I am very much looking forward to the University Chair Lecture Series featuring Ahmed Abbasi at 3 p.m. on May 1 in the Jordan Auditorium. Ahmed, the Joe and Jane Giovanini Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations and the co-director of the Human-centered Analytics Lab (HAL),  will present his 20-year career studying machine learning and AI, briefly highlight several real-world cases and discuss ongoing HAL research that is pondering important policy questions such as, "Is responsible AI impossible AI?" The presentation will help us all better understand human-centered AI. A reception will follow. I hope you will attend!

I’m pleased to highlight our latest research  published in top academic journals:

Zhi Da, Howard J. and Geraldine F. Korth Professor of Finance
Uncovering the Hidden Effort Problem (Journal of Finance)
Zhi and his co-authors use minute-by-minute Bloomberg online status and study the effort provision of executives in public corporations. While executives spend most of their time doing other activities, patterns of Bloomberg usage allow the researchers to characterize their work habits as measures of effort provision. They document a positive effect of effort on firm performance and also revisit agency issues that have received attention in the prior academic literature.

Kristen Ferguson, Assistant Professor of Marketing
The Mobile Giving Gap: The Negative Impact of Smartphones on Donation Behavior (Journal of Consumer Psychology)
While charities typically use the same messaging when appealing to consumers on their smartphones and PCs, this approach may backfire. This research finds that consumers are less likely to donate on their smartphones (vs. PCs), a phenomenon the authors call the mobile giving gap. Their findings across three lab and field experiments suggest that charities are leaving money on the table by using a one-size-fits-all strategy for all forms of online giving.

Tim Hubbard, Assistant Professor of Strategic Management
Competition and Constituents’ Polarization Online (Journal of Management)
Society's polarization shapes online engagement with organizations, particularly regarding identity-relevant events like competitions. Analyzing engagement among college football followers, the research examines how individuals who identify with the organization engage differently than those who dis-identify with the organization.  The study demonstrates that polarized constituents react to organizational events through identity-based mechanisms rather than objective evaluations of performance. The multi-method manuscript includes one of the first online psychophysiological studies in the stakeholder management domain.  

Yoonseock Son, Assistant Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Kaitlin Wowak, Robert & Sara Lumpkins Associate Professor of Business Analytics
Corey Angst, Jack and Joan McGraw Family Collegiate Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Gender Mismatch and Bias in People-Centric Operations: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment (Journal of Operations Management)
In an increasingly digital world, understanding how gender bias manifests is imperative. In partnership with an online platform offering weight management programs and consultation services, this study shows that revealing the consultant’s gender encourages customers to leave more reviews and higher ratings, with the impact more pronounced when the consultant is female. Gender mismatches, where the client and consultant are of opposite genders, result in higher ratings and increased engagement compared to gender matches. 

Lauren Vollon, Visiting Assistant Professor of Accountancy
The Capital Market Effects of Centralizing Regulated Financial Information (Accepted at Journal of Accounting Research)
Vollon and his co-authors use the introduction of digital storage and access platforms for regulated financial information (Officially Appointed Mechanisms, or OAMs) in the EU to study the capital market effects of information centralization. They show that the implementation of OAMs resulted in significant market liquidity improvements by reducing investors’ processing costs. Importantly, they document that information spillovers between focal and peer firms are a mechanism through which the positive capital market effects arise.

Thank you to Zhi, Kristen, Tim, Yoonseock, Katie, Corey and Lauren for your research contributions.

In Notre Dame,

Martijn

I’m pleased to announce a new policy for high-performing researchers that is truly historic for the College. For the first time, Mendoza will be offering our tenured faculty the opportunity to take paid research leaves — commonly known as sabbaticals — to focus on research and faculty development.

While this news directly applies to our tenured faculty, it affects the College as a whole. By providing more time for highly productive scholars to conduct intense and uninterrupted research, we are investing heavily in elevating our research culture, which is one of our top strategic priorities. 

The sabbatical policy will help us to be even more productive in publishing research in top-tier outlets. As we compete with our aspirational peers to attract, develop, and retain top scholars — all of our aspirational peers already have sabbaticals as standard practice — we will improve our standing as thought leaders. In so doing, we will be even more competitive with other highly ranked business schools. We thus seek to attract more top scholars to be part of the research culture within Mendoza.

Sabbaticals are a privilege and not an entitlement, and will be subject to the discretion of the administration of Mendoza on a case-by-case basis. To be eligible, tenured faculty members must meet all of the following criteria: 

1. Have been a Notre Dame faculty member for at least seven years.
2. Have not been granted a sabbatical leave under this policy in the previous seven years.
3. Have accumulated sufficient article acceptances in top-tier outlets since the previous sabbatical leave granted under this policy. 
4. Have provided sustained high-quality teaching.
5. Have provided sustained laudable service to the University.

A faculty member will not be responsible for teaching or involvement in University, College or departmental service (typically 20% of a tenured faculty member's role) while on the research leave. Thus, the faculty will have 100% of their time during the academic year to devote to research, upskilling, retooling and such development activities. 

We expect that relatively few of the eligible tenured faculty will be on sabbatical at the same time since the College must maintain the optimal functioning of the academic departments. During the initial rollout, the highest priority will be given to tenured faculty with the most research success during the previous six calendar years. Additionally, priority will be given to those whose application for a sabbatical is accompanied by strong justification for research advancement.

Mendoza sabbaticals are only available to tenured faculty; the sabbatical policy does not apply to teaching or other types of faculty. (Other types of faculty leaves not related to research include FMLA, primary caregiver and parental leave. More information about the University’s faculty leave policies can be found here.) 

To apply for a sabbatical, eligible faculty members should provide a written request to Ken Kelley, the senior associate dean for faculty and research, summarizing their research plans for a sabbatical leave before July 1 of the year that precedes the academic year in which the sabbatical would be taken. Sabbatical leaves may be granted two or more academic years in advance.

Ken is responsible for approvals of all sabbaticals, subject to the additional approval of the leave from the Office of the Provost per the Academic Articles, and will work with the relevant department on timing. As stated above, sabbaticals are not guaranteed and are fully subject to the discretion of Mendoza’s administration on a case-by-case basis with consideration of funding availability and teaching needs. Please contact Ken for the additional details of the Mendoza Sabbatical Policy.

I’m grateful to those who helped with the creation of the sabbatical policy, especially Ken, as well as the department chairs and members of the College Council, the faculty governing body that formally sanctioned the policy. 

In Notre Dame,

Martijn

I am glad to share some recent research papers that our faculty published in top academic journals:

Ahmed Abbasi, Joe and Jane Giovanini Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
John Lalor, Assistant Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Kezia Oketch, Ph.D. in Analytics Student
Should Fairness be a Metric or a Model? A Model-based Framework for Assessing Bias in Machine Learning Pipelines (ACM Transactions on Information Systems)
Fairness is a crucial challenge in AI. However, fairness measurement currently involves metrics that consider disparities for a single protected attribute or group. Existing metrics don’t work well in many real-world applications of machine learning (ML), where imperfect models are applied to data with multiple protected attributes in a broader process pipeline. This leads to inconsistencies in fairness metrics between upstream representational harms and allocational harms in downstream policy/decision contexts. The authors propose FAIR-Frame, a model-based framework for parsimoniously modeling fairness across multiple protected attributes in a holistic ML environment. FAIR-Frame’s representational fairness measures have the highest percentage alignment and lowest error with allocational harm observed in downstream applications. The researchers’ findings have important implications for various ML contexts, including information retrieval, user modeling, digital platforms and text classification, where responsible and trustworthy AI are becoming an imperative.

Nicholas Berente, Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Sriram Somanchi, Assistant Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Do Crowds Validate False Data? Systematic Distortion & Affective Polarization (MIS Quarterly)
The paper examines how socio-cognitive influences can systematically distort crowdsourced ground truth in event-centric data through subgroups. The researchers conducted an immersive experiment to investigate whether crowd consensus can be systematically distorted by subgroup-based socio-cognitive influences, such as affective polarization. In the experiment, raters from various subgroups with varying levels of affective polarization were asked to view and validate crisis data from a violent public riot in 2020. Relying partly on double/debiased machine learning techniques, the research analyzes heterogeneous treatment effects across subgroups. The results show that affective polarization and more extreme raters, via the constructs of loyalty and betrayal, distort consensus-based ground truth in different ways.

Yixing Chen, Assistant Professor of Marketing
The Value of Safety Training for Business-to-Business Firms (Journal of Marketing Research)
Business-to-business suppliers invest in safety training programs believing that such programs mitigate safety hazards, prevent workplace injuries, and create value for their customers. However, causal evidence of these effects is sparse.  Leveraging proprietary data from a global oil field services company, a safety training regulation in New York City, and a conjoint experiment of procurement professionals, we underscore safety training as an important risk-mitigation vehicle that also has positive implications for business-to-business buying decisions.

Stephannie Larocque, Notre Dame Associate Professor of Accountancy
On the Informativeness of Unexpected Exclusions from Street Earnings (Contemporary Accounting Research)
The paper investigates the unexpected exclusions from street earnings that are revealed after earnings are reported. The researchers find that unexpected exclusions represent a mix of transitory and recurring items and are informative about future profitability, particularly when firms meet or beat analysts’ street forecasts but not their GAAP forecasts. The findings are consistent with recurring earnings amounts being opportunistically shifted to excluded items to meet or beat benchmarks.

Adam Wowak, Viola D. Hank Associate Professor of Management & Organization
John Busenbark, Mary Jo and Richard M. Kovacevich Associate Professor of Management & Organization
Why Do Some Conservative CEOs Publicly Support Liberal Causes? Organizational Ideology, Managerial Discretion, and CEO Sociopolitical Activism (Organization Science)
CEOs are increasingly choosing sides in societal debates, despite the obvious risk of alienating stakeholders. Even more puzzlingly, conservative CEOs sometimes espouse liberal stances in such debates, which runs counter to the otherwise consistent evidence that CEOs are guided by their ideologies in their actions. The study addresses this paradox by examining the antecedents of CEO liberal activism with an emphasis on the interplay between the CEO’s ideology and the prevailing ideological tilt of the employee population. In short, the research finds that a pronounced organizational ideology constrains a CEO’s ability to act in accordance with their own values.

Rafael Zambrana, Assistant Professor of Finance
Ben Golez, Associate Professor of Finance
Friendly Investing and Information Sharing in the Asset Management Industry (Journal of Accounting and Economics)
The researchers study whether asset managers act as friendly shareholders of brokerage firms to gain privileged investment information. They find that mutual funds are more likely to hold and overweight stocks of their broker parent companies and side with management in contested votes. They also find that fund performance improves with the extent of such friendly investing. The performance improvement stems from trading the stocks of the broker's clients.

Thank you to Ahmed, John L., Kezia, Nick, Sriram, Yixing, Stephannie, Adam, John B., Rafael and Ben for your work.

I also wish you a blessed Holy Week and a joyful Easter. Pope Francis’ Easter message described the season of Lent as “a season of conversion, a time of freedom” and as an occasion to rediscover God’s promise: 

“It is time to act, and in Lent, to act also means to pause. To pause in prayer, in order to receive the word of God, to pause like the Samaritan in the presence of a wounded brother or sister.” 

May this be a blessed time for you and your families.

In Notre Dame,

Martijn