Management News: June 2025

Venkataramani Named UMD Distinguished Scholar Teacher

Vijaya Venkataramani, Dean’s Professor of Leadership and Innovation, was named a university-wide 2024 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award recipient. She shared her “Exploring Workplace Creativity and Innovation” lecture with UMD leaders. She shared research insights on how social networks, team dynamics and leadership influence innovation, emphasizing the importance of inclusivity and psychological safety. Read more

Gupta and Wang Named to Thinkers50 Hall of Fame

Endowed Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang, MBA ’95, were inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame. The recognition places the pair in an “elite group of thinkers whose work has had a profound and lasting influence on the world of management.” Read more

Life Sciences Expert Joins Smith 

Wendy Sanhai, PhD, MBA, and a member of the Smith School Advisory Board, has been appointed Visiting Professor of Practice in the Department of Management and Organization. She is also Smith’s Outreach Ambassador, where she leads strategic initiatives with private industry, federal and state agencies, and other external stakeholders. Read more

Shapiro Wins Academy of Management’s Decade Paper Award 

Debra Shapiro received an Academy of Management Learning and Education “Decade Paper Award” for co-authoring “Scholarly Impact: A Pluralist Conceptualization,” which garnered more citations than any other academy publication in that journal in the past 10 years. Read more

Smith Researchers Track AI Jobs

Professors Anil K. Gupta, Siva Viswanathan and Kunpeng Zhang and PhD student Hanwen Shi lead UMD-LinkUp AI Maps, launched in 2024 as the world's first tool for mapping the creation of jobs requiring artificial intelligence skills. Their latest findings show that ChatGPT is fueling a surge in AI jobs. Read more

Agarwal Recognized for Mentoring PhD Students

The Strategic Management Division of the Academy of Management selected Rajshree Agarwal, the Rudolph Lamone Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, for its Outstanding Educator Award. She is recognized for her long-term commitment to and expertise in educating strategy doctoral students. Read More

Ding, Shapiro and Lee Win Research Award

Associate Professor Waverly Ding, Dean’s Chair in Organizational Behavior Debra Shapiro and Hyeun Lee PhD ’20 captured the Strategic Management Society’s Best Video Abstract Award 2024 for a visual interpretation of their research, “Are Entrepreneurs Penalized During Job Searches? It Depends on Who is Hiring.” Read more

Students Help Toyota Mobility Foundation Make Moves

Clinical professor Nicole Coomber and executive-in-residence Ab Krall guided master’s in management students in collaborating with the Toyota Mobility Foundation this spring to apply problem-solving frameworks, explore business expansion and thematic innovation for TMF’s Mobility Unlimited Hub. Read more

New Professor Joins Management and Organization Department

Alyssa Tedder-King joins the faculty for Fall 2025 as a new PhD from the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. Her research focuses on workplace allyship and inclusion. Her forthcoming paper in Organization Science addresses ‘Women’s Complaints of Workplace Abuse Get Ignored More Than Men’s,’ as summarized in Harvard Business Review. Read more

Strategic Management Journal 
Harvard Business Review

Assistant Professor Reuben Hurst shows that flat hierarchies can discourage women applicants, including “women tend to perceive flatter organizations as more difficult to fit into, burdening them with a heavier workload, and offering fewer career advancement opportunities.” READ MORE

Does a Theory-of-Value Actually Add Value?
Organization Science

Rajshree Agarwal, the Rudolph Lamone Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, shows theoretical reasoning adds value to entrepreneurial decision making. She and nine co-authors conducted a field study in the “uncertain, resource-constrained environment” of Tanzania, with agribusiness entrepreneurs in separate training programs. The group applying theory-and-evidence-based decision-making “made more coordinated changes—aligning both core and operational elements of their business models,” find the researchers. READ MORE

History is Core Framework in Strategy Research
Strategic Management Journal

Dean’s Professor of Entrepreneurship Brent Goldfarb and associate professor David A. Kirsch, with Smith PhD graduate Sandeep Pillai, make a case for history as a core methodological framework in strategy research. The Academy of Management describes the work as “a rallying cry for scholars to embrace historical methods—not as supplementary tools, but as a scientific framework central to uncovering deeper truths in strategic research.” READ MORE

How Passion Drives or Derails Team Innovation
Personnel Psychology

Hui Liao, the Long Jiang Endowed Chair in Business, reveals how passion drives or derails team innovation—that obsessive passion in teams can stifle innovation by hindering reflection and flexibility. In contrast, the study shows that harmonious passion promotes team reflexivity and fosters greater innovation. READ MORE

When Groups Lack Diversity, Size Matters for Whether People Notice
Organization Science

Studying the demographic composition of S&P 1500 corporate boards, assistant professor Aneesh Rai shows larger homogeneous groups tend to diversify, underscoring the need for inclusive practices even in small teams—for leaders “to recognize that potential blind spot and act accordingly.” READ MORE

The Keys to Success for Advocating for Social Justice on the Job
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Debra Shapiro, the Dean's Chair in Organizational Behavior and Clarice Smith Professor of Management, examines factors for effective social justice advocacy in the workplace, including “both the empathy and credibility of the appeal are higher when the person receiving it feels they are similar to the advocate.” READ MORE

How Cities Can Attract Remote Workers and Keep Them
Organization Science

Associate Professor Evan Starr shows how cities can attract remote workers and keep them, from studying a Tulsa, Okla. relocation program offering $10,000, co-working space and community connection activities to get remote workers to move to Oklahoma and stay. Since 2018, the program has drawn more than 3,000 people—attributable to its focus on helping subjects to engage and embed in a community-and-or school system. READ MORE

Why Employees Stay Silent When They See Warning Signs of Problem
Journal of Applied Psychology
Harvard Business Review

Dean's Chair of Organizational Studies Subra Tangirala and PhD graduate Hyunsun Park address challenges posed by ambiguous threats to employees speaking up in the workplace. Summarizing the work in Harvard Business Review, they explain “Why Employees Stay Silent When They See Warning Signs of a Problem.” READ MORE

When Territorial Managers Stifle Innovation, Fostering Connections to the Organization Helps
Organization Science
MIT Sloan Management Review

Vijaya Venkataramani, Dean’s Professor of Leadership and Innovation, and Professor Rellie Derfler-Rozin address why territorial managers stifle innovation — and what to do about it. READ MORE

Why Great Ideas Die on Managers’ Desks—and How to Save Them
MIT Sloan Management Review

Vijaya Venkataramani, Dean’s Professor of Leadership and Innovation, and Professor Emerita Kathryn Bartol show why great ideas die on managers’ desks — and how to save them. Highly unusual ideas—the kind that may generate extraordinary rewards—are also the kind that may scare managers, they find. The solution: Rethink and reshape managers’ advice networks. READ MORE

Startups That Will Relocate Internationally Get More Funding
Strategic Management Journal

High-profile startups frequently relocate internationally, with funding sources being the biggest relocation predictor, according to associate professor David Waguespack. His team analyzed a database of about 76,000 firms—originating from 147 countries—that received at least one round of venture capital funding between 2002 and June 2022. Regardless of destination, emigrating firms raise an average of $60 million in venture capital—more than three times the average of non-emigrating firms. READ MORE

Bloomberg: Evan Starr contributes to “FTC’s Noncompete Ban Got Struck Down. What Happens Next?”

CBS Evening News: Evan Starr comments, from his research in “Maryland City Offers Remote Workers $20,000 to Relocate to Once-Booming Manufacturing Hub.” Related: New York Times cites Starr’s work in “Can Remote Workers Reverse Brain Drain?” 

CNN: Rajshree Agarwal comments in “Elon Musk is One of Illegal Immigration’s Harshest Critics. He Once Described his Past Immigration Status as a ‘Gray Area.’” 

Computerworld: Clinical Professor Oliver Schlake weighs in extensively in “Beyond the Office: Preparing for Disasters in a Remote Work World.”

MarketWatch (via MSN Money): David Kirsch and Brent Goldfarb comment in “What Nvidia Investors Can Learn From the Roaring 1920s and the Radio Bubble.”

National Geographic: David Kirsch contributes to “The Forgotten History of New York’s First Electric Taxi Fleet—in the 1800s.”

Politico’s E&E News: David Kirsch comments in “The Post Office is Switching to EVs. Will Trump Allow it?”

Wall Street Journal: Vijaya Venkataramani co-authors “Companies Like to Pit Internal Teams Against Each Other. Bad Idea” – based on her scholarly work published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Wall Street Journal: “How the AI Talent Race Is Reshaping the Tech Job Market” quotes Anil K. Gupta and draws from UMD-LinkUp AI Maps. Related: Axios, “Where the AI Jobs Are,” and CNN, “It’s America’s Fastest-Growing Job – Thanks to ChatGPT.”