R2@Saunders 2023

Recent events have exposed vulnerabilities and risks associated with supply chain disruptions due to pandemic and weather events. Professor Laharish Guntuka and his co-authors collaborated on a research project conducted by the University of Maryland Supply Chain Center and Supply Chain mapping firm Resilinc to study supply chain disruption risks and recovery, especially due to climate change. This work was recently published in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management and Harvard Business Review.

As per a recent Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report, with 99% of Fortune 500 companies using “open” software, it is a mainstream movement that firms need to manage and integrate into their corporate strategy.  Professor Manlu Liu collected qualitative data from the Kauli initiative over a 10-year period and, along with her co-authors (Professors Sean Hansen and John Tu), examined ways in which collaborative consortium-based open source software (COSS) development can be a strategic alternative to resource-intensive in-house development or misaligned software acquisition. This alternative is innovative and sustainable. Their research was published in The Journal of Strategic Information Systems.

Many of us rely on reviews of products and services, but how do we know whether these reviews are real or fake? Professors Ali Tosyali and Gijs Overgoor used network analysis and machine learning to develop a highly accurate method for detecting fake reviews. Their research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In other research published in the Journal of Finance, Professor Mehdi Khorram investigates the performance of options investments across different stocks by computing monthly returns on at-the-money straddles on individual equities and dispels some myths around options investment.

Companies struggle with the paradox of preserving their past that made them successful while also changing to adapt for the future. To help us understand and manage this paradox, in research published in the Academy of Management Journal, Professor Rich DeJordy and his co-authors study how leaders with divergent visions – one rooted in the past and another geared towards modernizing for the future – come together to create a novel and successful strategy, during the quartz crisis in the Swiss watchmaking industry for Switzerland’s largest watchmaking company.

With food trails predicted as one of the biggest travel trends for 2023, have you wondered if food travel has any impact on life satisfaction and other metrics of happiness? Professor Muhammet Kesgin, in an article published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management, finds that food travel positively impacts quality of life, individual well-being, and satisfaction with life.

That’s all for this edition - Happy researching!!