Every year, Goodman faculty undertakes scores of innovative research initiatives. Here are highlights from select award-winning studies.
Abdul Ashraf
Goodman Emerging Scholar of the Year
When Ashraf first joined the Goodman School of Business as a Master of Science in Management student in 2008, he did not expect that he would return to his alma mater to teach fewer than 10 years later.
Usman Raja
Goodman Distinguished Scholar of the Year
When Usman Raja, Professor of Human Resource Management, was an MBA student, he did not consider a career as an academic.
With a stable career in engineering for close to 10 years, Raja chose to obtain an MBA degree to further progress his career.
He did not expect that it would prove to be a pivotal decision for his future.
Staci Kenno
Department Research Award Winner for Accounting
With minimal changes in what funding Ontario universities receive, Dr. Kenno’s recent research is attempting to dig into whether it’s affecting the way universities react to the funding, or if they are changing their approach to budgeting and strategy because of the funding.
Dirk De Clercq
Department Research Award Winner for Organizational Behaviour, Human Resources, Entrepreneurship and Ethics
By studying factors affecting entrepreneurship in various contexts, including emerging economies, Dr De Clercq’s findings indicate that household income and education levels directly and positively affect their engagement in entrepreneurship.
Trish Ruebottom
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant recipient
Inspired by recent research of the stigma surrounding immigrant taxi drivers, Dr. Ruebottom explores the impacted of technology-driven change on stigmatized occupations, and their influence on taxi drivers in Canada.
Walid Ben Omrane
Department Research Award Winner in Finance, Operations and Information Systems
When financial news breaks, it can cause major jumps in foreign exchange markets. By examining these changes, this research increases our understanding of the behaviour of exchange rates during a period of elevated uncertainty and that may help traders and investors improve their assessment of the risks and returns associated with their international assets.
Narongsak (Tek) Thongpapanl
Goodman Distinguished Research of the Year
Retailers need to capitalize on mobile commerce
Smartphones have quickly increased in popularity in recent years, and more people than ever use their phones to shop, making virtually any product almost immediately available to consumers through their smartphones. Although mobile commerce (m-commerce) has increased dramatically, retailers have not necessarily kept up with the trends. Professor Thongpapanl and his research team wanted to understand what was important to consumers when it comes to mobile shopping and how companies could make the experience better.
Shawna Chen
Goodman Untenured Researcher of the Year
How entrepreneurs can navigate organizations to create change
A significant part of any entrepreneur’s journey is gaining legitimacy and
support for an idea. What should they do when the ideas are so innovative that they could fundamentally change industry standards? How should they navigate a
complex environment to validate and gather support for their business ideas?
Tanya Tang
Department Research Award Winner for Accounting
Do government-controlled firms avoid taxes?
Do government-controlled firms avoid taxes? How does this dual, but conflicting, role
affect government behaviour? How do governments balance these competing incentives, and which incentive will outweigh the other under a tax sharing system where taxes are being collected and spent by both local and central governments?
Eugene Kaciak
Department Research Award Winner for Finance, Operations and Information Systems
What emerging countries need to do to support female entrepreneurs
Universally, women who start businesses play a big part in improving their communities and countries by innovating and creating jobs. They also, universally, face unique challenges, as female entrepreneurs often see their businesses as intertwined with familial relationships and responsibilities that are deeply affected by how they manage a work-life balance.
What types of support are best for entrepreneurs in wealthy economies versus developing or emerging countries? Do gender-related personal problems, such as emotional stress and time management, affect entrepreneurs differently in different countries?
Kai-Yu Wang
Department Research Award Winner for Marketing, International Business and Strategy
How companies should decide what language to use in advertising
Advertisers know how important it is to communicate the right message in the right
format to the right audience. If a company is advertising a foreign product or service, which language should they choose for their advertisement: the language of the company or of the target market?
Dirk De Clercq
Department Research Award Winner for Organizational Behaviour, Human
Resources, Entrepreneurship and Ethics
What it takes to be a successful entrepreneur in an emerging economy
Entrepreneurs play a big part in their country’s success, especially in emerging countries.
What does it take to start your own company in an emerging economy? Is it important
to have a high household income? Do you need formal education?
Maxim Voronov
Goodman Distinguished Researcher of the Year
Creating wine evangelists
Many people like the products they buy. But some people go beyond mere liking, and become enthusiastic advocates. Think of Apple, which has many consumers, bloggers, and media critics who rave about its trend-setting phones. These “product evangelists” voluntarily publicize the company and endorse its products. Many firms would love to create such evangelists among their customers, reviewers, and retailers. But how?
Kareen Brown
Goodman Untenured Researcher of the Year
Managing operations to manage earnings
Research has shown that businesses sometimes choose accounting policies to make themselves look good. A firm may change how it counts inventories, or when it reports sales. These “earnings management” choices make a company’s results appear better on paper, without affecting its underlying business.
Jingyu (Jennifer) Li
Department Research Award Winner for Accounting
Ethical Business Practices Benefit Firms and Investors
Business ethics is a topic we often see in the news. Some of these stories describe corporations becoming more socially responsible. They reduce pollution or treat their employees better. Other stories instead highlight the latest corporate scandals. But does ethical or unethical behaviour matter from a financial perspective?
Anteneh Ayanso
Department Research Award Winner for Finance, Operations, and Information Systems
Competing to be found online: payment versus popularity
Type a phrase like “truck tires” into a web search site like Bing or Google. The software will quickly find and display related links, beginning with “sponsored” links paid for by retailers. But how does the software choose which of those paid links to put first?
Narongsak (Tek) Thongpapanl
Department Research Award Winner for Marketing, International Business and Strategy
Should retail web sites be fun or functional?
Online retailing is big business, with global annual sales exceeding $1.4 trillion. However, only about 2.5 per cent of visitors to retail web sites actually purchase anything. To convert more visitors into buyers, retailers are investing in website improvements. By making sites both more fun and more functional, they hope to appeal to as many shoppers as possible.
Dirk De Clercq
Department Research Award Winner for Organizational Behaviour, Human Resources, Entrepreneurship and Ethics
Why are some family businesses more innovative than others?
Being innovative is a challenge for many businesses, but especially for those that are family operated. In those firms, managers are also relatives. Their personal and professional relationships overlap, for better or for worse.
Dirk De Clercq
Goodman Distinguished Researcher of the Year
Supporting innovation under adversity
Companies like Google and 3M encourage employees to spend part of their workweek on projects of their own choice. The firms realize that entrepreneurial workers often discover new products and processes. But employees elsewhere may not have this flexibility.
Sohyung Kim
Untenured Researcher of the Year
Do investors like bankruptcies?
When investing, we generally expect low returns from low-risk stocks and high returns from high-risk stocks. Investors concerned about safety put their money into low-risk companies. Other investors prefer the high-risk ones, where they may win big, or lose big. But in 1998, financial researchers noticed an anomaly.
Kareen Brown
Department Research Award Winner for Accounting
Paid to leave and paid for honesty
Severance packages are controversial because they can encourage executives to take undue business risks. But do they influence executives in other ways? Do packages encourage CEOs to inflate reported profits, to boost the value of the payouts? Or do they encourage accurate reporting by making CEOs more secure in their jobs?
Anteneh Ayanso
Department Research Award Winner for Finance, Operations, and Information Systems
Paying to be found online
“Sponsored search advertising” is popular with retailers and provides the largest revenue source for search engines. Are any retailers more efficient than others at sponsoring search ads? If so, what factors explain that efficiency?
Narongsak (Tek) Thongpapanl
Department Research Award Winner for Marketing, International Business, and Strategy
Global e-commerce needs trust and confidence
U.S. researchers have studied how user-friendliness and usefulness impact online shopping. Both features encourage American consumers to feel good about e-commerce and buy online. But do those relationships hold outside U.S.? Or are they culturally dependent?
Dave Bouckenooghe
Department Research Award Winner for Organizational Behaviour, Human Resources, Entrepreneurship, and Ethics
Ethical leadership boosts employee performance
It’s nice to have a boss who is honest and trustworthy, and who encourages you to be that way too. But does it actually help you do your job? And if so, how?