Research

School of Business professors Pallab Sanyal and Shun Ye explore the complex connections between managerial feedback and creative outcomes in new study.

A Mason professor is the sole academic working with the U.S. government in an unprecedented effort to measure environmental-economic activity.

Whether it is pressing deadlines, overwork, or employees feeling they are not being supported, anger in a work environment can be unavoidable. Over time, the anger and frustration can compound, causing anger to spread through the entire team or organization, creating what George Mason University expert Mandy O’Neill calls a “culture of anger.”

Financially troubled U.S. hospitals are petitioning for more support from the federal government, but handouts won’t fix the underlying problem.

Research by Mason Accounting Professor Bret Johnson, a former SEC staff accountant and academic fellow, shows how seemingly mundane intra-agency policies can have unintended effects that benefit Wall Street over Main Street.

Managers often struggle to motivate their teams, but that could be because they’re looking in the wrong place. Mason School of Business professor Shora Moteabbed believes that how employees relate to one another on a one-to-one basis is key to understanding—and influencing—workplace behavior.

Faculty, staff, and students from three units across Mason have worked together to create a new VR experience so elementary students can take a “field trip” to the Mason apiary and learn from an expert beekeeper.

Mehmet Altug, an associate professor of operations management, has been researching retail returns policies for a decade. The issue has recently come to prominence, as the lenient policies of online retailers have led to skyrocketing return rates (now exceeding 20 percent in the U.S.). Altug’s various academic papers delve into the difficult trade-offs retailers face when setting returns policies. While there are no easy answers, Altug’s research identifies factors that can help retailers achieve more strategic flexibility.

For most drivers in the U.S., obeying a stop sign upon approaching an intersection is an unavoidable annoyance. But for Mason finance professor Jiasun Li, it’s a problem waiting to be solved. His recent working paper proposes a simple and economical improvement: removing one stop sign from every four-way intersection. According to his calculations, this would boost not only driver safety, but environmental sustainability as well. 

Jingyuan Yang, an assistant professor of information systems and operations management at Mason's School of Business, is at the forefront of AI research that aims to crack the codes of the physical world. Her results so far point toward innovative solutions for some of the biggest societal, governmental, and business challenges we face.