They come to the Carroll School of Management with a breadth of scholarly passions ranging from the meaning of work to the valuation of stocks and the vagaries of data. And for the past couple of months they鈥檝e been bringing their passions and insights into classrooms and conversations. They are the Carroll School鈥檚 newest tenure-track faculty members鈥攖aking their places in the departments of Accounting, Finance, Information Systems, Management and Organization, and Operations Management. Here鈥檚 a look at each of the new assistant professors.
Lyndon Garrett
Management and Organization
Lyndon Garrett鈥檚 research focuses on a particularly profound question in management and organizations鈥斺�渢he challenge of humanizing the experience of work,鈥� as he puts it.
Specifically, he examines how organizations cultivate positive relationships, which in turn can 鈥渕ake work and life more meaningful and energizing.鈥� His pursuit of this question has taken him inside a variety of workplaces鈥攔anging from hospital ICUs to sports teams and theatre casts鈥攚here he has interviewed and observed many in the course of their work. His findings have appeared with coauthors in influential management publications such as the听MIT听Sloan Management Review.
鈥淚 study relationships at work because relationships are what give my life meaning. And my relationships with students are central to what makes this work meaningful,鈥� says Garrett, whose Ph.D. is from the University of Michigan鈥檚 Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
鈥淚 passionately believe that it is essential to model the principles of positive organizing in the way the classroom is constructed,鈥� he adds. 鈥淚 try to use the classroom as a living laboratory to empower students to build exceptional teams and form high-quality connections. When students experience what it is like to form high-quality connections in the classroom, they carry this image with them into the workplace as a replicable model.鈥�
Ben Yost
Accounting
Ben Yost鈥檚 doctoral dissertation鈥攁t the MIT Sloan School of Management鈥攆ocused on how corporate decisions by CEOs are influenced by their own personal tax incentives.
In particular, he found that CEOs are more averse to corporate risk when they have substantial stock holdings in the firm and are reluctant to sell those holdings because of the capital gains tax they鈥檒l have to pay. On the other hand, when capital gains taxes are lowered, the top executives are more likely to sell their stocks, diversify their holdings鈥攁nd take on more corporate risk.
Clearly, the assistant professor has found his scholarly stride, but Yost wants his students to know something about him. 鈥淧robably like some of them, I struggled for some time to figure out what career I wanted to pursue, switching through three different majors in college and working in industry for several years before following an academic career,鈥� he explains. 鈥淓ventually I found that being a business school professor was a good match for me鈥攊t offered the right balance between theory and practical thinking.鈥�
He adds that research 鈥渒eeps me excited about teaching,鈥� and 鈥渢eaching reminds me to think about corporate concepts from a more practical perspective.鈥� That is, from the perspective of future CEOs and leaders now studying at the Carroll School of Management.
Xuan Ye
Information Systems
As a scholar, Xuan Ye鈥檚 work has straddled the border between information systems and economics, especially labor and organizational economics. Her research has turned light on such questions as the extent to which digital employees value learning鈥攁nd are willing to take jobs that pay somewhat less if the work offers them opportunities to learn new tech skills.
As a teacher, she uses the insights gained from working on research projects related to recruitment issues in tech firms. She鈥檚 learned about the importance of analytical and reasoning skills in the new economy, and she makes it a priority to help strengthen these skills among her students.
鈥淚 try to cultivate a classroom environment where students feel comfortable raising questions and challenging the instructor鈥檚 ideas,鈥� says Ye, who received her Ph.D. from the Stern School of Business at New York University.听Ye鈥檚 findings have been featured in听, and another paper听is听under revision for听Management Science.
Rawley Heimer
Finance
鈥淢y students should know that I think finance provides many benefits to society. You can study finance with the intention of improving people's lives,鈥� says Rawley Heimer, who received his Ph.D. in 2013 from Brandeis University before spending four years as a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Heimer鈥檚 point is underscored by his scholarly research, which focuses generally on financial services used by households. One stream of his research throws light on how online social networks often give people what he describes as 鈥渄istorted beliefs鈥� about investments, leading to costly financial errors. Another stream deals especially with disadvantaged households. He鈥檒l look, for example, at how public policy and decisions by politicians influence the availability of consumer credit.
鈥淢y research has a strong influence on my teaching,鈥� Heimer adds, pointing to the mistakes people make with their personal finances. 鈥淪ome of these mistakes relate closely to the sorts of challenges that students can have when learning new material.鈥� He鈥檚 ready when that happens.
Curtis Chan
Management and Organization
People often speak of a desire to find greater 鈥渕eaning in my work,鈥� but what exactly do they mean when they say this? For Curtis Chan, who earned his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Harvard University, meaningful work is 鈥渁 lot of things.鈥� These include what he describes as 鈥渁n intensely personal journey and aspiration, an ongoing accomplishment, and an object of gratitude.鈥�
Discovering meaning in one鈥檚 work is not easy. 鈥淚t often takes effort and reflection, personal space and self-compassion,鈥� says Chan. He finds that meaningful work thrives on gratitude, which also doesn鈥檛 come easily but can be cultivated. Chan specializes in qualitative research studies, which has led him to study people in a variety of occupations including security screeners at the Transportation Security Administration and consultants at a strategy consultancy. His studies have appeared in听Administrative Science Quarterly听and the听Academy of Management Annals.
Nan Liu
Operations Management
鈥淚n today鈥檚 data-rich environment, managers are not suffering from lack of data, but lack of useful data,鈥� says Nan Liu, an operations researcher and data scientist by training. 鈥淚 challenge students to look for useful data and leverage these data to make good decisions driven by sound models.鈥�
Liu comes to the Carroll School from the faculty of Columbia University鈥檚 Health Policy and Management Department. In the classroom, he sees himself as 鈥渁 catalyst to stimulate the exchange of knowledge and innovative ideas among students.鈥� As a researcher, he focuses on operations management issues in healthcare, retail, transportation, and other service industries. He looks in particular at how to match service capacity with fluctuating customer demand.
David H. Solomon
Finance
David Solomon says he is deeply interested in how people 鈥渁ctually behave, not just how they should behave if they鈥檙e acting rationally in accordance with standard finance models.鈥� The applicable field is behavioral finance, and his research stands at the intersection of psychology and financial markets.
鈥淚鈥檓 interested in how investors think about their portfolios, and what impact this has on trades and prices,鈥� says Solomon, who has taught for the past eight years at the University of Southern California鈥檚 Marshall School of Business, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago鈥檚 Booth School of Business. 鈥淚鈥檝e studied the way investors do things like compare gains and losses, seek out dividend streams, and overreact to recent corporate disclosures. I鈥檓 also interested in the mechanics of how information gets transferred and how this affects markets, including things like media publications and in-person meetings.鈥�
Undoubtedly he gets a chuckle out of students when he draws a playful connection between his ancestry and his chosen field. He鈥檚 Australian, descended from one of the many British citizens transported to the old penal colonies there for petty crimes (larceny, in the case of Solomon鈥檚 ancestor). He quips: 鈥淲ith this ancestral background in theft, it was only natural that I鈥檇 gravitate toward finance.鈥�
Part of Solomon鈥檚 research deals with how investors and others follow their intuition for better or worse. It鈥檚 a focus that helps him with both research and teaching, he says: 鈥淯nderstanding this intuition helps me figure out where markets can get things wrong, and also how to better explain concepts to people so they hopefully can learn their way out of the mistake.鈥�
Beth Schinoff
Management and Organization
How do employees form friendships at work? And why do these relationships have the power to make employees loyal to their jobs, regardless of whether they like what they do? Those are a couple of the questions that draw the scholarly eye of Beth Schinoff, who received her Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Arizona State University.
Schinoff says she seeks to better understand how employees nurture positive relationships at work, and how these relationships influence their experiences within the organization. The research carries over into her teaching.
鈥淚 teach through the lens that everything in organizations occurs in the context of relationships. The more that we understand the people and relationships around us, the more we can successfully navigate organizational life,鈥� Schinoff explains. 鈥淎nd as someone who studies positive relationships at work, I strive to form such relationships with each of my students. I also work hard to create a classroom environment in which students can forge them with one another.鈥�
Vincent Bogousslavsky
Finance
Vincent Bogousslavsky is primarily interested in asset pricing and 鈥渕arket microstructure,鈥� a research domain that seeks to understand the economic forces that affect trades and prices. In his current work, he is investigating why some stocks tend to perform better than others, looking in particular at how stock returns accrue over the trading day and overnight.
His findings have been going against standard asset pricing theory, which suggests that returns should accrue gradually over the day. 鈥淚n contrast, I find that, for some stocks, returns are concentrated at specific times of the day, such as right before the close or during the overnight period,鈥� says Bogousslavsky, who received his Ph.D. from the Swiss Finance Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland. The higher returns overnight, for example, are explained often by traders who are reluctant to hold stocks after the markets close. They tend to sell lower at that time.
Bogousslavsky鈥檚 approach to teaching is very similar to his research approach. 鈥淲hen giving a lecture, I encourage students to be critical of the material as I am in my own research projects,鈥� he says.
William Bole is Senior Writer and Editor at the Carroll School.
Photography by Gary Gilbert.