Key Areas of Research
Status-Amplified Deterrence: Paul Manafort’s Prosecution Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act
Organization Science, September 2025
Social control agents often struggle to deter organizational deviance. We propose a theory of “status-amplified deterrence” wherein enforcement’s deterrent effects are amplified when carried out against high-status organizational actors. First, this enforcement is interpreted as willingness and ability for far-reaching enforcement. Next, amplified deterrence occurs as these episodes become widely known through (1) extensive media coverage and (2) the marketing efforts of third-party compliance advisors. We examine this theory in the context of the U.S. Department of Justice’s enforcement against Paul Manafort for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Using a difference-in-differences design, we demonstrate that enforcement against Manafort caused a widespread, sustained, and economically significant reduction in FARA noncompliance. We show supplementary evidence consistent with the idea that deterrence was amplified in significant part by media attention and by law firms referencing the episode while successfully marketing FARA advisory services. We contribute to literature illuminating how organizations, in conjunction with third-party compliance advisors, adjust deviant activities in response to shifting regulatory environments.
Reuben Hurst, Jin Hyung Kim (George Washington University) and Jordan Siegel (University of Michigan)
Breaking ceilings: Debate training promotes leadership emergence by increasing assertiveness.
Journal of Applied Psychology
To date, little is known about what interventions can help individuals attain leadership roles in organizations. To address this knowledge gap, we integrate insights from the communication and leadership literatures to test debate training as a novel intervention for leadership emergence. We propose that debate training can increase individuals’ leadership emergence by fostering assertiveness—“an adaptive style of communication in which individuals express their feelings and needs directly, while maintaining respect for others” (American Psychological Association, n.d.)—a valued leadership characteristic in U.S. organizations. Experiment 1 was a three-wave longitudinal field experiment at a Fortune 100 U.S. company. Individuals (N = 471) were randomly assigned to either receive a 9-week debate training or not. Eighteen months later, the treatment-group participants were more likely to have advanced in leadership level than the control-group participants, an effect mediated by assertiveness increase. In a sample twice as large (N = 975), Experiment 2 found that individuals who were randomly assigned to receive debate training (vs. nondebate training or no training) acted more assertively and had higher leadership emergence in a subsequent group activity. Results were consistent across self-rated, group-member-rated, and coder-rated assertiveness. Moderation analyses suggest that the effects of debate training were not significantly different for (a) U.S.- and foreign-born individuals, (b) men and women, or (c) different ethnic groups. Overall, our experiments suggest that debate training can help individuals attain leadership roles by developing their assertiveness.
Jackson Lu (MIT), Michelle Zhao (Washington University in St. Louis), Hui Liao (University of Maryland, Long Jiang Endowed Chair in Business), and Lu Zhang (MIT)
Conflicted About Coworkers: How Coworker Support Influences Engagement After Status Loss
Personnel Psychology, February 2025
People's needs for status and support are theoretically distinct, yet little research has considered how people cope with having one but not the other. We examine how people react to losing status as a function of whether they typically perceive their coworkers as supportive. Although social support is documented as a resource people can draw on to cope with failure at work, we argue that in the case of failures that implicate status (i.e., status loss), experiencing these events in a more supportive work group may not aid recovery and reengagement. Specifically, we predict that when the preexisting group context is one of more (rather than less) supportive coworkers, status loss may elicit greater ambivalence about those coworker relationships, triggering psychological reactions that undermine engagement. Consistent with this model, in a weekly experience sampling study of working adults (Study 1), having more supportive coworkers led to a stronger negative effect of weekly status loss on subsequent engagement. In scenario-based (Study 2) and high-involvement laboratory (Study 3) experiments featuring different manipulations of coworker support and status loss, we found that when individuals experienced status loss in more (rather than less) supportive work groups, status loss led to lower engagement because it heightened ambivalence about their coworker relationships, which triggered anxiety (Study 2), and self-threat and hurt feelings (Study 3). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Jennifer Carson Marr (UMD), Edward P. Lemay (UMD), Hyunsun Park (Georgia Tech)
The Theory-Based View and Strategic Pivots: The Effects of Theorization and Experimentation on the Type and Nature of Pivots
Strategy Science
We examine how formalization in cognitive processes (theorization) and evidence evaluation (experimentation) influence the type (frequency and radicalness) and nature (impetus, clarity, and coherence) of entrepreneurial pivots. We use a mixed-method research design to analyze rich data from over 1,600 interviews with 261 entrepreneurs within a randomized control trial in London. A quantitative analysis that complements human-coded and machine learning-coded measures reveals that conditional on pivoting, theorization and experimentation are complementary in their association with making single radical pivots. The extensive qualitative-case comparison further elucidates interactions between theorization and experimentation that generate differences in the nature of pivots that range from purposeful (clear and coherent rationale deriving from articulated theory and experimentation), postulatory (informed by articulated theory but not incorporating nuances or surprises generated from experimentation), and remedial (stemming from adjustments to preformed theories that drew on prior experiences) to reactive (driven by environmental stimuli absent a clear theory of value). These insights contribute to the theory-driven strategic decision-making literature and offer practical insights for entrepreneurs, incubators, and policymakers on the benefits of a scientific approach to entrepreneurship.
Valentine, Jacob (Doctoral Candidate, University of Maryland); Novelli, Elena (Professor, Bayes Business School); Agarwal, Rajshree (Lamone Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, University of Maryland)