Academy of Management Recognizes Top Smith Entrepreneurship Research

The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business was recognized for top entrepreneurship research at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Chicago, August 7-11. The Smith School’s department of management and organization and Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship co-hosted a reception in Chicago during the conference to celebrate the faculty and PhD student research achievements.

The following were honored:

Smith PhD graduate Antoaneta Petkova, now an assistant professor at San Francisco State University, was recognized with the entrepreneurship division’s top dissertation award, the Heizer Award, for outstanding research in the field of new enterprise development. Petkova’s dissertation, titled “Reputation Building by New Ventures: Three Essays on Processes and Performance,” was chaired by Smith professors Anil Gupta, and Violina Rindova, formerly a Smith professor now at the University of Texas at Austin.

J. Robert Baum, associate professor of entrepreneurship, and PhD candidate Sheetal Singh were honored with an entrepreneurship division IDEA award for their “best paper”, “The Practical Intelligence of High Potential Entrepreneurs: Antecedents and a Link with New Venture Growth,” co-authored with Barbara J. Bird of American University. It deals with venture and industry knowledge, learning styles, common sense, and how these correlate to growth in employment and sales for new firms.

PhD candidate Alan Boss was also honored with an entrepreneurship division best paper award for his paper, “Preserving the Peace through Organization Development: 30 Years of Successful Organizational Change.” The research deals with venturing within an established company.

Benjamin Hallen, assistant professor of strategy, had a paper accepted for inclusion in the best paper proceedings of the Organizational and Management Theory division at the conference. The paper is titled “The Purchase of Embeddedness: Can venture capital firms buy network embeddedness?”

More than 10,000 members attended the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. The complete program consisted of nearly1,600 sessions and the conference theme, Green Management Matters, focused on how teaching, research, and service might shape and be shaped by society’s increasing concern about responsible stewardship of the natural environment.