Doctoral Research Awards

Two Cleveland State University Doctoral Students Honored by the Monte Ahuja College of Business for Excellence in Research

The Doctoral committee of the Monte Ahuja College of Business at Cleveland State University honored two doctoral students with the Excellence in Research award in Spring of 2016. The Doctoral Excellence in Research awards are earned by DBA students who have consistently provided research that is applicable, relevant, timely and provides insight. The recipients for Spring 2016 are:

• Michele Heath-Smith
• Vivien Jancelle

Michele Heath-Smith:

Michele's research is in the area of health care information technology. Her research and teaching interest lie in the nexus of the management and information systems. Her research and teaching interests stem from her work experience in a variety of managerial positions in various organizations where she has witnessed the potential of information systems in management and vice versa. Accordingly, her research examines the role of leadership, governance, culture, conflict, team composition and other core management concepts in the context of health care technology in general and health information exchange and electronic health records implementation in particular. 

Vivien Jancenelle:

Vivien's research has drawn on signaling theory, upper echelons theory and the organizational identity perspective in order to investigate how top management teams (for publicly-traded firms) and founders (for small ventures) can create value through the use of efficacious signals in two-party relationships. At the public firm level, Vivien is gauging shareholders' reactions to quarterly earnings releases and how those can be moderated by signals sent by top managers during post-earnings announcement conference calls. One study on this topic was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Strategy and Management and highlighted how optimistic or other certain language cues can protect a firm's market value under conditions of heightened firm-specific risk. Another study in the same context investigated how a CEO's voice and tone can inform market participants about the firm's true economic state during periods of uncertainty.

At the entrepreneur level, Vivien's interest in founder-investor relationships is within the context of online loan and seed fund marketplaces. He investigates the effects of signals embedded within business plans and entrepreneurial video pitches on the odds of securing funding from investors. In this setting, normative signals (e.g., passion, meaning) are often found to have a stronger effect on the odds of securing funding than utilitarian signals (e.g., profit orientation, competitive aggressiveness), suggesting that firms with strong normative identities may be better equipped for success in crowd-based financial platforms. These findings suggest that online-based entrepreneurial finance may rely on different mechanisms than traditional venture capitalism, opening roads for new research and the applicability of new theories to the study entrepreneurial finance (e.g., warm-glow theory).