I’m pleased to announce the 2021 recipients of the Mendoza Mission Research Award, an annual recognition of Mendoza research papers that exemplify the College’s imperative to “Grow the Good in Business.” This year, six papers were chosen from nominations submitted across the six academic departments and nearly all of our major research areas:

Matt Bloom, Research Professor of Management & Organization; “Stories of Calling: How Called Professionals Construct Narrative Identities” (Administrative Sciences Quarterly, 2020). The paper explored how people find deeply meaningful work by studying people who experience their work as a life's calling. The findings provide insights into how people find a calling, and how they are able to sustain this deep connection to their work over long periods of time.

Yixing Chen, Assistant Professor of Marketing; “Improving Cancer Outreach Effectiveness Through Targeting and Economic Assessments: Insights from a Randomized Field Experiment” (Journal of Marketing, 2020). What should health care institutions do to boost cancer screening rates while saving more money for the health care system? Combining machine learning and a large-scale field experiment, this NIH-sponsored study develops a personalized outreach program that can simultaneously improve liver cancer screening rates by up to 24 percentage points and return on outreach program by up to 96%.

Zach Kowalski, Assistant Professor of Accountancy; “Can Ethics Be Taught? Evidence from Securities Exams and Investment Adviser Misconduct” (Journal of Financial Economics, 2020). In 2010, the investment adviser qualification exam reallocated coverage from the rules and ethics section to the technical section. Comparing advisers with the same employer in the same location and year, the research found those passing the exam with more rules and ethics coverage are one-fourth less likely to commit misconduct.

Sophie Shive, Viola D. Hank Associate Professor of Finance, and Margaret Forster, Teaching Professor of Finance; “Corporate Governance and Pollution Externalities of Public and Private Firms” (Journal of Financial Studies, 2020). The number of U.S. publicly traded firms has halved in 20 years. How will this shift in ownership structure affect the economy's externalities? Using comprehensive data on greenhouse gas emissions, the paper finds in part that independent private firms are less likely to pollute and incur EPA penalties.

Daewon Sun, Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations; “Responsible Sourcing Under Asymmetric Information: Price Signaling versus Supplier Disclosure” (Decision Sciences Journal, 2020). This paper studies a firm’s responsible sourcing decision, along with the optimal strategy to communicate that decision to uninformed consumers. The results imply that stakeholders, such as governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), should focus on both improving market transparency, by encouraging firms to make their suppliers more visible, and promoting socially conscious consumption among consumers.

Katie Wowak, Associate Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations; “The Influence of Female Directors on Product Recall Decisions” (Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2020). The paper investigates if adding female directors to a firm’s board of directors changes whether and how quickly the firm recalls defective products. The research found that compared to firms with all-male boards, those that have female directors announce high severity recalls 28 days faster or a 35% reduction in recall timing. They also find that for low severity recalls, which can be hidden from regulators, firms with female directors announce 120% more recalls, in comparison to a firm that has no female directors.

Research plays a critical role in advancing our academic reputation. My congratulations to these faculty members for their significant contribution to Mendoza’s research excellence and for their research that sheds light on how business can be used to advance the common good.

These researchers as well as those from last year will be invited to share their research in an event to honor the research and to celebrate how research can help advance our imperative to “Grow the Good in Business.”

In Notre Dame,

Ken

Ken Kelley, Ph.D.
Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research 
Edward F. Sorin Society Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations