Management


Moving Beyond Crisis Mode: Successful Corporations Merge Short-Term Goals, Long-Term Strategy, Expert Says

In a corporate world that is obsessed with immediate results, there is still plenty of need for long-term, strategic thinking, said David Souder, a management professor and the academic director of UConn’s Executive MBA program.

In a lively presentation, which touched on everything from light bulbs to major league baseball, Souder told 40 business executives that a progressive company must always strive for a balance between short-term goals and long-term strategy. Souder outlined four steps to bringing long-term goals into focus.Continue Reading



Doctoral Student Margaret Luciano Wins Scholarships for Work on Employee Dynamics in Hospital Patient “Handoffs”

Margaret Luciano
Margaret Luciano

Margaret (“Maggie’’) Luciano, a doctoral candidate at the UConn School of Business, has been awarded two scholarships in recent months recognizing her achievements in the field of organizational behavior.

The Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology’s (SIOP) Lee Hakel Graduate Student Scholarship recognizes achievement in a graduate career and is intended to assist doctoral students in the field of industrial and organizational psychology with the costs of carrying out their dissertation work. She received the award in January.

It is the second recognition for Luciano, who, late last year also received an award from the Society for Human Resources Management for her dissertation proposal. She was selected as one of four promising researchers.

Her dissertation research focuses on understanding and improving cross-unit coordination between hospital units, and the dynamics between such groups.

She has investigated patient “handoffs’’ as they move from surgery to a recovery room. During baseline assessments, upwards of 20 percent of these handoffs were found to be lacking in one or more important ways, jeopardizing patient care.

“Margaret’s dissertation is a stellar example of cutting-edge applied research,’’ said John Mathieu, professor of management and Luciano’s adviser. “Conceptually, Margaret tests theoretical questions concerning the integration of employees’ individual differences and how they combine to perform interdependent actions. Practically, she devised and implemented a work process improvement which essentially orchestrated how different parties should function during these handoffs.’’

“Her dissertation represented a serious organizational change for the hospital, involving everyone from top management to the nurses and doctors performing the handoffs. Her field experiment revealed that her intervention reduced the percentage of problematic handoffs to approximately 4 to 5 percent—a 75 percent decrease from baseline,’’ Mathieu said.

Both the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology (SIOP) awarded her competitive research grants on the basis of her proposed work. The criteria for both awards are that the work should advance both the science of human behavior in organizations, while also advancing practice and human welfare, Mathieu said.

Her research on these and related topics has appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology and other peer-reviewed journals.

Luciano will join the management faculty at Arizona State University after completing her doctoral program at UConn. She earned her bachelors degree in psychology in 2009 and her MBA in 2010, both from Clark University in Worcester, Mass.


Professors Gilson, Mathieu Win Best Paper Awards

Faculty and Ph.D. students in the School of Business’ management department have been selected for two prestigious awards in recent weeks.

Gilson, MathieuThe Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP) recently recognized a paper titled “Unpacking the Cross-level Effects of Tenure Diversity, Explicit Knowledge, and Knowledge Sharing on Individual Creativity,” as Best Paper for 2013. The paper was co-authored by UConn graduate students Margaret Luciano and Hyoun Sook Lim and Professor of Management Lucy Gilson. Continue Reading


Three Management Professors and a Ph.D. Student Receive a Scholarly Impact Award for their research

The Journal of Management (JOM) reviews all articles published in JOM five years prior and awards the top five highest impact papers . All JOM papers published in 2006 were considered for the 2011 Scholarly Impact Awards. A committee of four Associate Editors considered each paper according to the following criteria:

  • Number of citations (both with and without self-citations)
  • The breadth and quality of the papers/journals citing each paper
  • Total downloads
  • Perceived quality and potential for continued impact

The committee explored who cited each paper–whether the papers are being cited by top journals, as well as whether the papers are having wide penetration. Then the committee considered the strength of each paper and its potential for continued contribution.

The University of Connecticut School of Business is honored to have a paper written by three of its professors and a Ph.D. graduate recognized by the JOM. The paper, titled “Ambidexterity and performance in small- to medium-sized firms: The pivotal role of top management team behavioral integration” was written by: Michael Lubatkin, Thomas John & Bette Wolff Family Chair in Strategic Entrepreneurship and Professor, Management Department; Zeki Simsek, Associate Professor and Ackerman Scholar, Management Department; Yan Ling, UConn Ph.D. graduate; John Veiga, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Northeast Utilities Chair in Business Ethics, Management Department.

Sage, SMA, and JOM will be recognizing this achievement at their annual board meeting at the Academy of Management conference. At this event, a Best Paper Prize will be awarded. The Best Paper Prize comes with a cash honorarium.