Business Commons^™

Agreements And Disagreements About The Roll Of Leadership Team Diversity In Strategic Change: A Critical Review Of Measurement And Empirical Inconsistencies, Amy C. Horner

Engaged Management ReView

Research examining the relationship between leadership team diversity and strategic change has produced inconsistent and often contradictory findings. This dissertation digest synthesizes prior research through a meta-analytic review of twenty-five studies representing more than 500,000 observations across multiple industries and countries. The results indicate that relationships between leadership team diversity characteristics and strategic change are generally small in magnitude and highly variable across studies.

Rather than reflecting a clear directional effect, these patterns point to a fundamental challenge in the existing literature: inconsistency in how key constructs are defined and measured. Strategic change is operationalized through a wide range of …

The Impact Of Ceo Sociopolitical Activism On Firms’ Financial And Stakeholder Outcomes: A Critically Appraised Topic, Philip R. Stuczynski

Engaged Management ReView

In recent years, CEO activism has emerged as a highly visible and controversial form of executive communication. This structured literature review examines 23 peer-reviewed, ABS-rated articles published between 2017 and 2025, with the goal of synthesizing what researchers have learned about the effects of sociopolitical speech by corporate leaders. Drawing on studies from strategy, management, accounting, and finance journals, this paper explores how CEO-initiated public commentary influences investor reactions, firm performance, and stakeholder sentiment. Using the PICOC framework, the review defines CEO activism as executive speech or public commentary on controversial social or political issues which may be unrelated to …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Firm Value: A Critically Appraised Topic, Shinika L. Byrd

Engaged Management ReView

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an important component of strategic management, yet whether it enhances firm value remains a debated question. This Critically Appraised Topic (CAT) synthesizes the most recent peer-reviewed evidence to examine the relationship between CSR and the firm value of U.S. publicly traded companies. The guiding research question is: Does corporate social responsibility improve firm value? Findings indicate that CSR does not consistently improve firm value. Rather, its impact depends on factors such as strategic alignment, governance quality, transparency, stakeholder perceptions, and market conditions. Evidence suggests that strategically integrated, employee-centered CSR initiatives are more likely to …

Assessing And Addressing Financial Risk In Capitated Primary Care Contracts, Michael R. Wieck Dba, Laurence Smith, Steven R. Stout Dba

Engaged Management ReView

We employ multivariate statistical modeling and Monte Carlo simulation to study systematic and unsystematic financial risk faced by physician groups under capitated contracts with Medicare Advantage Organizations (MAOs). We use mixed methods and a standard reimbursement formula for risk-sharing contracts with primary care physicians (PCPs). We find that diversifying risk simply by increasing the size of a practice is insufficient to mitigate risks of large negative cash flows from capitation contracts and can result in financial failure. However, if use of costly medical services by patients is reduced from levels typically experienced under traditional Medicare to the levels of patients …

Burning Bridges? Conflicting Advice In Early Job Reneging And Implications For Practice, Amanda Leigh Bisson, Jo-Louise Huq

Engaged Management ReView

The time between early talent offers and students’ graduation dates is increasing. Although students are strongly encouraged by their universities not to renege on accepted early job offers, reneging is not uncommon in practice. In this paper, we explore how students approach the reneging decision, specifically examining the questions they ask and the advice they receive from peers and professionals. Using an interpretivist approach and reflective thematic analysis, we analyzed 25 Reddit posts by accounting students navigating reneges. Our findings offer novel insights into the student experience and the advice students are receiving from social network contacts. We find that …

The Impact Of Sustainable Responsible Investment On The Environmental And Financial Performance Of Listed Companies (In The Context Of European Regulatory Framework), Leila Kamara

Engaged Management ReView

Although socially responsible investment (SRI) first emerged in the United States in the 1970s, its influence is now global and booming. The most striking illustration is the increase of signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI): The number of signatories surged from around 100 in 2006 to more than 5,000 in 2025 (Peillex & Comyns, 2020), confirming that SRI is now central to investment strategies. The landscape of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment has seen the emergence of new stakeholders, including data providers. However, persistent limitations regarding data transparency, accessibility, and comparability have prevented investors from …

Implicit Bias In Hiring: Leveraging Avatars To Foster More Inclusive Hiring Practices, Alexa Trifilo, Gary Blau, Crystal Reeck

Engaged Management ReView

This research investigated implicit racial in-group bias in hiring and examined extended reality (XR) as a mechanism for masking visual identity cues during the interview process. By introducing avatars that obscure physical characteristics, such as race, the study extends the concept of “blind” hiring into immersive virtual environments. In our experimental design, randomly assigned participants evaluated job candidates represented by avatars that had three variations of racial identifiability (White, Asian, or racially unidentifiable avatar) and two qualification levels (strong and ambiguous). We controlled for gender by including only experienced, full-time female professionals as participants in the evaluation of female avatars …

An Austrian Approach To Accounting Regulation: How Policy Intervention Distorts The Market For Assurance Services, Kyan Howe

Student Scholarship

This thesis applies the causal-realist method of the Austrian School of Economics to the market for assurance services in the United States. The central argument is that post-crisis accounting regulation has systematically distorted the incentive structures of independent public accounting firms in ways regulators do not predict and cannot fully control. Financial crises, properly understood through Austrian Business Cycle Theory, originate in monetary distortions rather than market failure. Post-crisis regulatory responses nonetheless target the profession rather than the underlying distortion, introducing rules that alter the institutional constraints within which auditors exercise professional judgment.

The thesis develops a judgment-based equation of …

Engaged Employees Deliver Returns: Evidence On Financial Performance From Spain, Carlos Gomez-Mugica

Engaged Management ReView

Does investing in your employees create long-term value? Although many firms pursue employee-focused policies, studies show little agreement on which specific dimensions of employee satisfaction yield sustainable financial performance. Building on Edmans (2011), who linked employee satisfaction to superior stock performance in the United States, this study turns to the Spanish market. Using 15 years of data from Actualidad Económica—Spain’s most recognized benchmark for employee satisfaction—we apply Herzberg’s (1968) two-factor theory to distinguish between motivators, such as sense of belonging, talent management, and training, and hygiene factors, like compensation and work environment. Applying a Carhart (1997) four-factor model, we find …

Rightsizing Regulations To Foster Innovation And A Healthy Business Environment: Insights From Elite Executives, Brian Charles Mulligan, Nelson Granados

Engaged Management ReView

This study examines insights from business executives on how TRAILS—that is, taxes, regulations, assessments, interventions, litigation, and subsidies—influence entrepreneurial behavior and firm performance. Using an applied constructivist grounded theory design, we conducted 17 in-depth interviews to identify how top business executives view the effects of regulations on business performance. We adopt the premise that the right level and set of regulations lead to a healthier business environment. We find that right-sized TRAILS catalyze entrepreneurial dynamism, whereas wrong-sized TRAILS impose hidden opportunity costs, stifle innovation, and erode institutional trust. Crucially, the study reveals the vital role of the government as …

Women In The Construction Skilled Trades: Career Progression, Challenges, And Motivational Factors, Richard Hannah, Andrew Parzyck, Andrea Janzen, Amanda Portinari

Engaged Management ReView

Women remain significantly underrepresented in the construction industry, particularly in the skilled trades. Through qualitative exploratory interviews with six women, this study investigates the career trajectories, worksite barriers, and motivational influences shaping women’s experiences in the construction skilled trades. The research is framed using Donald Super’s Life-Span, Life-Space theory and expectancy-value theory (EVT) to explore how career stages and career value affect women’s experiences. Participants described gender bias, limited mentorship, and restricted advancement opportunities as primary challenges. This study highlights the need for industry-led initiatives to increase early exposure to trades, improve mentorship and sponsorship programs, and create structured pathways …

Risk-Sensitive Markov-Perfect Equilibrium, Matthew J. Sobel

Faculty Scholarship

We investigate the existence and structure of Markov-perfect equilibria of discrete-time dynamic games in which players are risk averse and have time preferences consistent with discounting. We establish the existence of a Markov-perfect equilibrium when each player strives to maximize the expected exponential utility of the present value of the time stream of rewards. Also, we give sufficient conditions for a Markov-perfect equilibrium to be myopic, namely to be a sequence of Nash equilibria of static games. The myopia results are applied to a dynamic oligopoly model in which firms choose prices and production quantities, encounter stochastic demand and hold …

Cultural Intelligence In Expatriate Employee Success: A Critically Appraised Topic, Kathy So

Engaged Management ReView

Studies have shown a high failure rate among employees of multinational enterprises (MNEs) who work on overseas assignments. Although research often heralds cultural intelligence as an essential factor in expatriate employees, whether cultural intelligence should be the primary focus when choosing employees for overseas assignments is inconclusive. This topic paper aims to provide specific recommendations for ensuring the success of expatriate employees. More specifically, this assessment explores the effect of cultural intelligence on the success of expatriate employees. The research question is this: What is the effect of cultural intelligence on the success of expatriate employees who work for multinational …

The Democratization Of Coaching And Development Through Peer Coaching In Groups, Richard E. Boyatzis

Engaged Management ReView

People want and need development at work and in life. The cost of typical development activities limits access to those in powerful or higher status positions. In addition, the efficacy of training programs in organizations and higher education as developmental activities have shown relatively poor results in terms of sustained, desired change. The effects of coaching seem more promising, but it is highly labor intensive and therefore costly. Peer coaching in groups (PCGs) offers a potentially efficacious developmental activity at no or very low cost to organizations or individuals. PCGs can be used throughout the world and invite participation regardless …

Improving Employee Turnover Intention: Outsourced Human Resources Vs. In-House Human Resources, Precious Carter, Gary Blau, John Deckop, Daniel Goldberg

Engaged Management ReView

Small business research has neglected comparing employees’ perceptions on variables related to in-house human resources (HRI) vs. outsourced human resources (HRO) in small businesses. We used a mixed methods research design to study this issue. The first study consisted of 11 in-depth interviews. The qualitative insights we gained helped to guide survey construction for the second quantitative survey-based study. For the survey, 101 HRI U.S. employees and 97 HRO U.S. employees filled out a survey. Results from the HRI and HRO samples were equivalent in terms of participants’ years of work experience, work schedule, gender, company size, company age, perceived …

Multigenerational Family Business Succession: An Extreme Case Study, Toney Duckworth-Chambless, Lars Mathiassen

Engaged Management ReView

Family businesses balance performance with family, employee, and consumer needs, and they exist in most private and public sector areas. Although family businesses must continuously manage decisions that impact the never-ending succession task, we have limited knowledge of how multiple successions play out over time. Against this backdrop, we present an extreme case of how a family business, Kinsmith Finance, thrived through three successions; we focus on how the generations involved shaped the succession path using combinations of adapting to emerging circumstances and reinforcing decisions from previous generations. By adopting a case study design with three embedded succession cases, we …

Seeing The Whole Together Through Relational Mapping: A Method For Engaging In Complex Systems Change, John Paul Stephens

Faculty Scholarship

Complex global challenges cut across organizational and sectoral boundaries, increasing calls for holistic responses. Seeing the whole across diverse stakeholders is challenging for participants in complex systems, yet doing so is essential for engaging effectively in systems change. A promising new method known as relational mapping, based on relational coordination theory, has been used to facilitate complex systems change. Here, we propose that relational mapping can be applied to help participants (1) see the whole in relation to the parts, (2) share their explicit and tacit knowledge, (3) engage in dialogue across distinct perspectives supported by the map as a …

Business Innovation As A Force For Good: From Doing Less Harm To Positive Impact Type 1 And Type 2, Chris Laszlo, David Cooperrider, Ronald Fry

Faculty Scholarship

Commitments of “getting to zero” or becoming a regenerative company are raising investor, customer, and employee expectations at a time when businesses are struggling just to reduce negative impacts. Executives are increasingly caught between wanting to build a better world and the reality of managing value-add activities that continue to harm people and the environment. Businesses need to distinguish between three types of innovation impacts to maintain their credibility and legitimacy. The first is doing less harm, where the goal is to minimize social wrongs and reduce ecological footprints. The second is incremental positive impact, where the goal is to …

Well-Being In Gen Y Employee Retention: A Critically Appraised Topic, Janine Smith

Engaged Management ReView

Retention continues to be a top business concern. Retention is the ability to keep employees from voluntarily leaving. Without a workforce, companies cannot execute their mission, which results in a loss of revenue. Companies focused on the retention of their workforce use the total rewards package to retain employees. One component of the rewards package is well-being. Well-being comprises multiple components, some of which have been identified as reasons for the wave of recent resignations. Well-being is when employees “have the psychological, social, and physical resources they need to meet a particular psychological, social, and/or physical challenge” (Dodge et al., …

Preferences, Risk Neutrality And Risk-Sensitive Mdps, James Alexander, Matthew J. Sobel

Faculty Scholarship

A binary preference relation on a real vector space satisfying four (natural) axioms is shown to induce a utility function composed of a linear function to the reals and a weakly monotonic function. The key axiom is decomposition, and the utility function can be taken to be linear if and only if this axiom’s converse is also satisfied. Important consequences follow for risk-sensitive discounted Markov decision processes, decision trees, and the discounted utility model in economics. Since the four axioms imply that preferences correspond to discounting, the four axioms without the converse imply that preferences are consistent with discounting without …

[Discussions] Vol. 19 Iss. 1

Discussions

This issue of Discussions was published for the Spring 2023 cycle.

U.S. Public Equity Esg Fund Composite And Parnassus Core Equity Fund: Performance And Factor Attribution, Karthik Nemani, Barrett Buhler

Discussions

This is the first paper to examine all U.S. public equity Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) funds offered by the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment’s (SIF) institutional member firms from 2005 to 2020. For ease of communication, this will be called the ESG Composite. With a Net Asset Value (NAV) over $150 billion, these funds comprise nearly half of the U.S. public equity ESG investment landscape. The article finds that the ESG Composite maintains performance with the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 total return index on an overall returns basis with lower volatility, indicating greater risk-adjusted returns. Factor analysis …

Employing Individuals With Disabilities And Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Role Of Employer Openness And Employee Attitudes, Claude B. Kershner Iv, George M. Marakas

Engaged Management ReView

When employers hire people with disabilities, collective behavioral change occurs in organizations. Specifically, attitudes toward people with disabilities improve through professional interventions and encourage organizational citizenship behavior. Previous studies have demonstrated the economic and client-focused effect of hiring people with disabilities, resulting in a tested model of competitive, integrated employment. In this study, we find that a performance-based behavioral change occurs in non-disabled employees when organizations employ best practices in relation to people with disabilities in the workplace. We use intergroup contact theory and social exchange theory to develop a model and a corresponding survey instrument that measures how several …

Optimizing Training To Effectively Mitigate The Human Risk Of Cyberattacks: A Critically Appraised Topic, Christine Davis

Engaged Management ReView

Employees are an organization’s greatest defense against cyberattacks; however, traditional cybersecurity training falls short of developing this protection. Failing to properly train employees to prevent a cyberattack becomes a vulnerability that attackers exploit. Can organizations optimize employee cybersecurity training to effectively mitigate the human-related risks of cyberattacks? Findings indicate that optimized cybersecurity training can indeed mitigate this risk. In this topic paper, the author reviewed the research to recommend strategies for optimizing such training, highlighting the importance of embracing cybersecurity company-wide, at all levels. Furthermore, the lessons in the training must be reiterated, updated, and reinforced—thus promoting a culture of …

Emotional Expression Between Ceo And Chairperson As A Micro-Foundation Of Organizational Capabilities: An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study, John Paul Stephens

Faculty Scholarship

The work relationships between CEOs and Chairpersons are key to the functioning of the firm. This study uses survey and interview data to explore how these work relationships serve as a micro-foundation for an organization's communication climate. Survey data suggested that CEO-Chairperson relationships can be characterized by emotional carrying capacity (ECC; constructively expressing more positive and negative emotions). The survey-based model further demonstrated that CEOs and Chairpersons perceive their ECC to positively predict organizational communication climate and, in turn, knowledge creation capabilities. The latter, in turn, are positively associated with firm performance. CEO-Chairperson dyadic interview data supplemented the associations identified …

Data Analytics And Compliance With Aacsb Accounting Technology Standards: A Critically Appraised Topic, Gregory J. Tanzola

Engaged Management ReView

As technology accelerates and gains importance in the accounting industry, the inclusion of technology in accounting curricula also becomes more important. Indeed, this inclusion is a requirement of the academic accounting accrediting body, The American Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). However, neither minimal guidance nor standards for meeting the technology requirements currently exist. This topic paper examines how academic accounting departments may address data analytics as a component of the AACSB’s technology requirement. The analysis synthesizes peer-reviewed articles exploring how data analytics are being integrated into accounting curricula and identifies three main concerns: (1) the need for …

Does Work-Life Boundary Management Improve Work-Life Balance For Remote Workers: A Critically Appraised Topic, Danyelle L. Berger

Engaged Management ReView

This topic paper examines whether managing the boundaries between work life and personal life positively affects work-life balance in the context of remote work. The research that forms the basis of this topic paper is derived from five scholarly, peer-reviewed articles relevant to the stated purpose. The findings are mixed. In the long term, they indicate that successful management of the boundaries between work life and personal life affects work-life balance positively, while non-management of boundaries affects work-life balance negatively. In the short term, the findings demonstrate that managing boundaries in a way that allows for temporary and deliberate weakening …

Does Engaging Commercial Customers In A Shared Social Mission Improve Impact Sourcing Service Provider (Issp) Success? A Critically Appraised Topic, Michael F. Corbett

Engaged Management ReView

This topic paper examines whether engaging commercial customers through a shared social mission improves the success of social enterprises. It is based on an examination of a subset of the information technology and business process outsourcing (ITO/BPO) industries, known as impact sourcing service providers (ISSPs). ISSPs are social enterprises – B2R Technologies and Digital Divide Data are two examples – that provide call center, transaction processing, data entry, and other technology-enabled services for commercial customers from remote locations around the globe. What is unique about ISSPs is that they do this with a social mission of creating jobs and economic …

A Novel Approach To Legacy Donations With Long-Term Benefits Supported By Mathematical Analysis, Daniel Solow, Robin Symes

Faculty Scholarship

A novel approach to legacy donations, called the “Master Fund Strategy,” is proposed. Potential long-term financial benefits for both donor and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) when compared to a “Traditional Fund Strategy” are established through mathematical analysis and computer simulations, providing nonprofit marketing and fundraising professionals an alternative way to lock in bequest funding. In particular, formulas are developed for computing relevant financial quantities associated with the two strategies. Conditions are presented under which the Master Fund Strategy is better than the Traditional Fund Strategy, in the sense that there is a point in time when the net present value of …

Self-Beliefs, Transactive Memory Systems, And Collective Identification In Teams: Articulating The Socio-Cognitive Underpinnings Of Cohumain, Gabriela Cuconato

Student Scholarship

Socio-cognitive theory conceptualizes individual contributors as both enactors of cognitive processes and targets of a social context's determinative influences. The present research investigates how contributors’ metacognition or self-beliefs, combine with others’ views of themselves to inform collective team states related to learning about other agents (i.e., transactive memory systems) and forming social attachments with other agents (i.e., collective team identification), both important teamwork states that have implications for team collective intelligence. We test the predictions in a longitudinal study with 78 teams. Additionally, we provide interview data from industry experts in human–artificial intelligence teams. Our findings contribute to an emerging …