Research projects authored by Assistant Professors Elena Kennedy, Sean McMahon, Mark Mallon and Matthew Perrigino were shared during the annual meeting for management and organization scholars.
Papers co-authored by Martha and Spencer Love School of Business faculty members Elena Kennedy, Sean McMahon, Mark Mallon and Matthew Perrigino were presented at the 78th annual meeting of the Academy of Management held Aug. 10-14 in Chicago.
Elena Kennedy, assistant professor of entrepreneurship
During the session, “NGOs and Multi-Sector Partnerships,” Kennedy, assistant professor of entrepreneurship, presented “Strategic social venturing: Examining employee compensation within enterprising nonprofits” with co-authors Kostas Alexiou, Kent State University; Abhisekh Ghosh Moulick, University of Oklahoma; and Denise Linda Parris, University of Oklahoma.
The paper examines the revenue strategies of nonprofit ventures by focusing on how revenue is earned, allocated and maximized in the face of competing charity and business mindsets. In particular, the authors focused on the effect of increasing earned revenue as a proportion of total revenue on employee compensation.
Additionally, they analyzed the effect that organizational maturity has on this relationship. Drawing on a longitudinal dataset of more than 14,000 nonprofit organizations, the authors tested these relationships using a series of autoregressive and generalized linear models. The results of the analyses demonstrate a negative relationship between commercialization and average employee compensation, but the effect diminishes as nonprofits mature.
Kennedy also presented her paper, “Creating community: Understanding the development of a locally oriented entrepreneurial community,” during the “Social Entrepreneurship and Support Systems” session.
In this article, she presented the results of an exploratory case study of an entrepreneurial community that successfully developed in a rural community by leveraging complementary assets and a shared vision of community to overcome liabilities of geography to rebuild an abandoned mill and become a sustainable entrepreneurial community. Building on the case, she discussed the process through which the entrepreneurial community formed, elaborated on the unique mindset of community entrepreneurs, and highlighted challenges to maintaining relationships during entrepreneurial community formation.
Sean McMahon, Doherty Emerging Professor of Entrepreneurship
McMahon’s co-authors, Regan M. Stevenson, Indiana University, and Chaim Rossm Letwin, Suffolk University, presented the paper, “Equity crowdfunding: A qualitative assessment from the perspective of capable entrepreneurs.”
While prior research on venture funding has primarily focused on dyadic relationships between entrepreneurs and expert investors, the authors examined a new form of funding – equity crowdfunding. This novel form of funding allows entrepreneurs to bypass traditional early-stage investors and seek equity directly from distributed crowds of non-expert investors.
The authors developed an inductive model using grounded theory and the cognitive perspective to provide insights into the cognitive elements and mental roadmaps that occur in the ‘minds of entrepreneurs’ during the fund-seeking process. By explaining the source of these cognitions and their effects on behavior, the authors’ work contributes to the cognitive perspective of entrepreneurship as well as the scholarly understanding of venture funding in the modern era.
Mark Mallon, assistant professor of strategic management
During the session, “Quota, No Quota And Beyond: Gender Role Congruency On Boards,” Mallon presented a paper titled “Beyond Tokenism: Antecedents of more meaningful gender diversity on boards of directors,” which he co-authored with Orhun Guldiken, Florida International University; Stav Fainshmidt, Florida International University; and Bill Judge, Old Dominion University.
The authors employed an exploratory approach to understand what differentiates boards that retain limited gender diversity (a single female director) and boards that more genuinely diversify their composition by appointing additional female directors. Based on interviews with directors and corporate governance consultants, the authors proposed that additional female director appointments result from internal director selection dynamics reflected in female representation on firms’ top management teams and board nominating committees. Using longitudinal data of U.S. firms, the authors found that more female top managers and having the sole female director serve on the nominating committee increase the likelihood of additional female director appointments. Boards and nominating committees with older members suppress these effects. The authors use theory and interview data to discuss the causal mechanisms that likely drive these relationships.
Mallon also co-chaired a symposium session titled “Contextual Factors Shaping TMT/ Board Gender Diversity and Organizational Performance” with Fida Afiouni, American University of Beirut.
Although research has indicated gender diversity at the strategic leadership level of the firm (especially the top management team and board of directors) can positively influence performance, the contextual factors shaping this relationship are not well understood. The symposium represented a collection of five research projects relying on a diverse range of theories, samples and methodologies to form a cohesive effort to address this gap. The collective contribution of the papers were discussed in light of the AOM 2018 theme “improving lives” and the audience reflected on what organizations can do to contribute to a more inclusive society.
Matthew Perrigino, assistant professor of management
The paper “Leaving the Nested Structure: The Influence of Work Relationships on Climate Strength,” co-authored by Perrigino, was presented during the “Warming up to Organizational Climate” session. Perrigino, Hongzhi Chen, Nanjing University, and Benjamin R. Pratt, Purdue University, looked at how work relationship patterns affect climate strength, which indicates the degree of consensus (i.e., lack of variability) in the shared perceptions of individuals which are aggregated to the team level.
An implicit assumption in this aggregation is that the nesting based on organizational structure is the closest representation of work relationships throughout the organization: individuals use their work relationships with their teammates and supervisors to make sense of their environments, thereby generating shared individual perceptions which attain a level of consensus, the authors state.
The nature of work has become more interdependent and connected, enabling work relationships to flourish. On the one hand, these changes further facilitate conditions to generate consensus. Yet the authors argued that these changes also: (a) increase the salience of relationships beyond team boundaries, and (b) differentially influence relationships within teams, both of which act as barriers to consensus. They explain and reconcile these conflicting perspectives, identifying alternate ways in which climates can be assessed in flatter organizational structures within different types of teams. Overall, the authors demonstrated how work relationship patterns – as opposed to nesting according to organizational structure – can play a more central role in demarcating the aggregation of individual perceptions.