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ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE: FACULTY & RESEARCH

New Faculty
Sponsored Research
Cross-campus Collaboration
International Exchanges & Sabbaticals
Research Recognition

“Our faculty as a whole has been actively developing lines of research that are timely and relevant for today’s rapidly changing business environment,” said Dr. Ira Weiss, dean of the Poole College of Management.

Following is a sampling of the topics they have been researching: products that consumers want … building organizational trust … etirement benefits … social media … measuring sustainability … assessing fraud risk … labor force issues … new product innovation strategies … enterprise-wide risk factors … first-mover advantage … consumer decision-making. On average, the college's 100 faculty members have published three articles on these and other topics over the past five years in their disciplines’ peer reviewed journals, including the following which appeared in top academic journals:

  • The Bad Thing about Good Games: The Relationship between Close Sporting Events and Game-Day Traffic Fatalities, Dr. Stacy Wood, Journal of Consumer Research
  • Dynamic Effects among Movie Ratings, Movie Revenues, and Viewer Satisfaction, by Dr. Sangkil Moon and Dr. Paul Burgey, Journal of Marketing
  • The Impact of Supply Chain Complexity on Manufacturing Plant Performance, by Dr. Donald Warsing and Cecil Bozarth, et. al., Journal of Operations Management 

Listings of faculty publications are updated in the Research section of the NC State Poole College of Management website quarterly, and recent research news stories are posted to the research news feed.

The faculty also has been steadily increasing the level of sponsored research in the college, with growth in research expenditures averaging nearly $800,000 per year in the past decade and exceeded $1 million in two of those years.

Research workshops led by Poole College's economics and finance faculty provide opportunities to discuss current work with colleagues in NC State's Poole College and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, as well as with economics researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, and other academic institutions. Research workshops and seminars are also held periodically by Poole College faculty in other disciplines, as well as with international colleagues.  

NEW FACULTY

In fall 2012, Poole College welcomed nine new faculty members, including Dr. Bradley Kirkman joined the college as professor and head of the Department of Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. He previously was professor and Foreman R. and Ruby Bennett Chair in Business Administration at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School. Prior to that, he held visiting faculty positions at the Guanghua School of Management in Peking University, Beijing, China; and the University of Western Australia. One of his co-authored papers, published in the Journal of Management in 2005, was recognized as one of the journal's top five most cited articles that year.

Also joining the college in August 2012 were:

  • Jennifer Dirienzo, visiting lecturer, Department of Accounting; previously director of business tax services, Deloitte Tax, LLP
  • Dr. Guiseppe Fiori, associate professor, Department of Economics; previously, post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Sao Paolo and consultant with the Organisation for Economics Co-operation and Development in Paris, France, and economist with the Bank of Italy
  • Allison Lowe Reed, lecturer in the Department of Economics where she had served as visiting instructor in the past. Most previously, she was a lecturer and online instructor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  • Beth Ritter, lecturer in human resources, in the Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Previously, she was senior vice president at Burt's Bees in Durham, N.C., and has other senior positions in human resources at The Campbell Soup Company and the Nabisco Brands. She had been a visiting lecturer in Poole College in 2011-12
  • Qingqing Wu, assistant professor in finance in the Department of Business Management. She received her Ph.D. in finance in 2012 and her master's in agriculture and resource economics in 2006, both from Arizona State University, and her bachelor's in finance with a minor in statistics from Peking University in China in 2004.
  • Dr. Stefanie Rosen Robinson, assistant professor of marketing in the Department of Business Management. She received her Ph.D. in marketing from the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in 2012. Her awards include the Marketing Department Doctoral Student Research Award at Moore School of Business in 2010-11, and a Best Poster Award at the 2010 INFORMS Marketing Science Conference. She was an AMA-Sheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow in 2011.  
  • Peter Rubenacker, visiting lecturer in the Department of Accounting. He received his MBA in information and decision systems from San Diego State University and a bachelor's degree in accounting form the State University of New York at Albany. He joins the faculty after a lengthy career at Qualcomm, Inc., most recently serving as vice president of information technology. He also had previously been an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Diego School of Business. 
  • David Townsend, assistant visiting professor in entrepreneurship, in the Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He most recently was assistant professor of entrepreneurship at The University of Oklahoma. He received his degrees from the University of Oklahoma Price College of Business and Oral Roberts University.

SPONSORED RESEARCH

Work has begun on the college’s largest research award to date: $1,281,694 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a three-year project on “Cross-cultural Investigation of Organizational Trust. Dr. Roger Mayer, professor in the Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Mayer and co-investigators Dr. F. David Schoorman at Purdue University and Dr. Hwee-Hoon Tan at Singapore Management University are examining how people in different cultures around the world come to trust one another.

Following is a sample of other sponsored research under way:

  • Dr. Joe Brazel, Reznick Group Research Fellow and University Faculty Scholar in our Department of Accounting, is wrapping up a project on the development of a web-based financial risk assessment tool that compares a given company’s financial reporting with non-financial measures (NFMs). The project was funded by a $454,378 grant from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Foundation.
  • Dr. Robert Clark, Zelnack Professor, and Dr. Melinda Morrill are continuing their research on the topics of health and retirement benefits public sector employees, funded by two grants from Center for State and Local Government Excellence totaling nearly $250,000. They are disseminated results of their research through practitioner seminars and webinars, as well as journal articles.
  • A team of accounting faculty is conducting a case study of Bacardi Limited’s adoption of familiar analytical methods to physical (nonfinancial) performance indicators to the emerging field of sustainability decision support, planning, and control. Their project is funded by a $22,000 grant from the Institute of Managerial Accountants. Participating faculty are Dr. Al Chen, principle investigator, with Dr. Jon Bartley, Dr. Frank Buckless, Scott Showalter, Dr. Gilroy Zuckerman, Stephen Harvey at Bacardi.

CROSS-CAMPUS COLLABORATION

Poole faculty members also are engaging in a growing number of cross-campus collaborations. Brief descriptions of three new projects follow.

Building a Local Food Supply Chain

The Supply Chain Resource Cooperative is one of several partners in a five- year, $3.9 million grant-funded project to build and evaluate supply chains for local farmers and fishers to supply large-scale markets in North Carolina. The project is led by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), which has been awarded the first year’s funding of the grant by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Lowes Foods and Fort Bragg, the U.S. Army installation at Fayetteville, N.C., as well as US Foods and Foster-Caviness which supply food to Fort Bragg, are major project partners and represent the type of large-scale retail and institutional markets the supply chains will serve.

The project includes research into supply chain issues related to such large-scale local food sourcing and distribution, plus outreach and at least one new academic course designed to help prepare NC State students for positions as buyers for sustainable agricultural products or other supply chain roles, said Dr. Robert Handfield, Bank of America Distinguished University Professor and SCRC co-director.

ASSIST: Self-powered Nanotechnology-based Health Monitoring Systems

Dr. Ted Baker, associate professor of entrepreneurship in the college’s Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is industry collaboration and innovation director for a national nanotechnology research effort funded by the National Science Foundation. The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST), headquartered on NC State’s Centennial Campus, is a joint effort between NC State’s College of Engineering and partner institutions Florida International University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Virginia, as well as five affiliated universities and about 30 industry partners in this global research consortium.

ASSIST researchers will lead a national nanotechnology research effort to create self-powered devices that will help people monitor their health and understand how the surrounding environment affects it. Dr. Veena Misra, professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State, is the center’s director. Read more

Eastman Innovation Center

CIMS is a participant in an innovative research agreement signed by NC State and Eastman Chemical Company in September 2012. As part of the agreement, Eastman is providing $10 million over six years in support of the Eastman Chemical Company Center of Excellence partnership and Eastman Innovation Center laboratory on NC State’s Centennial Campus. The agreement provides a central point of contact for Eastman to coordinate its activities at NC State, which will involve at least six colleges across campus. The Entrepreneurship Collaborative (TEC), based in Poole College, is assisting with two proposals submitted for this project, involving NC State researchers in mechanical and aerospace engineering, textile engineering and science, electrical and computer engineering, chemical and biomolecular engineering and graphic and industrial design.

“In both cases, TEC will use our ACT interns to evaluate commercial viability of the products envisioned for this by technology by the research teams and make recommendations for go-to-market strategies,” said Roger Debo, TEC director. ACT – Advancing the Commercialization of Technology – is a TEC program that provides research support for NC State and other entities seeking to turn new technologies into businesses.

INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES & SABBATICALS

Through The University Global Partnership Network (UGPN), part of NC State’s Office of International Affairs, a delegation of Poole College’s accounting, innovation management and marketing faculty met with their counterparts at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, for a series of workshops and research exchanges in fall 2012. As part of the partnership, Dr. Beverly Tyler, MIE department, attended a seminar in June 2012 at the University of Surrey, U.K., where she presented one of her research papers on international alliances and was a discussant on another paper.

Dr. John Seater, Thurman-Raytheon Distinguished Professor in Economics, and Dr. Nora Traum assistant professor in economics, collaborated with Maurizio Lacopetta, a professor in the global business school SKEMA, in presenting a workshop on economic growth held at Skema’s campus in France. The workshop drew scholars from several countries to discuss research in the fields of economic growth, macroeconomic dynamics, and international trade. Seater and Traum presented and discussed their research, and Seater was a discussant for another paper.

Dr. Don Warsing, associate professor of supply chain management in the Department of Business Management, completed a sabbatical in spring 2012, based on his ongoing collaborative work with Dr. Russell King, and master's and Ph.D. students in the NC State College of Engineering’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. The sabbatical included additional work with current candidates on the development of decision tools that allow operations and supply chain managers to respond quickly to various source of uncertainty in supply and demand. Several papers co-authored by the faculty and students have been submitted to journals for review based on this research.

Dr. Robert Handfield, Bank of America Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management and co-director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative, researched issues in the biopharmaceuticals supply chain while on sabbatical in 2011 and summarized his findings in his book, Distribution, Regulatory, Systems and Structural Changes in Biopharmaceutical Supply Chains, published in May 2012.

RESEARCH RECOGNITION

Dr. Al Chen and Dr. Gilroy Zuckerman, Department of Accounting, with co-author Stephen K. Harvey, P.E., Bacardi Limited, received a Best Paper award for their paper, “Bacardi Limited's Flexible Budgeting Efficiency Metrics to Report Sustainability Improvements,” presented at the Academy of Business Research Fall 2012 Conference, Strategy section, in September 2012. The research was featured on the cover of the December 2012 issue of Strategic Finance, published by the Institute of Managerial Accountants, which funded the research. Poole College accounting professors Frank Buckless, Scott Showalter, and Jon Bartley are also participating in this research project.

Three Poole College accounting faculty members were recognized for their research productivity in the study, “Benchmarking the Research Productivity of Accounting Doctorates,” by James R. Hasselback, University of West Florida, Alan Reinstein, Wayne State University, and Mohammad Abdolmohammadi, Bentley University, published in Issues in Accounting Education in November 2012. Recognized were:

  • Dr. Mark Beasley (Ph.D. 1994) had 21 publications in the Top 40, with two in the Top 3 and six in the Top 10.
  • Dr. Paul Williams (Ph.D. 1977) had 20 publications in the Top 40, with 2 in the Top 3 and six in the Top 10.
  • Dr. Joe Brazel (Ph.D. 2004) had eight publications in the Top 40, with two in the Top 3, and 2 in the Top 10.

Dr. Mark Beasley, Deloitte Professor of Enterprise Risk Management and Director, ERM Initiative was named to the 2012 National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Directorship 100 which recognizes the most influential leaders in the boardroom and corporate governance community.
Poole College Faculty Awards

The generous support of Poole College donors has enabled the college to recognize faculty for their research and scholarship. The college now has eight named professors and made three faculty research fellows and scholars awards in the past year.

  • Mark S. Beasley | Deloitte Professor of Enterprise Risk Management and Director, ERM Initiative, Department of Accounting
  • Joe Brazel | Associate Professor, Reznick Group Research Fellow, University Faculty Scholar, Graduate Faculty, Department of Accounting
  • Frank A. Buckless | KPMG Professor and Head, Graduate Faculty, Department of Accounting
  • Mehmet Caner | Professor, Owens Scholar, Graduate Faculty, Department of Economics
  • Robert Clark | Zelnak Professor, Graduate Faculty, Department of Economics and Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  • Robert Handfield | Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management; co-director, Supply Chain Resource Cooperative; Graduate Faculty; Editor Emeritus, Journal of Operations Management; Graduate Faculty, Department of Business Management
  • David H. Henard | Poole Board of Advisors Professor of Business Management, Associate Professor, Marketing, Graduate Faculty, Department of Business Management
  • Kathy A. Krawczyk | Dixon Hughes Professor of Accounting; Director, Master of Accounting Program, Graduate Faculty, Department of Accounting
  • John J. Seater | General Maxwell Reid Thurman Distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics, Graduate Faculty, Department of Economics
  • Mark Walker | Associate Professor, Owens Scholar, Graduate Faculty, Department of Business Management
  • Paul F. Williams | Professor, E&Y Faculty Research Fellow, Graduate Faculty, Department of Business Accounting
  • Stacy Wood | Langdon Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Executive Director, Consumer Innovation Consortium; Graduate Faculty, Department of Business Management