The Smith School's faculty research interests encompass a broad, dynamic mix of functional and netcentric economy issues. The Smith School has numerous research projects ongoing, and Research@Smith is the medium to keep you informed about many of these projects.

Research@Smith, Winter 2006

IN THIS ISSUE

Featured Stories:

Management
Consumer risk preferences can be shifted and actively managed by marketers.
RESEARCH BY Rebecca Hamilton and Gabriel J. Biehal

International Business
Different types of global business teams pose unique management challenges.
RESEARCH BY Anil Gupta and Qing Cao

D&IT
Powerful new techniques for pricing yield potential gains in the billions for high-stake auctions.
RESEARCH BY Robert Day and S. Raghavan

►D&IT Department
►Faculty Kudos
►Smith Undergraduate Research Fellows

►Download Winter 2006 Research@Smith (PDF)

D&IT Department

Information systems and networks represent the critical infrastructure on which corporations and the economy depend not only for the execution of operations, but also for the formulation of strategy andcompetitive differentiation. The Smith School’s department of decision information technologies (D&IT) helps organizations meet these challenges through its leading-edge research and educational programs.

D&IT faculty have received international recognition for their research in management science, information systems, statistics and data analysis, and operations and supply chain management. Members of the Management Science Group were ranked sixth in the nation for the practices of operations research (Interfaces, 1997). U.S. News and World Report ranked the Smith School as having the eighth best program in management information systems. The Wall Street Journal ranks Smith's information technology program # 6.

The department’s faculty members continue to garner awards and honors. Bruce Golden, France-Merrick Chair in Management Science, Shreevardhan Lele, Tyser Teaching Fellow of Decision

Sciences, S. Raghavan, assistant professor of management research, and collaborators Zhiwei Fu (former PhD student) and Ed Wasil (American University) were awarded the 2005 INFORMS Computing Society Prize for their research in the area of data mining.

Raghavan, with PhD candidate Ioannis Gamvros and Rick Nidel, MBA ’05, were selected as finalists for the prestigious 2005 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice. Raghavan, Gamvros and Nidel developed a model to help Catholic Relief Services, a not-for-profit agency that funds development efforts and humanitarian efforts throughout the world, allocate more than $70 million in unrestricted funding. Catholic Relief Services is using the model developed by the team for strategic planning and to help keep budgetary spending in line with its philanthropic goals.

Katherine Stewart, assistant professor of information systems, received an NSF CAREER Grant, approximately $500,000 in funding during the period 2004-2008.

For more information about current research in the Smith School’s department of decision and information technologies, please visit http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/dit/.

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Faculty Kudos

Michael Ball, Orkand Professor of Management Science, and Michael Fu, professor of management science, have received a $630,000 grant from NSF under the special initiative on “Dynamic Data Driven Application Systems.” The title of their proposal is “Dynamic Real-Time Order Promising and Fulfillment for Global Make-to-Order Supply Chains.” Ball has been named Area Editor for Transportation in the flagship journal Operations Research.

Chris Bingham, assistant professor of management and organization, won the Best Paper Award at the 2005 Atlanta Competitive Advantage Conference for his paper on "Opening the Black Box of Capability Creation: The Internationalization of Entrepreneurial Firms." Bingham's paper on "Building Theory Using Simulation" has been conditionally accepted for publication in
Academy of Management Review.

Bruce Golden, France-Merrick Chair in Management Science, will be the first Conoco-Phillips Distinguished Lecture at Oklahoma State University in October 2005. He presented two lectures as Distinguished Speaker at the 31st Lunteren Conference on the Mathematics of Operations Research in Lunteren, The Netherlands in January 2006.

Larry Gordon, Ernst&Young Alumni Professor of Managerial Accounting, has been appointed as the International Representative for Accounting for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise
(RAE) in the U.K. The RAE is the process which determines the research ranking, and in turn research funding, for the various departments (across all disciplines) at U.K. universities for several years starting in 2008.

David Kirsch, assistant professor of management and organization, has received additional funding for his "Dot Com Archives" project. The Library of Congress has extended its funding
agreement under the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP) for an additional two years, through 2007, committing an additional $813,000, bringing total
direct support to $1,056,000. Counting additional contributions from project partners, the project has received $2,209,000 in funding.

Dilip Madan, professor of finance, has been appointed editor of Mathematical Finance.

S. Raghavan, assistant professor of management science, and G. Anandalingam, Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Management Science, co-edited a book entitled Telecommunications
Planning: Innovations in Pricing, Network Design and Management, to be published by Springer.

Ian Williamson, assistant professor of management and organization, has won the 2005 Academy of Management Mentoring Best Practices Award. This award recognizes individuals who have excelled in providing mentoring to Academy of Management members. Williamson has been invited to join the editorial board of Academy of Management Journal.

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Smith Undergraduate Research Fellows

Twenty-two students participated in last semester’s launch of Smith Research Fellows, a new program for undergraduates which allows them to partner with faculty members pursuing research projects. Students learn through the research process, participate in data collection and compilation, modeling, presentation and other tasks under faculty supervision while earning a stipend for their efforts.

The Fellows worked on a variety of projects, including:

  • writing white papers on the state of electronic markets in various industries
     
  • gathering data for a study that examined the self-serving bias as it affects auditors’ beliefs about tradeoffs between retaining audit clients versus improving audit quality
     
  • testing and demonstrating auction mechanisms for a variety of applications including industrial and government procurement, real-time ticket sales for sporting events, allocation of landing/take-off slots at airports
     
  • gathering data about private security offerings by public firms
     
  • collection, coding, organization, and analysis of detailed data about patents, and corresponding data about the companies that use them for research on the changing nature of intellectual property
     
  • managing the distribution of the survey instruments, collecting of survey instruments and coding and inputting of data for a study of the motor carrier industry's adoption of information technology to manage safety performance
     
  • Web-based coding and analysis of data regarding how young startup ventures in the biotech
    • sector evolve

Smith Research Fellows is part of the new Smith Undergraduate Fellows Program. The Fellows program consists of groups of specialized tracks that cut across academic majors, so that all Smith School undergraduates can participate in an intimate small-school environment while enjoying the options and opportunities only a large school can provide.

Fall 2006 will see the launch of several new Fellows tracks, including International Fellows and Entrepreneurship Fellows. International Fellows will be admitted with double majors in business and foreign language study, and will participate in dedicated study abroad trips, international clubs, events and subsidized travel. Entrepreneurship Fellows will a provide a four course track in entrepreneurship, including a funded business plan competition and special activities with the school’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship aimed at product, service and business creation. The Smith Undergraduate Fellows program enjoys strong cross-campus support and has received major funding from the University of Maryland administration and from Smith School alumni.

For a complete list of projects and more information about Smith Research Fellows, visit www.rhsmith.umd.edu/undergrad/researchfellows.html

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DEAN
Howard Frank

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH
Michael Ball

EDITOR
Rebecca Winner

CONTRIBUTOR
Kenneth Ng, Smith MBA Candidate '06

We’d like to put Research@Smith directly into the hands of those who are interested in learning about the latest research conducted by Smith School faculty. To request a copy of this publication contact Rebecca Winner via e-mail, editor@rhsmith.umd.edu, or phone,
(301) 405-9465.

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