INSIDE THIS ISSUE
New Anthology Addresses Critical Questions About the Future of Work
The Surprising Benefits of AI Skepticism and Strategic Decision-Making
Moderating the Extremes: How AI is Changing Financial ‘Jack of All Trades’ or ‘Renaissance Person?’ How Reputation Affects Career Choices
Over the past 50 years, work has evolved at an exponential pace. From remote workers and virtual meetings to concerns about emotional health and the emergence of artificial intelligence, today’s workplace is in uncharted territory. That’s why Dr. Ian O. Williamson, Dean of the University of California Irvine (UC Irvine) Paul Merage School of Business, assembled a series of essential essays that explore these seismic shifts for The Conversation on Work, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
In the book, essays from top scholars explore a diverse range of urgent topics, including burnout and mental health, remote and hybrid working environments, unions, and job inequities among marginalized groups, as well as the effects of COVID and artificial intelligence on the future of our changing workplace.
“What we call work and what we actually do as work has changed dramatically,” says Williamson. “Over the last five to six years we’ve seen a change in the most fundamental areas. The actual work that workers do, the demographics of the individuals doing the work and the tools workers use have all shifted. All of that has generated a system where much of what we thought we knew about leading workforces has been rendered less relevant—or perhaps even irrelevant.”
Williamson says these changes mean there are four issues business leaders must re-evaluate if they hope to remain profitable in the future. “The four most essential elements to consider are the work, the workers, the tools and the leaders,” he says. “The part that is probably most challenging is that, while the work, workers and tools have changed, it’s not clear the perceptions or capabilities of leaders have evolved at the same rate.”
Williamson and the book’s other contributors point out that the U.S. economy has shifted from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. “If you look across the U.S. today,” Williamson says, “the largest employers in most states are service organizations. That was not true 20 years ago. The economic drivers of our society are based on a fundamentally different set of activities from what we were doing in the ’70s or ’80s.”
However, Williamson notes, the approach many organizations adopt towards managing their workforces, particularly legacy organizations that have been around for 40 to 50 years, are often based on principles developed for manufacturing operations as opposed to service organizations. “If you look at how we’ve selected and trained our leaders, there is a disconnect between how we developed leaders in the past compared to what is needed today. In many organizations their approach to leadership simply has not changed at the same rate as the other three factors.”
Williamson sees the shift to a service-based economy as having a dramatic impact on the ability of organizations to attract a high-quality workforce. “If you are a service firm—a healthcare organization for example—you depend on the capabilities of highly skilled individuals,” he says. “You need a workforce with fairly high levels of education that can be retooled and retrained. The competition for those individuals is ruthless and global.” The demand for highly skilled workers is fierce, he says. Current estimates suggest the IT industry, for example,
will post more than 600,000 new job openings across the country in the next few years that cannot be filled. “We have historically thought of the USA as an attractive migration destination for workers, but the reality is most other developed economies are also service economies, and they are struggling as well. We’re in competition globally for skilled talent in a way we have never seen.”
This means our future workforce will become “extraordinarily diverse” by necessity, and “new talent will
come from everywhere.” We won’t have the luxury of being picky about where new talent is located, he says. “As a leader, you have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to manage and lead a very diverse workforce in a way that perhaps you did not see even 10 years ago.”
In America, the growing challenge for many employers will also be finding young talent. “At the same time that America is becoming more diverse, we’re also aging,” Williamson says. “Globally, most of the developed economies are aging at a dramatic rate.” The number of young people is declining, “which puts tremendous pressure on organizations that historically have thought about filling entry-level roles with younger individuals who perhaps don’t have high levels of skill.” In this case, diversity isn’t the issue. Organizations just can’t find young workers. “They don’t exist. We don’t have the bodies.”
All of this means going forward organizations will need to think very differently about how they manage their employees, especially when it comes to managing the diversity of needs individuals will bring to the workplace. Leaders must become skilled at managing a geo-diverse workforce, notes Williamson. “Today a worker in San Diego looking for a new job can feasibly interview for a job in Philadelphia and accept the new job offer without moving out of their house. In the past, it would have been incumbent upon the worker to move to another state for the job opportunity. They would have had no other choice.”
“The reality is very few organizations were actually set up
with a geo-divers workforce in mind. We never thought about it. It wasn’t something we trained leaders to do. Leaders are asking ‘where’s the rule book on how to do this’?” He says, for most organizations, we have only been doing this at scale for the last three years, “so we haven’t had a chance to fully run this experiment. Managers are asking, ‘How do I inspire? How do I evaluate? How do I develop? What does career progression and succession planning look like? Can a person based in San Diego be the long-term leader of a business unit based in Philadelphia?’”
These kinds of questions are not academic for Williamson. He accepted his current job as Dean of the Merage School of Business in Irvine, California, while he was still living in New Zealand. “Because of COVID, I could not immediately move to the United States,” he says. “I started at UC Irvine in January, and I did not physically arrive on campus until late that year. With no prior experience with the university I led the business school in Irvine from Wellington, New Zealand, for over six months. During that time, we had to make many high stake and time sensitive decisions while investing millions of dollars in order to navigated the organization through the pandemic. I hired new members of my leadership team, none of whom I was able to physically meet until I arrived in California that August. But we were working together on a daily basis. This was not something we would have considered possible in 2000 or even 2015.”
Leaders Need Skills to Win ‘an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy’
When Williamson accepted the position as dean, he had just completed work on a research project that examined the performance outcomes of teams that worked remotely compared to in-person teams. “It just so happened I finished that paper right before I started this job,” Williamson says. “I actually had to reread my own paper because I thought, ‘Wait a second. This is no longer abstract. I have to actually lead a team remotely from another continent on the other side of the planet.’”
Williamson learned from that research and his own experience that leaders need to develop a broader
portfolio of capabilities to be effective in today’s workplace. “You need to be someone who can basically win an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy,” he says. “If you think about your favorite actor or actress, there are actually very few people who are equally effective in a movie, a television show and a Broadway play. Yes, it’s all acting, but when you think about the skill set and what it takes for an actor to be on stage and captivate a live audience, that’s very different from what it takes to be effective in a twenty-minute sitcom versus what it takes for a person to be effective in a two-and-a-halfhour movie. It’s all acting, but it’s definitely not the same skill set for each.”
This metaphor applies to the different skills leaders need to develop to effectively manage their diverse workforce. “What we’re asking our leaders to do now is recognize that they have workers who need to be in person because the nature of their work requires it—and another segment of the workforce that will be remote or virtual. That means you have to learn to be effective interpersonally, and you have to learn to be effective on a Zoom call, and you have to be effective in a broader, more finessed way to inspire and motivate all of them. How many leaders have been formally trained to master this diverse set of skills? The reality is not many.”
for clients, however, it’s almost impossible for that to happen if the leaders don’t have empathy and can’t listen effectively,” he says. “If you are distressed because of something that’s going on in your personal life, or you’re not well physically due to a trauma in your life, that causes you to be emotionally and cognitively detached.”
Leaders need to evolve as quickly as possible to address more holistic aspects of managing a workforce, especially in terms of employee wellness, Williamson says. “In my mind, employee wellness is becoming more and more important. It’s almost impossible for you to be a service worker and not have your mental health, your emotional well-being and your physical health impact how you show up at work. All of it inherently shapes how you deliver the service that the organization is depending upon you to provide.”
To address these concerns, Williamson sees one specific skill leaders today will need to develop more than anything else: empathy. “We ask leaders to create work environments that enable service workers to use
“We used to think it was the employee’s job to figure out how to overcome the mental and physical traumas they faced in their lives. Now I think we are realizing that it is actually the leader’s job as well.’” Leaders can’t solve “every single” issue, but the good leaders have the foresight to invest in resources that help prevent employee’s life challenges from becoming “catastrophic or a detriment to the company.” In addition, “there’s a shortage of people to begin with, so a good leader realizes they can’t afford to lose any good employees. In order to be an attractive employer, organizations need to create as supportive of an environment as possible.”
Many thought leaders suggest the worker shortage crisis might be solved by leveraging artificial intelligence to replace some lower-level jobs with automation. This has created a mild panic among workers who are terrified AI will take their jobs, but is that entirely true?
“Historically speaking, whenever we’ve had major technological breakthroughs, over the long term (510 years) that technology tends to generate more job opportunities than it destroys,” Williamson says. However, in the short term, he says, we often do see some displacement. “We may be tempted to assume this displacement happens at the lower-skilled jobs— the ones that will be displaced by things like robotics automation—but we are seeing the potential for some white collar, higher-paying jobs being impacted as well, perhaps even more so than some of the lower-level jobs.”
Ultimately, the way we respond to this may have more to do with whether we see AI as a threat to our jobs or as an augmentation. “This is a very important point because the way a group sees something is heavily influenced by the way the leader frames it,” says Williamson. “Our organizations need to think about how they invest in educational mechanisms to ensure their workforces have the ability to use AI tools to be more productive. This also helps mitigate some of the potential resistance and the perception of threat. Leaders play an important role in framing how individuals think about new technologies. Ideally, we want workers to think of technology as magnifying their skill sets, not replace them.”
As for the future of the global workforce, Williamson believes the real key differentiator for business leaders looking to gain a competitive edge is to simply develop their listening skills. “Let’s set the framework,” Williamson says. “Our civilization is still recovering from a traumatic global pandemic. We have a workforce that has
some uncertainty. We’ve introduced AI and a remote workforce, and we have even broader geopolitical instabilities to deal with.”
Workers have huge questions about “the viability of our organizations.” In this environment, he says, “it is critical for leaders to be exceptionally transparent. It cannot be overstated how important it is for our leaders to understand how to express empathy because they will be asking for tremendous levels of discretionary effort from their workforce.” Workers “have the ability to leave, in most cases, but they will stay if they feel as if they are in an environment that is empathetic to their needs and understanding of their concerns.”
That doesn’t mean leaders should “fix” their employees’ problems. “Empathy is not solving your problem. Empathy is acknowledging and appreciating you are facing problems. Even acknowledging others concerns provides a sense of comfort and support, so while we have a lot of other things going on, if it’s your job to lead a group of people to accomplish a task, being able to have a sense of transparency, a sense of voice, a sense of empathy is crucial to enabling your workforce to be innovative and high performing during one of the most disruptive periods we have seen in recent history.”
The Conversation on Work, edited by Ian O. Williamson, will be published August 27, 2024, by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ian O. Williamson was appointed dean of the UCI Paul Merage School of Business on January 1, 2021. Prior to joining the Merage School, he served as pro vice-chancellor and dean of commerce at the Wellington School of Business and Government at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is a globally recognized expert in the area of human resource management. His research examines the impact of “talent pipelines” on organizational and community outcomes.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming many sectors of the economy. In the high-stakes environment of healthcare, the intersection of AI-driven analysis and human choices raises important questions. A recent study led by Professor John Edward Joseph of the UCI Paul Merage School of Business dives deep into these questions, revealing surprising insights about how AI can both elevate and challenge our decision-making processes—whether in diagnosing medical conditions or guiding business strategies.
Joseph and coauthors David A. Fussell, Cynthia C. Tang, Jake Sternhagen, Varun V. Marrey, Kelsey M. Roman, Jeremy Johnson, Michael J. Head, Hayden R. Troutt, Charles H. Li, Peter D. Chang, and Daniel S. Chow published “AI Efficacy as a Function of Trainee Interpreter Proficiency: Lessons from a Randomized Controlled Trial” in the American Journal of Neuroradiology.
Joseph’s study was rooted in the growing integration of AI into critical decision-making processes. “AI is becoming an important tool, not just for healthcare but for managers making daily strategic decisions,” he says. His interest in strategic decision-making, combined with ongoing collaborations with UCI Health, provided a natural extension to explore how AI could enhance diagnostic accuracy and efficiency in medical settings. “The healthcare side is ahead of the curve in AI adoption, which offered a unique context for us to examine these dynamics,” Joseph says.
“The healthcare side is ahead of the curve in AI adoption, which offered a unique context for us to examine these dynamics.”
To explore the effects of AI on diagnostic decision-making, Professor Joseph and his team conducted a randomized, controlled trial at UCI Health, focusing on the use of AI-assisted tools in the diagnosis of stroke using patient CT scans. “We took advantage of a tool employed at UCI Health, which was an AI designed to aid doctors in stroke diagnosis,” says Joseph.
The study involved medical students and residents, who were asked to evaluate 200 CT scan images, half of which were manipulated by AI to read either as correct or incorrect.
The primary goal was to assess the AI’s effect on diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, particularly in terms of how experience levels influenced outcomes. Participants completed a pre-survey to gauge their biases toward AI, which was later correlated with their diagnostic performance. By comparing the performance of these trainee interpreters with and without AI assistance, the study sought to answer critical questions about AI’s role in enhancing or potentially hindering decision-making processes.
A significant finding from Professor Joseph’s research is that AI’s efficacy is closely tied to the experience level of the user. “Accuracy improves for everybody but especially for medical students,” he says. The study revealed that medical students saw a 11% improvement in accuracy when using AI, while residents experienced a more modest 5% increase which was not significant. This suggests AI serves as a more substantial aid for less experienced practitioners, helping them bridge the gap in diagnostic proficiency.
Additionally, the study found that AI not only helps to improve accuracy, but it also encourages users to think more critically, especially in cases of disagreement between AI and human judgment. “We found that AI can improve accuracy, but it also improves information processing more generally,” Joseph says. This heightened vigilance was particularly beneficial for avoiding false negatives, where AI-assisted diagnostics caught issues human interpreters might have overlooked.
The study also highlighted the role of bias in AI efficacy. “Participants who had a positive bias toward AI tended to perform better,” says Joseph, “while those with a negative bias demonstrated greater vigilance, which also led to improved outcomes. Negative bias actually creates more vigilance, which emphasizes the importance of maintaining a healthy skepticism.”
While the study was conducted in a medical context, its findings have significant implications for the business world, particularly in strategic decision-making. Professor Joseph draws parallels between the use of AI in healthcare and its application in business scenarios, such as financial analysis, competitive strategy, and product development. “It’s no different from a CEO looking at AI output in the competitive environment or a board of directors evaluating strategic plans,” he says.
This research underscores the importance of understanding the context in which AI is deployed and recognizing that its benefits vary depending on the experience and biases of the users. “In healthcare, missing a diagnosis is critical, whereas in business, a false positive in launching a new product could result in significant financial losses,” Joseph says. This nuanced understanding of AI’s role can help managers make more informed decisions about when and how to integrate AI into their strategic processes.
Professor Joseph’s research offers valuable insights into the nuanced relationship between AI and human decision-making. “This study not only highlights the potential of AI to improve accuracy and efficiency in healthcare but also provides a broader framework for understanding its implications in the business world,” he says. As AI continues to evolve, these findings will undoubtedly contribute to shaping how organizations leverage this powerful tool in making strategic decisions that drive value.
Joseph’s future research plans have the potential to significantly advance our understanding of AI’s role in both education and business. By continuing to explore how AI can be most effectively integrated into various strategic decision-making processes in different industries, and by examining the long-term effects of AI use, ongoing research will provide broader insights that can guide organizations across industries to harness the full potential of AI.
John Joseph is a Professor of Strategy at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. He received his PhD from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He also holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. John has taught in the full-time, part-time and executive education programs at Kellogg, Duke and UC Irvine. He is a decorated instructor who has received numerous teaching awards. His research examines organizational designs for better innovation, decision making, and growth.
Devin Shanthikumar, associate dean of undergraduate programs at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business, is at the forefront of AI-driven financial research. Her most recent research spans two important areas: examining how AI can track and moderate extremism on social media platforms like Seeking Alpha and exploring how AI can improve financial analyst forecasting. Taken together, these distinct research projects reveal the profound effect AI will have on financial markets.
Tracking Extremism on Seeking Alpha
Shanthikumar’s groundbreaking research article, “Sentiment Extremeness on Social Media: Evidence from Seeking Alpha Comments,” is coauthored with Qiao Annie Wang, Montana State University, and Shijia Wu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. This research examines how financial social media platforms like Seeking Alpha, a widely used financial platform where investors share their views on stocks and market trends, affect user sentiment and extremism.
“Social media can drive us to become more extreme,” Shanthikumar says. Her research aims to determine how this phenomenon plays out in financial contexts
. She and her team analyzed vast comment datasets from Seeking Alpha, using AI to measure whether users’ sentiments were positive or negative and how extreme those sentiments were.
The results were surprising: Participation on Seeking Alpha tended to moderate users’ opinions over time, making them less extreme rather than more. This moderation effect challenges the common assumption that social media inherently amplifies extremism. “When someone comments early on—then they comment again and again—they become more and more moderate as they discuss the stock,” says Shanthikumar. This effect is particularly strong when users aren’t anonymous, suggesting platform design and transparency play a crucial role in shaping user behavior.
Their research implications are broad. Platforms like Seeking Alpha, which expose users to a variety of perspectives, can reduce echo chambers and encourage more balanced discussions.
This, in turn, leads to a decrease in volatility, as more moderate sentiment tends to result in less erratic trading behavior.
“When you have more extreme sentiment, you get more trading volume, more volatility. But as extremeness decreases, that
excess trading volume goes away,” Shanthikumar says.
Improving Analyst Forecasts with AI
Shanthikumar also explores how AI affects the productivity and accuracy of financial analysts’ forecasts. “Artificial Intelligence and Analyst Productivity,” coauthored with Il Sun Yoo, Shidler College of Business University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, addresses three key questions:
1. Does AI improve the quantity and quality of forecasts?
2. Does it complement or replace human analysts?
3. How does AI investment affect employment in the financial sector?
Their research reveals that AI significantly increases the quantity of forecasts financial analysts produce. More importantly, the quality of these forecasts also improves, especially for more volatile stocks that are harder to predict. “The AI allows the analysts to do what they do best and to do it better,” she says. “It’s basically complementing the analyst’s skills.”
This is a crucial finding because it demonstrates AI can enhance human performance in complex tasks rather than simply automating them. However, AI’s effect on employment is more nuanced. While analysts’ productivity increases, according to the research, investment banks that employ AI decreased hiring of new analysts. “They didn’t lay anyone off, but they reduced subsequent hiring,” Shanthikumar says. “With the AI assistant, we don’t really need anyone else. They’re doing more, and they’re doing it better.” This is concerning, and the vocational implications should be examined further in future research, she believes.
One of the other interesting aspects of the research is how different types of AI are used. Shanthikumar distinguishes between broad AI systems that analyze complex financial data and more accessible tools like ChatGPT. While ChatGPT can increase the quantity of work, it does not improve the quality of forecasts. “ChatGPT might help us write emails and reports, but it will not necessarily help with complex numerical analysis for forecasting earnings,” she says. This highlights the
need for specialized AI systems tailored to specific financial tasks.
Shanthikumar’s AI research offers valuable insights for investors and the financial industry. On social media platforms like Seeking Alpha, AI reveals that certain key factors influence the moderation of sentiment to create a more balanced and informed investing environment. Investors should be aware that platforms designed to expose users to diverse opinions, rather than reinforce existing beliefs, can provide a more accurate picture of market sentiment and reduce the risk of making decisions based on extreme or emotionally charged views.
With regard to financial analysis, Shanthikumar’s work shows AI is not only a tool for automation but a powerful complement to human expertise. Investors can take comfort in the fact that AI-backed forecasts are likely to be of higher quality, especially in uncertain or volatile markets. This suggests banks and financial institutions with significant AI investments may offer more reliable forecasts, which is something investors should pay attention to.
For financial institutions, Shanthikumar’s findings underscore the importance of thoughtful AI integration. While AI can improve productivity and forecast quality, firms need to be mindful of its effect on employment and ensure it supplements, rather than replaces, human analysts. “Let’s not try to automate knowledge-based jobs,” she says. “Instead, let’s think about how we can take advantage of AI to let people do what they do well.”
As AI continues to evolve, its role in both financial analysis and investor behavior will grow. Shanthikumar’s research is the beginning of what promises to be a transformative period for the financial industry. In the future, she plans to explore how AI affects other aspects of analysts’ work, such as their written reports and participation in conference calls.
Moreover, the socioeconomic implications of AI adoption in finance cannot be ignored. While AI-driven productivity gains are beneficial, the potential for reduced hiring in knowledge-based industries raises important questions about AI’s effect on the future of white-collar work in finance and beyond. “We’re seeing a little bit less new hiring, even in highly educated fields. That does raise questions going forward,” she says.
Shanthikumar’s dual approach to AI in financial research—exploring both its effect on analyst productivity and its role in assessing user sentiment online—offers a comprehensive view of how AI is reshaping the financial landscape.
Her findings suggest that while AI can enhance human performance, careful consideration must be given to its broader implications, from employment to market behavior.
As AI technology continues to advance, its integration into financial markets will require a balanced approach, one that leverages its strengths while safeguarding the human element that remains critical to interpreting and navigating the complexities of financial forecasting.
Professor Devin Shanthikumar is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and an Associate Professor in the Accounting area. She teaches undergraduate, MBA, executive-level and PhD courses, covering topics such as Managerial Accounting, Driving Profitability, and Research Presentations. Prior to joining the Merage School, Shanthikumar served on the faculty at the Harvard Business School (HBS), where she taught both Financial Accounting and Managerial Accounting for MBAs, and wrote cases which are used in accounting courses across the country. She has won multiple awards and was named to Poets and Quant’s “Best 40 Under 40 Business Professors” list in 2019.
‘Jack of All Trades’ or ‘Renaissance Person?’
Is a “jack of all trades” really a “master of none”? Are those who have the ability to perform several types of jobs passably doomed to a life of mediocrity? These are questions Professor Ming Leung and PhD student Simon (Seongbin) Yoon tackled in their research at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. They present the results of their efforts in the paper “Which Came First, the Reputation or Category Spanning? How Freelancers’ Reputation Affects Their Likelihood of Diversifying.”
“Most of us assume people who are diverse in their backgrounds are not exceptionally good at anything,” says Leung. “I’ve always been curious about the ‘jack of all trades’ saying because there’s an equally strong belief about being a ‘renaissance person’ where gifted people are successful in a broad array of things. That friction in perspective has always animated how I think.” He wonders this: Does a person move from job to job because they are unexceptional at what they do, or is a person unable to build expertise as a result of frequently moving from job to job?
The job market has shifted dramatically in the last decade or so. “Transitioning between jobs has increased exponentially for the workforce in recent times,” says Leung. “Whether that is because people prefer to job hop or because more layoffs are occurring—or even because people are comfortable crafting their own careers—there is much more movement between employers. That’s also particularly true for gig workers.”
Leung and Yoon explored the motivations that drive workers to change jobs and how their reputations played into those decisions. “We wanted to understand what makes people create careers that are more specialized in a certain area, versus people who create careers that are a little more diverse,” Leung says.
People who study labor markets have examined this general question for a while, he says. “Is it better to have a more specialized versus a more general career?” This is especially important now that people are moving between jobs more frequently and have more choices about “how and where they work and what they do.”
The question of reputation as a variable is particularly interesting to Leung. “How does one’s reputation affect the type of career one strings together?” He imagines “people with better reputations” remain in their domains and attempt to do more work in a certain field. For instance, if someone is an excellent programmer, and they have ample success as a programmer, then presumably they’ll choose more programming-related jobs in the future. “On the other hand, you could argue people with better reputations may start feeling confident in their abilities and maybe want to expand outside of programming.”
Leung and Yoon theorize there are two factors to consider in terms of how reputation might affect decisions to change or diversify people’s careers. “If I have a good reputation, that will encourage me to expand,” says
Leung. A person’s reputation might result in repeatedly working in similar jobs. “That’s because they recognize their reputation doesn’t expand dramatically far. If I’m good at programming, it doesn’t mean I will be good at ballet. If I’m good at programming, maybe I’ll be good at computer design or something adjacent.”
The researchers searched a database of independent contractors and freelancers. “I was an academic advisor to Elance, which became Upwork, which is an online freelancing platform,” Leung says. “I was given access to their data for this research that is incredibly rich and has supported several academic papers already.”
In terms of reputation, Leung was able to see the ratings freelancers accumulated on the platform. “Over time, with every job they’ve completed, we could see what rating they were given by their employer,” he says. “That was their reputation measure. What’s interesting about this measure is the freelancers themselves can see it and internalize it, and that affects their decision-making.” It’s also public, viewable by employers. “It’s a powerful indicator of one’s reputation, which also affects one’s confidence. That’s where we came in with this analysis.”
Leung and Yoon were able to observe all the job categories freelancers applied for on the platform. Each job was organized into larger domain types, like computer programming, but also specific job types, C++ programming, front-end programming, or website design. “We were able to see the different types of jobs these freelancers were applying to over time, which allowed us to predict the types of career moves they were trying to make given the reputation they’ve had up to that point in time,” Leung says. “We modeled it with statistical regression, which allowed us to predict the likelihood of a freelancer applying to a new job category.
Then we also modeled the likelihood of a freelancer, conditional on applying to a new job category, how far away that job category was from their previous jobs.”
Using this methodology, Leung and Yoon were able to see how reputation affected a freelancer’s decision to apply for jobs and how expansive those jobs were outside a given category. “What we found was that a better reputation increases your confidence to try new things,” says Leung.
However, once a freelancer decides to “apply to a new job category,” he says. “People with better reputations apply to jobs similar to the ones they’ve done in the past, whereas freelancers with poor reputations are more likely to apply very, very far away to what they have in the past. People with better reputations are likely to expand, but they expand close to their previous job categories, whereas the people with poor reputations expand further away.”
Leung suggests this may have something to do with confidence. He wonders if those with low reputations think, “I’m not very good at this; I need to find something I enjoy more.” In the beginning of someone’s career, “there’s an element of finding your niche” because one may think they want to do a certain job and then find out they don’t. “Or maybe someone is bad at programming, and the employers on the platform know this, so trying [one’s] hand at copywriting or design is safer because it’s so unrelated.” This most likely hinges on “how much of [one’s] ability is generalizable versus specific to the domain.” General skills are also a determining factor—for instance, if a worker performs tasks on time.
What are the implications of how freelancers’ reputations affect their career decisions? Leung believes it’s complicated. Several factors inform a worker’s decision to move to another job. “Maybe it’s your family. Maybe it’s your preferences. Maybe it’s an opportunity. But an aspect of that decision is always informed by how employers perceive an employee based on what they’ve done in the past. The bottom line is your job history determines a lot about what kinds of moves you can make in the future.” The importance of thinking strategically about how we develop our career histories can’t be overstated.
Yet, in today’s job market, there’s nothing wrong with being diverse. Not only is it more interesting for the employee, but it may also ensure they’ll be more employable as they develop a variety of skills employers look for. “People today have a lot of agency about how they create their own careers,” Leung says. “That’s a wonderful thing. People shouldn’t feel so constrained by their jobs. I tell my undergraduates this all the time because they’re always freaking out. They think that if they don’t get the perfect job out of school, their whole life is ruined. I always say, ‘Relax. There are many different ways to develop a career.’” Leung encourages college students “to take full advantage of freedom and the they have now.”
Professor Ming D. Leung studies careers, hiring, and labor markets, and in particular, issues pertaining to diversity and discrimination in the workforce. His work explores how career transitions between jobs and within a firm affect ones likelihood of being hired and promoted. Another emphasis of his work is in innovative, contemporary platform markets, such as virtual freelancing, mobile gig-economy work and crowdfunding.
Professor Emeritus Terry Shevlin
Title: “Politicians’ Ideology, State Intervention, and Corporate Taxation”
Co-authors: Ke Na, Danqing Wang and Wenjia Yan
Accepted at: Management Science (Journal on Financial Times Top 50 list)
Abstract: This paper examines whether and how politicians’ ideologies influence corporate taxation. Our tests exploit the implementation of the 1978 Reform and Opening-up policy in China that significantly weakens the communist ideology. Using textual analyses of city secretaries’ speeches, we first establish that secretaries who joined the communist party after 1978 have a weaker communist ideology. We next show that, in the post-reform period, firms in cities whose secretaries joined the communist party after 1978 have significantly lower effective tax rates than those of firms with secretaries joining the communist party beforehand. Further analyses reveal that tax benefit provisions and tax enforcement are the mechanisms through which secretaries’ ideologies influence corporate taxation.
Professor Franco Wong
Title: “Do buy-side participants in earnings conference calls manipulate stock prices?”
Co-authors: Gang Hu, Michael Jung, Bonnie Yu, and Frank Zhang
Accepted at: Journal of Corporate Finance
Abstract: We investigate the generalizability of widely perceived notions that buy-side analysts try to influence or manipulate a firm’s stock price by praising or criticizing management during a public earnings conference call. Despite two institutional factors that make it difficult to detect empirically, we find some evidence of stock influence behavior by using a combination of data on conference call transcripts and trading by the institutions that employ the buy-side analysts. However, we also find evidence consistent with the null hypothesis that buy-side analysts are acquiring information rather than manipulating the stock price. Subsample analyses suggest that stock influence is more detectable among hedge funds, while information acquisition is the norm among traditional buy-and-hold institutions. The evidence we provide on each behavior should be of interest to firm managers who host conference calls, market participants who use conference calls to collect company information, as well as regulators who monitor for possible market manipulation.
Professor Ed Coulson
Title: “Salience of Social Identities in Explaining Homeownership Patterns in India”
Co-authors: Prashant Das, Abhiman Das, and Ashish Gupta
Accepted at: Urban Studies
Abstract: Indian society presents heterogeneity across two identities i.e., religion and caste, that lead to heterogeneous economic outcomes, but affirmative action is mostly applicable to caste. Our empirical models affirm that economically less secure households have a higher homeownership propensity in India. Minority religions and backward castes also have a significantly higher propensity to own homes. This is in sharp contrast to findings in the US where minority households are associated with lower homeownership rates. Further, religious and caste-based identities in India lead to different household behaviors in differing demographic mixes. Religious identity in India is more salient than caste identity in explaining differing homeownership patterns.
PhD Student Christine Hu and Professor Tonya Williams Bradford
Title: “Brand Community Protection through Contested Brand Revival”
Accepted at: Journal of Marketing Management
Abstract: Brand communities create brand value. This also occurs with music where brand communities are associated with artists’ brands. Record labels traditionally control commercialization of those brands, yet artists have begun to leverage brand communities to negotiate control over the brand—associations linked to various services (e.g., concerts) and products (e.g., songs). Where brand communities employ moral responsibility to sustain itself, we identify how such communities may also leverage moral responsibility to protect the brand from perceived challenges to ownership, including the very record labels intimately involved in building those brands. Our ethnographic examination of a prominent brand community, Taylor Swift’s “Swifties,” explains how moral responsibility is employed by the community to protect and revitalize the brand.
Professor Connie Pechmann
Title: “Young adult retail purchases of cannabis, product category preferences, and sales trends in California 2018-2021: Differences compared with older adults”
Co-authors: Douglas Calder, David Timberlake, Joshua Rhee, Alisa Padon, and Lynn Silver
Accepted at: Addiction
Abstract: The aim was to identify cannabis products according to their appeal among young adults and measure product sales trends. It was designed as a retrospective comparative study using point-of-sale data from licensed recreational cannabis retailers that include buyer age with birthyear entered by retailers. Cannabis purchases by young adults (age 21-24, GenZ) were compared with older adults (age 25+) over four years (2018-2021). Sales for six cannabis product categories were analyzed using a commercial dataset with imputations and a raw dataset. Ageappeal metrics were dollar and unit sales to young adults, and dollar and unit share ratios (young adults/older adults) where a share ratio of 100 denotes age-appeal comparability. A product category was considered more young-adult appealing than others if its mean on a metric was at least one standard deviation above the grand mean across all product categories.
Flower (cannabis plant material) and vapor pen appealed to young adults based on absolute dollar sales, dominating young-adult spending compared with other cannabis products (37.24% and 31.83%, respectively). Vapor pen and concentrate appealed to young adults based on dollar share ratios of 152, meaning these products comprised a 52% greater share of young-adult cannabis spending relative to olderadult spending (31.83%/20.97% and 10.47%/6.88%, respectively). Less appealing to young adults were pre-roll, edible/beverage, and absorbable products (tincture/ sublingual, capsule, and topical). Flower showed the largest dollar sales growth (B=+$3.50 million/month), next vapor pen (B=+$1.55 million/month). Vapor pen tied for highest growth in the percent of product dollars from the largest package size (B=0.85%/month) and showed the steepest price decline (B=-0.53 price per gram/ month). In California USA from 2018-2021, relative to older adults, young adults spent a greater share of their cannabis dollars on vapor pen and concentrate (products with high potency of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol).
Professor Hope Schau
Title: “Fringe Consumers”
Co-author: Matthew M. Mars
Accepted at: Public Humanities
Abstract: We all consume the humanities through our engagement with the cultural, creative, and historical materials that influence our views on ourselves, others, and the world around us. However, can consumers also be considered humanists? We argue the answer is yes when consumption choices become symbols and expressions of one’s authentic self and meaningful connective points to others. Using hard-core surfing enthusiasts and thrifters as examples, we introduce the notion of fringe consumption as a form of cultural entrepreneurship and public expression of the humanities that centers individuality, authenticity, and otherness in an otherwise dominant mainstream environment that pushes people to always want more of the same.
Professor Hope Schau
Title: “Organizational Resiliency through Practice Innovation: Forced Brand Evolution in a Prolonged Exogenous Service Ecosystem Disruption”
Co-author: Ignacio Rodriguez Luri and Melissa Archpru Akaka
Accepted at: Journal of Services Management
Abstract: This article explores practice innovation and organizational resiliency during exogenous ecosystem-wide disruptions. This inquiry focuses on the extreme disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which required service firms to recodify long-established service scripts, adapt digital and physical material elements of the service encounter, and ultimately reconfigure systems of practices. The specific context is forced practice innovation in Starbucks servicescape (kiosks and coffeehouses). Starbucks is best known for their custom beverages and third-place strategy. Their strict adherence to a complex service script and unique ordering practices altered during pandemic stay-home disease prevention mandates. Data reveal how practice innovation occurs through the reconfiguration of a system of practices, which supports organizational resiliency, and can force brand evolution, in prolonged exogenous service ecosystem disruptions. The COVID-19 pandemic required service industries to adapt and recodify service scripts and alter physical and digital elements of service encounters. While the pandemic affected all firms in the sector, we argue that Starbucks’ established scripts and third- place strategies, which characterized the brand experience, were particularly vulnerable. We find that practice innovation occurs through the reconfiguration of practice elements – competences, meanings, and materiality – and restructures the service encounter. Practice
codification, transposition, adaptation, and stabilization support organizational resiliency and brand evolution. We find that Starbucks’ brand experience emphasis on the third place is reconceptualized from an in-person community-based retailscape to a platform-based strategy necessitating script recodification, and practice adaptation. Our analysis of Starbucks’ kiosks and coffeehouses illuminates how a distinctly branded service encounter is constituted by a system of practices that can be reconfigured and diffused anew in the face of disruption.
Professor Patrick Bergemann
Title: “Territoriality and the Emergence of Norms During the COVID-19 Pandemic”
Co-author: Christof Brandtner
Accepted at: American Journal of Sociology
Abstract: Although social norms are critical for regulating behavior, the emergence of new norms is rarely studied in consequential real-world settings. Thus, the conditions under which norms arise in certain communities but not in others are not well understood. In this article, we propose territoriality as a factor that helps to explain the unequal emergence of norms. When individuals experience a strong sense of territoriality over the physical spaces they inhabit, they feel empowered and justified in regulating others’ behavior within those spaces. To the extent that demand for particular norms is widespread, territoriality can facilitate norm emergence. Using daily, geolocated data from the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, we find support for this theory; neighborhoods with higher levels of territoriality were more likely to adopt new health-protecting norms. Our territoriality account sheds light on the relationship between norm emergence, physical space, and neighborhood resilience.
Maia Young and Chris Bauman
Title: “Linking Anxiety to Passion: Emotion Regulation and Entrepreneurs’ Pitch Performance”
Co-authors: Lily Zhu (PhD alumna)
Accepted at: Journal of Business Venturing (Journal on Financial Times Top 50 list)
Abstract: We investigate a strategy entrepreneurs can use to manage their emotions prior to pitching: linking anxiety to passion. We theorize that internally acknowledging anxiety and interpreting it as a reflection of one’s passion for the venture can make passionate feelings salient, facilitate expressions of passion during pitches, and increase judges’ evaluations of pitch performance. A field study and a randomized experiment support the theory, offering insights for how entrepreneurs can mentally reframe their seemingly detrimental emotional experiences for beneficial outcomes. More broadly, this work demonstrates the utility of fostering beneficial emotions rather than just alleviating negative ones.
Professor John Joseph
Title: “Organization Design: Current Insights and Future Research Directions”
Co-author: Metin Sengul
Accepted at: Journal of Management (Journal on Financial Times Top 50 list)
Abstract: We review the research on organization design from 2000 to 2023, inclusive. We identify four major approaches to organization design in the contemporary literature: configuration, control, channelization, and coordination. We discuss the key streams of research that characterize each of these approaches, as well as three emerging areas of research: AI and organizational decision-making, flat organizations, and multiple goals. Beyond the specific contributions of individual papers and streams of work, our review makes a number of high-level observations across approaches. We identify patterns that characterize this body of work, the methods used, open questions for future research, and a discussion of organization design as a theory. Collectively, these observations define the state of organization design research and may provide scholars with a foundation for future research.
Professor John Joseph
Title: “Content and Process: Organizational Conflict and Decision Making”
Co-author: Vibha Gaba
Accepted at: Frontiers in Psychology
Abstract: The foundational work in the Carnegie perspective established conflict as endemic to organizations and a driver of organizing behavior and decision making. Organizations as a system of coordinated action among interdependent individuals and groups with different preferences, interests, information, or knowledge create the potential for pervasive and ongoing latent goal conflict. At the same time, extant psychology research has devoted considerable attention to identifying the content and intensity of conflict, focusing on the relationship between different types of conflict and their impact on group outcomes. The Carnegie perspective also assumes that the need for joint decision-making and the differences in goals or perception of reality are never fully resolved. As a result, it has paid attention to the processes through which conflict is addressed – by attending sequentially to goals, decentralizing information, accumulating excess resources, and forming coalitions rather than formal mediating procedures. The assessment of the psychology and organizational theory research also suggests that future work focusing on organizational conflict as latent, situated, and dynamic would enable greater clarity on how organizations make decisions.
Professor John Joseph
Title: “Research Frontiers on the Attention-Based View of the Firm, Strategic Organization”
Co-author: William Ocasio, Daniella Laureiro-Martinez, Amit Nigam, and Claus Rerup
Accepted at: Strategic Organization
Abstract: The attention-based view (ABV) offers a foundational perspective on strategy and organizing. Despite its significance, questions persist about the relationship between organizational attention and strategic organization. Inspired by the evolving literature on organizational attention, its determinants, and consequences, this special issue aims to advance theory and research in the ABV realm. It includes eight articles—three empirical and five theoretical—spanning a diverse range of topics. Emerging themes include a shift from viewing attention as individual cognition toward attentional engagement through interactions and social relations within organizations, the temporal and dynamic nature of attention, and an explicit recognition that ABV is not about a fixed quantity of attention but what shapes strategic organizational behavior and adaptation.
Professor John Joseph
Title: “AI Efficacy as a Function of Trainee Interpreter Proficiency: Lessons from a Randomized Controlled Trial”
Co-author: David A. Fussell, Cynthia C. Tang, Jake Sternhagen, Varun V. Marrey, Kelsey M. Roman, Jeremy Johnson, Michael J. Head, Hayden R. Troutt, Charles H. Li, Peter D. Chang, and Daniel S. Chow
Accepted at: American Journal of Neuroradiology
Abstract: Recently, AI tools have been deployed with increasing speed in educational and clinical settings. However, the use of AI by trainees across different levels of experience has not been well studied. This study investigates the impact of AI assistance on diagnostic accuracy for intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) and large vessel occlusion (LVO) by medical students (MS) and resident trainees (RT). This prospective study was conducted between March 2023 and October 2023. MS and RT were asked to identify ICH and LVO in 100 non-contrast head CTs and 100 head CTAs, respectively. One group received diagnostic aid simulating AI for ICH only (n = 26), the other for LVO only (n = 28). Primary outcomes included accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity for ICH / LVO detection without and with aid. Study interpretation time was a secondary outcome. Individual responses were pooled and analyzed with chisquare; differences in continuous variables were assessed with ANOVA. This study demonstrated greater improvement in diagnostic accuracy with AI for MS compared to RT. However, MS were less likely than RT to overrule incorrect AI interpretations and were less accurate, even with diagnostic aid, than the AI was by itself.
Professor Violina Rindova
Title: “The Imagination Advantage: Why and How Strategists Combine Knowledge and Imagination in Developing Theories”
Co-author: Luis Martins
Accepted at: Strategy Science and INFORMS Journal
Abstract: We theorize why and how strategists develop different types of theories when confronted with different types of problems, by combining knowledge and imagination in different ways. We propose that strategists’ epistemic stances affect how they combine knowledge and imagination, and whether they develop either analytic theories, or constructive theories of two types – reconfigurative and projective. We further theorize how imagination complements knowledge in theory development to generate distinctive strategies and strategic advantages. We argue that analytic theories enable conjectural anticipation, which contributes to early timing of strategic actions; reconfigurative theories posit novel value dimensions and enable industry shaping; and that projective theories articulate novel possibilities shape desired and desirable futures. Our ideas advance research on how imagination is leveraged in theory development, future-oriented strategizing, and shaping strategies.
Professor Chris Bauman and PhD Student Jeesoo Kim
Distinguished Paper Award in Corporate and International Strategy for the 2024 Academy of Management Conference
Title: “Psychological Impact of Contract Frames on Specific and Ambiguous Alliance Investments”
Co-Author: Libby Weber
Professor Violina Rindova
2024 SMS Behavioral Strategy IG Most Novel Proposal Award
Professor Zuguang Gao
2024 Commodity & Energy Markets Association (CEMA) Best Paper Award
Title: “Aggregating Distributed Energy Resources: Efficiency and Market Power”
Co-Author: Khaled Alshehri and John R. Birge
Professor Zuguang Gao 2024 ESSEC-Amundi Best ESG Paper Award
Title: “Designing Renewable Power Purchase Agreements: Impact on Green Energy Investment”
Co-Authors: Nur Sunar and John R. Birge
Professor Hope Schau
Title: “Ethnomethodology and the Study of Markets”
Co-author: Melissa Archpru Akaka
Published in: Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing
Description: This chapter advocates for, and provides guidance toward, the use of ethnomethodology to study markets, market-centered social orders, and practices that enable markets. Ethnomethodology emphasizes the practical methods people use to interpret and navigate their social environment, rather than relying on pre-existing social structures or individual psychological factors. It emphasizes the examination of the micro-level details of social encounters to reveal the methods individuals employ to make sense of and navigate their social world.
Professor Hope Schau
Title: “Telling Stories with Textual and Visual Analyses”
Co-author: Melissa Archpru Akaka
Published in: Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing
Description: In this chapter, we discuss critical factors in the analysis of visual and textual materials and outline a process through which these types of data can provide empirical evidence that help to explain dynamic and emerging social phenomena. We underscore the value of images and language in enabling researchers to conduct multifaceted studies and tell compelling stories through symbolic representations and verbatim language of individual and collective voices. We begin with an overview of how these materials are used in qualitative research (e.g. through interview transcriptions, field notes, marketing communications, articles, books and online and offline dialogue), as well as visual materials (e.g. images, films, photographs and ads). We highlight key considerations in analyzing such data, including unit and level of analysis, leveraging emic and/or etic perspectives, and zooming in and out on specific phenomena in complex contexts.
