2023–24 KU Business faculty research highlights
Research co-written by assistant professors of business analytics Michael Lash and Karthik Srinivasan and associate professor Shaobo Li explores the predictability of financial markets before, during and after the pandemic using social media data. The article examines how normally predictive investor sentiment based on social media word-of-mouth became unreliable during the peak-COVID and recovery periods. However, it remained stable during the pre-COVID period. “Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Stock Market and Investor Online Word of Mouth” appears in Decision Support Systems.
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Vincent Barker, Edmund P. Learned Professor, co-wrote “CEO’s industry experience and emerging market SME performance: The effects of corruption and political uncertainty,” along with KU doctoral graduate Juan Carlos Morales-Solis of West Texas A&M University. It finds that the value of industry experience of CEOs to firm growth increases with initial years of experience but levels off at around the 11-year mark. For small and medium-sized firms in less corrupt developing countries, further years of CEO industry experience do not affect firm growth. However, firm grow rates start to actually deteriorate after 11 years of CEO industry experience in countries vulnerable to corruption and political instability. The article was published in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights.
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A study co-written by assistant professor Nagarajan Sethuraman explores business advantages of customers using “personal fabrication” in 3D printing. The article, “Personal fabrication as an operational strategy: Value of delegating production to customer using 3D printing,” examines the benefits and drawbacks of the strategy taking into consideration important factors such as personalization, postponement and design improvement. It appears in the journal Production & Operations Management.
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An article by associate teaching professor Joe Walden offers recommendations to help address the growing international problem of exploited labor. “Modern Day Slavery in Your Supply Chain,” which appears in Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, estimates the number of workers living in slavery conditions between 17–21 million worldwide. While some countries have laws that prevent slave labor and/or require audits of their supply chains, Walden offers further insights to fix the global crisis.
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Associate professor of management Patrick Downes co-wrote an article with KU doctoral candidate Ella Lee that finds that co-scheduling sales staff with higher performers has an immediate negative effect — then pays off. “A Relational View of Shiftwork: Co-scheduling With Higher Performers” examines how sales employees’ social contexts — particularly their being co-scheduled with higher performers — relate to changes in performance over time. It’s published in Human Resource Management.
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A paper co-authored by Sara Reed, assistant professor of business analytics, explores solutions designed for urban and rural environments to help companies minimize the additional time that parking can add to delivery schedules. The results show how in urban environments, where customers are close together, short parking windows affect optimal routing decisions, modeled by CDPP (Capacitated Delivery Problem with Parking.) However, in rural environments where parking is more readily available, a parking solution that serves each customer individually may be sufficient. “Does parking matter? The impact of parking time on last-mile delivery optimization” appears in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review.
Nate Meikle, assistant professor of management, co-wrote a paper that examines the human biases that impede artificial intelligence’s assessment. His experiments find that people are prone to underestimate AI capabilities due to exponential growth bias and people reject the aversive implications of rapid technological progress even in cases in which they themselves predict the growth rate. The study, “Unaware and Unaccepting: Human Biases and the Advent of Artificial Intelligence,” was published in Technology, Mind, and Behavior.
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A paper co-written by Mike Wilkins, Larry D. Horner/KPMG Professor of Accounting, analyzes the costs and benefits from the time of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s primarily risk-based inspection process, finding benefits to the original approach. The paper, “Costs and Benefits of a Risk-Based PCAOB Inspection Regime,” suggests there are more benefits than costs associated with auditors’ responses to a selection approach that is primarily risk-based. The paper appears in Accounting, Organizations and Society.
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Research co-written by Eric Weisbrod, associate professor of accounting, and Adi Masli, Larry D. Horner/KPMG Professor of Accounting, as well as KU doctoral candidate Matt Peterson, reveals that both traditional and social media announcements of plaintiff’s attorneys’ corporate investigations strongly predict future litigation. “Corporate Ambulance Chasing? Plaintiff’s Attorney Marketing as a Signal of Corporate Litigation Risk” finds that attorneys’ efforts to recruit additional plaintiffs after a lawsuit has been filed signal that the action is more likely to succeed and result in more severe damages.