Jindal School Now – July 2018

Management Professor Recognized for Highly Cited Research

Dr. Mike Peng, O.P. Jindal Distinguished Chair of Management, has been named to the list of Highly Cited Researchers from Clarivate Analytics (formerly of Thomson Reuters), for the fourth consecutive year.

The 2017 list includes more than 3,300 researchers in 21 fields of the sciences and social sciences. These scholars have published a high number of papers that rank in the top 1 percent most cited in their respective fields over the last decade, and have been listed in The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.

Peng, a professor of organizations, strategy and international management, is among the 93 scholars named in the field of economics and business.

“It is gratifying to see that my research continues to be of value to the scholarly community worldwide,” Peng said. “There is vigorous competition in the market for ideas, whose winners are cited. Given space constraints, the number of references in every paper is limited. Therefore, overly narrow, nonessential, and non-novel publications will not be widely cited. I have always endeavored to take on some big questions, which is a risky research strategy. But I am glad it has paid off.”

A leading expert on global business strategy, Peng is best known for his development of the institution-based view of strategy and his insights about the rise of emerging economies in global business.

His research has investigated business strategies in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Both the United Nations and the World Bank have cited his work.

JSOM Professor Appointed a Fellow of Two Professional Societies

A globally recognized organizational psychologist who specializes in international management issues, Organizations, Strategy and International Management Professor Riki Takeuchi was named a fellow of two professional organizations in recent months.

The Association for Psychological Science named him a fellow in June. The association’s president awards fellow status to members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, service, and/or application. Scientists, academics, clinicians, researchers, educators, administrators, and students from more than 80 countries belong to the 30,000-member association, which is dedicated to the scientific study of psychology.

In April, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology announced Takeuchi’s appointment as a fellow at the society’s 2018 meeting in Chicago. SIOP Fellows are psychologists recognized for having made “an unusual and outstanding contribution to the field.” Takeuchi’s election is his second honor from SIOP, a professional organization for those who practice and teach industrial and organizational psychology. In 2010, the society gave him its Distinguished Early Career Contributions Award.

Appointed last fall as the first Jindal School of Management Advisory Council Distinguished Professor, Takeuchi is known for his research in cross-cultural adjustment processes, social exchange relationships and strategic human resource management, with particular focus on employer-employee relationships.

His work includes 29 refereed journal articles and six book chapters. He has delivered many presentations at the Academy of Management and SIOP conferences, among others. He has served on the editorial boards of six major management journals and recently completed a term as associate editor for the Academy of Management Journal.

Professor Elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Business

Dr. Eric W. K. Tsang, Dallas World Salute Distinguished Professor in Global Strategy, was elected a fellow of the Academy of International Business in March. He was inducted in a ceremony at the AIB 2018 Annual Meeting in Minneapolis in June.

AIB Fellows are a select group of distinguished academy members recognized for either their outstanding scholarly contributions to the field of international business or their significant contributions to the academy.

What is special about Tsang’s work is that his research interests are much broader than international business. He is also a leading scholar in applying philosophy to solve methodological problems related to assumption, explanation, generalization, ontology, replication and theory testing. Some of these research results were included in his book The Philosophy of Management Research (New York: Routledge, 2017).

“In this sense, I am an ‘outlier’ among the fellows,” he says.

Tsang was a corporate banker at HSBC in Hong Kong when he decided to pursue a different career path. He left HSBC to work at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he was an associate professor. After making his decision to join academia, he attended the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD in management in 1997. He taught at Wayne State University before arriving at UT Dallas in 2007. He was an honorary professor at Sun Yat-sen University in China.

Currently an editorial board member of eight academic journals, he also serves as deputy editor-in-chief of Management and Organization Review.

Jindal School Professor Recognized for Mentoring Excellence

Naveen Jindal School of Management faculty member Dr. Suresh Radhakrishnan was honored during the spring 2018 Doctoral Hooding Ceremony at The University of Texas at Dallas for sustained excellence in graduate research mentoring.

Radhakrishnan, Constantine Konstans Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Management, was recognized May 8 with the 2018 Provost’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring.

“The award belongs to the students and my colleagues for their hard work and support,” Radhakrishnan said. “Successful mentoring would not have been possible otherwise.” Dr. Inga Musselman, UT Dallas vice president for academic affairs and provost, created the mentoring awards and presented them at the ceremony.

This was the second year that the graduate award was given; the undergraduate award was first bestowed in 2013.

Prior to calling Radhakrishnan to the lectern, Musselman read from some of the nomination letters. Dr. Ram Natarajan, associate professor of accounting in the Jindal School, wrote that Radhakrishnan “had been involved in the dissertations of as much as half of the PhD students who have graduated from our doctoral program [in accounting] since its inception.”

Dr. Albert Tsang, PhD’08, MS’02, associate professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University, wrote that, “mentoring is the heart of the PhD education, and with this heart, [Radhakrishnan] shows us more than what we can learn from any books, papers or lectures. He not only taught us how to do research, but he also demonstrated the way by which one can earn respect from the academic profession.”

Dr. Paul Mason, PhD’08, assistant professor of accounting and business law at Baylor University, wrote in his nominating letter that Radhakrishnan “provided a perfect balance between offering direction and suggestions while allowing for independence during the completion of my degree.”

Mason also explained that Radhakrishnan approached his role as a mentor by contributing “to the scholarship and professional development of the mentee even if it doesn’t benefit him directly.” This, Mason explained, is how he knew that “a true mentoring relationship exists.”

Jindal School Professor Earns Best Paper Award

Dr. Kathryn E. Stecke, Ashbel Smith Professor of Operations Management, and her co-authors received a Best Paper of 2017 Award from Omega – The International Journal of Management Science for research initiated at the request of Sandia National Laboratories.“Mitigating Disruptions in a Multi-Echelon Supply Chain Using Adaptive Ordering” which appeared in the April 2017 issue of Omega (Volume 68, page 185-198), examined response to and recovery from supply chain interruptions.

Stecke and her fellow researchers noted that disruptions may stem from natural disasters — such as earthquakes; accidents — such as oil spills; and intentional acts — such as terrorist attacks. They estimated that disruptions in 2011, the costliest ever for natural disasters, cost more than $350 billion.

The researchers found through simulation experiments “that the impact of a disruption depends on its location, with costlier and longer lasting impacts occurring from disruptions … close to ultimate consumption.”

They learned that “expediting, an adaptive ordering approach often used to mitigate disruptions, can trigger unintended bullwhip effects, and hurt rather than help overall performance.”

Their findings, they wrote, “leave no doubt that variability in quantity and timing, whether from normal operations, disruptions, or expediting, tends to be amplified in supply chains.”

A project leader at Sandia noted that one significant practical result of their work was that it “demonstrated the importance of careful design in modeling the realities of supply chain behavior.”

Stecke’s co-authors were Thomas G. Schmitt of the University of Washington, Fred W. Glover of OptTek Systems Inc., Mark A. Ehlen of Sandia National Laboratories and Sanjay Kumar of Valparaiso University.

An associate professor of information and decision science, Kumar was a student of Stecke’s who earned two degrees from UT Dallas, an MS in management and administrative sciences in 2005, and a PhD in management science in 2009.

JSOM Faculty Member Earns Accounting Educator of the Year Award

Jennifer Johnson, a senior lecturer in accounting, received a 2017 Outstanding Accounting Educator Award from the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants.

The statewide award, presented in three categories, to small, medium and large schools, recognizes Texas accounting educators who have exhibited excellence in teaching and who have distinguished themselves through active service to the profession. Criteria for judging includes instructional innovation, student motivation, the pursuit of learning opportunities for students, involvement in student and professional accounting organizations, and research accomplishments and publications.

Johnson, named the large-school winner, and the other recipients each received a plaque and a $500 cash award at the annual TSCPA accounting educators’ conference, held last October in Dallas. She was nominated for the honor by several of her students, former students and Dr. Monica Powell, senior associate dean.

Johnson is a self-described accounting nerd who teaches accounting as the language of business.

“I think that students don’t understand all of the opportunities available to them in this profession,” she said. “I tell my students that, as accountants, we are helping to enact change. Accounting isn’t just a function. It’s a way to help companies grow.”

Johnson joined UT Dallas in 2009 after an accounting career at Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Southwest Securities and PricewaterhouseCoopers. She currently serves on the TSCPA Board of Directors and is treasurer-elect for the Dallas CPA Society.

Jindal School Graduates Take Third in Global IT Challenge

Two recent Jindal School graduates took home a bronze medal from Paris in a global competition to improve customer service with artificial intelligence and chatbots.

Vishal Kamble and Aman Mulkalwar placed third on July 3 in the Atos IT Challenge for their entry Electra for the Utilities, a cloud-based chatbot that can reduce costs and provide better customer service in the utilities industry. The pair received a cash award of 3,000 euros. (Kamble’s Electra presentation begins at 48:36 in the event video.)

The annual contest, sponsored by European IT company Atos, is open to any student enrolled in a college, university or engineering school. The contest, which this year attracted more than 200 entries from several countries, challenged students to develop a prototype using artificial intelligence and conversational interfaces — chatbots — that could help both customers and businesses.

A team of Columbia University students received the gold medal for BTM Solutions, which unlocks automated demand response by using real-time electricity prices. The silver was awarded to students from Russia’s Voronezh State University who designed Masterpiece, a mobile app that lets you discuss art with a chatbot.

Working with Amazon’s web cloud services, Kamble and Mulkalwar devised Electra to provide immediate answers to utilities customers 24 hours a day via text message, Amazon’s Alexa, Facebook Messenger and virtual reality.

“Our idea gives customers a smooth, great experience: Basically, you’re talking to a virtual person who knows the answers to preset questions,” Mulkalwar said.

In December, Electra made the shortlist of 20 entries. Each of the teams then met with a coach who provided technical and business insights. Kamble and Mulkalwar joined forces with Dr. Prakash Shrivastava, an Atos employee who also works as a lecturer at JSOM.

Both Kamble and Mulkalwar graduated in May. Kamble, an MS in Business Analytics alumnus, is now a full-time analytics consultant at Atos, where he had previously interned. He said there was no conflict of interest in entering the challenge because the contest is based in France and involves tech innovation, while his internship was in the U.S. and focused on marketing.

An MS in Information Technology and Management graduate, Mulkalwar was so busy with his job search he could not attend the awards ceremony. His focus paid off: He landed a job with Dell in Austin.

But he is still savoring his success in the challenge, which he said would not have been possible without the Jindal School. “JSOM gave us the resources and the inspiration to implement the idea in real life. The diverse and comprehensive coursework definitely contributed toward the fruition of this idea.”

Company Owned by Jindal School Alumnus Wins Startup Competition

A company founded and run by Jindal School alumnus Dr. Peter Baek has won the $33,000 grand prize in the Penfolds Max’s “Maximum Funding” startup competition.

Vigilant Labels, based out of the Venture Development Center at The University of Texas at Dallas, offers a product that improves patient safety and expedites required anesthesia syringe label printing that integrates with electronic medical record software systems.

Culminating at the end of 2017, the competition, run by Australian wine producer Penfolds, had two phases. The first consisted of a panel of experts from various technology and business firms selecting 10 finalists from more than 100 entrants. The top 10 then underwent a social media voting campaign that determined the three winners.

“Going through this exercise helped us develop as a company,” said Baek. His business interests naturally follow from his career as an anesthesiologist who earned an MS from the Jindal School’s Healthcare Leadership and Management for Physicians program in 2014.

Baek planned to use the winnings to increase the company’s marketing efforts and to strengthen company infrastructure.

“As an entrepreneur, one of the key benefits to being a UT Dallas alum is access to the VDC and the Blackstone LaunchPad,” he said. “They are helping me define the vision for growth and guiding me to make sure that everything looks good not only now, but five or 10 years from now — and that we have an exit strategy.”

As the company continues to grow, Baek remains excited about the possibility of increasing its market share in healthcare workflow optimization and compliance management.

“The demand is out there,” he said. “In terms of what the product does, I think we’ve hit upon the right formula. It’s a great system in terms of patient safety, improving medical compliance, and it is convenient to implement without interrupting the end-user’s workflow.”