Watch for research from faculty of Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business that will impact business practices:

Chris Blocker
Assistant Professor, Marketing

Blocker's research focuses mainly on customer value, marketing strategy, emotional intelligence and buyer behavior. Blocker, with coauthors Daniel J. Flint and Matthew B. Myers, wrote "Customer Value Perceptions in Global Business Markets: Exploring the Strategic Potential of Standardization," which was presented at the 2009 Academy of Marketing Science Conference held in Baltimore, Md. The team received the Wayne Delozier Award for the best paper in the conference across all tracks.

Blocker, with Mee-Shew Cheung and Oliver Rust, wrote "Strategic Sensemaking and Value Creation at the Base of the Pyramid in China," which was presented at the International Base of the Pyramid Conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa, sponsored by the University of Pretoria's Gordon Institute of Business Science and The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, November 2009.

Blocker also serves as a contributor for Baylor University's Keller Center Research Report. With co-author Bill Weeks, he wrote "Trying to Find and Keep Top-notch Agents for your Sales Team? Why Not Use the Person-Job Fit Approach?," which was included in the November 2009 report. Blocker also wrote "The Emotionally Intelligent Salesperson" included in the August 2009 report.

Blocker, with Mee-Shew Cheung, wrote "Base of the Pyramid Market Construction in China: Co-creating Value for Organizations and Individuals," which will be presented at The Third Subsistence Marketplaces Conference: "From Impactful Research to Sustainable Innovations for Subsistence Marketplaces" in July 2010. He also wrote "Modeling Customer Value Perceptions in Cross-Cultural Business Markets," forthcoming in the Journal of Business Research.

Kathy Hurtt
Assistant Professor, Accounting & Business Law

Hurtt's research focuses on judgment and decision making among auditors, specifically on the impact of professional skepticism on auditors' judgments and behaviors, and she has developed a scale to measure professional skepticism. Hurtt's research "Development of a Scale to Measure Professional Skepticism," is published in Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, May 2010.

Chris Pullig
Department Chair of Marketing
Associate Professor, Marketing

Pullig, along with coauthors S. Dutta and C. J. Simmons, examines price judgment in a working paper "What Is It Worth? Consumers' Price Judgments of Really New Products," which was presented at the 11th Annual Behavioral Pricing Conference held in Orlando, Fla., November 2009.

Price judgment research primarily has focused on situations where consumers use prior knowledge of product category prices as internal standards for fair or expected market price. However, consumers often face situations where they must make price judgments in the absence of such standards. This may occur when consumers encounter novel purchase options for which they have little or no experience, or when radically new products are introduced to the marketplace. The authors first present a conceptual model describing how this may occur, demonstrate support for this model, and offer insights into the process of making price judgments given no internal price standards. The findings have implications for marketers of new-to-the-world products and products that consumers have little experience in buying.

Cynthia K. Riemenschneider
Associate Professor, Information Systems

Some of Riemenschneider's research interests include IT work force issues, women and minorities in IT, and absorptive capacities of IT departments within the organization. Most recently, Riemenschneider, along with coauthors Deborah Armstrong and Jo Ellen Moore, wrote "Meeting the Demand for IT Workers: A Call for Research" published in the European Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 18, No. 5. Riemenschneider, with coauthors Kiku Jones and Lori N. K. Leonard, also wrote "Trust Influencers on the Web," which was published in the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 19, No. 3.

More of Riemenschneider's research is featured in the Focus Research Newsletter (Winter 2009).

Marty Stuebs
Assistant Professor, Accounting & Business Law

Stuebs' research investigates important relationships between ethics, human resources, and company performance. For several years, Stuebs has presented research in these areas at American Accounting Association meetings. He has discussed issues of social responsibility and firm performance; corporate reputation and earnings quality; and business reputation and employee efficiency, productivity and cost.

A few recent publications with Baylor colleagues include "Ethics and the Tax Profession: Restoring the Public Interest Focus" appearing in Accounting and the Public Interest in 2010 coauthored with Brett Wilkinson, holder of the Roderick L. Holmes Chair of Accountancy. "The Gatekeepers' Tools" is an article coauthored by professor Mike Robinson and associate professor David Hurtt appearing in the January 2010 issue of Strategic Finance.

Stuebs wrote "Moral Confrontation: An Essential Companion to Moral Imagination," which was published in Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting, January 2010. Stuebs, with coauthor Li Sun, wrote "Business Reputation and Employee Efficiency, Productivity and Cost," a forthcoming article in the Journal of Business Ethics.

Jamie Collins
Assistant Professor, Management & Entrepreneurship
William Worthington
Assistant Professor, Management & Entrepreneurship
John Schoen
Adjunct Faculty, Management & Entrepreneurship

Collins' research concentrates on executive decisions governing the direction of firms, performance outcomes, and consequences of these decisions. Worthington's research focuses on issues of business continuity and organizational resilience in the context of small/private/family owned businesses particularly in times of crisis. Collins and Worthington have partnered on several research projects.

Most recently, Collins and Worthington wrote "Knowledge Management, Supply Chain Technology Investments and Overall Firm Performance: Developing a Competitive Advantage," which was published in Management Research News, Vol. 33, No. 11, 2010. Coauthors on the article included Pedro Reyes, assistant professor of Management at Baylor, and Marisabel Romero.

Collins and Worthington, along with Michael Hitt, also wrote "Beyond Risk Mitigation: Enhancing Corporate Innovation with Scenario Planning," which was published in Business Horizons, Vol. 52, 2009. Collins and Worthington presented "FrameEx: Demonstrating the Value of Strategic Frameworks," coauthored by Christopher Reutzel, for the Strategic Management Society 29th Annual International conference held in Washington, D.C., October 2009.

Collins, Worthington and John Schoen, adjunct faculty member in Management and Entrepreneurship; presented "Trust and Relax? Keys to Retiring Well for Family Founders" at the Family Enterprise Research Council (FERC) annual meeting in Cancun, Mexico, April 2010. Collins, Worthington and Schoen will also present "Family Business Retirement Perspectives Vary, Services Should Too" at the Family Firm Institute (FFI) annual conference in Chicago, Ill., October 2010.