Emerging scholar’s research ventures where few journals dare to go

By Tiffany Mayer marketing. Ask Yun Ke, an Assistant Professor of Accounting at Goodman, and he’ll tell you there’s also a significant sociological component. Ke knows this because he’s written about how both social capital and social trust can influence the behaviour of a company’s chief executive officer.

When there’s a higher level of social trust — a belief in the honesty, integrity and reliability of others — within an organization, CEOs tend to behave better. CEOs are also less likely to waste money when there’s abundant social capital, which is the connections between individuals, and the trust and reciprocity in their relationships.

Still, for a long time, it was a hard sell convincing journals to see the merits of sharing such research.

“Traditionally, they didn’t publish these papers,” Ke said. “They don’t like the sociological aspects of this.”

Fortunately, that’s changing. Ke has papers about the effects of social trust and social capital on executive perks and dividend payouts under review for publication in the Journal of Business Research and in the Journal of Banking & Finance.

Meanwhile, his work hasn’t been a hard sell among his colleagues at Goodman. Ke was named the School’s

Emerging Scholar for 2020, in part because of those two studies on social trust and social capital.

“All of your (Goodman School of Business) colleagues are impressed with your research records over the course of the past year, which includes the two highquality, high-impact journal articles … and the five manuscripts, which are currently under review and/or revision at highly reputable journals,” Narongsak (Tek) Thongpapanl, Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Programs, wrote in an email congratulating Ke. “We are very appreciative of what you have been working (on) with us to advance our school’s research and teaching

Ke, who’s currently on leave from Brock to teach at the University of Texas at El Paso, wasn’t expecting the accolades.

“At first I was surprised but also very happy,” he said. “I’m on leave so I never thought they’d consider me."

The award comes with a grant to further support Ke’s work, which also includes a working paper on the readability of annual reports by American companies.

Reports that are easy to read depend on good writing and limiting jargon to describe a company’s performance. But Ke found something else of note.

Yun Ke, Assistant Professor of Accounting, was named the Goodman School of Business 2020 Emerging Scholar, in part because of his research studies

Business isn’t just about bottom lines and clever

excellence.”

on social trust and social capital.

“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."