Research Chair's Message

Mae McDonnell (Wharton), Chair of the Research Committee announces the 2021 research award winners and acknowledges research committee members.

2021 OMT Award Winners

I am delighted to report that the OMT Research Committee completed the process of selecting winners for all the OMT paper and symposium awards that will presented at the 2021 Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting.

Nominees were identified by Program Chair Eva Boxenbaum based on the ratings of OMT reviewers. Then, subgroups of Research Committee members read each award-nominated paper or symposium in one of the eight award categories and voted on their picks for the most outstanding work submitted to this year’s AOM conference. 

Congratulations to all the award-winning authors and to those whose paper and symposia were nominated! The names of all winners and finalists are listed below. The formal presentation of the OMT Division’s awards will take place at the OMT Business Meeting in the Fall. We hope you will join us at the business meeting to celebrate the winners!

The OMT Business Meeting and Social Hour is also the perfect time to find out more about the OMT Research Committee, which is staffed by a dedicated group of OMT volunteers.

Finally, we encourage you to be a part of recognizing the excellence of OMT scholarship. Join the OMT Research Committee! Just send us an email.

OMT Division Best Paper Award

Winner: Madeleine Rauch (Copenhagen Business School), Drones in military warfare: The moral and emotional implications of an emerging technology

Runner-Up: Moritz J. Kleinaltenkamp (Hertie School), Living in the future or living in the now? How institutional change actors engage ambi-temporality

Also Nominated:

Chengwei Liu (ESMT Berlin), Chia-Jung Tsay (University College London), The variance of variance

Bastian Wurm (WU Vienna), Thomas Grisold (University of Lichtenstein), Jan Mendling (WU Vienna), Jan Vom Brocke (University of Lichtenstein), Measuring fluctuations of complexity in organizational routines

Wendy Kilminster, Alessandro Giudici, Paula Jarzabkowski (Cass Business School, City Universty London), The active persistence of shared characteristics in an organized market

Louis Pondy Best Dissertation Paper Award

Winner: Kylie Jiwon Hwang (Columbia Business School) Entrepreneurship as a bridge to employment? Evidence from formerly incarcerated individuals

Runner-up: Lindsey D. Cameron (Wharton), (Relative) choice in algorithms: How digital platforms repurpose workplace consent

Also Nominated:

Danielle Elaine Bovenberg (UC Santa Barbara), Safe crossings: How laboratory staff circulates knowledge amid scientific secrecy

Alessandro Tirapani (Niccolo’ Montpellier Business School), Turning the wheel? Interns and the reproduction of precariousness

Audrey Holm (Boston University), Protective halos, experts’ justification for future and the “job readiness” of returning citizens

Best Entrepreneurship Paper Award (Sponsored by the journal Innovation: Organization & Management)

Winner: Daniel Kim (Wharton), Minjae Kim (Rice University, Jones Graduate School of Business), Individuals and organizational change: Effect of unexpected founder loss on industry change among US startups

Runner-up: Eric Volmar (Stanford), Mission and money: Unpacking competition between hybrid organizations in the nascent MOOC market

Also Nominated:

Ting Yao (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), Hugh O’Neill (UNC – Chapel Hill), Venture capital time bombs and new ventures: Do boards limit the damage?

Paolo Aversa (City University London), Emanuele Bianchi (Cass), Loris Gaio (University of Trneto), Alberto Nucciarelli (University of Trento), The grand tour: The role of catalyzing places for industry emergence

Joseph Dwomoh Owusu, Marvin Washington (University of Alberta), The influence of commercial and family logics on organizational founding attempts

OMT Responsible Research Award

Winner: Thomas John Fewer, Dali Ma (Drexel University), Boeing’s Jedi mind tricks: Discursive framing and the dark side of institutional entrepreneurship

Runner-up: Siri Boe-Lillegraven, Panikos Georgallis, Ans Kolk (University of Amsterdam), A tale of two cities: How firms’ reactions may shape societal adaptation following climate disasters

Also nominated:

Mislav Radic (London School of Economics and Political Science), Alessandro N. Tirapani (Montpellier Business School), The public responsibility of platform corporations

Davis Holls (Nottingham Business School), Alex Wright (University of Sheffield Management School), Owain Smolovic Jones (The Open University), Sanela Smolvic Jones (The Open University), From “pretty to pretty powerful:” Facial beauty’s performative power

Marian Eabrasu (European Business School Paris), Arthur Gautier (ESSEC Business School), Past the business case: Reorienting corporate philanthropy research towards outcomes and impact

Best Student Paper Award

Winner: Ying Li (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), The show must go on: The role of organizational values in art houses’ identity-violating transformation during COVID-19

Runner-up: Yeonsin Ahn (INSEAD), When is organizational culture more replicable?

Also Nominated:

Kunyuan Qiao, Geography in the making of culture and corporate strategy: A longitudinal study of M&As

Tomi Koljonen (Aalto University School of Business), Dismantling the Trojan horse: Professionals and relational resistance against technological change

Lisha Liu (Cornell), Matchmaking only for equals? Cross-network influence of status distance on triadic closure

Best Symposium Award

Winner: Timothy Pollock, Ace Beorchia, Ashley Y. Roccapriore (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), The art of storytelling in academic writing

Runner-up: Elena Bruni (WU Vienna), Lianne Lefsrud (University of Alberta), Science denial: Causes, courses and remedies. A route map for organizational scholars

Also Nominated:

Yuliya Snihur (Toulouse Business School), Llewellyn Thomas (IESE), Raghu Garud (Pennsylvania State University), Nelson Phillips (Imperial College London), Opening the black box of entrepreneurial framing

Matthias Wenzel (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Philip Gylfe (Aalto University School of Business), Academic-practitioner relationships: Tensions and practices

Best Paper on Environmental and Social Practices

Winner: Peter Younkin (University of Oregon), Kaisa Snellman (INSEAD), Applicant bias: Evidence from a field experiment

Runner-up: Yang Liu, Christopher Marquis (Cornell SC Johnson College of Business), Producing masks amid COVID-19? How a pandemic imprint affects firm’s new medical production

Also Nominated:

Wooseok Jung (HEC Paris), Amanda Sharkey (University of Chicago), For good, but not for long: Disengagement from pro bono supports in U.S. law firms, 2008-2012

Heli Tuulia Nissilä (Aalto University School of Business), Environmental jolts and temporal adaptation in a local solar energy movement

Blagoy Blgoev (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Lea Von Guttenberg (Leuphana U. Lüneburg), Dennis Schoeneborn (Copenhagen Business School), From temporal myopia to foresight: Bridging the near and the distant future through temporal work

Best International Paper Award (Sponsored by Organization Studies / SAGE)

Winner: Katharina Scheidgen (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Anna Brattström (Lund University), Lukewarm or hot? Comparing investor tie formation of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and Berlin

Runner-up: Stephan Bohn (Free University Berlin), Nora Lohmeyer (Radboud University), Harsh Kumar Jha (Newcastle University Business School), Juliane Reinecke (King’s College London), Hostile frame takeover: Co-opting the security frame in the German nuclear energy debate

Also Nominated:

Wenjie Liu (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Pursey Heugens (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Frank Wijen (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Marc Van Essen (University of South Carolina), Assessing and extending the unique contributions of Chinese management studies

Sofiane Baba (University of Sherbrooke), Innan Sasaki (Warwick Business School), Eero Vaara (University of Oxford), Maintenance of the vulnerable hybrid identity: When traditions and modernity meet in the wilderness

Selorm Agbleze, Marcus Møller Larsen, Michael J. Mol (Copenhagen Business School), How aspirations interact to influence informal firms’ decision to formalize

Question: How do I become a member of the OMT Research Committee?

Answer: Volunteer!

Approximately fifty OMT division members annually volunteer their time as part of the Research Committee. Volunteers are placed on one of eight sub-committees and are asked to read and rank the three to six papers or symposia that have been nominated. The committee’s work is done in a very compressed time frame, usually near the end of February and the beginning March. Each year some new members are added to the Research Committee as long-serving members who have provided five years of valuable service to the division begin to cycle off.

If you want to be a part of selecting which papers and symposia win awards, please volunteer. The requirements are that you are an active reviewer for the OMT division and that you can commit to being available during the time we review papers for awards. If you are interested, you can contact Mae McDonnell (Wharton) via email.

2021 OMT Research Committee Members

My sincere, heart-felt thanks go out to the all of the OMT members who volunteered to be part of the 2021 OMT Research Committee. I would like to especially acknowledge the heroic service of our four members who will be given the Research Committee Service Award this year for serving the committee for five years: Derek Harmon, Jiao Luo, Benjamin Cole, and Joel Gehman.

As you can see below, the Research Committee represents a broad sample of OMT’s membership. Please consider joining the committee next year as a volunteer!