Accounting and Finance

Barbara Arel  focuses on the impact of external auditor reliance on the work of internal auditors on the integrated audit of financial statements and internal control, the effect of auditor reliance on the perceptions of jurors, and the impact of audit firm rotation on audit quality.

Kevin Chiang's research interests include real estate, asset pricing, portfolio theory, and the mutual fund industry. His teaching interests include real estate, investments, corporate finance, international finance, and institutional investing.

Stephen Dempsey's research areas are in the interpretation of accounting rules, practices and their impact on financial resource allocations; stock market reaction to news releases; and financial performance measures.   He is currently investigating environmental loss disclosures from 10-K reports to study their use as a possible vehicle for earnings management. He is working with Jim Gatti on a joint project related to the portfolio outcome simulations, "max-min" strategy by investors than traditional theories of risk aversion-i.e., diminishing marginal utility for wealth.

James Gatti's research interests include school aid systems; deposit insurance; bank regulation; investments; the equity risk premium and portfolio allocation decision using a maxi-min approach.   His research program focuses on optimal portfolio allocation and the equity risk premium as well as the controversy over whether time diversification has any value to the investor which remains unresolved.

Christopher Hodgdon has published research on China’s capital markets and securities regulatory commission.  He is also doing research on compliance with the disclosure requirements of international accounting standards. Other interests include international and financial accounting as well as accounting history.  

Susan Hughes' research focuses on the continuing convergence of international and U.S. financial reporting standards, the impact of national culture on audit decision making, and the measurement and management of intangible assets.

Hugh Marble III is a CFA charterholder and his research looks at changes in credit ratings and also at the impact of debt contracts on firm incentives.

Michael Tomas' research interests include the design and performance of futures and options exchanges and their products, derivative security pricing and use, and fixed income markets.

Management Information Systems and Decision Analysis

Matthew Bovee is interested in how people model information, both individually and collectively. (1) Information quality is becoming recognized as a critical and competitive strength in business. As we move toward expected availability of information online, there seems to be growing concern for the quality of that information, but very little investigation into if and how people evaluate it. (2) As XML taxonomies proliferate, there seems to be implicit acceptance that a generation of middleware vendors will arise and be capable of patching the semantic gaps between parallel, inconsistent taxonomies. (3) Agent-based search is facilitated in a semi-structured, bounded environment. One such environment is the EDGAR database of public financial statements, where a wealth of information is available, but buried in lengthy files.

William Cats-Baril's research revolves around the use of web based systems to collect clinical data bases and patient satisfaction to help in the development of performance scorecards and development of best practices and recommendations for knowledge dissemination and management. Research plans:

1. Investigate ways that hospital administrators get paid and the impact of different schemes on outcomes measures like length of stay, patient satisfaction, and medical errors.
2. Use of information technology (web enabled hospital beds) and compensation/incentive structures and medical team structure and management to reduce medical errors.
3. Use of technology to educate diabetes patients in rural areas (with Drs. Mimi Reardon and Benjamin Littenberg of UVM's College of Medicine).

Richard Jesse's research involves quality function deployment and stocking models for high-value, low-demand products as well as work in the area of attribute comparison using mathematical programming. He is also doing research in the areas of student evaluation of teaching.

James Kraushaar continues his work in the use of computers in businesses as well as e-commerce and database management.

Marilyn Lucas conducts research in product design, the impact of market environment and internal capabilities on the firm's new product development strategy, operations and marketing interface, resource allocation decisions between marketing research and production under various scenarios. She is also involved in investigating the impact of market uncertainty and learning on product design decisions of the firm over a given planning horizon.  Her research into new product development deals with the time-to-market and product performance trade-off when introducing new products. She has also begun research on the impact of subsidized vehicle acquisition on selected outcomes in the transition from welfare to work by analyzing the extent to which the Good News Garage program, a Vermont social welfare initiative started in 1996, has been successful in providing low-income families with reliable means of transportation from and to work. Marilyn is also doing an extensive survey of applications of location models in the agricultural sector.

David Novak’s interests include computer network quality-of-service (QoS) and bandwidth control issues, capacity management by ISPs, applied simulation, design and implementation of decision support systems (DSS) and application of operations research models to solve real world problems.

Larry Shirland's most recent research involves the development of optimization models and techniques for determining metrics for multi-attribute decision making applications.   In cooperation with Mr. Malcolm Chamberlain and Mr. Paul Grover, partners in DecisionAssist, he has developed a standalone computer program for processing data, developing the mathematical model and analyzing final solutions. He is also investigating environmental issues related to production and operations management in order to help advance the School's objective to become a "green" business school and is investigating the cost of quality related to environmental issues. His work with Jim Gatti involves developing a simulation model to study risk premium and portfolio allocation. He is also working with Rick Jesse on quality function deployment and stocking models for high-value, low-demand products.

Management and Strategy

Rocki-Lee DeWitt continues to do research in the areas of corporate restructuring, downsizing, growth strategies, family business, and board of directors governance.

Michael Gurdon's research revolves around industrial and labor relations issues as well as international union-management developments.   He has done extensive research on management issues in the Czech Republic.  He is currently conducting interviewing with founders of science-based ventures who were originally surveyed in 1989 to uncover the factors leading to long-term success and failure.

David Jones conducts research on employees' perceptions of fairness in the workplace and on how people respond to fair and unfair treatment. In particular, he focuses on employees' cooperative behaviors (called organizational citizenship), turnover, and counterproductive behavior (e.g., employee theft). In related research, he studies revenge in the workplace, focusing on the cognitions involved in employees' decisions to engage in revenge behavior. Other research areas include job applicant dishonesty and employee recruitment.

Barbara McIntosh concentrates on the aging workforce issues including: rethinking HR policies and practice; best practices for older dislocated worker re-employment, living alone; job content and age discrimination; gender's effect on the relationships linking older American's resources and financial satisfaction; and factors contributing to older dislocated worker placement.

E. Lauck Parke's research activities include investigations into the usefulness of strategic planning in public sector organizations; the problems of employee ownership; and the shortcomings of work improvement schemes.

Richard Vanden Bergh's current research is in the area of firm strategy in the political environment; regulatory, political and judicial institutions; security valuation in high-yield fixed income markets.   Specific projects include: accounting for independence-lobbying strategy in the audit industry; buying agencies through legislatures in the political economy area; and exploring the design of firm level nonmarket strategies. Firms, especially those operating in multiple political environments, are significantly affected by the regulatory environment need to understand their nonmarket environment in order to develop effective nonmarket strategies.  He has published articles on state court constitutional interpretation, legislative control of regulatory agencies, and the implementation of consumer advocacy institutions that condition regulatory decision making.   Rick is also investigating how firms adjust their nonmarket strategies to reflect the political environment in which they operate and firm level non market activities.  He also explores the lobbying strategies of utilities in states where there is a strong consumer advocacy presence and the political strategies of commercial banks that need to satisfy requirements under the community reinvestment act.

Mark Youndt's research activities revolve around the intersections of strategic management, intellectual capital, innovation, and competitive advantage. More specifically, his most recent work examines how human, social, and organizational capital influence organizations' innovative capabilities; how strategic human resource management activities help develop and leverage intellectual capital for competitive advantage; and how the strategic management of human capital influences the performance of service firms. 

Marketing

Carolyn Bonifield's current areas of research include post purchase decision making; role of affect in consumer decision making; customer satisfaction; and financial decision making.

Thomas Noordewier's research involves developing and maintaining industrial buyer-seller relationships.   He is also conducting research on mortgage markets spanning marketing and finance intended to expand understanding of how mortgage market participants (i.e., both suppliers and consumers of credit) behave, and the consequences of such behaviors. Projects include:

1. Mortgage default - examining the role of borrower LTV as a signaling mechanism of borrower creditworthiness; default externalities (e.g., damage to a borrower's credit rating); and examining a borrower's choice of fixed vs. adjustable rate products as a signal of creditworthiness;
2. Conditional Volatility of both housing prices and interest rates in hazard models of mortgage termination (i.e., prepayment and default) decisions - he hopes to expand this investigation to a broader analysis incorporating/testing a variety of alternative volatility metrics, including GARCH, EGARCH, TGARCH, Stochastic Volatility, Diffusion models, etc.

James Sinkula's research generative learning and new product success, the effect of strategic orientation on e-business initiatives in organizations, market orientation and the new product paradox, innovating for competitive advantage: how enduring are learning approaches in turbulent markets, environmental strategies and marketplace advantage, mental models and organizational interpretations systems in market learning cultures.

Chun Zhang’s research interests include the Chinese Market, trust and trust-breakers in across-cultural distribution partnerships and managing salesperson opportunism.  She also investigates relationship management challenges in channels of distribution,  issues of cooperation and competition in supplier-manufacturer relations and upstream supply chains.