Research and Faculty

Fake news detector: Digital supply chain reveals untrustworthy content

Haskayne School of Business researchers dig into third-party data to see website business models

Working from home through COVID-19? Take micro-breaks and perform better, UCalgary expert says

Behaviour research and Scandinavian experience teach that breaks improve wellness, boost productivity, reduce errors and more

Environmental and social policies help companies weather stock market crisis

‘Astonishing result’ part of study co-authored by researchers at Haskayne School of Business

From Feynman to face cream: how innovations make it from the lab to commercialization

Haskayne researchers see how relationships help technology commercialization by exploring the nanotech industry

More Haskayne Research News

Elite Academic Journals (Eyes High Journal List)

Forthcoming

Network Brokerage: An integrative review and future research agenda

Journal: Journal of Management (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4*)

Author: Seok-Woo Kwon, Emanuela Rondi, Daniel Z. Levin, Alfredo De Massis, Dan Brass

Network brokerage research has advanced considerably since the pioneering work of Burt (1992) and others.
Our review shows that there remain many opportunities for management and other social science researchers to engage more fully with network brokerage, from a theoretical, empirical, and practical standpoint.

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Forthcoming

Look who is talking ... and who is listening: Finding an integrative “we” voice in entrepreneurial scholarship

Journal: Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4)

Author: Dimo Dimov, Reiner Schaefer, Joseph Pistrui

If entrepreneurship scholars want to study that which is distinctive of entrepreneurship, then their research needs to address the practical perspectives of entrepreneurs.
To connect with entrepreneurs’ practical decision-making perspectives, entrepreneurship scholars need to engage in conversations with the entrepreneurs, thereby making themselves accountable to entrepreneurs and their reasons.
Scholarly rigour requires relevance or else it misses the point of the phenomena it claims to study.

Forthcoming

The Family as a Platform for FSA Development: Enriching New Internalization Theory with Insights from Family Firm Research

Journal: Journal of International Business Studies (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Author: Liena Kano

We show how family-firm owners and managers can extract the most value from resources contributed by the family, and describe examples of family-owned multinationals that successfully capitalized on the family nature of their businesses to compete in international markets.
We describe unique barriers that may prevent family-owned multinationals from successfully exploiting their unique resources at home and abroad.
We describe strategies employed by family-owned multinationals to monitor for, and safeguard against, unique biases that may prevent family firms' successful internationalization.

Forthcoming

Global Value Chains: A review of a multi-disciplinary literature

Journal: Journal of International Business Studies (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Author: Liena Kano, Eric W.K. Tsang, Henry W. Yeung

This article reviews the rapidly growing domain of global value chain (GVC) research by analyzing several highly cited conceptual frameworks and then appraising published GVC studies from various disciplines.
Building on GVC conceptual frameworks, we conducted the review based on a comparative institutional perspective that encompasses critical governance issues at the micro-, GVC, and macro-levels. Our results indicate that some of these issues have garnered significantly more scholarly attention than others.
We suggest several future research topics.

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Forthcoming

Industry Structure and the Strategic Provision of Trade Credit by Upstream Firms

Journal: Review of Financial Studies (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Alfred Lehar, Yang Song, Lasheng Yuan

Competition authorities should watch how financing arrangements in supply chains can reduce competition and make consumers worse off.
It can be better for competition if production firms do not engage in banking activities.

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Forthcoming

Provisioning Interoperable Disaster Management Systems: Integrated, Unified, and Federated Approaches

Journal: MIS Quarterly (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Hong Guo, Yipeng Liu, Barrie R. Nault

Resource interoperability is key to districts sharing resources effectively.
Tension is between technology fit for a given district and interoperability with other districts.
Incentives can be used to motivate the collectively optimal interoperability approach.

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Forthcoming

Chinese Multinationals’ Fast Internationalization: Financial Performance Advantage in One Region, Disadvantage in Another

Journal: Journal of International Business Studies (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Heechun Kim, Jie Wu, Douglas A. Schuler, Robert E. Hoskisson

Top managers should consider together both the speed and geographic space of internationalization.
Top managers are advised to rapidly venture into and focus on intra-regional host countries, where they can utilize their home-grown firm-specific advantages, including technological and marketing resources.
Top managers should be cautious when rapidly expanding into inter-regional host countries, not only because they may have difficulty transferring home-grown firm-specific advantages successfully, but also because it is challenging to address large differences across inter-regional host countries.

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Forthcoming

Delegation of Stocking Decisions under Asymmetric Demand Information

Journal: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 3)

Authors: Osman Alp, Alper Sen

Inventory replenishment decisions for retail chains are commonly made at their headquarters; this practice neglects information that individual store managers have about local demand and volume.
Inventory replenishment decisions could be delegated to local store managers, but there is no incentive for them to make decisions that align with headquarters’ interests.
A proposed new method that blends new Key Performance Indicators into the performance scorecard of store managers could lead to significant savings, boost customer service levels and provide competitive advantage over rival businesses.

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Forthcoming

Abusive Supervision Differentiation and Employee Outcomes: The Roles of Envy, Resentment, and Insecure Group Attachment

Journal: Journal of Management (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Babatunde Ogunfowora, Justin M. Weinhardt, Christine C. Hwang

When managers habitually abuse some team members but not others, feelings of envy and resentment ultimately lead to psychological distress, unethical work behaviours and intentions to quit among all team members.
Organizations should clearly establish zero tolerance for general abusive behaviour by managers and explicitly discourage managers from selectively abusing certain employees, possibly tying managerial performance to “no abuse” compensation systems.
Organizations should also implement training that helps managers to be mindful of situations where they may, unwittingly or knowingly, justify their abuse of certain team members.

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May 2020

The Bribery Paradox in Transition Economies and the Enactment of 'New Normal' Business Environments

Journal: Journal of Management Studies, 57(3), 597–625. (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4)

Authors: Kimberly A. Eddleston, Elitsa R. Banalieva, Alain Verbeke

Bribes do bring an immediate benefit, but the longer-term consequences often make the situation worse because an environment is created where bribes are normalized.
With a higher frequency of bribes, the expectation of bribes becomes contagious throughout the economy and it therefore becomes even harder to do business. Governments in transition economies should therefore prioritize rooting out bribery practices.
In a family firm, the identity of the owners becomes intertwined with the behaviour and reputation of their firm. Once a family firm is known to be corrupt, the family name is equated with being willing to bribe, and this leads to a vicious cycle where bribes are expected without really helping to remove business obstacles in the big picture.

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April 2020

Inaction Traps in Consumer Response to Product Malfunctions

Journal: Journal of Marketing Research, 57(2), 298–314. (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Neil Brigden (post-doctoral fellow), Gerald Häubl

Smaller problems can trap us into never addressing them because we initially put off the decision of whether to address them and then devalue later opportunities to address them.
Consumers often allow smaller product malfunctions to persist, leading them to enjoy the product less and be less interested in using it again in the future, even with the problem fixed.
It is possible to get out of an inaction trap by choosing a previously unavailable course of action.

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January 2020

Corporate Diplomacy and Family Firm Longevity

Journal: Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 44(1), 109–133. (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4)

Authors: Luciano Ciravegna, Liena Kano, Francesco Rattalino, Alain Verbeke

The authors discuss family firm longevity building upon a new conceptual lens, informed by transaction cost economics (TCE), but augmented with corporate diplomacy thinking.
Corporate diplomacy, through its three process steps—familiarization, acceptance and engagement—can help the family firm augment its baseline reservoir of social capital, and allows improved economizing on contracting challenges that endanger its survival.
Family firms that focus on corporate diplomacy processes and the resulting social capital creation greatly improve their chances of longevity.

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January 2020

Family Firm Behavior From a Psychological Perspective

Journal: Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 44(1), 3–19. (editorial: Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4)

Authors: Pramodita Sharma, James J. Chrisman, Jess H. Chua, Lloyd P. Steier

Family business studies, by academic standards, represent a very new field. There are still many conceptual issues, propositions, hypotheses, myths, and conflicting empirical evidence to resolve.
For example, why do many families prefer succession by a family member rather than a non-family member? What are the goals they hope to achieve by doing that? What kind of businesses identify themselves as family firms? What do the families mean when they say that they consider their businesses to be family businesses? Scholars currently have no satisfactory answers to these questions; yet they use these conditions extensively to differentiate “family business” from “non-family business”.
Only by investigating the psychological roots of these important differentiating influences can family business studies help us understand better family businesses, which play a ubiquitous and numerically dominant role in the global economy.

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December 2019

The Strategic Value of IT in Setting Productive Capacity

Journal: Information Systems Research, 30(4), 1124–1144. (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Dawei Zhang, Barrie R. Nault, Xueqi (David) Wei

The authors examine how information technology (IT) can contribute to a strategy of holding excess capacity by comparing the relationship between IT capital and capacity with that of non-IT capital and capacity.
Using production theory-based empirical analyses, they find that increases in IT capital yield an almost four-fold greater expansion in capacity than do increases in non-IT capital.
Thus, as both types of capital are constraints on capacity, for a strategy of holding excess capacity, IT capital is a more valuable constraint to relax than non-IT capital.

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December 2019

The Structural Reshaping of Globalization: Implications for Strategic Sectors, Profiting from Innovation, and the Multinational Enterprise

Journal: Journal of International Business Studies, 50(9), Special Issue, 1487–1512 (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Olga Petricevic, David J. Teece

The authors specifically ask how MNEs can continue to profit from innovations in a bifurcated world, which is increasingly being shaped by the ‘rule-of-rulers’.
The authors examine how one powerful force at the macro-level, namely (neo) techno-nationalism, can so rapidly reshape the structure of the global economic order.
The authors discuss what MNEs and the IB scholarly community can do to re-assess and enhance its current toolbox at the micro-level for navigating the new IB realities.

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December 2019

Improving the Measures of Real Earnings Management

Journal: Review of Accounting Studies, 24(4), 1277–1316. (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4)

Author: Anup Srivastava

Firms in the same industry could differ in competitive strategy and use different amounts of intangibles in their business models. Thus, it is wrong to assume that same-industry firms have the same cost structures and that any deviations from industry peers represent a firm’s opportunistic or abnormal behaviour.
Deviations in a firm’s financial characteristics compared to its industry peers could reflect the firm’s competitive strategy.
The author shows how to control for firm’s competitive strategy in detecting a firm’s opportunistic behaviour.

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November 2019

Five Configurations of Opportunism in International Market Entry

Journal: Journal of Management Studies, 56(7), 1287–1313. (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4)

Authors: Alain Verbeke, Luciano Ciravegna, Luis E. Lopez, Sumit K. Kundu

The authors investigate the conditions under which opportunism occurs in international market entry by studying five variables affecting opportunistic behaviour: managerial experience, market entry share, market distance, young age, and network size.
While no single variable on its own is associated with opportunism, in concert the five variables form five configurations of opportunism.
The study establishes a much-needed bridge between scholarly work based on Transaction Cost Economics, which assumes opportunism as a default behavioural trait, and the practical needs of managers to anticipate and mitigate the effects of deceitful behaviour in international market entries.

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October 2019

Market Segmentation and Software Security: Pricing Patching Rights

Journal: Management Science, 65(10), 4575–4597 (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Terrence August, Duy Dao, Kihoon Kim

The patching approach to security in the software industry (wherein consumers can decide whether to apply security updates or not) lacks the incentive structure to induce better security-related decisions.
Software vendors can differentiate their products based on the provision of patching rights.
The optimal pricing of these rights can segment the market in a manner that leads to both greater security and greater profitability.

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October 2019

Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Risk: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Journal: Management Science, 65(10), 4451-4469 (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Rui Albuquerque, Yrjo Koskinen, Chendi Zhang

The authors model Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives as a product differentiation strategy that allows firms to benefit from higher profit margins.
Higher profit margins reduce cyclicality of profits, and result in decreased betas (systematic risks) and increased corporate valuations.
The authors find supporting evidence analyzing a panel of U.S. firms from 2003 to 2015. Results are stronger for firms with high advertising expenditures.

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September 2019

Balancing openness and prioritization in a two-tier Internet

Journal: Information Systems Research, 30(3), 745–763. (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Barrie R. Nault, Steffen Zimmermann

The authors develop a model to determine the impact of a two-tier Internet—including the current open Internet and a co-existing fee-based fast-lane Internet—on overall welfare.
Their model examines edge provider (such as Amazon or Netflix) conversion to a fast lane, broadband provider’s investment and pricing, and a straightforward policy mechanism to balance openness and prioritization in a way that the general quality of the open Internet does not suffer.
Results demonstrate that to maintain the quality of service of the open Internet and increase social welfare, a two-tier Internet must be coupled with a policy mechanism, whereby a portion of broadband provider profit is invested in Internet capacity.

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August 2019

Optimal Consumption and Investment under Time-Varying Liquidity Constraints

Journal: Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 54(4), 1643–1681. (Eyes High, FT50, AJG 4)

Authors: Seryoong Ahn, Kyoung Jin Choi, Byung Hwa Lim

The authors study households' consumption and investment decisions given realistic time-varying constraints on borrowing (e.g., debt-to-income ratio constraint and loan-to-value ratio constraint)
The resulting implications for households' behaviour differ considerably from those obtained in the existing literature based on fixed borrowing limits, but are consistent with those documented in the empirical literature.
This work aims to provide a workhorse model for the individual investor’s investment and consumption behaviour with realistic features on credit and borrowing.

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May 2019

Imperfect Renegotiations in Interbank Financial Networks

Journal: Management Science, 65(5), 2342–2359. (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Alexander David, Alfred Lehar

Interbank financial networks enable banks to share the risks in their assets but potentially also increase systemic spillovers of insolvency from one bank to others in the network.
The authors model a renegotiation game to explicitly examine the forgiveness of commitments of insolvent banks by solvent banks to limit the systemic transmission of financial distress.
The authors also show how banks can ex ante optimally construct networks from interbank loans and derivatives to minimize the costs of such inefficient financial distress.

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May 2019

The cross-section of labor leverage and equity returns

Journal: Journal of Financial Economics, 132(2), 497–518. (Eyes High Star, FT50, AJG 4*)

Authors: Andres Donangelo A, François Gourio, Matthias Kehrig, Miguel Palacios

The authors’ model provides theoretical support for the use of firm-level labour share as a measure of labour leverage, which represents a form of operational leverage related to the relative size and inflexibility of labour expenses.
In firms where labour takes a high share of revenues, operating profits are more sensitive to economic shocks and have higher expected returns. Thus, labour leverage works in the same way as financial leverage.
Practitioners should take this into account in assessing a firm’s riskiness and cost of capital, and in estimating the expected returns of appropriately formed portfolios.

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