Blog

Management Department Research Committee

Bentley CARMA Membership

The Management Department has secured access to an institutional membership at CARMA, an authoritative source for all things research-methods related. Department members can access details for how to set up their membership here.

Department Brown Bag Schedule

Please join us for our monthly brown bag series – a listing of the current slate of presenters is below. Please refer to the Outlook invitation for details about how to join the Zoom meeting.

DateTimePresenterTopicPresentation
2/23/2410-11aTami KasaharaGlobal talent managementAvailable upon request
3/29/2410-11aStefan MaricTBA
4/26/2410-11aBrandon SmitTBA

Brown Bag Consortium with UMass and UConn

We are also very fortunate to work with the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut in putting together a cross-university brown bag series. The inaugural event took place in April 2024 at the UConn Hartford campus and was well received. Details on the fall installment of this initiative (tentatively to be hosted by UMass) are forthcoming.

Recent Publications by the Department

Our department is very research active – the table below provides a sampling of the recent publications in well respected peer-reviewed journals by our esteemed colleagues. For those of you on campus, copies of these papers are available to flip through on the Research Good News board in the Management Department suite.

Please also visit the Faculty profiles of our department for a more complete list of the scholarly contributions of all of our faculty members.

IDFaculty MemberTitleOutletDOIYear 
1Amanda SargentYou being new is hard on me too: Considering the veteran employee’s perspective on newcomer socializationHuman Performance10.1080/08959285.2022.21114322024
2Brandon SmitEmpowered or Overwhelmed? Procrastination Extinguishes the Positive Effects of Work Flexibility on Work-Family Conflict.Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology10.1111/joop.124902024
3Brandon SmitSpoiled for Choice? When Work Flexibility Improves or Impairs Work-Life OutcomesJournal of Management10.1177/014920632312150182024
4Brandon SmitGrowth Mindsets Increase Flexible Work Arrangement Attractiveness: A Policy-Capturing Study.Personnel Review10.1108/PR-10-2020-07932023
5Effie Stavrulaki From Used to New: Committing to Product Refresh ServicesSustainability10.3390/su140845942022
6Emily CorwinBelieve to achieve? Understanding how social class background impacts the effects of achievement striving on propensity to negotiateJournal of Managerial Pyschology10.1108/JMP-09-2021-04932022
7Emily CorwinPain or gain? Understanding how trait empathy impacts leader effectiveness following the provision of negative feedback.Journal of Applied Psychology10.1037/apl00008822022
8Gang LiA Supply Chain Sourcing Model at the Interface of Operations and SustainabilityIISE Transactions10.1080/24725854.2022.21114812023
9Hidy ZhouCEO power: A review, critique, and future research directionsJournal of Management10.1177/014920632412413022024
10Ian WalshProfessional credibility under threat: Responses to negative social evaluations in newly contested professionsHuman Relations10.1177/001872672110565312023
11Ian WalshWhat is NORML? Sedimented meanings in ambiguous organizational identitiesOrganization Studies10.1177/017084062110577252022
12Jill BrownThe Fork in the Road for Social Enterprises: Leveraging Moral Imagination for Long-Term Stakeholder Support. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice10.1177/104225872110414852023
13Jill BrownMore Than an Umbrella Construct: We Can (and Should) Do Better with CSR by Theorizing through ContextBusiness and Society10.1177/000765032211266422022
14Linda EdelmanTop secret: Integrating 20 years of research on secrecyTechnovation10.1016/j.technovation.2023.1026912023
15Linda Edelman + Tatiana ManolovaCatalyzing Change: Innovation in Women's EntrepreneurshipStrategic Entrepreneurship Journal10.1002/sej.14352022
16Mateo CruzProfiles in persistence: A latent profile analysis of multilevel coping strategies enacted among women in the sciencesJournal of Organizational Behavior10.1002/job.26572022
17Monir JaliliTrend-chasing versus minimalism: Selling fewer, better products to fashion-sensitive customersProduction and Operations Management10.1177/105914782412349962024
18Monir JaliliPricing and Structuring Product Trials: Separate versus Mixed Wine Tastings European Journal of Operational Research10.1016/j.ejor.2023.07.0242023
19Rodrigo DeMelloThe effect of political elections at home on the internationalization of state-owned multinationals from emerging countriesGlobal Strategy Journal10.1002/gsj.14892023
20Tatiana Manolova The Role of Context for Theory Development: Evidence from Entrepreneurship Research on RussiaEntrepreneurship Theory & Practice10.1177/104225872211382262023
21Tatiana ManolovaWomen’s Entrepreneurship and Culture: The Influence of Gender Role Expectations, Identities, Societal Culture, and the Entrepreneurial EnvironmentSmall Business Economics10.1007/s11187-020-00429-62022

Thoughts on comments to share with the committee?

Please feel free to email me and I will pass it along to the committee members.

Venture team membership dynamics and new venture innovation

My colleagues and I recently published an article in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal which explores the relationship between the dynamics within a new venture team and the company’s ability to innovate. We reason that new ventures rely on innovations to establish a market presence and compete against established firms. Even though team members are an essential source of inspiration, ideas, and resources to foster innovation, teams often change substantially as the venture evolves. We ask the question—does modifying the make-up of the team make it more likely that the venture can innovate? We contend that such change significantly shapes the cognitive and interpersonal processes by which team members contribute to innovations. Our results suggest that new ventures undergoing member change can boost innovation in three ways: adding new members to the team with relevant experiences, taking advantage of opportunities to pause and reflect upon team processes in the wake of change, and mitigating the disruptive effects of change.

One figure that I think is enlightening from our work is considering a number of qualitatively different patterns of change in the management team. As the table below shows, in almost every case there is a net positive effect on innovation when these changes in team composition occur, but especially so when the factors for success described above seem to align.

A recent blog post draws upon this work and a fun interview I had with the author to explore these ideas a little futher.


TMT experience, requisite variety, and firm performance

The intent of this workstream is to better understand the interrelationship between top management team experience distributions, the pattern of competitive actions that a firm develops and executes, and the consequences for firm performance.

Our first investigation, set in the context of the 3D printing industry, has recently been published in the Academy of Management Journal. In short:

This study develops and tests a thesis derived from the law of requisite variety. We contend that the greater the experiential variety of a top management team, the more likely the complexity and consistency of the firm’s competitive repertoire will be calibrated to relevant external variety. In addition, for firms that achieve such calibrated repertoires, we expect that their financial performance will be superior to that of their peers. We then integrate these arguments and examine whether top management team experiential variety indirectly, through calibrated repertoires, contributes to firm performance. Analyzing hand-collected data for firms operating in the 3D printing industry over the past three decades (1986-2017), we find support for the overall thesis and associated hypotheses. The discussion section elaborates on the study’s contributions, limitations, and future research potential.

(Abstract)

One of the more interesting findings is that teams who are able to appropriately parlay their greater reserves of experiential variety into competitive repertoires that match the complexity of the environment receive a dividend in the form of enhanced performance. The Figure below sketches the effect that we find:

A copy of a recent presentation based on an earlier draft of that paper is located here.

If you would like further details about the study or the setting, feel free to contact me here: bfox [at] bentley [dot] edu.