Faculty Profiles

Accounting Information and Mangement Systems

Finance

Management

Marketing and Supply Chain Management

Executive Development Program

Accounting Information and Management Systems Faculty Profile

Ranjani Krishnan

Associate Professor
PhD: University of Pittsburgh
Email: krishnan@bus.msu.edu

Krishnan's 'Honesty in Managerial Reporting' earns notable contribution award

The American Accounting Association has given the 2004-05 Notable Contributions to Management Accounting Literature Award to Broad School Associate Professor Ranjani Krishnan for her co-authored paper, "Honesty in Managerial Reporting," published in The Accounting Review. Krishnan's co-authors were John H. Evans, III, and Donald V. Moser, University of Pittsburgh, and R. Lynn Hannan, Georgia State University.

The study examines how preferences for wealth and honesty affect managerial reporting. Krishnan and her colleagues found that even when honest reporting results in significant loss of payoff, there was considerable honesty among the subjects. They also found less honesty under a contract that provides a smaller share of the total surplus to the manager, suggesting that the fairness of the distribution between the manager and the firm influences honest reporting decisions by managers.

This study has implications for design of managerial incentive contracts in firms. The authors suggest a modified version of a managerial incentive contract that makes use of subjects' preference for honest reporting, instead of contracts that assume that all managers are honest or that all managers are dishonest.

Krishnan's research interests include accounting and economic issues related to regulation and governance; accounting and economic issues related to competition; and psychological and economic paradigms in decision-making and reporting.

Finance Faculty Profile

Charles J. Hadlock

Associate Professor
PhD: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Email: hadlockc@bus.msu.edu

Hadlock, Fee find CEOs and non-CEO execs get fired at the same rate, for different reasons

In a recent study of "forced turnover" among CEOs and top executives of 443 large firms, two Broad School finance professors found both classes of managers face dismissal at about the same rate, but that non-CEO firings can't be as closely related to a firm's stock performance as CEO firings can be. According to Associate Professors Charles J. Hadlock and C. Edward Fee, their study, "Management Turnover Across the Corporate Hierarchy," in the Journal of Accounting and Economics, indicates that firms do continually eliminate underperforming executive personnel, but factors that are more subtle than stock price may affect the tenure of non-CEOs.

In fact, they found that when CEOs lose their jobs, their immediate subordinates are very likely to be fired, particularly if the new boss is an outsider. "This evidence suggests that the value of a manager to the firm very much depends on the identity of those who are around the CEO — in other words, managers are being evaluated as a team," says Hadlock.

In their study, Hadlock and Fee also found that while a significant number of dismissed executives eventually landed new jobs, the positions they got were inferior to their old positions, based on such metrics as compensation and firm size. "Executives directly below the CEO certainly do not appear to have quiet lives," says Hadlock. "If they lose their positions, the consequences can be severe, and thus they should have strong incentives to take actions that allow them to maintain their positions. The most effective way to do this is to help keep the CEO in office, either by increasing firm performance or taking actions that entrench the CEO."

Hadlock received the Merton Miller Prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Business in 1997.

Management Faculty Profile

Ingrid Fulmer

Assistant Professor
PhD: Vanderbilt University
Email: fulmer@bus.msu.edu

Fulmer study explores use of communication media in interpersonal influence

Assistant Professor Ingrid Fulmer has quickly become part of the Broad School Management department's strong research tradition since arriving at Michigan State University in 2002. Her research is in the areas of human resource management and organizational behavior.

Fulmer's article titled, "The Medium and the Message: The Adaptive Use of Communication Media in Dyadic Influence," co-written with Bruce Barry at Vanderbilt University, was recently selected as a finalist for 2004 Best Paper in the Academy of Management Review.

Fulmer and Barry propose a model that depicts a cycle of perception and interaction between an influence agent and target in the pursuit of a defined influence goal. Their study also shows how three attributes of communication media — social bandwidth, interactivity and surveillance — affect the influence attempt. Using this model, they propose that individuals will dynamically adapt these attributes of media (through expansion, contraction, or shifting between types of media) in the process of trying to persuade or influence other people.

Fulmer's other current research activities involve studying employee attitudes and organizational performance, examining the relationship between executive compensation and mobility, and exploring the role of emotion in negotiation. Much of her other work has been published in major academic journals, including Personnel Psychology, the International Journal of Conflict Management and International Negotiation. Prior to entering academia, Fulmer was a consultant and CPA in Birmingham, Alabama, working with clients in healthcare, banking and real estate.

Marketing and Supply Chain Management Faculty Profile

David A. Griffith

Assistant Professor
PhD: Kent State University
Email: griffith@bus.msu.edu

Griffith finds global supply chain relationships perform better when governance strategies fit simultaneously

Assistant Professor David A. Griffith joined the Marketing and Supply Chain Management department in August of 2003. Prior to his Broad School appointment, he served on the faculty at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the Japan-America Institute of Management Science, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien and the University of Oklahoma.

The themes of his research fall into two categories: (1) international marketing strategy, with an emphasis on intercultural inter-organizational behavior and the influence of culture on business phenomenon; and (2) marketing strategy, with an emphasis on supply chain management, retailing and marketing resources/capabilities.

Griffith recently published "The Performance Implications of Strategic Fit of Relational Norm Governance Strategies in Global Supply Chain Relationships," in the Journal of International Business Studies. He and his co-author, Matthew B. Myers, found that firm performance is enhanced when the relational norms of information exchange and solidarity are fit to culturally founded norm expectations across culturally diverse relationships simultaneously. As such, the findings highlight the need for firms within global supply chains to consider governance issues related to multiple relationships simultaneously as opposed to managing relationships individually in order to maximize firm performance.

Griffith has published over 50 articles in the area of international marketing and marketing strategy. He serves on the editorial review boards of the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of World Business and Journal of Business Research. Griffith also co-authored a retailing textbook ( Retailing [2002] by Dunne, Lusch and Griffith).

Executive Development Program Faculty Profile

Gary L. Ragatz

Associate Professor
Marketing and Supply Chain Management
PhD: Indiana University
E-mail: ragatz@msu.edu

Ragatz takes 'live' research to exec development students

With teaching responsibilities largely at the graduate level, Associate Professor Gary Ragatz is accustomed to taking challenging questions from his experienced MBA students, but he admits, "There's a little more edge in the executive education classroom."

As co-director of the Broad School's annual Purchasing and Supply Chain Management Executive Seminar, he is one of 16 academic and business experts who teach sessions in the annual five-day seminar.

"It's no walk in the park," he jokes. "Taking 'live' research into the executive classroom is exciting because it's an entirely different kind of teaching environment. When the probing questions come — and they will — your lifeline is the deep knowledge of the subject that comes from doing your own research and the confidence that nobody understands it better than you."

In today's corporate environment, knowledge is the competitive edge, capable of transforming the way organizations perform and leaders think.

"That's where executive education in an academic environment differs from that offered by professional organizations or corporate 'universities' in a fundamental way," says Ragatz. "What we teach is based on new knowledge derived from research. It's our research and our concepts. What we deliver is a new way of thinking about tomorrow's challenges."