Faculty Profiles
Caroline Bartel
Management Department
Today’s work environments are a far cry from the work groups of
yesteryear. Organizational structures are different; business moves
at a much more rapid pace; and individuals frequently work on
multiple teams—sometimes virtually, without coming into direct
contact with colleagues. These modern workplace realities can make
coordination and collaboration difficult.
Caroline Bartel, assistant professor of management, studies the
challenge of how to enhance coordination in organizations. If an
organization can cultivate strong relationships with employees, both
individuals and work teams function better. Stronger
“identification” with the organization means—regardless of physical
location or personnel structures—everyone is on the same page.
Employees who “identify” with an organization have a strong overlap
between the values and characteristics that define the organization
and those they use to define themselves, Bartel explains. This
relationship is much more intense than simply being “committed” to
the company, a connection that implies an endorsement of values
rather than a total intersection.
“An organization has values, norms and specific ways of doing
things,” she says. “If you can cultivate identification, you have an
implicit understanding about how to think and act” in workplace
situations. This connection enables employees to develop—quickly and
with limited information—a common set of expectations that allows
them to synchronize their actions and make real-time adjustments to
fit the situation at hand.
Bartel, who comes to McCombs from NYU’s Stern School of Business,
looked at the effects of a community outreach program at Pillsbury.
Many companies are increasing their involvement in community
outreach programs for a variety of reasons, according to Bartel.
“They’re interested in giving back to their communities, and it
creates positive impressions in the eyes of potential customers,”
she says.
But such community-oriented programs may also cause employees to
more closely identify with their companies. Over time, according to
Bartel’s research, the experience of working with other employees in
a volunteer setting enhanced their positive perceptions of the
organization and led them to feel a greater sense of esteem from
their company affiliation. The end effect of greater identification
was increased cooperation and work effort during normal working
situations, Bartel says.
“Pillsbury hadn’t fully considered the impact of its community
service initiatives on employees,” Bartel says. Cultivating
identification can happen quickly and in unexpected ways. While the
methods may not always be obvious, “companies recognize the benefits
of identification.”
Ethan Burris
Management Department
When something in your work situation isn’t going as well as it
could, do you speak up or bite your tongue?
One of the factors driving that decision may be the actions of your
boss, according to research conducted by Ethan Burris, assistant
professor of management. His current study, “Leadership Influences
on Employee Voice Behavior: Is the Door Really open?” examines the
effect of leaders’ actions on subordinates’ willingness to offer
constructive criticism or improvement-oriented suggestions.
“High-performing employees are in tune to their leaders’ behavior,”
explains Burris, who is teaching Introduction to Organizational
Behavior this year. So when the boss is closed or unwilling to act
on suggestions, those ideas may stop coming to light—which can lead
to lower productivity and morale.
On the other hand, a leader that creates a safe, non-threatening
atmosphere is more likely to cultivate personal connections with his
or her employees. While this can result in a tight “inner circle,”
the leader must take care to pay attention to those on the outside
so they will feel comfortable contributing ideas.
Burris, who grew up in Indiana and earned his Ph.D. from Cornell
University |in May 2005, is interested in why teams make bad
decisions. His research in this area involved data collected from
employees of a national restaurant chain that had been experiencing
an annual turnover rate of 180 percent. The company has used the
study’s results to implement changes, such as a revised performance
appraisal system and updated management training.
Burris says that while companies may not be able to use most ideas
offered by people in the rank and file, one good idea could help a
company in unexpected ways. “It’s a small cost to listen,” he says.
Ilan Guedi
Finance Department
As a new arrival from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Ilan Guedj,
assistant professor of finance at McCombs, is looking forward to
continuing his research examining how the organization of a
pharmaceutical firm affects the company’s financial decisions.
Guedj completed his dissertation, “Ownership vs. Contract: How
Vertical Integration Affects Investment Decisions in Pharmaceutical
R&D” and received his Ph.D. in financial economics in May 2005
Born in Courbevoie, France, Guedj and his family later moved to
Israel where he served as a lieutenant in the Israeli Army for four
years. In 2000, he completed his bachelor’s degree in industrial
engineering and management at the Israel Institute of Technology and
moved to the United States to continue his education.
This spring, he is teaching Entrepreneurial Finance, which looks at
how young firms finance themselves.
“One of the things I try to understand is if the background of an
entrepreneur will affect their likelihood of success with venture
capitalists,” he explains. For example, Guedj examines whether the
entrepreneur has previously worked in the pharmaceutical or biotech
industries or if the person is an academic. He also studies which
universities produce academic entrepreneurs and whether the school’s
location (say in Cambridge or San Diego) figures in to
pharmaceutical ventures.
Guedj is nearly finished collecting data for his upcoming paper,
“What Makes Successful Entrepreneurs?” with Professor David
Scharfstein of Harvard Business School.
Paul Martorana
Management Department
When employees in low positions are unhappy with their work
situation, what is it that leads them to retaliate?
“It’s not just anger that motivates people to act,” says Paul
Martorana, assistant professor of management. “It’s also positive
characteristics such as pride and self esteem. A sense of power
creates resistance.”
Martorana’s research focuses on normative and non-normative
(extreme) approaches people in low positions take to challenge
status hierarchies.
“Some people don’t act extremely, but they act within their roles,”
he says.
Martorana combined lessons learned while earning his bachelor’s
degree in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley
with research conducted for his May 2005 Ph.D. in management and
organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern
University.
He hopes his work studying the implications of employee retaliation
at the corporate level will help employees find ways to make changes
in normative (nonextreme) behavior and help companies prevent loss.
“I really think business people can change the world,” Martorana
says, describing why he entered management research after obtaining
his psychology degree. “What professors research can influence
popular culture. I would like to have an impact on MBAs.”
This spring he is teaching Negotiations at the MBA level. In July
2005, he presented his work on varieties of action to change status
hierarchies at the 14th Tri-Annual General Meeting of the European
Association of Experimental Social Psychology in Würzburg, Germany
and offered “Women and Work: Perspectives for the 21st Century” to
the Academy of Management in Honolulu.
His research on female mentorship and women and work also earned
Martorana a faculty fellow position for the Center for Women and
Gender Studies Faculty Development Program at UT Austin. Martorana’s
research has been published in a variety of scholarly journals,
including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Social Judgements:
Implicit and Explicit Processes, and Organizational Behavior and
Human Decision Processes.
Michael Williamson
Accounting Department
Before setting foot on The University of Texas at Austin campus,
Michael Williamson already knew he would fit in well at the McCombs
School. As a doctoral student last year, he met several McCombs
faculty members at conferences outside of Texas and got a taste of
the open and supportive academic culture at McCombs.
The quality of the faculty convinced him to join the McCombs School
as an assistant professor in the Department of Accounting in fall
2005.
Before obtaining his Ph.D. in accounting at the Kelley School of
Business at Indiana University, Williamson completed his bachelor’s
degree in accounting at Louisiana State University and worked as a
senior consultant for Ernst & Young for four years. He went on to
earn his master of information systems degree from Carnegie Mellon
University and a master in business degree from the Kelley School.
“Since my undergraduate work, I wanted to be a professor,”
Williamson recalls. “But I wanted to get some experience first.”
While Williamson says he enjoyed working as a consultant, his first
love is the classroom. This spring, he is teaching honors Management
Accounting for undergrads—the same course he taught for five years
as an associate instructor at the Kelley School.
Williamson’s main research interests include studying how to design
reward systems that allow employee authority in an organization.
In his dissertation, “The Effects of Expanding Employee Decision
Making on Firm Value in an Implicit Contracting Setting,” Williamson
found that giving employees more authority in the workplace
increases performance—to a certain point. As you continue to allow
more of this responsibility, the performance begins to drop off.
“Some people don’t like to play the full role,” he says.
In November 2004, his paper, “The Evolution from Taylorism to
Employee Gainsharing: A Case Study Examining John Deere’s Continuous
Improvement Pay Plan,” co-authored by Geoffrey Sprinkle, was
published in Issues in Accounting Education.
