Research

Today's workforce might best be described in terms of tumult: Great Resignation, Great Retirement, Great Reshuffle, etc. In this "new normal," managers must learn to navigate a state of continual transition in their teams and organizations, while keeping up with day-to-day demands. Likewise, George Mason University School of Business Management Professors Sarah Wittman and Kevin Rockmann believe that it is time for scholars to change the way they think about role transitions to better align their theories with our increasingly uncertain world.

In her 2021 PhD dissertation, Ashley Yuckenberg, a trained journalist and assistant professor of business communications at Mason, plumbs the ethical quandaries of crisis coverage—and provides a framework for guiding journalists through them.

Brian Ngac and Nirup Menon, from the information systems and operations management area at the School of Business, were recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) located in Arlington, Virginia. This Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Grant was awarded for their proposal to develop a new experiential learning program that will engage students and companies from the Commonwealth.

Hierarchy has its upsides and downsides. A pyramidical power structure works well for day-to-day decision making. But as the distance between the base and the tip of the pyramid increases, tensions between organizational tiers can create obstacles to reform. It’s a matter of “the unconscious dynamics of humans in groups and systems” rather than a deliberate response, says Renee Rinehart Kathawalla, a postdoctoral research fellow of management at Mason.

In her latest book, Victoria Grady delves into 20 years of research on how people—and their brains—react to change in the workplace and beyond.

George Mason University professor Sarah Wittman said the usual offboarding process is rote: effectively a checklist, and it doesn't need to be.

Einav Hart, an assistant professor of management at George Mason University’s School of Business, shows the economic implications of negotiators’ relationships, and how these economic implications affect how people negotiate. Her recent paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (co-authored with Maurice Schweitzer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania) introduces the construct “ERRO” (the Economic Relevance of negotiators’ Relational Outcomes) to shed light on when negotiators should consider their future relationships.

Bret Johnson, assistant professor of accounting at Mason, recently co-authored a paper in Management Science finding that SEC comment letters are leaking out among investors close to the company concerned, who then use it to their advantage. Technically, such information-sharing violates Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD), which prohibits companies from sharing secrets with network partners such as institutional investors and analysts.

The rules of the economy are being wholly rewritten right under our noses, and distributed ledger technology wields the pen. That’s the core contention of Sarah Grace Manski, an assistant professor in George Mason University's School of Business.

The National Science Foundation (NSF)’s I-Corps program is an accelerator that helps entrepreneurs and researchers work together “to bring invention to impact.” Mason serves as an official I-Corps site, supporting local grantees through the exploratory stages of venture-building, as well as preparing them to apply for the national-level program.