Strong Showing of Smith Scholars at Annual Academy of Management Meeting

Management and Organization faculty and PhD students at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business made an impressive showing at this summer’s 85th Academy of Management Annual Meeting, the world’s largest gathering of management and organization scholars. In total, 26 Smith scholars were involved in 22 research presentations, and three professors received awards at the premier international conference, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, July 25-29.

“Congratulations to our management faculty honored at this incredibly important conference in this field,” said Subra Tangirala, the Dean’s Chair of Organizational Studies and area chair of Smith’s management and organization department. “We are excited that so many of our faculty and PhD students are participating in this year’s conference and sharing their research.”

The meeting brings together academics, students and practitioners in the field to network, share research and engage with the latest trends in management. This year, three Smith professors were honored:

Rajshree Agarwal, the Rudolph Lamone Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and director of the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets, received the prestigious 2025 Outstanding Educator Award from the Academy of Management’s Strategy Division. Each year, the group recognizes one scholar who has demonstrated a long-term commitment to and expertise in educating strategy students. Agarwal was honored for her mentorship of Smith PhDs. She’s been dissertation chair or co-chair to more than 20 students and a committee member for numerous others.

Hui Liao, the Long Jiang Endowed Chair in Business and Assistant Dean of Research Outreach, received the Management Education and Development Division’s “Best Paper” award for her paper, “Fostering Assertiveness and Leadership emergence with Debate Training,” coauthored with Jackson Lu (MIT), Michelle Zhao (WashU-St. Louis), and Lu (Doris) Zhang (MIT). The paper is forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Alyssa Tedder-King, a new assistant professor of management and organization at Smith, accepted the Saroj Parasuraman Outstanding Publication Award from the DEI Division of the academy, for her paper, “Fairness Judgements in the Context of Structural Sexism: Individual and Structural Causes of Success,” published with Elad Sherf of the University of North Carolina in the October 2024 issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

Smith faculty and doctoral students took part in symposiums and sessions at the flagship conference, presenting research on topics including leadership, power and status, prosocial behavior, team dynamics, networks, employee well-being, the role of AI in work, talent management, entrepreneurial learning and decision-making, and innovation.

Smith scholars involved in the meeting:

Faculty

• Rajshree Agarwal
• Serguey Braguinsky
• Gilad Chen
• Rellie Derfler-Rozin
• Waverly Ding
• Brent Goldfarb
• Reuben Hurst
• David Kirsch
• Hui Liao
• Jennifer Carson Marr
• Aneesh Rai
• Myeong-Gu Seo
• Subra Tangirala
• Alyssa Tedder-King
• David Waguespack
• Vijaya Venkataramani

PhDs

• Kevin Peter Clark
• Oguz Gencay
• Nelly Arbel Groissman
• Millard (Jay) Habegger
• Ziyi He
• Amber Johnson
• Marta Villamor Martin
• Yasha Spriha
• Jacob Valentine
• Beril Yalcinkaya