Yun Ke, Assistant Professor of Accounting, was named the Goodman School of Business 2020 Emerging Scholar, in part because of his research studies on social trust and social capital.
EMERGING SCHOLAR’S RESEARCH VENTURES WHERE FEW JOURNALS DARE TO GO By Tiffany Mayer
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usiness isn’t just about bottom lines and clever his colleagues at Goodman. Ke was named the School’s marketing. Emerging Scholar for 2020, in part because of those two Ask Yun Ke, an Assistant Professor of studies on social trust and social capital. Accounting at Goodman, and he’ll tell you “All of your (Goodman School of Business) colleagues there’s also a significant sociological component. Ke are impressed with your research records over the knows this because he’s written about how both social course of the past year, which includes the two highcapital and social trust can influence the behaviour of quality, high-impact journal articles … and the five a company’s chief executive officer. manuscripts, which are currently under review and/or When there’s a higher level of social trust — a belief revision at highly reputable journals,” Narongsak (Tek) in the honesty, integrity and reliability of others — Thongpapanl, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate within an organization, CEOs tend to behave better. Programs, wrote in an email congratulating Ke. “We are CEOs are also less likely to waste money when there’s very appreciative of what you have been working (on) abundant social capital, which is the connections with us to advance our school’s research and teaching between individuals, and the trust and reciprocity in excellence.” their relationships. Ke, who’s currently on leave from Brock to teach at Still, for a long time, it was a hard sell convincing the University of Texas at El Paso, wasn’t expecting the journals to see the merits of sharing such research. accolades. “Traditionally, they didn’t publish these papers,” Ke “At first I was surprised but also very happy,” he said. said. “They don’t like the sociological aspects of this.” “I’m on leave so I never thought they’d consider me." Fortunately, that’s changing. Ke has papers about The award comes with a grant to further support the effects of social trust and social capital on executive Ke’s work, which also includes a working paper on the perks and dividend payouts under review for publication readability of annual reports by American companies. in the Journal of Business Research and in the Journal of Reports that are easy to read depend on good Banking & Finance. writing and limiting jargon to describe a company’s Meanwhile, his work hasn’t been a hard sell among performance. But Ke found something else of note.
“Previous study finds when a company has a good performance, their annual report is easy to read,” he explained. “When a company has a bad performance, it’s hard to read. They’ll use language you can’t understand.” Based on the literature, easy-reading annual reports are often penned by companies in rural areas, a finding Ke wrote about in a paper he co-authored that’s under review by the Journal of Accounting and Economics. Rural firms hope that a highly readable annual report will attract investors, who often pay closer attention to companies in big cities, such as New York, Chicago or Philadelphia. “They invest more in urban companies and have analysts paying more attention to urban companies, so we think (rural companies) are trying to improve their situation,” he said. Earning the Emerging Scholar Award certainly improves Ke’s situation. He plans to use the seed money he received with it to further his research and help with the costs of getting that work published. “That’s very meaningful,” Ke said. “I really appreciate the business school’s support in that sense."
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