Journal checks in with an update on the experiential-learning Saxbys café at STHM: The coffee and hospitality company announced a $60,000 contribution to the Saxbys Fellows Endowed Scholarship, to support future educational opportunities for STHM students. Read more >>
Gender equity in corporate settings
Did you know utility companies traditionally achieve a greater gender diversity in its corporate boards than boards in other industries? Explaining why is Fox School’s Dr. Steven Balsam, who studies—among other subjects—gender diversity on corporate boards. Read more >>
WalletHub | April 6, 2018
What’s the best credit card for travelers? STHM’s Michael Sheridan explains rewards and benefits options for hotels, airlines, and more. Read more >>
BusinessBecause | April 6, 2018
The online business publication profiles a Fox MBA alumnus who leveraged his experience and education to land a position at IBM. Read more >>
Media requests: Please send requests to Christopher A. Vito, associate director of communications & media relations, Temple University’s Fox School of Business, at cvito@temple.edu
For more stories and news, follow the Fox School on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
A roundup of media mentions featuring faculty and staff from the Fox School of Business and the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management.
Running for a good cause
A university-wide Broad Street Run team, led by the Fox School’s Michael McCloskey and students from Gamma Iota Sigma, annually supports a charity of choice. This year’s organization, reports The Temple News, provides resources for local high school students battling anxiety and depression. Read more >>
Feeding those in need
Last week, Fox School SPOs united to collect food for the university’s Cherry Pantry—an initiative to combat food insecurity and allow students to take food anonymously. Read more >>
Arkansas Business | March 19, 2018
Dollar stores tend to thrive in a depressed economy and in low-income communities, says the Fox School’s Dr. Jay Sinha, who has conducted research on the dollar-store phenomenon.
Captive Insurance Times | March 14, 2018
The Fox School’s M. Michael Zuckerman offers a solution to the talent gap in the insurance industry. Read more >>
Temple Now | March 22, 2018
A program led annually by the Fox School’s Dr. Steven Balsam aligns accounting students with members of the local community to file their tax returns free of charge. The university’s e-newsletter provides coverage. Read more >>
Temple Now | March 29, 2018
A recent gift to the Fox School by MBA alumni Stanley and Franny Wang receives mention in the university’s e-newsletter. Read more >>
Philadelphia Business Journal | Jan. 18, 2018
Earlier this year, a woman-owned advertising agency sold after 40 years. Fox’s Dr. Susan Mudambi explains the decision. Read more >>
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Angelika Dimoka’s job is to get inside your head.
As the director of the Center for Neural Decision Making at the Fox School of Business, Dimoka finds how you make the choices you do—and she does not need to ask you.
Instead, she looks to the human body for answers.
A trained biomedical engineer and neuroscientist, Dimoka came to the Fox School in 2008 to study how people make decisions. From air traffic controllers to victims of traumatic brain injuries to average consumers, Dimoka and her colleagues investigate—and predict—our everyday choices.
Getting inside your head
In 2008, Dimoka established the Center for Neural Decision Making, the first neuroscience center located within a business school, and currently the largest such center in the country.
“[The Center’s goal] is to provide a more objective understanding of the driving forces of a subject’s decision making,” says Dimoka, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Marketing. In the past, researchers have had to rely on self-reported data, asking consumers why they choose this product or made that decision. This, however, left room for error, as perhaps the consumer could not—or would not—divulge the true reason for their decision.
Today, with state-of-the-art tools like eye tracking machines, heart rate monitors, and MRI scanners, the Center’s research eliminates the subjective bias of decision-making research. “We don’t have to ask the subject anymore,” says Dimoka. “We can observe their physiological state.”
Dimoka and her colleagues, Vinod Venkatraman and Crystal Reeck, assistant professors of marketing, use these tools to study the body’s responses in experiments like the ability to recall print ads versus digital ads.
“With eye trackers, we can observe where the subject is looking at any given point,” says Dimoka, allowing the researcher to understand exactly what information the subject is taking in at what time. Heart rate monitors, skin conductors, and breathing monitors analyze the person’s emotional state—whether you sweat more, breath heavier, or have a faster heartbeat when making a decision.
What the brain reveals
The Center also has a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, brought to campus this fall in partnership with the College of Liberal Art’s Department of Psychology and with support from the National Science Foundation. “The fMRI scanners show us the brain’s functionality,” Dimoka says. “We can put people in the scanner and observe how their brains function when they make decisions.”
The areas of the brain that activate during different activities can reveal how consumers take in information and make decisions. Consider what happens when a person looks at a physical advertisement versus a digital advertisement. In a series of experiments funded by the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Postal Service, Dimoka and her colleagues studied subjects’ brains as they reviewed ads in both print and online formats.
“The area of the brain associated with memory, the hippocampus, showed higher levels of activation for ads that subjects had seen before in a physical format,” says Dimoka, “as opposed to digital ads.” By using the brain scanning tools, the researchers found that print is still sticky, even in today’s digital age.
The third phase of the experiments are currently underway. Dimoka says this new round will further investigate generational differences and brand awareness.
Are there any differences between the purchasing decisions of Millennials and Baby Boomers when looking at online versus print ads? “We did find some preliminary results [from earlier experiments] that were quite interesting,” Dimoka says, “and the opposite of what you would expect.” The full results will be published later this summer.
Real-world impact
The Center investigates all kinds of decision making—including consumer, financial, and privacy decisions—that can have real impact on average people and companies. The impact of their work extends from marketing to fields like management information systems and finance.
For example, Crystal Reeck, assistant professor of marketing, found that how you review your choices during the decision making process can impact your ability to be patient. She is currently working on a study that involves how people disclose private information.
Companies are also affected by the Center’s work. “By looking at the brain of how 30 subjects were responding,” says Dimoka, “we can predict how millions of consumers in the United States would decide.”
“That’s the magic, the power of these tools.”
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What was it like to be a woman earning a doctorate degree forty years ago? Dr. Gloria Thomas, PhD ’80, has firsthand experience.
Today, Dr. Thomas is an accomplished researcher, a dedicated professor, and an esteemed administrator at Baruch College.
But in 1980, she was a trendsetter for women at the Fox School of Business.
As the first woman to obtain a doctorate from the Fox School, Thomas received her PhD in marketing, a field that is now predominantly women, but was all men during her tenure at Temple. “Women were very uncommon in business PhDs, even marketing, when I was in school,” she recalled. “And I rarely saw women at conferences.”
Dr. Thomas is currently a professor of marketing and the Director of the Zicklin Undergraduate Honors Program at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, City University of New York. Thomas praises her experience at Temple University for the appreciation she has developed towards public institutions.
“Temple has taught me to believe in public education,” Thomas professed. “I went to Baruch right from Temple and we have really smart students from all over the world with parents who don’t speak English or have any money.” After years of private schools, Thomas’ experience at the Fox School helped her appreciate the value of diversity in education. “Cultural exposure makes public institutions more valuable and it gives students opportunities they normally wouldn’t have,” she said.
With undergraduate degrees in math and art history, Thomas pursued a doctorate in marketing. Following graduation, she went straight to Baruch, where her roles included professor, associate dean, and director of the doctoral program. She currently serves as director of the business honors program.
“My current role is my most favorite,” Thomas said. “Many students at large public schools don’t get the attention they would at a private school, but I make sure to give that attention in my honors program.”
Thomas credits her mother, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s law school in the 1940s, for her then unconventional educational choices. “I grew up thinking everyone was equal. I never thought that [by going to business school] I was going into a man’s profession,” Thomas said.
That ‘man’s profession’ has changed. Today, 50-percent of PhD students are women at the Fox School, compared to 45-percent for all business-focused doctoral programs in the United States, according to the Council of Graduates Schools’ 2017 report.
Thomas did not let any obstacles get in her way of her goals. “It never occurred to me that women couldn’t do whatever they wanted to,” she recounted. “In reality, many women [at that time] didn’t even know they had options.”
“It never occurred to me that I didn’t.”
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A Legacy of Research at the Fox School of Business: Dean Harry Cochran
March 20, 2018 //
Since its founding a century ago, the Fox School of Business has produced outstanding thinkers, innovative doers, and formidable trailblazers.
Distinguished research has been at the forefront of Temple University’s initiatives since the 1940s. Following World War II, the federal government had a vested interest in funding research centers all across the country.
Harry A. Cochran, then dean of Temple’s School of Business and Public Administration, predicted that this movement towards research would steer this university to great heights.
“Harry Cochran was smart enough to figure out how to take advantage of this,” said Dr. William Aaronson, PhD ’86, former director of the Fox PhD program, and current associate professor at the College of Public Health. “He had a vision of a research enterprise with the business school that is very much still alive today.”
In the mid-1940s, Dean Cochran led the Fox School’s research agenda, creating a Bureau of Economic and Business Research and establishing the school’s first journal, The Economics and Business Bulletin, to disseminate its findings. It was over a decade later that a watershed report from the Ford Foundation highlighted the trend of business schools changing from trade schools to research institutions. The Fox School was ahead of its time, already a large and prestigious business school as others began to recognize the importance of a research agenda.
While Dean Cochran retired in 1960, his legacy grew. His successors recognized the need for a doctoral program to support the mission of leadership in high-quality research, so in the early 1960s, the Fox School established its PhD program, which awarded its first doctoral degree in 1969 to Lacy H. Hunt.
The doctoral programs at the Fox School grew to encompass PhD programs in Statistics, Decision Neuroscience, and Business Administration. In 2014, the school once again blazed a trail, instituting an Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (EDBA) program, a unique opportunity for industry executives and business leaders that few schools offer today. “The DBA focuses on applied research,” said Paul A. Pavlou, senior associate dean of research at the Fox School. “It plays a very important role in creating the next generation of seasoned high-level executives who can inform their organizations through rigorous research.” And Dean M. Moshe Porat constantly offers strong support for the doctoral programs at the Fox School.
Cochran’s vision became a virtuous cycle. Research would not be something we merely did, but who we were. By creating an environment that would house brilliant minds, past and present deans of the Fox School have demonstrated their commitment to support leaders in both academia and industry. From its roots in 1918 to its continued success in 2018, the Fox School continues its tradition of distinction through work ethic, innovation, and research impact.
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3 Reasons to Publish on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
March 19, 2018 //
You put in all the work—collecting data, analyzing information, writing the article. But what happens next?
Get your research off your computer and into the world through the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), a free, online platform dedicated to disseminating scholarly research throughout the world. With 1.5 million users, SSRN can put your insights into the hands of people who can use them.
Here are three reasons to publish your work on SSRN.
1. Enhance your online presence
Whether you are a doctoral student at the start of your career, a professor working towards tenure, or advanced researcher, SSRN can support your career goals by providing a platform for your online presence.
By uploading your work to SSRN, you are building your online identity—which includes your LinkedIn presence, personal or professional websites, and social media platforms. SSRN gives you an opportunity to host everything from working papers to published articles, which builds your credibility as a researcher.
2. Make your research accessible
Through the Fox School’s partnership with SSRN, your research will be included in the Fox School Research Paper Series, a monthly newsletter with nearly 6,000 subscribers and 12 subtopics that allow subscribers to easily search for your work, making it accessible to prospective PhD students, business executives, and potential collaborators.
As the Fox School builds a greater emphasis on translating research into actionable insights, the accessibility of research plays a huge role. With SSRN, your research can go beyond your own network and generate greater impact.
3. Start collecting citations
Impact is measured in a variety of different ways—from media mentions to changes in the way we do business. One metric of research impact is the citations it receives from other academics. If others are citing your work, it demonstrates the paper’s influence and insights into that field.
With SSRN, you can begin collecting citations while waiting for a journal to accept or publish your work. Upload working papers, accepted articles, or completed publications and track the number of downloads it receives or citations it garners. Researchers often play the long game, but with SSRN, they make “tomorrow’s research today.”
Ready to publish?
The Office of Research, Doctoral Programs, and Strategic Initiatives at the Fox School supports faculty members and doctoral students in subscribing and uploading papers to SSRN. Click to learn more.
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A roundup of media mentions featuring faculty and staff from the Fox School of Business and the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management.
Translational Research Center launches
The Philadelphia Business Journal covers the launch of Fox’s Translational Research Center, which hopes to bridge the gap between business-school research and applications of it in industry. PBJ speaks with Fox’s Dr. Charles Dhanaraj about the Center, as well as last week’s kick-off summit. Read more >>
NCAA-in-Japan project in next phase
For now, Japanese universities do not formally recognize their sport teams. A research project, led by STHM’s Dr. Jeremy Jordan and Dr. Daniel Funk, is exploring the possibility of creating for Japan a sport governing body equivalent to the NCAA. Japan Times provides coverage of the project, which will soon enter its third phase. Read more >>
Philly Style profiles Porat
For its charity and social datebook, Philly Style Magazine speaks to Dr. M. Moshe Porat for a profile on the Fox and STHM dean. Porat discusses the schools’ growth and their focus on student professional development. Read more >>
The Atlantic | March 1, 2018
A feature story in The Atlantic identifies a recent study by Fox’s Dr. In-Sue Oh as one of 16 that have found coworkers to be the best-equipped predictors of an individual’s workplace success. Read more >>
WHYY | March 9, 2018
A sizable portion of land in Northeast Philadelphia, which had been dormant for years, has been purchased and will be converted into a logistics hub. Fox’s Tom Fung explains, in an interview for WHYY’s NewsWorks news show, the benefits for its use in supply chain. Listen >>
Philadelphia Magazine | March 8, 2018
Last week, Philly Mag asked a litany of local leaders to pick the best places in the city to hold coffee meetings. Fox’s Ellen Weber provides her pick. Read more >>
Al Dia | March 9, 2018
Recently and historically, economic implications have led millions of immigrants to the United States. For more on this, Fox’s Dr. Ram Mudambi speaks with Al Dia—the nation’s leading Latino news organization. Read more >>
Media requests: Please send requests to Christopher A. Vito, associate director of communications & media relations, Temple University’s Fox School of Business, at cvito@temple.edu
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The Fox School of Business is making history—and driving real impact.
On Monday, March 12, the Fox School hosted a first-of-its-kind forum that brought together editors-in-chief of leading academic business journals across multiple disciplines. The 2018 Editors’ Summit united academia and industry, researchers and executives, students and educators, for a day of dialogue on a way forward to generate transformative impact of business school research.
With leadership from Charles Dhanaraj, director of the Fox School’s new Translational Research Center, over 150 people discussed the opportunities for creating impactful research and barriers standing in the way.
Fox School faculty and doctoral students were joined by editors from prestigious business journals from many disciplines, including management, marketing, accounting, finance, operations, management information systems, and international business; colleagues from Villanova University, the Wharton School, and Northwestern University, among others; and executives from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, LyondellBasell, and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
Here are five key takeaways from the event:
1. Define impact
What do we mean by “impact” and how do we measure it? “It has to meet the qualifications of rigor, relevance, insights, and action,” said V. Kumar, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Marketing and Regents Professor at J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.
While a definition of impact may remain elusive, participants identified its signs: from small shifts in how companies work and academia teaches, to societal, economic, and public policy changes.
Anne Tsui, president of the Responsible Research Leadership Forum, noted that this discussion about impact was a large step. “In the last 20 or 30 years, rigor began to dominate research and relevance began to decline,” she said. “Today, we’re here to discuss this gap.”
2. Ask the right questions
“Just because something hasn’t been studied doesn’t mean that it should,” said Tyson Browning, co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Operations Management and professor at Texas Christian University. In order to study issues that affect business, researchers need to know the right questions to ask.
Researchers can develop relationships with businesses, through programs like Fox Management Consulting, or invest in listening platforms to identify what problems businesses face.
Bhavesh Patel, CEO of LyondellBasell, put it another way: “Think about what value your work will create from the beginning. If you do it early, it will guide the work you do.”
3. Know your audience
“In reflecting about practical impact,” said Arun Rai, editor of MIS Quarterly and professor at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University, “we need to think about partnerships with complementary channels to reach audiences that we do not have core competencies to reach.”
Executives are not reading academic journals, nor should we ever expect them to. If academics want their research to have impact on the real world, they should think beyond publications and about distribution.
“In the Twitter and soundbite era, no one wants to read a 40-page paper,” said Dr. Scott Bauguess of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “They want the major takeaway.” His suggestion? Write white papers and stylized facts.
Practitioner journals, trade magazines, and popular media like newspapers and TV can also be relevant channels to getting research insights into industry. Mary Barth, senior editor of The Accounting Review and professor at Stanford University, also recommended translating research into thought pieces that are understandable to non-academics. To do that, however, researchers need a new set of skills—like marketing or social media strategies—that require training or support from the school.
4. Adjust the infrastructure
A recurring theme throughout the day was incentives. How can business schools incentivize faculty to produce research that has impact, not just publications? How can editors affect trends in what is published to promote relevance?
Participants brainstormed solutions for both. While structural changes take time, discussions centered on adjusting tenure requirements and timelines, defining impact, creating industry partnerships, hosting workshops with executives, providing funding incentives for research with practitioners and non-tenure-track faculty, and publishing special issues in journals that focus on bundled topics.
Alain Verbeke, editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Business Studies and professor at University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, put it bluntly: “If you really want change, you can’t do it with the existing structure and processes.”
5. Teach the future
Students cannot be neglected in the conversation about impact. “One way we take our research articles and ideas and make them relevant to practice is by teaching them in our classes,” said Jay Barney, editor-in-chief of the Academy of Management Review and professor at the Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah.
Constance Helfat, co-editor of the Strategic Management Journal and professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, agreed. “Every single thing I teach is based in academic research. And it works.”
The Fox School is already addressing the way forward. M. Moshe Porat, dean of the Fox School, affirmed his commitment to research and doctoral education throughout the day.
With support from the dean, the Translational Research Center has big plans for the future of research at the Fox School. The center plans to develop a white paper of the findings from the event and is hosting a case-writing consortium for faculty interested in writing and submitting a teaching case through the summer.
“The shift toward impact is a significant one, but it will take time,” said Dhanaraj,. “We will need everyone to make this big move.”
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A conversation with Alain Verbeke about how the international business research community should adapt to today’s global context.
*The opinions expressed are the personal opinions of the interviewee and not of the Fox School of Business.
In late 2017, the Fox School of Business hosted the Academy of International Business U.S. Northeast Conference. For the second consecutive year, scholars from around the world—this year, there were representatives from 32 countries—met at Alter Hall to examine and discuss the most pressing issues facing the international business community.
The keynote speaker was Alain Verbeke, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), who talked about corporate globalization and what it means for international business researchers. We connected with Verbeke after the conference to discuss these issues further.
What’s the biggest challenge JIBS, and international business researchers as a whole, now face?
I see JIBS as the last intellectual barrier against the hordes trying to destroy the vestiges of globalization. One problem is that most of the defenders of globalization have a self-interest in globalization. For example, the CEOs of large multinational enterprises want maximum freedom for their firms. Academics who do speak out in favor, are mostly economists, political scientists, and geographers who do not talk to managers of firms. That is what JIBS does—talk to firms. You can’t say anything reasonable about globalization if you don’t know what’s happening at the firm level. And our role is becoming more important in this new global context where the anti-globalization forces are clearly gaining momentum and power.
I don’t like to use the phrase “fake news,” but when we’re talking about the cost and benefits of globalization, there’s an enormous amount of fake news that literally crowds out what is factually correct in terms of the great benefits that typically accrue to countries involved in international exchange. This is a big problem JIBS addresses.
How do you cut through the noise with more reasonable arguments?
Unfortunately, people see problems in their community and they blame others for them. I call this “the new geography of discontent.” Basically, people blame some individual or group or set of people—preferably those who don’t look like them—for all the problems happening in their community. Easily, one third of people in any community—whether rightly or wrongly, or based on fake news or real news—is aligning with populist movements. There’s a renewed, built-in reflex that says, “Nation first.” One positive element that may come from this is more awareness in policy circles about the adjustment costs that will need to be addressed after freer trade deals, freer investment deals, and freer movement of human capital.
What can policy makers do to adjust for the actual detrimental aspects of globalization?
What has been neglected in the past are the forgotten men and women of trade deals. Globalization has led to outcomes that benefit consumers, but also trigger concentrated job losses and vicious cycles of de-clustering. One positive outcome of populist movements may be that the mainstream parties with common sense will think more carefully about how to deal with those dynamic adjustment costs, and how to anticipate them and how to avoid creating unfortunate reservoirs of forgotten people. Workers need to be retrained, re-tooled, and reintegrated into the economy. That doesn’t mean a former steelworker will tomorrow be operating robots, but other things can be done for those individuals and groups. Policy makers must think about what resources are needed to help with each transition.
What’s the role of academic business researchers in all this?
The anti-globalists often turn to that maligned presence of global firms and the supposedly malevolent processes of corporate globalization. The way I see it is that these critics are attacking imaginary enemies—they’re the equivalent of Don Quixote, who said to Sancho Panza, “Look at these monstrous giants, we’re going to defeat them.” But they were looking at windmills. We must teach the Don Quixotes and the Donald Trumps of the world—it is quite interesting how similar their names are, isn’t it? —that it’s not wise, when you have limited time and resources, to attack windmills. This is the responsibility of the international business research community.
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The automobile industry in Detroit is thriving.
This seems counterintuitive considering all we know about the damaging impact the last four decades of auto industry decline had on the city. But a meaningful transformation happened and automobile firms have found new ways to flourish.
Fox School of Business professor Ram Mudambi has been researching the Detroit auto industry’s transition from a manufacturing center into an innovation hub for many years. His work was recently featured in a New York Times article, “What Happens When the Richest U.S. Cities Turn to the World?,” about how a city’s prosperousness can be determined by how globally connected it is with other cities.
This is true for Detroit’s auto industry, which has become a thriving innovation center due to its robust relationships with other global knowledge hotspots, such as Germany and Japan. However, while innovation and connectedness are thriving, Detroit, which in 2013 became the largest municipality to file for bankruptcy, as a city is not.
“Manufacturing in Detroit is still shrinking along with blue collar jobs,” explains Mudambi. “There’s a quality-quantity disconnect, as there are increasing white collar jobs, but by definition there are fewer of those. When a factory closes, we lose 5,000 blue collar jobs, and then when you open a R&D center, you only create 100 knowledge jobs. That’s been happening in Detroit for decades. In short, this is not a recipe for a healthy metropolitan area. The innovation ecosystem is very healthy, but it has not helped the city very much.”
But there is a possible solution. Mudambi says it’s all about nurturing entrepreneurship and small businesses. He cites Silicon Valley, where thousands of companies start every year, as a healthier alternative. And Seattle, he claims, is Detroit’s most edifying counterpoint.
“America’s future is in the garage,” says Mudambi. “While the auto industry in Detroit has done great innovation-wise, they haven’t done great with the city. But if you look at Seattle, Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing have done great with innovation and with the city. Why? Because they’ve been engines for startups; they’ve put money into starting small companies. GM and Ford haven’t done this—they just look for suppliers, and haven’t thought about creating new businesses. In the last 20 years, those three Seattle companies have been involved with 66,000 startups. That’s where the jobs are. The solution is no longer in these large companies.”
The Seattle example, Mudambi suggests, specifically the unique way companies there have managed to become vanguards of global innovation while simultaneously elevating the conditions of the city itself, is one other U.S. firms and policymakers should take seriously.
“The U.S. is getting a winner-loser economy where you have winner locations and growing cities, like Silicon Valley and Seattle and Austin, and hinterland areas, like Appalachia and Flint, Michigan,” says Mudambi. “They’re falling further behind and they’re not happy about it. We can’t ignore these places, so we need to find smart ways to address these challenges. The knee-jerk reactions we’re seeing now from some people, saying America needs to cut itself off from the world, are losing solutions. The answers must be in the direction of building skills, knowledge, and more connectivity, and making more informed policy decisions. If we can fix these struggling cities, then we will be on our way to fixing the economy as a whole.”
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Look around. They are in newspapers and social media feeds. They are online and on scrolling news tickers, too.
Almost daily, you’ll see splashy headlines announcing the latest scientific-research findings—from groundbreaking disease cures, to solutions for cell-phone addiction and possible causes of global warming.
Rarely, if ever, are real-world applications of business-school research given such a high-profile platform. Temple University’s Fox School of Business is hoping to alter that reality with the launch of a center designed to bring impact to the forefront of business-school research. Next week, the Fox School will host a workshop on March 12 to bring together industry leaders and top journal editors to start the conversation on driving real impact with scholarly research.
The Fox School’s Translational Research Center is the first of its kind nationally to attempt the alignment of business-school research produced by Fox’s award-winning faculty with critical problems of the industry and to communicate it quickly and effectively to practitioners and executives.
Why hasn’t such an endeavor been launched? There are multiple reasons, says Dr. Charles Dhanaraj, the Fox School’s H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest Professor of Strategy. Conventionally, business-school research is produced by faculty looking to earn tenure status, or as a mechanism to support the school’s reputation. Faculty often gauge the success of their research based upon the journal within which it’s published and the volume of citations it receives.
“Business schools need to go beyond academic citations; they need to create real impact on business and on policy,” said Dhanaraj, the center’s founding director. “That being said, the Fox School has more than 210 full-time faculty in a variety of research disciplines, which means we are uniquely positioned to accomplish those traditional research goals, too.”
“Everyone in academia discusses impact,” said Dr. M. Moshe Porat, the Fox School’s Dean. “How you define impact and how you measure impact takes time. We are moving in that direction. Our school has the agile, entrepreneurial faculty to take the lead in shaping the future of business school research—and not just ours, but for everyone.”
The Fox School’s Translational Research Center will focus on four dimensions of impact: academia, students, business, and society. The center enables faculty to broaden their scholarship portfolio and support them in stretching their reach.
Typically, translational research is linked to fields of medicine and science. This approach bridges multiple disciplines, as practitioners and academics work together to uncover new and innovative medicines and treatments.
Fox’s Translational Research Center will operate under a similar construct, Dhanaraj said.
“Think of it as push and pull,” Dhanaraj said. “We want to tap into the needs of industry to pull in their problems to drive our faculty research, and we want to push actionable insights in the most effective way back to the business community, as quickly as possible. Our mission is to change the way everyone thinks about business school research. We don’t want to simply overcome the perception of lack of relevance, but really demonstrate that research creates substantive value. By increasing the engagement of faculty with business executives, the Translational Research Center will ensure that our researchers are asking the right questions, and that they are producing their research in a way that it can be consumed by academic peers and leading practitioners.”
Eventually, the Fox School will house the Translational Research Center in 1810 Liacouras Walk. That space is currently under renovation. The Fox School’s expansion across Liacouras Walk is happening in conjunction with the school’s centennial. For now, the center operates out of Dhanaraj’s office.
“Between the center, our school’s expansion, and our 100-year anniversary, it is an exciting time to be at the Fox School,” he said.