Rotman School Research Articles

An Interactive Spreadsheet Model for Teaching Classification Using Logistic Regression

We present an interactive spreadsheet that supports teaching essential concepts in classification using the logistic regression (LoR) model for binary classification. The interactive spreadsheet demonstrates the capabilities of LoR by integrating computation with visualization. Students will reinforce concepts like probabilities, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), and the use of likelihoods to optimize parameters for the LoR. We then discuss using LoR for classifications while adjusting its decision boundary (DB), demonstrating how to convert assigned likelihoods into classification using the DB; impact classification outcome by varying DBs; designate predictions as true positive, true negative, false positive, or false negative; and determine the classification accuracy. We use a variety of performance measures, including sensitivity, specificity, precision, negative predictive value, F1 and F2 scores, the receiver operating characteristics curve, and lift/decile charts. These measures are dynamically adjusted when the DB changes. We also reiterate the usage of these measures in the context of crossvalidation and imbalanced data sets. We provide a case study that implements LoR and an option for teaching the details behind MLE. We discuss the pedagogical aspects of this spreadsheet based on a survey of the 2022 student cohort in the Master of Management Analytics Program at the Rotman School of Management.

Using Integrative Thinking Techniques to Design Integrated care Programming in Ontario, Canada

Integrated Care connects care providers across sectors and often from different agencies or organizations to deliver more effective, efficient and client centered care. Creating new or redesigned programs to achieve these goals typically requires new care models delivered by a range of providers who have varying experiences and mental models about what is required for effective care. Effective care designs must also consider factors such as variations in populations, available services, and resources. Thus, creating care models for integrated care can be challenging, creating conflicts that can undermine efforts to arrive at effective delivery models. Ontario Health Teams (OHTs), a new model for integrating care, launched in staged cohorts across the province in 2019, are developing new population health-focused care delivery models for specified target populations, and, eventually, for the 15 million people of Ontario, Canada. OHT leaders and staff come from a variety of agencies with varying care models, and, in some cases, limited prior collaborations with a mandate to integrate service delivery. Leaders in each OHT can design services to fit local needs, and their performance will be assessed on specified metrics. To assist in the design of new care models that meet patient needs and support providers from multiple and different agencies, a team from the ADVANCE program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto have used Integrative Thinking approaches to help leaders to select and combine elements of opposing care designs to create more effective strategies for integrated care. Integrative Thinking is an innovative method developed by Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel that helps decision-makers to reframe decisions by shifting efforts away from seeking compromises among competing approaches, and, instead helps decision-makers to identify the core elements of each potential model and then reassemble these components into a new, even better design. Integrative Thinking thus helps decision makers combine seemingly competitive solutions into a stronger option through a carefully structured, facilitated process. This presentation will describe the methods used for Integrative Thinking within the context of integrated care, and home care programming specifically, to better serve local populations in different care environments.
 

The Promises and Perils of Corporate Purpose

Corporate purpose is taking off as a concept within both the corporate world and management academia. Despite many bold pronouncements by companies about pursuing purpose and not just profits, evidence suggests that these are often decoupled from real action on social and environmental issues. In this essay, I grapple with a number of questions that arise for scholars and practitioners given the state of the field. Is the lack of progress intentional such that corporate purpose is just a power grab for firms to protect their influence and profits? Is making the business case for corporate purpose just part of this power grab? Stepping back, what is corporate purpose anyway? Additionally, how does it relate to trade-offs across stakeholders? Who counts as a stakeholder? How can we account for value distribution along with value creation? How can we conceptualize the firm if we take purpose seriously? What would it mean to decenter the firm (and center the stakeholders) in the practice of corporate purpose? What governance structures are needed to enact corporate purpose? Additionally, what are the implications for a new model of decentered leadership? There are not a lot of answers yet, but this review of recent research in the domain spots many excellent clues and paths for future progress.History: This paper has been accepted by Matt Kraatz for the Strategy Science Special Issue on Corporate Purpose.Funding: The Michael Lee-Chin Institute for Corporate Citizenship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto provided financial support for the author’s research in this domain.

Overseeing the dynamic materiality of ESG risks: The board's role

Journal of Applied Corporate FinanceEarly View ORIGINAL ARTICLE Overseeing the dynamic materiality of ESG risks: The board's role Norman T. Sheehan Pro., Corresponding Author Norman T. Sheehan Pro. [email protected] Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Correspondence Norman T. Sheehan, Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N5A7, Canada. Email: [email protected]caSearch for more papers by this authorHan-Up Park Pro., Han-Up Park Pro. Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, CanadaSearch for more papers by this authorRichard C. Powers Pro., Richard C. Powers Pro. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaSearch for more papers by this authorSarah Keyes CEO, Sarah Keyes CEO ESG Global Advisors, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, CanadaSearch for more papers by this author Norman T. Sheehan Pro., Corresponding Author Norman T. Sheehan Pro. [email protected] Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Correspondence Norman T. Sheehan, Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N5A7, Canada. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorHan-Up Park Pro., Han-Up Park Pro. Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, CanadaSearch for more papers by this authorRichard C. Powers Pro., Richard C. Powers Pro. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaSearch for more papers by this authorSarah Keyes CEO, Sarah Keyes CEO ESG Global Advisors, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, CanadaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 May 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/jacf.12551Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

Model-Free Assortment Pricing with Transaction Data

We study the problem when a firm sets prices for products based on the transaction data, that is, which product past customers chose from an assortment and what were the historical prices that they observed. Our approach does not impose a model on the distribution of the customers’ valuations and only assumes, instead, that purchase choices satisfy incentive-compatible constraints. The uncertainty set of potential valuations of each past customer can then be encoded as a polyhedral set, and our approach maximizes the worst case revenue, assuming that new customers’ valuations are drawn from the empirical distribution implied by the collection of such polyhedra. We study the single-product case analytically and relate it to the traditional model-based approach. Then, we show that the optimal prices in the general case can be approximated at any arbitrary precision by solving a compact mixed-integer linear program. We further design three approximation strategies that are of low computational complexity and interpretable. In particular, the cutoff pricing heuristic has a competent provable performance guarantee. Comprehensive numerical studies based on synthetic and real data suggest that our pricing approach is uniquely beneficial when the historical data has a limited size or is susceptible to model misspecification. This paper was accepted by Omar Besbes, revenue management and market analytics. Funding: This work was supported by the Rotman School of Management (TD-MDAL Research Grant) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [Grants RGPIN-2015-06757, RGPIN-2020-04038, RGPIN-2020-06054, RGPIN-2021-04295]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4651 .

Locational strategy: Understanding location in economic geography and corporate strategy

Research SummaryDrawing on key concepts from management theory, corporate strategy, and economic geography, we argue that the time has come for “Locational Strategy.” Locational strategy is a framework for understanding how the locational decisions of organizations fit into broader corporate strategy. Locational strategy is particularly relevant given rise of knowledge and talent as key factors of productions and the fact that these inputs are so clustered in space. We lay out several principles to guide further work in this area, and briefly anticipate the role for locational strategy in the post‐pandemic economy. Such an approach is well suited to the study of the sprawling modern firm, the footloose geography of talent, and the hyper‐competitive field of regional economic policy.Managerial SummaryManagement needs to consider locational strategy as a key element of broader corporate strategy. This is because location and firm location decisions are ever more central to firm strategy. We review key ideas from the academic literature that bear on how managers can get the best access to talent, knowledge, and customers. Access to talent and embeddedness in complex knowledge systems is a defining feature of Locational strategy over and above simple input cost concerns. Furthermore, firms need to consider the actions and reactions of jurisdictions as they decide how to locate and deploy resources across in places across the world. Management training typically does not feature the geographic considerations of location strategy. The authors have refined their approach while teaching students in their course on The City and Business in the MBA program at the University of Toronto's Rotman School.

New Insights into Moral Psychology

The present symposium brings together a group of experts in moral psychology and organizational behavior to explore questions such as: What are the antecedents to (i) the development of a particular moral belief and (ii) the assigning of moral sacredness to an object (papers 1 and 2, respectively)? How can we best predict whether an individual will engage in a given moral behavior (paper 3)? What prompts individuals to judge (i) the spreading of falsehoods as more or less ethical and (ii) individuals in their ingroup who choose to cooperate with outgroup members on behalf of their ingroup (“intergroup brokers”) as ethical or unethical (papers 4 and 5, respectively)? Are individuals willing to have honest conversations with others about others’ (im)morality, and if not, why (paper 6)? We believe that a better understanding of moral psychology and how it relates to individuals’ belief formation, judgments of others, and moral conversations is critical when trying to Create a Better World Together. The Antecedents to Moralization: The Head, The Heart, and The Hands Presenter: Samantha Kassirer; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Presenter: Isaac Smith; Brigham Young U. Collective Transcendence Beliefs Shape the Sacredness of Cultural Objects Presenter: Siyin Chen; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Presenter: Rachel Lise Ruttan; U. of Toronto Presenter: Matthew Feinberg; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management The Conceptual and Empirical Value of Bivalent Moral Judgments Presenter: Hajin Kim; Stanford U. Presenter: Julian Jake Zlatev; Harvard Business School Presenter: Dale T. Miller; Stanford U. It Might Become True: How Prefactual Thinking Licenses Dishonesty Presenter: Beth Anne Helgason; London Business School Presenter: Daniel A. Effron; London Business School The Immorality of Boundary Spanning: Social Sanctioning of Intergroup Brokers Presenter: Adiel Moyal; Stanford Graduate School of Business Presenter: Dafna Goor; London Business School Presenter: Nir Halevy; Stanford U. Understanding the Reluctance to Deliver Moral Feedback Presenter: Yena Kim; U. Of Chicago Presenter: Emma Levine; U. Of Chicago

When and How Are Allies Promoters of Social Change? An Examination of Allyship in the Workplace

Allies have played instrumental roles in efforts to address inequity in society. In the wake of civil unrest triggered by the shooting deaths of unarmed Black people, the brutalization of Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, and state legislatures passing laws that seek to reduce voting and women’s rights, the supportive action taken by allies is gaining attention once again. This year’s Academy of Management Conference theme “Creating a Better World Together” is a call to action for scholarship that provides insight into how organizations can anticipate and solve these important societal challenges. Yet, despite management scholars suggesting allyship is an effective way to create organizational change, the literature on allyship is still quite scarce. This symposium includes a collection of papers that examines open research questions pertaining to allyship including: who or what entities are able to engage in allyship behavior, why those actors choose allyship, and when (i.e., which contexts) support allyship. Following the presentations, Denise Lewin Loyd, a major contributor to research in the field of diversity and inclusion, will serve as our symposium’s discussant. Together, we hope that this symposium will provide important insights into how to create meaningful change in organizations through allyship. LEAP at Work: Examining the Effects of Race-Based Allyship Training in the Workplace Presenter: Stephanie J. Creary; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Tianna Shari' Barnes; U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Ozias Moore; Lehigh U. Institutional Allyship, a Ritual of Recovery Presenter: Tiffany Dawn Johnson; Georgia Institute of Technology Presenter: Juanita Kimiyo Forrester; Mercer U. Presenter: Natasha Denise Reed; Georgia Institute of Technology Bursting the Bubble of Performative Allyship: How Moral Performance Compromises Inter-Group Learning Presenter: Karren Kimberly Knowlton; Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Presenter: Rachel Arnett; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Who’s Expected to be an Ally? An Examination of Allyship and Leadership Evaluations Presenter: McKenzie Preston; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Angelica Leigh; Fuqua School of Business, Duke U. Presenter: Terrance L. Boyd; Louisiana State U. Presenter: Richard Burgess; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Presenter: Vic Marsh; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Practice What You Preach: Performative Allyship in Organizations’ Support for Racial Equity Presenter: Roxanne Ross; James Madison U. Presenter: Horatio Traylor; U. of Houston Presenter: Enrica Nicole Ruggs; U. of Houston

Increasing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Organizations

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated social inequality within the U.S. As a result, many organizations have attempted to increase the gender and racial/ethnicity diversity of their organizations to potentially help reduce social inequality. The papers in this symposium test assumptions regarding various diversity efforts to examine the effects of these efforts on organizational perceptions and on people’s feelings of inclusion and belonging. The first paper investigates the effectiveness of asking applicants to provide diversity statements to see whether asking for these statements increases the diversity of applicants/hires and signals to applicants that the organization values equity, diversity, and inclusion. The second paper explores how disclosure of employee diversity data influences impressions of organizations. The third paper investigates concerns that dominant group members may have towards organizational diversity efforts and explores ways to garner support from dominant group members for diversity efforts. Finally, the fourth paper explores how structured evaluation processes may increase employees’ perceptions of inclusion and belonging within organizations. Together, the papers in this symposium provide insights into how managers can potentially increase diversity, equity, and inclusion within organizations. Exploring the Effects of “Personal EDI Statements” on Applicants and Organizations Presenter: Joyce He; U. of California, Los Angeles Presenter: Grusha Agarwal; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Presenter: Sonia Kang; U. of Toronto Disclosing Workforce Diversity Data Increases Perceptions of Progress (Even When There Isn’t Any) Presenter: Evan P. Apfelbaum; MIT Sloan School of Management Presenter: Eileen Y. Suh; Boston U. Questrom School of Business We Need You! Diversity Messages That Enlist Dominant Group Members in Diversity Efforts Presenter: Kaylene McClanahan; U. of California, Los Angeles Presenter: Hannah Birnbaum; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Presenter: Margaret Shih; U. of California, Los Angeles Structured Evaluations Processes Increase Employees’ Perceptions of Inclusion and Belonging Presenter: Aeroelay Chyei Vinluan; Harvard Business School Presenter: Erika Kirgios; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Edward Chang; Harvard Business School

Connections Between Stakeholder Governance and Corporate Governance

Scholarly work in strategy and corporate governance is increasingly converging to explore the implications of firms moving beyond the shareholder-centric governance modes towards stakeholder governance approaches that consider the interests of a broader set of heterogeneous stakeholders. This shift calls for new thinking in at least two core areas of strategic management: (i) the conceptualization of a firm’s fundamental function of creation and distribution of economic value within a stakeholder governance set-up, and (ii) the rules and patterns of organizing that underpin the enfranchisement and identification of stakeholder interests. In this symposium, we propose to engage in conversations that cut across work in stakeholder theory, corporate governance and social issues in management to advance further research on these important topics. The symposium will open with introductory keynote comments by two prominent scholars in the field, it will continue with four paper presentations, and it will conclude with a brief question-and-answer session with the audience. The ensuing discussion is envisioned to help advance both conceptual and empirical work at the intersection of novel, stakeholder-centric forms of governance. We also hope to shed light on promising areas for further research that leverages both novel approaches to theory and explores new empirical settings. Introductory keynote remarks Presenter: Ruth V. Aguilera; Northeastern U. Introductory keynote remarks Presenter: Joseph T. Mahoney; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Just Strategizing A Decision-Based Theory of Stakeholder Governance Presenter: Sergio Giovanetti Lazzarini; Insper Institute of Education and Research The Strategic Reconfiguration of Cross-Sector Interactions Presenter: Aline Gatignon; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Polycentric Governance Among Stakeholders in Low-Income Communities Presenter: Leandro S. Pongeluppe; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Stakeholder Governance and the Institutional Environment Presenter: Sinziana Dorobantu; NYU Stern School of Business

Geography and Strategy in Developing Countries

Geography plays a central role in firms’ strategic choices. Deciding where to locate operations and employees, as well as whether to move or not, can have critical performance implications. At the same time, a growing literature in strategy shows that conditions in developing economies often necessitate different firm strategies. This raises an important question at the intersection of these literatures: how do choices about geography shape firm strategy in developing economies? In this symposium, we explore this new area of research through a set of cutting edge studies, each of which examines a different way in which geography and firm strategy interact in developing economies. Our discussant, Professor Lamar Pierce, will build on these presentations and his own expertise on firm strategy in Africa to synthesize and critique the studies. Following this, the host will encourage a lively debate about how geography matters for strategy and organization theory in developing economies. Location, Gendered Constraints and Business Performance Presenter: Solene Delecourt; Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Employee Work Novelty and Communication in a Hybrid Remote Workplace Presenter: Tarun Khanna; Harvard U. Presenter: Kyle Schirmann; Harvard Business School Presenter: Christos Makridis; MIT Sloan School of Management The Impact of Capital Constraints on Strategic Misconduct Presenter: Fulton C. Eaglin; Harvard Business School Won’t you be my neighbor? Geography, networking, and entrepreneur performance in Togo Presenter: Stefan Dimitriadis; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Presenter: Rembrand Michael Koning; Harvard Business School

Practical Applications of Factor Investing Using Capital Market Assumptions

In <b><i>Factor Investing Using Capital Market Assumptions</i></b>, from the January 2022 quantitative special issue of <b><i>The Journal of Portfolio Management</i></b>, three Canadian researchers—<b>Redouane Elkamhi</b> and <b>Marco Salerno</b> of the <b>Rotman School of Management</b> at the University of Toronto and <b>Jacky Lee</b> of the <b>Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan</b>—present a factor investing methodology far less complicated and expensive than existing practices by making use of publicly available capital market assumption reports. Most factor investing strategies require access to large databases and use costly proprietary mathematical models. In the hope of making factor investing possible for a wider range of investors, the team identified three macroeconomic factors that appear to be embedded in publicly available reports on capital market assumptions (CMAs): the rate of economic growth, the real interest rate, and the rate of inflation. Using these macroeconomic factors, they calculate asset class returns closely aligned to those in the CMAs. They then devised a formula to calculate the factor sensitivity of a sizable group of publicly traded asset subclasses, as well as a separate formula to price private assets. In addition, they developed a formula to reconcile their target factor weights with a portfolio that is built with constraints on diversification and risk.

Cultural Production and Reception

This symposium aims to challenge existing knowledge and develop new insights on how the reception (i.e., evaluation and consumption) of cultural goods shape its production by bringing leading scholars in the study of creative industries. Our symposium brings together cutting-edge research investigating the mechanisms by which audiences and evaluators of cultural goods facilitate or alter producers’ production strategies. We use different disciplinary lenses from economic sociology to social psychology to expand and deepen our understanding of the relationship between the field of reception and the field of production of cultural goods and contribute to the development of this emerging literature. We believe this symposium will generate an insightful discussion and fuel further inquiry into the role of audiences and evaluators in shaping cultural production. Where do innovations come from? Diversity & innovation in popular music, 1958-2016 Presenter: Khwan Kim; INSEAD Presenter: Noah Askin; INSEAD The stickiness of category labels: Audience perception and evaluation of change in creative markets Presenter: Greta Hsu; U. of California, Davis Presenter: Balazs Kovacs; Yale School of Management Presenter: Amanda Sharkey; U. Of Chicago Art on demand: Managing the tension between art and commerce in the “Porcelain Capital” of China Presenter: Siyin Chen; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Presenter: Chen-Bo Zhong; U. of Toronto Presenter: Marlys K. Christianson; U. of Toronto Revisiting exclusionary practices: How honorary organizations affect creative production Presenter: Daphné Baldassari; U. of Toronto

Field Experiments in Social Networks and Entrepreneurship

A significant body of research has shown that social network position and structure are important for entrepreneurship. Networks impact both an entrepreneur’s decision to pursue an idea and the performance of their business by stratifying people’s access to information, resources and contacts. However, many open questions remain regarding how entrepreneurs' networks come to be that are essential for conceptualizing the relationship between networks and entrepreneurship. This symposium makes progress on this with six presentations on how decisions or strategies employed by potential entrepreneurs during the early ideation stage influence how their networks evolve and the success of their ventures. These papers show the importance of factors like training, individual behaviors, relational matching and demographics in enabling or constraining entrepreneurs' ability to construct a productive network and extract value from that network. In addition, as social networks research is often beset by endogeneity concerns, these papers all use field experiments to study network dynamics in entrepreneurship. Social Skills Improve Business Performance: Evidence from an RCT with Entrepreneurs in Togo Presenter: Stefan Dimitriadis; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Presenter: Rembrand Michael Koning; Harvard Business School The Value of Commitment for Strategic Decision-Making: Evidence from UK Micro-Entrepreneurs Presenter: Chiara Spina; INSEAD Presenter: Elena Novelli; Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) Networking and Entrepreneurial Success: The Role of Self-Regulation in the Network Referral Process Presenter: Jacqueline Lane; Harvard U. Presenter: Jeffrey T Polzer; Harvard U. Presenter: Karim R. Lakhani; Harvard U. How Do Organizational Collectivism and Individualism Impact Student Teams’ Performance? Presenter: Zhuoxuan Li; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Presenter: Anyada Assavabhokhin; U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor Presenter: Charles Eric Eesley; Stanford School of Engineering Consider the Learner: Can Entrepreneurs Identify Sources of Advice? Presenter: Ethan Poskanzer; Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Gender Gap in Financing and Third-Order Inference: Experimental Evidence from Turkey Presenter: Salman Alibhai; World Bank Presenter: Solene Delecourt; Stanford GSB Presenter: Aletheia Donald; World Bank

‘His’ and ‘Her’ Career: Exploring the Unexpected Consequences of Gendered Stereotypes

Although women are still overall more likely to experience career disadvantages relative to men at work, empirical analyses have shown how socialized and cultural expectations about gender in work settings can produce positive and negative career outcomes for both genders. This symposium offers novel insights on the conditions under which gender stereotypes can help or hinder careers in unexpected ways. Specifically, we bring together a set of five papers that examine how cultural beliefs about gender, gendered differences in social tie formation, and the gender composition of teams and organizations can positively and negatively influence the career trajectories of men and women. Identifying these consequences of gender stereotypes serves as a starting point for finding practical ways to promote gender equity and improve working conditions for both men and women throughout professional organizations. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot: Gender Differences in Networks & Performance Following Mobility Presenter: Evelyn Ying Zhang; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Presenter: Brandy Aven; Carnegie Mellon U. The Help-Seeking Paradox: Gender and the Effects of Career Re-Entry Assistance Presenter: Julia Lee Melin; Stanford U. A Fatherhood Penalty? Examining Fatherhood and Promotion Time in the Workplace Presenter: Maima Aulia Syakhroza; Cass Business School Presenter: Ming De Leung; U. of California, Irvine Distributions that Divide: Structural Predictors of Gender Pay Inequality Presenter: Mabel Abraham; Columbia Business School Presenter: Youjin Jenna Song; Columbia Business School Gender, Team Composition, and Career Attainment in Organizations Presenter: Elizabeth Linos; U. of California, Berkeley Presenter: Sanaz Mobasseri; Boston U. Questrom School of Business

Business or Fairness Case for Social Issues? Influencing Stakeholders in Organizations

Achieving diversity within the workplace remains a challenge for organizations, yet many are trying to convey their commitment to diversity through diversity statements, in which they justify why they value diversity. The most popular of these messages, the “business case for diversity”, claims that organizations should value diversity because it is instrumental to organizational goals, in contrast to the less prevalent “fairness/moral case for diversity”, which emphasizes moral and social justice principles. This symposium will question the untested assumption in current organizational approaches to diversity that the business case for diversity is the most effective rhetoric to promote diversity in the workplace. The first paper provides evidence that the targeted audience’s demographics are of paramount importance to predict whether a business or moral case for diversity will be most convincing. The second, third and fourth papers show that business case diversity statements undermine underrepresented group members’ sense of belonging in, and attraction to organizations using them, generate performance-contingent support for diversity, deteriorate diversity attitudes, increase bias in hiring and promotion decision-making, and decrease people’s ability to detect organizations’ lack of diversity. Finally, the fifth paper shows that organizations’ instrumental use of diversity elicits indifference to diversity, suggesting that this approach may undercut the very value on which organization intend to capitalize. Finally, the discussant, Professor Dobbin, will integrate the insights from these works into a discussion of the pitfalls of organizations’ instrumental approaches to diversity, and propose theory-driven next steps for a more effective promotion of diversity in the workplace. The Effectiveness of Business Case and Moral Arguments for Diversity Presenter: David Mayer; U. of Michigan Presenter: Samir Nurmohamed; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Adverse Effects of The Business Case for Diversity on Diversity Attitudes and Inclusion Presenter: Oriane Georgeac; London Business School Presenter: Aneeta Rattan; London Business School Does Social Justice Sell?: Examining Instrumental Vs. Moral Rationales for Diversity Presenter: Jamillah Williams; Georgetown U. The Consequences of Diversity Rhetoric Presenter: Modupe Akinola; Columbia U. Presenter: Tina R. Opie; Babson College Presenter: Geoffrey C. Ho; Google People Innovation Lab Presenter: Safiya E. Castel; - Presenter: Miguel Unzueta; U. of California, Los Angeles Presenter: Arthur P. Brief; U. of Utah Instrumental Use Erodes Sacred Values Presenter: Rachel Lise Ruttan; Rotman School of Management Presenter: Loran F. Nordgren; Northwestern U.

She Said “Me, Too,” He Said “Not Me:” A Situationist Perspective on Sexual Harassment

Despite rising public awareness about sexual harassment, we lack a complete understanding of the etiology of harassment and its perpetuation in organizations. The papers in this symposium explore potential theoretical lenses through which to understand the phenomenon of sexual harassment. The first two papers consider how different forms of hierarchy can contribute to harassment. Williams, Gruenfeld, and Guillory contend that the effects of power on harassment can be best understood by separating chronic and acute power. Similarly, Ruttan and Fincher look at how indirect (rather than direct) hierarchies may increase the likelihood of harassment because of attributional ambiguities. The final two papers examine how perceivers’ values and judgment biases may allow harassment to persist in society. Rees, Diekmann, and Tenbrunsel (2017) draw on the phenomenon of motivated blindness–defined as individuals’ tendency to not see unethical behavior of others when it is not in their best interest to do so (Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2011)–to explain why victims and observers may not recognize (and thereby not report) the harassment they experience or observe. Finally, Niemi and Young examine the phenomenon of victim blaming, and demonstrate that both participants’ moral values and the way incidents of sexual assault are framed in narratives are consequential to the judgment of victims. Together, these papers point to a social psychological framework for the study of sexual harassment, in which both situational and person factors contribute. The implications of a person by situation framework for organizational interventions will be discussed. Predicting Sexual Harassment among Leaders: The Paradoxical Role of Chronic Powerlessness Presenter: Melissa J. Williams; Emory U. Presenter: Deborah Gruenfeld; Stanford U. Presenter: Lucia Elizabeth Guillory; Yahoo, Inc. Informal Power Predicts Sexual Harassment Through Attributional Ambiguities Presenter: Rachel Lise Ruttan; Rotman School of Management Presenter: Katrina M. Fincher; Columbia Business School Motivated Blindness: A Bounded Ethicality Perspective of Sexual Harassment Presenter: McKenzie Rees; Southern Methodist U. Presenter: Kristina Diekmann; U. of Utah Presenter: Ann Tenbrunsel; U. of Notre Dame The Role of Moral Commitments and Narrative Framing in Attitudes Toward Victims Presenter: Laura Niemi; Duke / U. of Toronto

Contributors

Previous articleNext article FreeContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreRourke L. O’Brien, Ph.D., is assistant professor at the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. He is an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology and the Institute for Research on Poverty. From 2012 to 2014 he served as a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.Kiyoteru Tsutsui is associate professor and associate chair of the Department of Sociology and director of the Donia Human Rights Center and of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research has examined the evolution of global human rights and its impact on local politics, using cross-national quantitative analyses and qualitative case studies. His current research focuses on changing provisions about minority incorporation in all national constitutions in the world since the 18th century.Kwai Hang Ng is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests include legal institutions, legal language, and culture.Xin He is professor of law at the City University of Hong Kong. His research interests focus on examining the operation of the Chinese legal systems from a law and society perspective.Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. A political sociologist, Walder has long specialized on the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His current research focuses on popular political mobilization in late-1960s China and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state.Qinglian Lu is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Stanford University. Her research interests include social networks and organizations and economic sociology.Mikołaj Jan Piskorski is professor of strategy and innovation at the Institute for Mangement Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. His research examines how people interact on social media platforms. His recent book is Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media (Princeton University Press, 2014).Andreea D. Gorbatâi is assistant professor at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. from the joint program in Organizational Behavior and Sociology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on collaborative production and new forms of organizations and organizing. Her current projects employ computational methods such as topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and deep learning techniques to explain variations in behavior and outcomes among participants in online marketplaces for entrepreneurial funding and financial exchanges.Pierre Azoulay is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on the economic study of scientific institutions and their impact on the rate and direction of technological change.Christopher C. Liu is assistant professor of strategy at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. His research explores spatial networks and how geography shapes communication patterns and market interactions. Empirical settings for his work have ranged from biotechnology firms to the U.S. Senate Chamber. Chris also has a long-standing interest in scientists, innovation, and productivity.Toby E. Stuart is at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research projects investigate the determinants of entrepreneurship in the science- and technology-based economy and the sociology of prizes in the academic sciences. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 122, Number 4January 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/691273 © 2017 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Practical Applications of From Derivatives to Mega-Funds: An Interview with John Hull

<b>John Hull</b>, the Maple Financial Professor of Derivatives and Risk Management at the <b>Rotman School of Management</b> at the <b>University of Toronto</b>, is very well known in the field of quantitative finance. He has published dozens of papers and several books, including the classic <b><i>Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives</i></b>, which is widely used in university classrooms and trading rooms around the world. Hull’s work spans a wide range of topics, including interest rates, credit derivatives, volatility and risk management. He will be speaking at the <b>Global Derivatives Trading &amp; Risk Management Conference</b> and is studying new areas of securitization, as he explained to <b>Institutional Investor Journals</b> in this pre-conference interview.

Teaching disaster risk management: lessons from the Rotman School of Management

This article describes how disaster risk management topics are taught at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and thus highlights opportunities for developing similar course modules on disaster risk management at other institutions. An undergraduate and MBA elective course, titled Catastrophic Failure in Organizations, contains four modules that are directly relevant to disaster risk management. The first module focuses on the need to move from risk indifference to risk sensitivity. The second module considers the importance of business continuity and crisis management plans and explores their common shortcomings. The third module uses a case study to examine the topic of prospective risk management. The fourth module focuses on the vulnerability of supply chains and other complex systems to disaster risk. The article describes the details of implementing these modules and discusses opportunities for further integration of disaster risk management topics in other parts of the curriculum.