Management Professor Wins School of Business's Outstanding Article of the Year
 
Assistant Professor of Management and International Business Amir Pezeshkan
During a May luncheon, Assistant Professor of Management and International Business Amir Pezeshkan received the Merrick School of Business's Black & Decker Outstanding Article award for calendar year 2016 for co-authoring the paper, "Dynamic Capabilities and Organizational Performance: A Meta-Analytic Evaluation and Extension," which was published last December in the Journal of Management Studies. The journal is on the Financial Times’s list of top 50 scholarly publications worldwide, and exemplifies scholarly excellence in the field of management research.

Professor Pezeshkan described the research this way:

“Dynamic capabilities encompass sensing (continuous observation of a firm’s external environment to capture opportunities and threats arising from changes), seizing (ongoing evaluation of firm capabilities and resources accompanied by substantial investment in tangible and intangible assets), and reconfiguration capabilities (recombination of a firm’s resources to optimize firm’s adaptability with the change and new environment). While firms investing in dynamic capabilities are believed to outperform the others in theory particularly in turbulent environments, empirical evidence regarding the role of dynamic capabilities remains unclear. In fact, some studies have found non-significant or even negative relationships between dynamic capabilities and performance in dynamic environments, which partially pertains to costs associated with the development of such capabilities.

 

“To disentangle the equivocal empirical evidence and move the theory forward, we took stock of the literature and conducted a meta-analysis (analyzing prior empirical studies and their results) to evaluate two core assertions: (1) dynamic capabilities have a positive impact on performance, and (b) such impact is stronger in environments characterized by rapid technological change. Our results support an overall positive contribution of dynamic capabilities to performance. However, we found that the contribution is not stronger when there is a high rate of technological change. Instead, our results reveal that dynamic capabilities are more strongly related to performance in developing economies. In our view, the relatively weaker levels of competition and the reluctance of many firms to change their old ways in developing markets, enhance the value added for firms that systematically seek to improve their adaptability with the environmental changes by investing in dynamic capabilities.”

Pezeshkan explained that the research findings illustrated the overall contribution of dynamic capabilities to firm performance. He further noted that their findings regarding the role of economic context and their distinction between higher vs. lower order dynamic capabilities, offer a more nuanced conceptualization of the dynamic capabilities-performance relationship. This is an important finding because the economic context and hierarchical ordering of dynamic capabilities have been neglected by prior studies and uncovering their significance, their study opens a new venue for future research. Finally, their results show managers, particularly in developing countries, that investing in dynamic capabilities and especially higher order ones can very well pay off.

 

“It is an honor to have received the Black & Decker Outstanding Article award. I would like to thank our leadership team at Merrick School of Business for their support,” Pezeshkan said at the awards luncheon. “As the field evolves towards maturity, a meta-analytic assessment of the core theoretical tenets within the dynamic capabilities view seemed essential to bring together the proliferating theoretical and empirical works and I think our study and its results are quite compelling in that regard.”


Learn more about Prof. Pezeshkan.  

In addition to the Outstanding Article Award, the School of Business announced professorships, chairs and annual teaching awards for the academic year 2016-17 at the school’s May awards ceremony:

Professorships / Chairs

  • Veena Adlakha, professor of management, awarded the CSX Leadership Chair
  • Regina Bento, professor of management, awarded the Baltimore Gas and Electric Chair
  • Mikhail Pevzner, associate professor of accounting, continues to hold the Ernst & Young Chair in Accounting
  • Dennis Pitta, professor of marketing, continues to hold the J. William Middendorf Distinguished Professor
  • Eusebio Scornavacca, assistant professor of information systems, continues to hold the John P. & Margaret M. Thompson Professorship in MIS
  • Jaya Singhal, professor of decision science, continues to hold the Frank Baker Chair for Research Excellence
  • Kalyan Singhal, professor of supply chain management, continues to hold the Doris and Robert McCurdy Chair
  • Lourdes White, professor of accounting, awarded the Lockheed Martin Chair
  • Nafeesa Yunus, associate professor of finance and real estate, awarded the Harry Y. Wright Chair

Annual Teaching and Service Awards

  • William Carter, assistant professor of management, and Praneet Randhawa, assistant professor of marketing, received the Dean Clifford C. James Chair for Distinguished Teaching.
  • Dong Chen, associate professor of finance, received the Chase Manhattan Bank Research Award
  • David Lingelbach, associate professor of entrepreneurship, Dean’s Special Service Acknowledge for Shaping the Entrepreneurship Fellows Program
  • Tigi Mersha, professor of management and international business, received the Turner Medallion.
  • J.C. Weiss, senior lecturer in finance and entrepreneurship, Dean’s Special Acknowledge for University Service
  • Jan Williams, associate professor of accounting, received the Yale Gordon Chair for Distinguished Teaching and the Dean Daniel Costello Service Award.
  • Frank van Vliet, executive-in-residence in marketing and entrepreneurship, received the G. Maxwell Armor Professorship.
  • Ting Zhang, assistant professor of economics received the T. Rowe Price Excellence in Teaching.

 

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