From the Dean's Desk

New Organization Structure

Dean Martijn Cremers

Dean Martijn Cremers

Monday, 24 July 2023
Many of you have had the opportunity to hear about the organizational changes being put in place at Mendoza during the two recent “staff town halls.” I appreciate the good attendance at each session and encourage staff to attend the follow-up Q&A session tomorrow at 2:30 PM.
Today, I want to highlight several developments I mentioned in my opening remarks.
We started the process of reorganizing College staff three years ago when we introduced the “matrix” structure, which was an effort to better integrate our work functions within the graduate degree programs. This past April, I asked Rob Kelly, Kara Palmer and Ryan Retartha to lead a comprehensive review of the staff structure to identify opportunities for improvement, especially as the College has seen significant growth in a number of important areas.
Their review included a staff survey that consistently identified internal communication, collaboration across teams and functions, and identifying overlaps across functions and programs as key areas of improvement. They further held a series of well-attended workshops and had 35 meetings with individuals. 
Also at this time, the extensive feedback I had received as part of the reappointment review process reinforced the need to revisit our organizational structure and for me personally to focus more on strategy and less on operations and administration, prioritizing academic matters and our development efforts. That realization combined with the findings of the extensive organizational review led to the resulting structure, which you can view here.
Most notably, the new structure includes two new senior leadership roles, which report directly to me:
Rob Kelly has accepted the position of Chief Operating Executive responsible for overseeing all staff leaders and operational functions. Additional roles at the senior leadership level, which report directly to Rob, include: 
  • Senior Director of Student Experience. Kara Palmer will assume this role, with oversight of Student Services, Academic Operations, Experiential Learning and Program Management.
  • Senior Director of Graduate Career and Alumni Relations. John Rooney will direct Career Coaching and Development, Employer Relations, Alumni Relations and Advisory Board Relations.
  • Senior Director of College Operations. Tracy Biggs has accepted this role, which manages Mendoza IT, Human Resources, Finance, Facilities, Events, Administrative Support and Faculty Support.
  • Senior Director of Marketing & Communications. This is an open position that will oversee a combined Marketing and Communications team, including Portfolio Marketing Management, Communications, Marketing Technology, Operations and Analytics, Content Marketing and Paid Media.
  • Senior Director of Graduate Enrollment. This also is an open position that will manage Admissions Pipeline, Admissions Operations, Recruiting, Admissions Partnerships and Onboarding.
Ryan Retartha will serve as the Dean’s Advisor and Senior Director of Strategy and Planning. This new role will drive our institutional strategic planning initiatives, oversee a team of Strategy Specialists to support both our faculty and staff leaders, and directly support my most important areas of focus as Dean.
We’ve already begun to implement the new structure and plan to have it in place by early fall semester. Rob will provide more details in an upcoming Mendoza Exchange column.
I believe this organizational structure will lead to better communications and stronger collaborations among our teams and help us in advancing Mendoza to be the College we aspire it to be – a place of learning that can adapt to meet the changing needs of our students and the global business community. I’m grateful for the strong participation of so many of you who took the time to provide feedback and suggestions, as well as to Rob, Kara and Ryan for their leadership in this project.
I also want to share my own excitement and enthusiasm as I embark on my second five-year term as dean. I’m honored that University leadership has trusted me to continue to lead the progress we’ve made, and particularly to implement our strategic plan, and I’m very grateful for your dedication to Mendoza and Our Lady’s University. 
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

'H' to 'A'

Dean Martijn Cremers

Dean Martijn Cremers

Monday, 10 July 2023
Today, I am glad to share the exciting news that we recently finalized a gift agreement that will allow us to proceed with the construction of a new building in the north courtyard of the main Mendoza buildings; i.e., in between the Kelly and McGlinn wings. The three-story addition will add nearly 20,000 square feet of classroom space, team/seminar rooms, a large student lounge designated for undergraduate students, as well as faculty and staff offices to our current building. We expect to break ground in 2025.
The most significant feature of the addition will be a large auditorium to be used primarily for teaching foundational undergraduate courses. The mostly flat design means that students are never far from the front of the room — or the professor — to make the classroom experience more engaging. Its larger capacity allows us to teach more students and expand access to our Foundations courses to more non-business majors.
We’ve made great strides in the past few years to advance the College as a leading business school guided by our Catholic identity, including our new Ph.D. programs, an increase in the size of our faculty, growth in our master’s programs and the revised Undergraduate Business Core, to name a few developments. This new building is another major step toward achieving the College’s strategic goals, particularly in providing our students with an unsurpassed educational experience and giving us more space to grow our faculty and staff.
I close with a heartfelt thanks to the many of you who have demonstrated a spirit of patience, flexibility and collaboration as we have made adjustments to manage significant space constraints. This includes those who have served on project teams to figure out complex office moves and those who have had to make an office move (sometimes more than once!) to accommodate growth in the College.
Finally, I want to thank Natalie Sargent and Patrick Brennan who were instrumental in securing the gift to make the addition possible, and of course, I am very grateful to the benefactor family, who wishes to be unnamed at this time, for their incredible generosity.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

Research Roundup

Dean Martijn Cremers

Dean Martijn Cremers

Monday, 12 June 2023
I hope you are having a great summer. After a brief pause in activity after graduation, the College is busy again as several of our graduate programs are getting underway. My thanks to all of you involved in orientation last week. I enjoyed seeing MBA students running around campus for the scavenger hunt!
We also recently received the exciting news that Notre Dame has been selected for inclusion in the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of the nation’s leading public and private research universities. This is a significant milestone in being recognized as a preeminent research institution. You can read more about the distinction in the University’s press release.
On that note, here is a selection of our latest research recently published in top academic journals:
Craig Crossland, Professor of Management & Organization
Joanna Campbell, Research Affiliate in Management & Organization
The Background on Executive Background: An Integrative Review (Journal of Management)
This study reviews several decades of research on the topic of executive background, defined here as the total of an executive's “experience, knowledge, and education.” The researchers consider work from both management and non-management sources and from both macro and micro sources within management. Their review of 216 published empirical articles is structured around a series of widely studied executive background characteristics and categories, including tenure, functional background, knowledge and education, outsider/insider status, other professional experiences, and experiences outside the workplace.
Andrew Imdieke, Assistant Professor of Accountancy 
Does the Presence of an Internal Control Audit Affect Firm Operational Efficiency? (Contemporary Accounting Research)
This study finds that small firms with internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR) audits have higher operational efficiency than small firms without ICFR reports, regardless of underlying internal control strength. The effect manifests through improvements in inventory turnover and innovation, and through increased relative product market share. The results provide additional evidence on the ongoing cost and benefit debate of ICFR audits for small firms which is especially important given recent SEC regulatory amendments that exempt additional small firms from ICFR audits.
Shijie Lu, Howard J. and Geraldine F. Korth Associate Professor of Marketing
The Ripple Effect of Firm-Generated Content on New Movie Releases (Journal of Marketing Research)
This paper studies how firms should promote new products on social media using data from the movie industry. By analyzing 145,502 firm-generated and 5.9 million user-generated Twitter posts associated with 159 movies, the authors find a positive and significant ripple effect of firm-generated content (FGC) on movie sales; that is, FGC increases movie-related UGC, which then drives consumption. This finding suggests that movie executives should focus on creating FGC that sparks conversations among followers when new movies are released.
Stefano Pegoraro, Assistant Professor of Finance
Incentives and Performance with Optimal Money Management Contracts (Journal of Political Economy)
Stefano theoretically studies the optimal compensation contract between a money manager with uncertain investment skill and a principal who owns capital. The principal increases the manager’s pay-performance sensitivity after a good performance in order to delegate more capital to a manager with higher perceived skill, thus implementing a convex pay-for-performance scheme. Expected pay-performance sensitivity declines over time to mitigate ex-ante investment distortions.  The research also provides a methodological contribution to solve dynamic contracting models with state variables.
Daewon Sun, Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Contracting Mechanisms for Stable Sourcing Networks (Manufacturing & Service Operations Management)
The research focuses on the problem faced by the iron ore industry, i.e., purchasers of iron ore, such as steel manufacturers, who typically obtain ore from a relatively small set of mining companies. Daewon and co-authors study profit allocation for a sourcing network, in which a buyer takes the lead in forming the sourcing network and designing the contract mechanism, due to their substantial bargaining power, and the suppliers take the lead in determining the terms of the contract.
Thank you to Craig, Joanna, Andy, Shijie, Stefano and Daewon for your hard work and contributions to the College’s research reputation.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

In Gratitude

Dean Martijn Cremers

Dean Martijn Cremers

Tuesday, 30 May 2023
As announced last week, the provost has extended my appointment as dean for a second five-year term, which will run through June 2029. I am humbled by the reappointment and grateful for the provost’s and the College’s support.
I especially want to thank the members of the review committee for their service: Mike Crant (chair), David Arndorfer (student member), Robert Battalio, Jeff Burks, Mary Flannery (Arts & Letters), Shankar Ganesan, Randy Kozel (Law School), Kirsten Martin and Maura Ryan (provost’s representative).
Thanks also to the many of you who took the time to offer helpful, constructive feedback during the review process, including both positive feedback and several challenges. The positive changes in the past four years include the increased strength and size of our faculty, the launch of the doctoral programs in Analytics and Management, the launch of the Business Honors Program, growth in our master’s programs, the increased flexibility in our undergraduate program with new double majors, increased openness of our undergraduate curriculum to non-business majors, enlarged financial resources and improved facilities.
Through these and other accomplishments, I believe we have strongly positioned the College for the future and to better meet the needs of our students, while remaining faithful to the University’s Catholic mission and identity.
I acknowledge that these changes have brought challenges, especially the disruption caused by the transition to the new undergraduate core requirements and the comprehensive reorganization of the graduate programs into the matrix structure. The process of implementing these significant changes was imperfect. I certainly have learned from the mistakes I made along the way and remain committed to working with the faculty and staff most affected by the new Business Core curriculum and to continue reviewing and improving the College’s organizational structure.
I’m excited and hopeful about the future of the College, and fully dedicated to our mission and vision as formulated in the strategic plan that we launched last fall. Looking ahead, we will continue to prioritize the six goals in this strategic plan:
  • Elevate the quality and quantity of impactful research with relevance to business and society.
  • Provide an unsurpassed educational experience that contributes to the formation and preparation of undergraduate students who will meaningfully contribute to the world.
  • Elevate our flagship MBA program while offering a strategic portfolio of specialized graduate programs that are distinctively mission-centric, are market-relevant, leverage faculty strengths and contribute to Mendoza's advancement.
  • Develop an innovative curriculum and formative experiences that integrate the business disciplines with the perspective of the human person, preparing students to contribute, cooperate and compete in an ever-changing society.
  • Attract, hire, develop and retain a diverse, world-class faculty and staff who advance our mission and extend our vision.
  • As a community of students, faculty and staff in pursuit of excellence, cultivate an engaged, caring and inclusive culture informed by the University's Catholic mission.
I am truly thankful to work with such exceptional, engaged colleagues and to be able to continue furthering the mission and vision of the College, in service of the University, to advance the human community through growing the good in business. As always, this is a mission that we fulfill together and I welcome your ideas and insights as we move forward.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

Research Roundup and Faculty Retirements

Dean Martijn Cremers

Dean Martijn Cremers

Monday, 22 May 2023
Today’s column serves two purposes – to highlight a number of our faculty members for their papers recently published or accepted by top academic journals and to offer gratitude to four professors who will retire this year. 
Our latest published research includes:
Sarv Devaraj, Fred V. Duda Professor of Business (ITAO)
Impact of Working Capital on Firm Performance: Does IT Matter? (Journal of Operations Management)
The researchers examine investments in Information Technology (IT), that allow firms to optimize the working capital–firm performance relationship by helping to either automate (i.e., use technology to increase the speed and accuracy of process execution) and/or informate (i.e., use technology to create new information). Using proprietary IT data and based on a sample of 1,054 US-based manufacturing firms, the paper finds that IT investment positively moderates the performance effects of inventory, payables and receivables cycles, and that these moderating effects vary by the type of IT investment, namely IT infrastructure and IT labor.
Tim Hubbard, Assistant Professor of Management & Organization
Conducting Phenomenon-Driven Research Using Virtual Reality and the Metaverse (Academy of Management Discoveries)
This paper makes the case that virtual reality (VR) — as a methodological platform — is ideal for conducting empirical research in business. It discusses the capabilities of VR technology, its potential to study poorly understood phenomena and its applications in various management subfields. The paper discusses the near-limitless research opportunities offered by VR and provide recommendations and pitfalls to consider when using VR as a research platform.
Peter Kelly, Assistant Professor of Finance
Benjamin Golez, Associate Professor of Finance
Horizon Bias and the Term Structure of Equity Returns (Review of Financial Studies)
The research defines horizon bias as the degree to which individuals are more optimistic at long horizons relative to short horizons. Consistent with the intuition from a stylized present value model, the researchers find that periods of above-average horizon bias are associated with negative term premiums, whereas periods of below-average horizon bias are associated with positive term premiums.
Kirsten Martin, William P. and Hazel B. White Center Professor of Technology Ethics
Are Algorithmic Decisions Legitimate? The Effect of Process and Outcomes on Perceptions of Legitimacy of AI Decisions (Journal of Business Ethics)
This study sought to answer, “Under what circumstances, if any, are algorithmic decision-making systems considered legitimate?” The research finds robust governance, such as offering an appeal process rather than mere notice, can create a legitimacy dividend for decisions with bad outcomes. However, companies cannot overcome the legitimacy penalty of using arbitrary or morally dubious factors, such as race or the day of the week, with a good outcome or an appeal process for individuals.
Joe Urbany, Professor of Marketing
Competition and the Regulation of Fictitious Pricing (Journal of Marketing Research)
The authors develop a descriptive model explaining why the practice of fictitious reference pricing persists despite FTC guidelines and explore potential regulatory solutions. They propose that disclosing the true normal price charged may be the most effective solution and present propositions about the likely effects of requiring firms to disclose recent selling prices, outlining benefits and challenges associated with this requirement.
Hal White, Vincent and Rose Lizzadro Professor of Accountancy
Spillover Effects of Mandatory Portfolio Disclosures on Corporate Investment (Journal of Accounting & Economics)
The researchers find that investment sensitivity to stock price declines for firms with significant ownership held by actively managed funds that have to disclose their portfolio investments more frequently. The effect is concentrated among firms that are (i) owned by funds with larger expected proprietary costs and (ii) more likely to learn from the information in price. The results suggest that portfolio disclosure requirements for money managers have spillover effects on corporate investment by curtailing corporate managers’ opportunities to learn from their firms’ stock price.
The faculty members who are transitioning to emeritus status this year collectively represent 136 years of teaching and research excellence:
Chao-Shin Liu, associate professor of Accountancy, joined Notre Dame in 1998. Chao won numerous teaching awards during his tenure and published research in the area of market reactions to public information.
Ram Ramanan has served as a professor of Accountancy since 1991. Ram taught both financial accounting and managerial accounting and received several teaching awards, including the “Outstanding Teacher” award in the MBA and Executive MBA programs.
Tom Stober, associate professor of Accountancy, joined the University in 1995. His expertise is in financial statements analysis, accounting-based valuation models, financial accounting and reporting, and capital markets. A CPA, he also previously served as the department’s assistant chair.
Jim Wittenbach, professor of Accountancy, takes the longevity prize – Jim joined Notre Dame in 1972! His many recognitions include the James Dincolo Outstanding Undergraduate Professor, the Master of Science in Accountancy Outstanding Professor Award and the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence. As a scholar, his research focused on the practical application of income tax laws while emphasizing the way the laws could influence personal and organizational behaviors.
Thank you to Chao, Ram, Tom and Jim for your remarkable service to Our Lady’s University. Please join me in wishing them all of the best in their retirement.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn

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