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

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:

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