Business Commons^™

Shifting Perspectives: How Scrutiny Shapes The Relationship Between Ceo Gender And Acquisition Activity, Daniel L. Gamache, Cynthia E. Devers, Felice B. Klein, Timothy Hannigan

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research Summary: Several upper echelons studies have found that firms led by female executives are less likely to engage in risky endeavors than those led by male top executives. We argue that conceptualizing female CEOs as universally conservative decision-makers may paint too simplistic a picture and that the impact of CEO gender on strategic decision-making may vary significantly depending on the given situation CEOs are experiencing. We integrate executive job demands and gender research to propose that scrutiny will exhibit differential effects on female and male CEOs' acquisition activity. We show that in high-scrutiny contexts, the difference between male and …

The Inherent Bad Faith Of The Ncaa's Use Of Title Ix To Shield Its Illegal Business Practices, Sam C. Ehrlich

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This Essay examines the moral and policy implications of the NCAA’s use of Title IX to argue for legislative immunity from antitrust and employment law. Regardless of if there is merit to the NCAA’s in-court assertions that Title IX prevents employment status, revenue sharing, and other reforms, the NCAA’s requests to Congress for legislative protection and immunity requires a monumental degree of faith that an all-powerful NCAA would sincerely carry out its supposed commitment to gender equity. Yet this Essay finds that the NCAA has hardly earned the level of trust necessary to grant it that power. To the contrary, …

With Name, Image, And Likeness, College Sports Enters The Gig Economy, Sam C. Ehrlich, Joe Sabin, Neal C. Ternes

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

With the arrival of name, image, and likeness (NIL), the college sports labor market has distinctly taken on similar characteristics to the gig economy, with athletes able to earn extra compensation through external NIL-based independent contractor “gigs.” But with this comparison comes comparable issues, and scholarship and litigation examining and challenging gig economy structures have identified several legal and ethical concerns both individual to each worker and more broadly affecting labor markets. Building off this literature, we conceptualize the NIL phenomenon within the gig economy space, exploring the legal and ethical concerns that have plagued companies like Uber and applying …

Multispecies Livelihoods: A Posthumanist Approach To Wildlife Ecotourism That Promotes Animal Ethics, Bastian Thomsen, Jennifer Thomsen, Kellen Copeland, Sarah Coose, Emily Arnold, Haydn Bryan, Karl Prokop, Kaela Cullen, Caitlyn Vaughn, Brenda Rodriguez, Rachel Muha, Natalie Arnold, Hannah Winger, Gabrielle Chalich

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research on animal ethics in tourism has gained traction but posthumanist approaches to wildlife (eco)tourism remain sparse. There has never been a more urgent need to redress this paucity in theory and practice. More than 60% of the world’s wildlife has died-off in the last 50 years, 100 million-plus nonhuman animals are used for entertainment in wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs), more than one billion “wildlife” live in captivity, and some scholars argue that earth has entered its sixth mass extinction event known as the Anthropocene. This paper presents a posthumanist multispecies livelihoods framework (MLF) based on an applied ethnographic study …

Examining Strategic Antecedents Of The Appointment Of Women To Top Management Teams, Robert L. Bonner, Steven J. Hyde, Kristen Faile

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the organizational and environmental antecedents to the appointment of a woman to a non-CEO top management team (TMT) position.

Design/methodology/approach – This study uses a conditional fixed effects logistic regression model to analyze non-CEO TMT appointment data collected from the S&P 500 between 2008 and 2016.

Findings – Women were more likely to be appointed to non-CEO TMT positions when a firm was undergoing strategic change, had slack resources, and was in a less munificent environment.

Originality/value – This article contributes to the literature concerning the antecedents of the selection …

Is That An Opportunity?: Global Versus Local Processing Of Technological And Socioeconomic Constraints, Eric Shaunn Mattingly, Manju K. Ajuja, Andrew S. Manikas, Trayan N. Kushev

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Opportunity beliefs lead entrepreneurs to explore or walk away from opportunities. The dominant process for explaining opportunity beliefs is structural alignment theory’s analogical problem solving of information. Information can be conceptualized according to its structure with some information presented as separate pieces of information (local) and others as aggregated information (global). We conducted an experiment with 116 upper-level managers and engineers, and found that structural and procedural similarities between technologies and socioeconomic conditions of markets drive opportunity beliefs. We found that the constraining effects of technological and socioeconomic differences on opportunity beliefs are contingent on individuals’ global versus local processing.

Autism In The Workplace, Gundars Kaupins

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Autism is a lifelong, genetic disorder that creates communication challenges, including social-emotional reciprocity, nonverbal communicative behavior deficits, and relationship struggles; restricted or repetitive behavior patterns and interests; and sensitivity to sensory inputs.1 This disorder presents a range of conditions, known as the autism spectrum, which spans from “low-functioning” individuals, who have significant speech challenges, to “high-functioning” individuals, who can communicate but have other social and behavioral challenges; high-functioning autism has traditionally been called Asperger’s syndrome. This disorder has become more of a mainstream topic, with television shows and movies, such as The Good Doctor and Rainman, depicting characters on …

Evolving Esg Reporting Governance, Regime Theory, And Proactive Law: Predictions And Strategies, Adam Sulkowski, Ruth Jebe

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Transparency on ESG (environmental, social, and governance) is an important, if imperfect, step in striving for sustainability. Because a constellation of nonprofit organizations created voluntary reporting frameworks with little government involvement, ESG reporting governance is institutionally dense and fragmented. Reporting companies and information users have both expressed dissatisfaction. In 2020, standard-setting organizations indicated their intent to cooperate to simplify ESG reporting rules. In a different yet similar context, scholars utilize regime theory to understand institutional density and the potential for international cooperation, primarily among states. This article is the first to apply regime theory to ESG reporting governance architecture to …

Imagining The Future Of Lgbtq+ Evaluation: New(Er) Directions And What Comes Next, Dylan Felt, Esrea Perez-Bill, Eric Barela, Nicole Cundiff, Radaya Ellis, Lashaune Johnson, Nicholas Metcalf, Travis Robert Moore, Ash Philliber, Jeffrey Poirier, Sarah Daniel Rasher, Cindy Rizzo, Erik Elías Glenn, Gregory Phillips Ii

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

We close this issue of New Directions for Evaluation by looking towards the future. In this chapter, the perspectives of 10 LGBTQ+ Evaluators whose voices and insights were not otherwise featured in this issue provide their critical insights on what LGBTQ+ Evaluation means to them, what it looks like in practice, and where they hope to see it grow in the future, including how the work of this issue of New Directions for Evaluation can be expanded and built upon. In closing the issue on a critical, futures-oriented note, we reaffirm our assertion that this is neither the first, nor …

Who Is Nil Leaving Out?: Challenges And Solutions For International Student-Athletes, Beth D. Solomon, Karina G. Jolly, Sarah Stokowski, Sam C. Ehrlich, Skye G. Arthur-Banning

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) adopted name, image and likeness (NIL) legislation in July 2021. The expectation was for all NCAA student-athletes to have the opportunity to seek compensation for their NIL, but the reality is quite different. International student-athletes are not easily able to benefit from their NIL due to restrictions placed on off-campus work under the terms of their entrance visas to the United States. This paper explores the need for the NCAA, NCAA member institutions, and government agencies to re-evaluate policies in an effort to ensure all student-athletes have the right to profit off their NIL. …

Prosocial Occupations, Work Autonomy, And The Origins Of The Social Class Pay Gap, Ray Tsai Fang, András Tilcsik

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite decades of research on social mobility and wage disparities, it remains a puzzle why people from lower-class families earn less than people from upper-class families even when similar in education and occupational prestige. Taking a sociocultural perspective on social class, we argue that a key contributor to the class pay gap is that people from upper-class origins tend to work in occupations with greater autonomy, whereas their lower-class counterparts tend to work in occupations that are more prosocial. We further propose that autonomous occupations pay better than prosocial occupations. Across two distinct nationally representative samples in the United States, …

The Role Of Socioemotional Wealth In Entrepreneurial Persistence Decisions For Family Businesses, Dalong Ma, E. Shaunn Mattingly, Trayan N. Kushev, Manju K. Ahuja, Andrew S. Manikas

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many factors may influence entrepreneurial persistence in various contexts. For example, scholars find that family business entrepreneurs are more persistent than other entrepreneurs. However, the reasons why they are more persistent are not as well known. Utilizing a conjoint experiment with 64 entrepreneurs and 376 decisions, this paper examines the influence of socioemotional wealth (SEW) on persistence decisions in a family business context. The results of the Hierarchical Linear Modelling show that the expected financial returns, expected non-financial benefits, expected switching costs, and probability of expected outcomes influence entrepreneurial persistence decisions. Further, family business entrepreneurs with higher levels of SEW …

The Biasing Impact Of Positive Instructor Reputation On Student Evaluations Of Teaching, D. Brian Mcnatt

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

A naturally-occurring intervention in a longitudinal field setting (4 months) was used to examine the presence and biasing impact of a positive reputation on subsequent ratings of work performance (student evaluations of teaching). During pre-semester interactions, first-year MBA students received information from second-year MBAs about their upcoming professors and classes. Favorable information about the two professors and course examined in the present study caused a positive reputation. Results indicated that despite four months of experiencing actual performance, the positive reputation hindered students’ decision-making process resulting in biasedly inflated ratings of instructor performance and halo error judgments of course materials, grading, …

The U.S. Plastics Problem: The Road To Circularity, Ruth Jebe

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Plastics pollution has been an issue in the United States since discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch catapulted it to the forefront of news reporting. Regulatory and academic activity around plastics has had a common feature: it focused almost exclusively on one stage in plastics’ linear model and framed the problem as a waste problem. Challenges have come in two forms: the shift from the linear production model of take-make-waste to a sustainability paradigm represented by the concept of circular production, and disruption of the global plastics waste supply chain occasioned by changes in China’s waste import policies. These …

Consideration Sets As Resources For Business Model Generation, E. Shaunn Mattingly, Garrett A. Mcbrayer

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Business models as outcomes for entrepreneurship are increasing in prevalence in pedagogy and practice. Instructors and entrepreneurs are focusing efforts on iterating potential ideas through a process of trial and error in hopes to produce working business models. However, such practices need to be better underpinned by theory so we can develop an understanding of how to identify more valuable opportunity ideas and how to progress them towards working business models with fewer trials and errors. This conceptual paper focuses on integrating extant conceptualisations of business models as interdependent activities with research on identifying opportunities as problem-solution pairings. While integrating …

Small Business Development Centers And Rural Entrepreneurial Development Strategies: Are We Doing Enough For Rural America?, Timothy C. Dunne, Katie Toyoshima, Michael Byrd

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many states across the United States have significant rural populations, which typically face different sets of challenges than those closer to urban populations. This is particularly evident in the different types of opportunities that small businesses face in those rural areas. In recent years, various efforts - both at a national and local level - have been taken to increase those opportunities for rural small businesses. However, those efforts have not always produced the results that are envisioned. Utilizing information about Small Business Development Center (SBDC) strategies to serve small businesses in both rural and urban areas, we highlight the …

The Idaho Human Rights Act Is Long Overdue For A Legislative Update, Susan E. Park, Doug A. Werth

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Idaho Human Rights Act (“IHRA”) needs attention. The Idaho Legislature has not made a meaningful amendment to the Act since 2005, when it expanded protections for persons with disabilities.1 It has neglected to update the IHRA after landmark federal enactments such as the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, and the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008. The statutory disconnect created by this legislative lapse has magnified the importance of how courts apply federal case law to the IHRA, particularly in light of the …

Tracking The Evolution Of Stare Decisis, Sam C. Ehrlich, Ryan M. Rodenberg

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

At the United States Supreme Court, what is old is new again. In a series of recent opinions,1 the justices have repeatedly offered differing views on how stare decisis should be positioned when tasked with justifying or rejecting existing precedent. Indeed, in three recent Supreme Court decisions the justices have wrestled with the effect of stare decisis on future decisions. Reversing a decision, according to Justice Kagan, “demand[s] a ‘special justification.’” In contrast, Justice Thomas posited that “[w]hen faced with demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: We should not follow it.” Chief Justice Roberts, in explaining his switch in …

Seeking A Friend And Ally, Steven J. Hyde, Eric Bachura, Darcy K. Fudge Kamal, Meghan A. Thornton-Lugo

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is widely known in other micro fields such as organizational behavior and psychology that motivation is an important predictor of behavior. Yet the alliance and Upper Echelons literature have largely overlooked this important antecedent. A deeper understanding of a CEO’s motivations can illuminate why a firm may engage in higher levels of alliance activity while another firm may not. In this study, we explore how CEO needs—a manifestation of internal motivation—may impact alliance behavior. The results of our study demonstrate that the motivations of CEOs – namely their need for affiliation– have a non-linear relationship with alliance activity. More …

The Gender Equity Gap: A Multi-Study Investigation Of Within-Job Inequality In Equity-Based Awards, Felice B. Klein, Aaron D. Hill, Ryan Hammond, Ryan Stice-Lusvardi

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Laws in many countries mandate paying men and women equally when in similar jobs. Such laws, coupled with considerable organizational efforts, lead some scholars to contend that within-job pay inequality is no longer a source of the gender pay gap. We argue important differences in a widely used form of pay heretofore overlooked in existing studies—equity-based awards (i.e., pay where the value is tied to the employing organization’s stock, such as stock and stock options)—may cause underestimation of gender-based within-job pay inequality. Specifically, we theorize that because of differences in both why and how equity-based awards are distributed to employees …

Ceo Gender-Based Termination Concerns: Evidence From Initial Severance Agreements, Felice B. Klein, Pierre Chaigneau, Cynthia E. Devers

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

We theorize that female candidates considering CEO roles will perceive greater termination vulnerability in such roles than their male counterparts. We further theorize that indicators of recent organizational distress will exacerbate female CEO candidates’ perceptions of termination vulnerability, while the presence of female leaders will mitigate these concerns. To test our arguments, we examine the initial values of newly appointed female and male CEOs’ severance agreements from 2007 to 2014. Results support our arguments and begin to shed light on the factors that influence female executives’ concerns about CEO roles and ultimately firms’ ability to appoint female CEOs.

Remembering The Lessons Of The Baseball Exemption In Ncaa V. Alston, Sam C. Ehrlich

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is somewhat ironic that the recently-granted Supreme Court appeal in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) v. Alston falls so near the 100-year anniversary of Federal Baseball v. National League, a well-debated opinion by the Supreme Court that gave a particular sports league—and, for decades only that sports league—broad immunity from the antitrust laws. In doing so, the Court set up the field of sports antitrust law in a way that would position professional baseball apart from the other leagues to a degree that the Court would later remark is “unrealistic, inconsistent, or illogical.” Indeed, even a sitting member …

Laws, Educational Outcomes, And Returns To Schooling Evidence From The First Wave Of U.S. State Compulsory Attendance Laws, Karen Clay, Jeff Lingwall, Melvin Stephens Jr.

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The nineteenth and twentieth century saw two waves of state schooling laws. The first wave focused on children to age 14 and the second wave focused on high school. Using the full count 1940 census and a new coding of state laws, this paper provides new estimates of the effects of the first wave of laws. The analysis focuses on cohorts of prime working age between 1910 and 1940. IV estimates of returns to schooling range from 0.067 to 0.077. Quantile IV estimates show the returns were largest for the lowest quantiles, and were generally monotonically decreasing for higher quantiles.

Effects Of Employee Monitoring Notification Policies On Hr Manager Opinions, Gundars Kaupins

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

As a variety of electronic monitoring methods such as global positioning systems are available, monitoring employees without notice is a consideration even though several laws ban it and ethical questions remain. Monitoring without notice has risks that Human Resources (HR) managers should consider when they set monitoring policies to enhance knowledge management. A total of 174 HR managers were asked about their top reasons to electronically monitor employees with or without notice. About half received information that a company did not notify employees of electronic monitoring and the other half received the opposite information. Prospect theory was the basis for …

The Influence Of Board Of Director Gender Diversity On Gendered Corporate Social Responsibility, Wenlu Mcintosh, John C. Mcintosh

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines the impact of board of director gender diversity on organizational outcomes associated with gendered corporate social responsibility (GCSR). The study employs a sample of 458 companies reported in the 2018 RobecoSam sustainability report to examine the relationship between the board of director gender diversity (GD) to GCSR performance. In particular, it examines the influence of GD on the percentage of women hired by a company, female employee turnover, and recruitment of female managers. The study shows companies with high GD have a higher percentage of female employees and have greater female representation in managerial ranks. There was …

The Gender Pay Gap That No One Is Paying Attention To, Felice Klein

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

That women are paid less than male colleagues is a stubborn fact in the U.S. workplace.

As of July, women earned 84 cents for every dollar a man earned. It is a discrepancy that has garnered significant attention from scholars, the media and sex discrimination lawsuits.

But this figure only tells part of the story regarding gender pay inequality.

As a professor of business management, I have long studied compensation and inequality and know that base pay is only one way that women are disadvantaged in the workplace. Recent research by myself and colleagues shines a light on how female …

Should Professors With Invisible Disabilities, Such As Asperger's, Reveal Them To Their Students?, Gundars Kaupins

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Asperger’s syndrome is a high-functioning autism spectrum condition in which individuals tend to lack empathy with others, appear unengaged in discussions, speak in a monotone, limit eye contact, fail to connect names with faces, display some clumsiness, and maintain an excessive focus on favorite topics. They want connections with people but find it very difficult to attain them. Such characteristics are not amenable to great college instruction. Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that Asperger’s affects between 1 and 2 percent of the population, it is suspected that professoriate has a greater percentage due to its research …

Service-Learning: An Experiment To Increase Interpersonal Communication Confidence And Competence, D. Brian Mcnatt

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether engaging in course service-learning projects can impact interpersonal oral communication confidence and skill development beyond that of traditional course research projects.

Design/methodology/approach – Three sections of a university management course were randomly assigned to have a service-learning team project, while the other three retained the traditional research team project. All projects were student-generated. Survey data were collected at the beginning of the semester and at the end four months later.

Findings – Results indicated that service-learning produces greater oral communication self-efficacy. For female students, service-learning projects also increased their …

The Convergence Of Financial And Esg Materiality: Taking Sustainability Mainstream, Ruth Jebe

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sustainability reporting can be seen as an attempt to bring improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices to mainstream business. However, this movement to mainstream is hampered by the disconnect between financial and ESG information. Both reporting streams use the concept of materiality to shape firms’ disclosure obligations, but the term carries different meanings for different organizations. One sustainability organization, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), has developed reporting standards to merge sustainability and financial information by leveraging the definition of materiality for financial reporting purposes. This use of financial materiality positions the SASB to collide with the Security and …

Swimming Against The Current: Mayall V. Usa Water Polo And Its Potential Impact On Overseeing Athletic Organizations, Sam C. Ehrlich

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The concussion epidemic has been a major source of discussion among commentators in a variety of different subject areas, as many attempt to determine how to solve this crisis and curb the threat it poses to sport participation. While much of the discussion is centered around professional and intercollegiate sports, amateur youth sports have been affected as well. According to medical researchers, around 600,000 sport- and recreation-related concussions by youth sport participants are treated each year; between 22.5 percent and 52.7 percent of high school students’ concussions are not reported to medical providers for treatment. It may be impossible to …