The Smith School's faculty research interests encompass a broad, dynamic mix of functional and netcentric economy issues. The Smith School has numerous research projects ongoing, and Research@Smith is the medium to keep you informed about many of these projects.

Research@Smith, Winter 2005

IN THIS ISSUE

Featured Stories:

Herd Behavior in Voluntary Disclosure of Capital Expenditure Forecasts
Highly reputable firms set the standard for voluntary disclosure; many other firms just follow the crowd
Research by Nerissa Brown

Mid-life Transition Decision Processes and Career Successes
Understanding the process of mid-life career transition may help employers keep their employees
Research by Holly Slay

Foreign Investment: A Big Boost for Small Business
Foreign portfolio investment gives a big boost to small businesses, both at home and abroad
Research by April M. Knill

►A Word From Dean Frank
►PhD Program at a Glance, Lawrence Gordon
►PhD Candidate Kudos
►Faculty Kudos
►New Faculty Books

►Download Winter 2005 Research@Smith (PDF)

A Word From Dean Frank

This issue of Research@Smith focuses on the award-winning research of three Smith PhD candidates, but there are many other Smith PhD students with equally impressive accomplishments.

Debora Viana Thompson, PhD candidate in the marketing department, was one of three winners of the Marketing Science Institute’s Alden G. Clayton Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Competition, perhaps the most prestigious honor a marketing student can achieve. Thompson explores the phenomenon of feature fatigue, when consumers purchase products that are overly complex because they tend to value the product’s capability more than its usability. Subjects used virtual products in Smith’s Netcentric Behavioral Laboratory to investigate how consumers balance their desires for capability and usability when they evaluate products.

Sophia Marinova, a PhD candidate in the management and organization department, received a Best Paper Award for her work on the way high investment human resource management affects the corporate climate and individual employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors.

Jason Kuruzovich, a PhD candidate in the decision and information technologies department, received a second place Best Paper award for his work on the role of technology in telecommuting success.

These achievements are a testament to the quality of our students, who after graduation go on to teach at major research universities around the world.

In this newsletter we are able to include only a sampling of the research being done by our PhD students and their faculty collaborators.

Howard Frank
Dean, Robert H. Smith School of Business

[Back to Top]

PhD Program At A Glance

Lawrence A. Gordon, Ernst & Young Alumni Professor of Managerial Accounting and director of the PhD program at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, gives an overview of the Smith School’s PhD program.

“We have a global and very diverse group of PhD students. Right now there are 113 students who represent 22 countries; about 58 percent are international and about 53 percent are women. The doctoral program is competitive with the world’s top business schools. We attract excellent students in every discipline and are averaging approximately 35 applications for every student admitted.

“The academic program is extremely rigorous, particularly because of the quantitative nature of the research that underlies most disciplines here at Smith.

“One of the benefits of our program is the tremendous amount of interaction students have with faculty. It is an informal environment; students spend a lot of time working with faculty one-on-one, and there is a significant amount of joint research going on. We also encourage and support cross-functional research—Nerissa Brown’s dissertation, for example, is co-chaired by me and Russ Wermers, an associate professor in the finance department.

“Graduates of the doctoral program are first-class researchers, but they also have a keen understanding for and appreciation of the importance of teaching. They understand that their role is to both expand the knowledge base and communicate that knowledge to future business leaders.

“Over the past five years, roughly 99 percent of Smith’s PhD students have been successfully placed directly after they graduate—about 80 percent as tenure track assistant professors at an accredited university, and the rest as researchers in either private or government organizations.” ---- Lawrence A. Gordon.

[Back to Top]

PhD Candidate Kudos

The Smith School would like to offer congratulations to the following Smith PhD Candidates

Nerissa Brown, Accounting and Information Assurance
Best Paper Presentation Award
“Herd Behavior in the Voluntary Disclosure of Capital Expenditure Forecasts”
Center for Corporate Reporting and Governance Conference
Costa Mesa, CA, September 2004

April Knill, Finance
Best Dissertation in International Finance Award
“Can Foreign Portfolio Investment Bridge the Smaller Firm Financing Gap Around the World?”
Co-sponsored by Indiana University and the Financial Management Association
Financial Management Association (FMA) Convention
New Orleans, LA, October 2004

Jason Kuruzovich, Decision and Information Technologies
Best Paper Award - Second Place
“Satisfied and Productive or Isolated and Unmotivated? The Role of Technology in Telecommuting Success,” based on work with V. Venkatesh
Global Technology and Management Consortium (GTMC) 2004 Doctoral Consortium, Seoul, South Korea, June 2004

Sophia Marinova, Management and Organization (Organizational Behavior)
Best Paper Award
“Justice climate as a missing link for the relationship between high Investment HRM systems and OCBs.” With R. Takeuchi, S. Marinova, D. Lepak, & H. Moon.
Academy of Management (AMA) Meeting
New Orleans, LA, August 2004.

Holly Slay, Management and Organization (Organizational Behavior)
2004 Best Symposium - Careers Division Award; Best Reviewer - Careers Division Award
“Pursuing Protean and Boundaryless Careers: Identity, Networks and Career Transitions”
Academy of Management (AMA) Meeting
New Orleans, LA, August 2004

Debora Viana Thompson, Marketing
Winner, Marketing Science Institute's Alden G. Clayton Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Competition
“Feature Fatigue: When Product Capabilities Become Too Much of a Good Thing.”
With R. Hamilton and R. Rust.
Marketing Science Institute, 2004

[Back to Top]

Faculty Kudos

Roland Rust, holder of the David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, chair of the marketing department and director of the Center for e-Service, was named the next editor of the Journal of Marketing, ranked number one in two of the last three surveys of major marketing journals. It is the oldest and most frequently cited journal in the field and enjoys unique impact and visibility. His term will run from 2005-2008.

Michael Ball, Orkand Professor of Management Science and director of research, and Bruce Golden, France-Merrick Professor of Management Science, were named INFORMS Fellows, the highest honor of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science.

Lemma Senbet, holder of the William E. Mayer Chair in Finance and chair of the finance department, has been elected to the Steering Committee of the Financial Economists Roundtable (FER), a governing body comprised of distinguished financial economists who have made significant contributions to the finance literature and seek to apply their knowledge to current policy debates.

Ritu Agarwal, professor of decision and information technologies, was appointed the Robert H. Smith School of Business Dean’s Chair in Information Systems. She is also program co-chair for the International Conference on Information Systems held in December 2004 in Washington D.C. Agarwal, G. Anandalingam and Joe Bailey were part of the program committee for the Conference on Information Systems and Technology.

Anil Gupta, Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Strategy & Organization, chair of the management and organization department and research director for the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, was elected to the Board of Directors of TiE (The Innovation Ecosystem), the premier organization of CEOs and entrepreneurs devoted to fostering entrepreneurship in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Louiqa Raschid, professor of information systems, together with colleagues at Rockefeller University and Arizona State University, received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study data management challenges in the area of bioinformatics.

[Back to Top]

New Books

The following books authored by Smith faculty members were recently published.

G. Anandalingam and H. Lucas, Beware the Winner's Curse: Victories that Can Sink You and Your Company, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

S. I. Gass and A. A. Assad, An Annotated Timeline of Operations Research: An Informal History, Springer + Business Media, New York, 2005.

L. Gordon and M. Loeb, Managing Cybersecurity Resources: A Cost-Benefit Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 2004.

C. Grimm and K. Smith, Strategy as Action: Competitive Dynamics and Competitive Advantage, Oxford Publishing, 2005.

K. Smith and M. Hitt, The Oxford Handbook of Management Theory: The Process of Theory Development, Oxford Publishing, 2005.

S. E. Loeb and Paul J. Miranti, Jr., The Institute of Accounts: Nineteenth-Century Origins of Accounting Professionalism in the United States, London: Routledge, 2004.

H. Lucas, Information Technology: Strategic Decision Making for Management, New York, John Wiley, 2004.

R. Lusch and S. Vargo, Toward a Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing: Continuing the Dialog, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005.

►Complete Book List

[Back to Top]

Research@Smith Winter 2005, Volume 6, Number 1

DEAN
Howard Frank

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH
Michael Ball

EDITOR
Rebecca Winner

CONTRIBUTOR
Kenneth Ng, Smith MBA Candidate 2006

We’d like to put Research@Smith directly into the hands of those who are interested in learning about the latest research conducted by Smith School faculty. To request a copy of this publication contact Rebecca Winner via e-mail, editor@rhsmith.umd.edu, or phone, (301) 405-9465.

[Back to Top]