‘Open science’ celebrated in annual awards for management research

The outstanding achievements of researchers at the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) have been recognised in its annual awards. The ERIM Awards acknowledge the contribution of research to international business and management and were presented for excellence and scientific impact in dissertations and articles, for outstanding young researchers, and for research with societal impact. One new award this year reflects the principles and practices of Open Science – a new approach to the scientific process based on co-operative work and new ways of diffusing knowledge using digital technologies and new collaborative tools.

The 2020 Dissertation Award was presented to Dr Radina Blagoeva from RSM for her dissertation entitled The Hard Power Of Soft Power: A behavioral strategy perspective on how power, reputation, and status affect firms, which provides a behavioural strategy perspective on how to prevent the mutual influence of firms and financial markets from having potentially counterproductive outcomes. Her three empirical studies explored how evaluations by financial markets affect companies’ decision-making, and how strategic decisions are evaluated by those markets in various contexts. Her promotors were Prof. Justin Jansen and Prof. Tom Mom. Radina Blagoeva is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Management of the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.

The jury stated that Dr Blagoeva’s winning dissertation has already resulted in two publications in journals that are among the very best in management, the Academy of Management Journal and the Strategic Management Journal. Dr Blagoeva took a behavioural perspective of power, reputation, and status, and how they affect companies’ strategic actions and investors’ valuation of such actions. The jury found this perspective to be very novel, and its usage to be consistent across the three papers that constitute the dissertation. “The dissertation also combines several empirical methods, such as event study methodology, content analysis, and propensity score matching, and is therefore also very strong methodologically,” said the jury.

The 2020 Top Article Award was presented to Dr Tim Eisert, Associate Professor of Finance at ESE, for the article Whatever It Takes: The Real Effects of Unconventional Monetary Policy with co-authors Viral V. Acharya (the C.V. Starr Professor of Economics, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University), Christian Eufinger (Associate Professor, Department of Financial Management, IESE Business School, University of Navarra) and Christian Hirsch (Assistant Professor, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, Goethe University Frankfurt), which was published in The Review of Financial Studies.

The jury chose Dr Eisert’s article for its publication in a top journal, and for making a clear contribution in its field. The jury said the article stood out because it tackles a real-world problem by presenting a solid conceptual perspective, as well as containing strong data and a sophisticated empirical analysis. “This article has had an immediate impact on scholarly work in the area, judging by the number of citations in various databases, including over 300 citations and counting in Google Scholar,” said the jury.

There were two winners for the 2020 ERIM Award for Outstanding Performance by a Young Researcher for ERIM members or ERIM associate members who received their PhD less than five years ago. The two winners were chosen by jury members Prof. Gerrit van Bruggen, Prof. Albert Wagelmans, and Prof. Wolf Wagner.

Dr Thomas Lambert, Assistant Professor in the department of Finance at RSM was one of the recipients. The jury said: “Our first winner of 2020 recently received tenure and became Associate Professor of Finance at RSM. He received his PhD in 2015 from the Université Catholique de Louvain and Université Lille in Finance, with highest honours. In 2019 he published a single-authored paper in Management Science on banks’ lobbying activities. His earlier work on crowdfunding also got a great deal of attention in the academic community. His 2014 paper in the Journal of Business Venturing now has close to 3,000 Google Scholar citations and his 2013 paper in Venture Capital has close to 900 citations, which are obviously very impressive numbers. In 2020, Thomas received a highly competitive NWO Veni grant for the project “Captured Financial Authorities”, which deals with the highly relevant societal question of whether there is any scientific evidence of conflict of interests in the surveillance process of banks.”

The second award went to Dr Richard Haans, who received his PhD from the University of Tilburg and is now Assistant Professor in the department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at RSM. The jury said: “In his research he applies advanced methods for analysing textual data to answer fundamental scholarly questions. He published two papers in the Strategic Management Journal as well as work in the Academy of Management Annals and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. These studies have attained high impact.” His paper in the Strategic Management Journal was one of the top 10 per cent most-downloaded articles between January 2018 and December 2019, and his paper in the Academy of Management Annals was its second most-read article in 2019. Dr Haans was the inaugural Data Analytics Chair for the Organization and Management Theory division of the Academy of Management.

The ERIM Societal Impact Award 2020 was presented to two RSM professors Prof. Justin Jansen and Prof. Tom Mom for their research Scaling-up: Building, Leading, and Sustaining High-Growth Firms.

Justin Jansen is Professor of Corporate Entrepreneurship in the department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship, and Tom Mom is Professor of Strategic Growth in the department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship.

The jury said: “This award is to recognise and honour a research study which has had a major impact on society.” They were impressed and pleased with the very high quality of submissions for this year’s award and were particularly pleased to see that the submissions addressed real challenges in business and society, both locally and nationally.

The societal impact of Jansen and Mom’s winning research stretches beyond its immediate surroundings, connecting students and companies, but also extending its impact to national level and making its way into government policy. The professors’ research took in a range of companies and governmental organisations. “The researchers continuously share their new insights with their stakeholders, expanding their impact and making a difference at scale,” said the jury.

A new award, the ERIM Open Science Award 2020, recognises and honours the demonstrable commitment to the principles and practices of open science. It was presented to Dr Gabriele Paolacci, Associate Professor in the department of Marketing Management at RSM for his commitment to promoting open science among his peers and younger generations, ‘a virtuous example to follow’ said the jury. They said they look forward to witnessing more instances of the impact of his work and enthusiasm in his field and beyond.

The jury report said: “The inaugural ERIM Open Science award winner has been implementing open science practices in his work for a long time, by responsibly sharing materials, data, code, and publishing preprints. One of his papers, published in the journal Psychological Science in 2015, was awarded badges for its use of open data and open materials. Such badges were awarded only since 2014; [Gabriele Paolacci] clearly quickly understood the value of sharing, and is a pioneer among his peers.”
 

The jury report continues: “In terms of outreach, our award winner has promoted the benefits of large, high quality data via online sampling, not only at international meetings organised by influential scholarly associations (such as the Society for Improvement of Psychological Science) but also locally, for example at the Open Science Community here in Rotterdam. He has also been actively engaged in the public debate to open up research as a response to the reproducibility crisis.

“Our winner highlights the principles of openness and transparency among younger generations. As thesis co-ordinator for the master theses of the RSM programme MSc Marketing Management, he made data sharing compulsory. This is a clear signal for students, fellow teachers, and management.

“The committee unanimously agreed that this year’s winner is an outstanding candidate for the ERIM Open Science Award.”

The 2020 ERIM Awards also had some catching up to do from last year when an accident prevented the winner from collecting his award. The organisers of the 2020 Awards were happy to correct that by officially congratulating the winner of the 2019 ERIM Award for Outstanding Performance by a Young Researcher Dr Stefano Tasselli, Associate Professor in the department of Marketing Management at RSM.

Dr Tasselli published six papers on management and adjacent disciplines in the previous six years, and has a strong academic focus on the micro-foundations of organisational social networks and innovation, with an interest in broader topics of interest for organisational research. His scholarly citations continue to grow, and in 2018, he was mentioned by Poets and Quants as one of the top 40 professors under 40.

For a more elaborate article about the award winning research, please visit our research platform RSM Discovery.