Cryptocurrency’s surprising transparency advantage

Despite the fears of regulators and skittish investors, clear and accurate signals of cryptocurrency quality may be hidden in plain sight.

Politically conservative CEOs think differently about transparency

As a purely voluntary form of disclosure, management earnings forecasts may tell us as much about the managers themselves as about their company’s financial future.

Can non-partisan news survive in the online echo chamber?

Even famously neutral news organizations are not immune to the pressure to compete for clicks in the increasingly partisan online marketplace.

“Loss avoidance” is all the rage in private equity

Private equity is known as a “high-risk, high-return” asset class.

When expressing gratitude, it’s all in the timing

Thanks so much for reading this article all the way to the end! No, that wasn’t an editorial error.

Research Highlights

The Costello College of Business at George Mason University is an acknowledged center for global business research.

Faculty take a multidisciplinary approach, with the goal of ensuring that business can be a force for the greater good.

Faculty publish in leading business journals on wide-ranging global business issues, are cited by the press, and are actively engaged in making discoveries to address a wide set of societal and institutional challenges.

 

Impactful Scholarship

Three pillars define the real-world impact of Costello College of Business thought leadership:

Ensuring Global Futures

Safeguarding our planet and societies from the crises identified in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recent highlights include:

Digital Transformation of Work

Preparing global organizations and professionals for the massive technological changes that are reshaping business. 

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Fostering the creative problem-solving skills needed for success in an increasingly unpredictable world. 

 

Mosaic tile
55,000
Together, the top ten most-cited Costello College of Business scholars have more than 55,000 research citations.
Mosaic tile
#81
The Costello College of Business' spot in the UT-Dallas North American Business School Research Rankings.
Mosaic tile
17
17 Costello College of Business professors currently hold editorial positions at academic journals.
Mosaic tile
20
In 2022-2023, Costello College of Business faculty published 20 papers in premier journals.

Costello College of Business Faculty Research

  • June 2, 2022
    Government corruption has universally corrosive effects on U.S. society. Yet there is little uniformity to the structure of state-level corruption oversight agencies. Syrena Shirley, an assistant professor of accounting at Mason, recently published a research paper in Current Issues in Auditing suggesting that in the fight against corruption, these structural inconsistencies are impactful.
  • May 3, 2022
    These days, devising an outsourcing strategy involves a host of challenges and opportunities. Between deglobalization and pandemic-induced supply chain issues, the 20th century practice of moving manufacturing to wherever labor was cheapest is paying smaller and smaller dividends. As the value proposition of cost-cutting diminishes, a different rationale for outsourcing—one based upon maximizing synergies—is gaining traction. Cheryl Druehl, associate professor of operations management and associate dean for faculty at Mason, lays out a model to help managers think about how to outsource in this new world in her recently published paper in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
  • May 2, 2022
    In the earliest stage of innovation, creative proposals are judged according to their perceived novelty and usefulness. Sharaya Jones, assistant professor of marketing at Mason, has a simple yet counterintuitive rule for would-be innovators hawking their ideas: More is more. Her recent paper in Marketing Science, co-authored by Laura J. Kornish of University of Colorado Boulder, pits verbose and detailed idea descriptions against terse ones.
  • April 29, 2022
    Einav Hart, an assistant professor of management at George Mason University’s School of Business, shows the economic implications of negotiators’ relationships, and how these economic implications affect how people negotiate. Her recent paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (co-authored with Maurice Schweitzer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania) introduces the construct “ERRO” (the Economic Relevance of negotiators’ Relational Outcomes) to shed light on when negotiators should consider their future relationships.
  • April 28, 2022
    According to a recent working paper co-authored by Mason finance professors Lei Gao and Bo Hu, more than 80 percent of U.S. public firms use graphics in their annual reports. Further, visual presentation has market benefits as well as aesthetic ones.
  • April 27, 2022
    Bret Johnson, assistant professor of accounting at Mason, recently co-authored a paper in Management Science finding that SEC comment letters are leaking out among investors close to the company concerned, who then use it to their advantage. Technically, such information-sharing violates Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD), which prohibits companies from sharing secrets with network partners such as institutional investors and analysts.
  • April 7, 2022
    Turbulent times are challenging for decision-makers in business. This pervasive condition scholars call economic policy uncertainty (EPU) can turn a wise move into a costly one virtually overnight and is known to weigh on firm innovation, investments and value. When confronting EPU, what’s a firm to do? Saurabh Mishra, professor and area chair of marketing at Mason, and co-authors explores that question.
  • March 29, 2022
    Brad Greenwood, associate professor of information systems and operations management at George Mason University School of Business, and coauthors recently launched a research study that is forthcoming at Information Systems Research that explores what happens to a community’s abortion rates when a workaround for capital constraints becomes available.
  • March 24, 2022
    ​​​​​​​A paper co-authored by Jessica Hoppner, associate marketing professor at Mason, has been named a finalist for the American Marketing Association’s prestigious Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award.
  • March 23, 2022
    The rules of the economy are being wholly rewritten right under our noses, and distributed ledger technology wields the pen. That’s the core contention of Sarah Grace Manski, an assistant professor in George Mason University's School of Business.
  • March 15, 2022
    Victoria Grady, associate professor of management and program director of the Masters of Science in Management at Mason, has a new book, Stuck: How to WIN at Work by Understanding LOSS, which is the result of years of research and writing with her co-author Patrick McCreesh, an adjunct management professor at Mason. Stuck plumbs an area of psychology known as attachment theory, first developed in the mid-20th century by John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst.
  • February 15, 2022
    Research by Gautham Vadakkepatt, associate professor of marketing, finds strong indications that gender equality in advertising and actual outcomes for women are on parallel rising trajectories, in the markets that need it most.

Faculty Teaching, Research, and Engagement Awards