Research Briefs

A look at some results of faculty studies on business topics

STEVEN SCHUSTER, Assistant Professor of Economics

“The Persuasive Power of the Fourth Estate: Estimating the Effect of Newspaper Endorsements: 1960–1980”

Journal of Financial Research

Sprick Schuster measures the effect of newspaper endorsements in presidential elections from 1960 to 1980, a period when the vast majority of newspaper owners and editors supported Republican candidates. During this era, newspapers constituted a major source of information for the average individual. His research shows that when a newspaper endorsed a candidate, reader support for that candidate increased by 20 percentage points. Given the strong partisan skew of these endorsements, they systematically influenced campaigns. By Sprick Schuster’s estimates, these newspaper endorsements potentially increased Republican support by 17 million voters and may have been pivotal in Richard Nixon’s 1968 Electoral College victory.

ENNIO E. PIANO, Assistant Professor of Economics

and CLARA E. PIANO (Austin Peay State University)

“Contracting Creativity”

European Review of Economic History (forthcoming)

What determines an artist’s creative freedom? Renaissance Italy provides the perfect setting to answer this question. Using a unique data set containing 90 original commission documents from this period, the authors investigate how artist reputation, the identity of the patron, and the expected value of the commission predict the painter’s freedom over choice of subject, style, and look of the painting. The results suggest that the value of the painting and the identity of the patron matter for an artist’s creative freedom, while evidence of an effect of the artist’s reputation is weak.

MICHAEL PEASLEY, Assistant Professor of Marketing and Director, Office of Consumer Research

“A Nuanced Analysis of Salesperson Grit: Exploring Perseverance, Consistency, and Mindset”

Journal of Business and Industrial Management

Peasley and his colleagues investigated subdimensions of grit, perseverance, and consistency of interests in a B2B sales setting. They suggest managers should be aware that salespeople with a growth mindset benefit from environments that continually provide them with new opportunities. A candidate with the growth mindset may be an ideal fit for select opportunities within the sales organization that would allow them to progress more quickly, such as accelerated training programs, programs offering relatively rapid progression from junior standing to full standing, or programs that would place them on a management track. Sales managers can monitor and develop a salesperson’s locus of control to mitigate a decline in their interest by permitting flexibility and autonomy, providing tools and feedback, and empowering the salesperson with the capabilities and opportunities they need to execute the sales process successfully.

DEANA RAFFO Interim Chair of Management

and HEATHER HEATH, M.B.A. graduate

“What Would Dolly Do?: Dolly Parton as Authentic Leader”

Journal of Leadership Education

Heath, a recent MTSU M.B.A. graduate, collaborated with Raffo to provide leadership educators with popular media resources for teaching authentic leadership, using Dolly Parton as a compelling case study. Authentic leadership is a theoretical framework that emphasizes core values, purpose, meaning, self-awareness, an internal moral perspective, and enduring relationships. Although Parton is best known for her long and distinguished musical career, the focus here is on her notable civic and philanthropic contributions as an authentic leader, including her work with Imagination Library, her support for the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, and her relief efforts for the Gatlinburg fires.

MELODIE PHILLIPS, Professor of Marketing

“Do Business School Faculties Have an Ethical Obligation to Maximize MBA Student Involvement by Developing ‘Online Presence’ to Engage Students Displaced During the Pandemic and Beyond?”

International Journal of Education and Social Science (forthcoming)

Phillips explores the significance of going beyond asynchronous online involvement and moving toward a more interactive engagement with distance-learning students, which was never more urgent than in the COVID-19 environment. Students and faculty in traditional face-toface courses were shifted virtually overnight into an e-learning environment. These students and faculty were particularly vulnerable to this transition. Faculty facing the pandemic have been online instruction novices, and a substantial portion of the disengaged students felt they learned better and were more engaged in a traditional learning environment. This paper investigates approaches that can help ease the unexpected transition to online learning to yield a more impactful experience to engage these students in an active learning environment in graduate programs.

DAVID S. STEFFENSEN JR., Assistant Professor of Management

with CHARN P. MCALLISTER (Austin Peay State University) and PAMELA L. PERREWÉ, GANG WANG, C. DARREN BROOKS (Florida State University)

“ ‘You’ve Got Mail’: a Daily Investigation of Email Demands on Job Tension and Work-Family Conflict”

Journal of Business and Psychology

Email represents a useful organizational tool that can facilitate rapid and flexible communication between organizations, managers, and employees regardless of their physical location—office, home, on vacation, etc. However, despite the potential benefits of email, its usage is a double-edged sword that also has the potential to negatively affect its users. To advance knowledge and inform both researchers and practitioners of such negative outcomes, Steffensen et. al. integrate the job demands-resources model with spillover theory to investigate email as a potential job demand and explore how it may relate to employees’ job tension and work-family conflict. Their research suggests, as a job demand, email can have negative consequences on the job that can spill over into the home.