Short paper 1 guideline-new.pdf
Student Guide for Short paper 1
This assignment can be group work or individual work, depending on your
preference. A maximum of 3 group members is allowed. You will be assigned one
of the journal articles by the professor. The assigned journal article number can
e found in the gradebook on D2L (Journal article number).
The purpose of this assignment is for you to write a research proposal based on a
published research paper before developing a research proposal of your own topic.
You will first need to read the article carefully and thoroughly. Then assuming that you
are about to conduct the research described in the paper, write a research proposal. In
the research proposal, you will need to provide the background/introduction, purpose of
the study, research hypotheses, data and methodology, all of which should come from
the journal paper. A general outline of the research proposal is given below.
Note that you need to summarize
ephrase the co
esponding contents in the paper
using your own words. Directly copying from the paper is plagiarism and not acceptable.
Refer to the Academic Honesty Policy for consequences of plagiarism.
Formatting
The proposal should be double-spaced using Times New Roman 12 font and should not
exceed 1000 words, including references and appendix, if any. You are required to
follow APA style when writing the short paper. Here is a tutorial on APA style:
http:
gseacademic.harvard.edu/~instruct/articulate/apa_mod/APA_Intro/player.html
The file name h ld be The file name h ld be La name 1_La name 2_La
name 3_project name .
Research proposal outline
Cover Page: Include a title of the research proposal, course number, course name, and
he a h name
Background/cu
ent situation: What led you/the authors to address this problem?
Why is the research important?
Purpose of the Research: What is the purpose of the proposed research? What
contribution the proposed research will provide?
Research hypotheses: What are the research hypotheses that will be tested in the
proposed research. Research hypotheses are usually clearly stated in published journal
papers. You can directly copy and paste the hypotheses. This is the only exception to
the plagiarism policy.
Research design and sample design: you should discuss the data that will be used in
the research. If it is primary data (collected through surveys), describe what type of
surveys will be used, how sample will be selected, what is the expected sample size,
etc. If it is secondary data, you should describe the source of the data. You will also
need to
iefly describe that the methodology that will be used to analyze the data
collected. Note that you do not need to have fully understanding of the methodology.
One or two sentences about the methodology should be sufficient.
Breaking the mold_ An examination of board discretion in female CEO appointments
T
Journal of Business Research XXXXXXXXXX–23
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres
Breaking the mold: An examination of board discretion in female CEO
appointments
Jennifer M. Knippena, Jennifer Pala
, Richard J. Gentryc,⁎
a Department of Management, Eckerd College, United States
Department of Management, Augustana College, United States
c The University of Mississippi, P.O. Box 1848, 339 Holman, University, MS XXXXXXXXXX, United States
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Keywords:
Boards of directors
Discretion
Female CEOs
We propose and test a theory of board discretion in the context of the board's selection of a female CEO. We
propose that boards also have discretion, an area that has typically focused exclusively on managers, and ex-
amine the conditions under which boards, facing high levels of uncertainty, have the latitude to make non-
traditional choices, particularly when a negative equity market reaction to such a selection is likely. In the
context of the nontraditional choice of a female CEO successor, we observe that the strong financial health of the
firm and boardroom and situation-specific experience grant the board the discretion to select a female CEO. We
test our model using all Standard & Poors (S&P) 1500 firms that experienced a CEO succession between 2000 and
2013. Implications for practice and research are discussed.
1. Introduction
Although still largely unde
epresented, the number of female CEOs
has increased among the corporate elite in recent years. There are
cu
ently more women serving as CEO of large U.S. firms than at any
other time, with 13 of the 26 female CEOs in 2016 being appointed
within the last several years (Covert, XXXXXXXXXXIn 2015, there were more
men named John running S&P 1500 companies than women (Wolfers,
2015). The lack of women at the top of organizations relative to the
multitude of women at lower levels in the organizations suggests that
usinesses are not fully exploiting their talent pool (Hernes, 1987).
Research provides evidence of potential benefits of diversity in the
upper echelons, such as new perspectives and problem-solving
(Helgesen, 1990), increased firm innovation (Torchia, Cala
ò, & Huse,
2011), and board effectiveness (Nielsen & Huse, XXXXXXXXXXResearch sug-
gests that a woman's presence at the top of an organization evokes both
positive and negative responses from key stakeholders. On the one
hand, it signals equal opportunity to women at the organization's lower
levels (Bilimoria, XXXXXXXXXXHowever, on the otherhand, apprehension
su
ounds this nontraditional successor choice. This apprehension
manifests as a negative equity market reaction to women CEO an-
nouncements (Lee & James, XXXXXXXXXXRecent findings indicate that male
corporate directors categorize women as out-group members and may
possess a negative social bias toward their board appointment and their
election to major board committees (Westphal & Stern, 2007; Zhu,
Shen, & Hillman, XXXXXXXXXXGiven this expected negative market reaction
and the resistance to women among the corporate elite, what are the
conditions under which boards have the discretion to promote a female
candidate or make other strategic changes that may be perceived as
unconventional?
The literature establishes that one of the board's most important re-
sponsibilities is CEO selection (Vancil, XXXXXXXXXXBoards focus largely on
maintaining firm performance (e.g., Borokhovich, Pa
ino, & Trapani,
1996; Brickley, Linck, & Coles, 1999; Tian, Haleblian, & Rajagopalan,
2011), and managing the CEO transition is one way in which the board is
directly tied to firm performance. CEO succession, a key organizational
event (Kesner & Sebora, 1994), requires careful stakeholder management
(Graffin, Carpenter, & Boivie, XXXXXXXXXXWith the new CEO's ability to
perform and the market's response to the CEO announcement comes
uncertainty (Kesner & Sebora, 1994; Khurana, 2002; Lorsch & Khurana,
1999). Boards are held responsible for the success of the CEOs they ap-
point; a positive market reaction is not guaranteed; and a negative re-
action may adversely affect the new CEO's early tenure (Khurana, 2002).
It is reasonable that a board of directors may be hesitant to appoint a
nontraditional candidate who, more than likely, will be received nega-
tively by the market (Lee & James, XXXXXXXXXXResearch suggests that di-
ectors associated with negative firm events are more likely to lose their
oard appointments, further strengthening their motivation to manage
the succession process conservatively (e.g., Arthaud-Day, Certo, Dalton,
& Dalton, 2006; Gilson, 1989; Srinivasan, 2005).
⁎ Co
esponding author.
E-mail addresses: XXXXXXXXXX (J.M. Knippen), XXXXXXXXXX (J. Palar), XXXXXXXXXX (R.J. Gentry).
https:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres XXXXXXXXXX
Received 5 November 2016; Received in revised form 30 October 2017; Accepted 31 October 2017
Available online 11 November 2017
XXXXXXXXXX/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/ XXXXXXXXXX
https:
www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres
https:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres XXXXXXXXXX
https:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres XXXXXXXXXX
mailto: XXXXXXXXXX
mailto: XXXXXXXXXX
mailto: XXXXXXXXXX
https:
doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres XXXXXXXXXX
http:
crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1016/j.jbusres XXXXXXXXXX&domain=pdf
J.M. Knippen et al. Journal of Business Research XXXXXXXXXX–23
Despite the board's important role in shaping firm strategy (Dalziel,
Gentry, & Bowerman, 2011; Goodstein & Boeker, 1991; Tuggle,
Schnatterly, & Johnson, 2010), the literature has primarily focused on
the board's role in changing strategy or dismissing an inadequate CEO
as a mechanism to improve performance (Tian et al., 2011; Zajac, 1990)
ather than on the conditions under which a board has more or less
discretion to pursue a particular strategic choice, an important ante-
cedent to the firm performance discussion. Although many researchers
have studied the board's interpersonal dynamics and bias (e.g., Zhu
et al., 2014) and the board's external impression management (Graffin
et al., 2011), few researchers have examined how uncertainty influ-
ences strategic board decisions, namely, the appointment of a non-
traditional CEO (i.e., a woman). Research tends to treat the board's
inability to execute an appropriate strategy as a function of its own
esource deficiency or agency conflict rather than as an outcome of the
complex interplay between external stakeholder management and in-
ternal board dynamics that accompany any major board decision. Al-
though Rindova XXXXXXXXXXand Vancil XXXXXXXXXXboth suggest boards make
decisions differently than top management (e.g., via consensus-
uilding), the constraints on the range of strategic options available to
the board—in other words, the board's discretion—has not been thor-
oughly investigated.
The purpose of this study is to address these issues and, in doing so,
make two important contributions to the literature. First, we extend
Ham
ick and Finkelstein's XXXXXXXXXXtheoretical work on managerial
discretion to boards of directors. We explore the conditions under
which board discretion is enhanced by examining a strategically im-
portant context where the board's complex interaction with the CEO is
more isolated (Krause, Semadeni, & Cannella, 2014), that is, during
new CEO selection. In so doing, we identify external and internal fac-
tors that influence the board's ability to pursue a norm-violating
strategy and