Our faculty members continue to publish new research at a robust pace across all disciplines, a key contribution to our academic excellence. I’m pleased to recognize the following Mendoza faculty members for their recently published or forthcoming research:
Sandra Vera-Muñoz
Deloitte Foundation Department Chair of Accountancy and Associate Professor of Accountancy
Deloitte Foundation Department Chair of Accountancy and Associate Professor of Accountancy
"Communicating Assurance Using Practitioner-Customized Procedures: An Experiment and Emerging Research Opportunities;" forthcoming in Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
We use a policy-testing experiment based on actual assurance reports on greenhouse gas emissions to elicit report users’ confidence judgments from combinations of assurance report attributes deemed important by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) in revising the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000R for nonfinancial assurance services. Our results indicate that practitioner-customized procedures as the basis for communicating assurance may induce an information credibility communication gap because users of assurance reports prepared under ISAE 3000R do not appreciate the incremental assurance provided by assurance procedures identified as important by the practitioner.
Rafael Zambrana
Assistant Professor of Finance
Assistant Professor of Finance
"Competition and cooperation in mutual fund families;" published in the Journal of Financial Economics
This research gives insight into how the contractual incentives of portfolio managers and the overall structure of incentives at the investment advisor those managers work for, affect the performance, risk, and strategy of the investment vehicles they manage. We find evidence consistent with a separating equilibrium, where some management companies encourage cooperation among their managers and are more likely to engage in coordinated behavior (e.g., cross-trading), while others encourage competition and generate higher-performing funds, but greater performance dispersion across funds.
Corey Angst
Professor of ITAO
Professor of ITAO
"Too Good to Be True: Firm Social Performance and the Risk of Data Breach;” forthcoming in Information Systems Research
Data breaches are now a daily occurrence. What corporate leaders may not realize is that certain actions they are taking in the social responsibility space may in fact be placing a proverbial target on their backs. Indeed, there is evidence that the hacking community is not homogenous and at least some hackers from both internal and external sources appear to be motivated by what they dislike, as opposed to solely financial gain. In this paper, we find support for the idea that espoused positive social performance in areas that are peripheral to core business operations (e.g., philanthropy, recycling programs) can be a detriment to information security, particularly when firms have simultaneous high levels of social concerns.
John Busenbark
Assistant Professor of Management & Organization
Assistant Professor of Management & Organization
"Divided We Fall: How Ratios Undermine Research in Strategic Management;" published in Organizational Research Methods
Since firms vary dramatically in their characteristics, empirical business researchers tend to standardize focal variables by transforming them into ratios (e.g., ROA, market-to-book, R&D intensity, etc.). In our research, we find and illustrate that the types of analytic models business scholars incorporate in their research are unable to detect accurate relationships between variables when either of them is a ratio. We argue this is problematic, particularly considering that nearly 80% of published empirical research in top management journals employed ratios, often times to make recommendations about variables that influence firm performance.
Vamsi Kanuri
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Assistant Professor of Marketing
"When Consumption Regulations Backfire: The Role of Political Ideology;" published in the Journal of Marketing Research
Significant safety and health issues related to product consumption plague the United States and other countries around the world. To curb these issues, public policymakers frequently enforce consumption regulations. This research investigates why such regulations may backfire and how public policymakers can increase the effectiveness of the consumption regulations.
I’m thankful to all of our faculty for their many efforts in support of the University’s core mission of teaching and research, and congratulate them on their success with these publications.
In Notre Dame,
Martijn