The Louis Pondy Best Dissertation Paper Award recognizes the best paper based on a dissertation.
To be eligible, the paper must be individually authored by the student. To be considered for the Pondy Award, you must submit your manuscript to the OMT Divison through the Academy of Management Annual Meeting online submission system. During this process you need to certify that your paper is eligible for the Pondy Award. Once received, all manuscripts are sent out for anonymous review and rating. The eligibility of the top rated manuscripts is confirmed, at which point they are forwarded to the OMT Division's Research Committee, which determines the Pondy Award winner. The Pondy Award winner is announced at the OMT Business Meeting during the AOM Annual Meeting. The winning paper is automatically nominated for the Academy of Management's William H. Newman Award for outstanding papers based on a recent dissertation. The Newman Award was first given out in 1999.
2023 Louis Pondy Best Dissertation Paper Award
Laura Adler (Yale School of Management)
"The Paradox of Individual Equity: How Employers Explain the Fairness of Unequal Pay"
Past Winners
2022 Ryann Elizabeth Manning (U. of Toronto). "Constructing Proximity for Distanced Moral Action during an Ebola Outbreak"
2021 Kylie Jiwon Hwang (Columbia Business School). "Entrepreneurship as a bridge to employment? Evidence from formerly incarcerated individuals"
2020 Brittany Bond (MIT) "Pride without Prejudice: The Burden of Under-Recognition in Organizations"
2019 Arvind Karunakaran (Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University) "Navigating Status-Authority Asymmetry between Professions: The Case of 911 Emergency Management."
2018 Pedro Monteiro (EMLyon Business School) "The Enabling Roles of Bureaucracy in Cross-Expertise Collaboration"
2017 Derek Harmon (University of Michigan) "When the Fed Speaks: Arguments, Emotions, and the Micro-Foundations of Institutions."
2016 Aruna Ranganathan (Stanford University) "The Artisan and His Audience: Identification with Work and Price-Setting in Southern India"
2015 Mabel Abraham (MIT Sloan) “Explaining Unequal Returns to Social Capital Among Entrepreneurs”
2014 Laura Singleton (Eckerd College) “Understanding the Evolution of Theoretical Constructs in Organization Studies: Examining Purpose”
2013 Murad Mithani (Stevens Institute of Technology) "The Illusions of Power"
2012 Kaisa E. Snellman (Harvard University) “Window Dressers and Closet Conformists: Organizational Decoupling Revisited”
2011 Christopher Yenkey (Cornell University). “Ethnic Homogeneity in a Social Network: Recruiting Investors into the Nairobi Stock Exchange”** Read an interview with Pondy Winner Chris Yenkey.
2010 David Zhu (Arizona State University). “Sparing Boards Will Pay Even Less and Openhanded Boards Will Pay Even More”**
2009 Dali Ma (University of Chicago). “Bring the Society Back In: Relational Identities in the Creation of Entrepreneurship”**
Published as Social Belonging and Economic Action: Affective-Based Social Circles in the Creation of Private Entrepreneurship, Social Forces, 94(1) 87-114.
2008 Elizabeth G. Pontikes (Stanford University). “Fitting in or Starting New? Invention, Constraint, and New Categories in the Software Industry”**
2007 Jerry W. Kim (Columbia University). “Arbiter of Science: Institutionalization and Status Effects in FDA Drug Review 1990-2004”
2006 Christopher Marquis (University of Michigan). “Historical Environments, Coordination and Consolidation in the US Banking Industry, 1896-2001.”**
Published as Marquis & Huang (2009) “The Contingent Nature of Public Policy and the Growth of U.S. Commercial Banking,” Academy of Management Journal, 52(6):1222-1246;
and as Marquis & Huang (2010) “Acquisitions as Exaptation: The Legacy of Founding Institutions in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry,” Academy of Management Journal, 53(6):1441-1473.
2005 Nina Shah (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). “Change in Institutions: The Decline of the No-Lateral-Hiring Norm among Large Law Firms, 1974-1990”
2004 Sean C. Safford (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Published as Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown: Social Networks and t he Transformation of the Rust Belt, Harvard University Press (2009).
2003 Stefan Jonsson (Stockholm School of Economics). “Trickle-Up and Trickle-Down: Institutionalized Norms and the Spread of New Ideas”**
2002 Bongjin Kim (Tilburg University). “Adaptation of Corporate Governance to Deregulation: A Longitudinal Study of the U.S. Banking Industry”
2001 Matthew S. Bothner (Columbia University).**
Published as “Relative Size and Firm Growth in the Global Computer Industry” in Industrial and Corporate Change
2001 Isabelle Royer (Dauphine University). “Stopping Champions of Failing Projects”
Published as “Why Bad Projects Are So Hard to Kill” in Harvard Business Review
2000 Timothy G. Pollock (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). “Reputation, Embeddedness and the Power of Investment Banks as Transaction Intermediaries in the Market for Initial Public Offerings”
1999 Beth Bechky (Stanford University).**
Published as “Sharing Meaning Across Occupational Communities: The Transformation of Understanding of a Production Floor” in Organization Science.
1998 Gautam Ahuja (University Of Michigan). “Collaboration Networks, Structural Holes, and Innovation: A Longitudinal Study”
1997 Ha Hoang (Case Western Reserve University). “The Consequence of Network Participation for Acquisition & Alliance Activity in the Biotechnology Industry”
1996 D. Charles Galunic (INSEAD). “Evolving Domains and Resources Within Multibusiness Organizations: Creating Divisional Charters”
1996 Scott Snook (Harvard University). “Practical Drift: The Friendly Fire Shootdown Over Northern Iraq”
1995 Matthew Kraatz (Northwestern University).
1994 Brian Uzzi (State University of New York at Stony Brook).
Published as “The Sources and Consequences of Embeddedness for the Economic Performance of Organizations: The Network Effect” in American Sociological Review.
1993 Kimberly D. Elsbach (Stanford University).
Published as “Managing Organizational Legitimacy in the California Cattle Industry: The Construction and Effectiveness of Verbal Accounts” in Administrative Science Quarterly.
1992 Pamela R. Haunschild (Carnegie Mellon University).
Published as “Interorganizational Imitation: The Impact of Interlocks on Corporate Acquisition Activity” in Administrative Science Quarterly.
1991 Brian T. Pentland (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
1990 Heather A. Havemen (University of California at Berkeley)
Published as "Between a rock and a hard place: Organizational change and performance under conditions of fundamental environmental transformation" in Administrative Science Quarterly.
1989
1988 William P. Barnett (University of California at Berkeley)
**Denotes dissertation-based papers that also won the Academy of Management's William H. Newman Award.
Have an update to this list? Please email omt@aom.org.