Business Foundations Faculty Research

Assoc prof awarded Mason’s Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence in Diversity & Inclusion

Jennifer Anzaldi — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 12:54:31 +0000

Assoc prof awarded Mason’s Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence in Diversity & Inclusion Jennifer Anzaldi Mon, 09/12/2022 - 08:54

In This Story

Cameron Harris

Cameron Harris, BA Integrative Studies ’06, associate professor of business foundations in the School of Business, was recently awarded the ��AV Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence in Diversity & Inclusion. Sponsored by the Office of the President, the Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence were created to recognize, promote, and honor outstanding members of the ��AV community for excellence in teaching, research, social impact, and diversity & inclusion. The Faculty Excellence Award in Diversity & Inclusion recognizes activities that directly advance diversity and inclusion within and outside of the Mason community.

“It is quite an honor to be recognized for the Presidential Award, but also to serve in the various places around the university and in spaces related to DEI,” says Harris.

In addition to receiving the Presidential Award, Harris was also one of only two faculty members at Mason appointed to the ��AV, Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning Anti-Racist and Inclusive Excellence Task Force (ARIE) as a Faculty Fellow. ARIE Fellows are tasked with implementing more successful inclusive and equitable teaching strategies through resources to support faculty with course design, assessment, and student engagement, as well as designing and leading workshops to support Mason faculty in anti-racist and inclusive teaching.

“I have been working in faculty development spaces for a few years and have done some work with the Stearns Center in the past,” says Harris. “This position will allow me to dedicate energy and effort to the development of anti-racist pedagogical and curricular change for faculty across the university.”

Since joining the Mason faculty in 2015, Harris has built a long list of accomplishments to support diversity in the Mason community. Harris recently co-led a year-long effort to incorporate issues relating to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) into the school’s faculty hiring process. He is the faculty advisor to the Black Student Alliance, and was recognized as Student Organization Advisor of the Year by University Life’s Student Involvement Office. Harris participated in the Diversity and Inclusion Summit and the Anti-Racism Teaching Excellence committee. Harris is a member of the social justice and advocacy working group of the Mason Chooses Kindness initiative and has also served for three years on the leadership team of the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) project.

Harris has served as a co-faculty advisor to the School of Business Living Learning Community since 2016, and has facilitated multiple opportunities for students to network. In 2019, Harris was elected as vice president of Mason’s Black Alumni Chapter (BAC), where he served the Mason community through program development and engagement, and recognized alumni through the first ever BAC Mason 40 under 40 initiative. Harris was nominated for the Pillar Award for Outstanding Faculty/Staff at the 2019 Black Excellence Gala. He has served as co-chair on the Diversity Committee for the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD), and as chair of the Stanley Award for Diversity and Inclusion Research in Educational Research Committee. This award is dedicated to the development and recognition of faculty who have demonstrated an unequivocal commitment to advancing research on diversity and inclusion issues in teaching and learning.

“Cameron is an asset to our institution and a valued and respected member of the faculty in the School of Business,” says Jacquelyn Brown, area chair of business foundations at ��AV School of Business. “He has consistently proven an integral part of our team and shown a willingness to engage and support the needs of our students, area, and school. I have seen his dedication to our students and his genuine enthusiasm for teaching, curriculum design, innovation, and service firsthand, as well as his natural and at times pointed inclusive approach toward each one.”

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Business Foundations Faculty Research

diversity equity and inclusion DEI

An 'ethics of care' for journalists covering mass shootings

Jennifer Anzaldi — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 15:00:17 +0000

An 'ethics of care' for journalists covering mass shootings Jennifer Anzaldi Wed, 08/31/2022 - 11:00

In This Story

Ashley Yuckenberg

Ashley Yuckenberg

Before May 24 of this year, much of the country had never heard of Uvalde, Texas. But the horrific incidents of that day catapulted the small city to national consciousness. Its name became synonymous with the crisis of gun violence gripping the United States. In the process, a local tragedy was made part of a sorrowful lineage—only the latest, and fully expected not to be the last, in a string of similar calamities. Yet the 21 lives lost, among them 19 children, were unique individuals whose loss caused unimaginable grief for their community.

The manifold meanings of traumatic events like Uvalde and other mass shootings create thorny ethical dilemmas for journalists, over and above their usual concerns about accuracy and the ideal of non-intervention. Beneath the blinding light of the national stage, there is an ever-present risk that in trying to get the story right, reporters may inadvertently add to the violence’s toxic aftereffects.

In her 2021 dissertation, Ashley Yuckenberg, a trained journalist and assistant professor of business communications at ��AV, plumbs the ethical quandaries of crisis coverage and provides a framework for guiding journalists through them.

Yuckenberg completed the dissertation, titled “Ethical Implications of Communicating Risk in the Media: A Heuristic for Reporting on Crisis Events with a Focus on Mass School Shootings,” for a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric from Mason. Her research builds upon concepts from late-20th-century feminist philosophers, who argued against ethical absolutism and for an “ethics of care” that considers actions in light of their effect on others. Yuckenberg was also strongly influenced by the 2008 book Horrorism, in which feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero explores the uniquely traumatic characteristics of contemporary violence targeting the most vulnerable (e.g., suicide bombings and school shootings).

But Yuckenberg’s interest in the issue is more than theoretical. “As a K-12 teacher for eight years, I had to take students through active shooter drills, and we had to be aware,” she says.

The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting also touched Yuckenberg personally as a community resident. “The shooter went to high school with me. He was a year younger than me. And one of my friends lost his sister.”

Her research took her to the Library of Congress, where she analyzed a total of around 700 articles about the Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Parkland school shootings. Yuckenberg used local newspapers—rather than, say, the New York Times—because their closeness to the affected communities increased the immediacy of their coverage as well as its emotional impact for those most directly traumatized by the event. She opted for print editions over digital articles so she could capture subtleties of journalistic presentation such as the original headlines, selection and placement of photos, etc.—suggestive nuances that can influence how readers interpret the news.

Through the evolution of media narratives, Yuckenberg was able to track how journalistic missteps (which were no doubt well-intentioned) in the wake of the violence distorted the national conversation. On the day of the 1999 Columbine shooting, for example, reporters interviewed traumatized students fresh from the scene of slaughter. False rumors circulating amongst the teenagers ended up being reported as fact, e.g., that the perpetrators had formed a gang called the Trench Coat Mafia to avenge supposed bullying. These questionable accounts, related as part of a breaking news story, helped form a terrifying template of the disaffected school shooter that stalks the American imagination to this day. They also introduced elements into the national discourse that arguably had no business being there, such as the putative role of goth culture in motivating school shootings.

In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued guidance for reporters covering mass shootings, including a sensible crop of general principles such as avoiding angles and language that could glamorize the carnage, thereby inspiring copycats. Yuckenberg drew upon her journalistic training, as well as her research and theoretical framework, to translate the CDC’s guidelines into a practicable technique for journalists. Just as the “five W’s” are a near-universal reference point for structuring news stories, Yuckenberg hopes her mnemonic device—or, in academic parlance, “heuristic”—will be widely adopted by journalists covering crisis events.

Her dissertation’s “WHIMM” heuristic acronymizes five essential ethical trouble spots for journalists:

Witnesses—Relying on unverified information from witnesses—who may still be in shock—may result in misinformation.

Harm—Gratuitous details about the crimes may satisfy a certain craving for sensationalism among some segments of the public, but can re-traumatize affected communities. Information should be included in stories only if the benefit to society as a whole (e.g., helping prevent future shootings) justifies the potential for emotional distress.

Influence—By indulging the shooter’s desire for widespread infamy, journalists can influence others who feel they have nothing to lose to chase fame through a copycat crime.

Missing side—Offering differing perspectives to contextualize information can prevent harmful misconceptions from forming. For example, facts about a shooter’s psychological history could be offset by quotes from experts clarifying that only a small minority of mentally ill people commit acts of violence.

Missing information—Especially as the crisis event is unfolding, facts usually filter out in piecemeal fashion. Situations change from hour to hour, sometimes moment to moment. This can plunge the news audience, primarily in the affected community, into a state of serial trauma as updates continually arrive. Yet the absence of information can produce excruciating suspense, an emotional trade-off calling for the utmost delicacy.

Yuckenberg’s dissertation was completed before the tragic events in Uvalde. Reflecting on the news coverage to date of this latest school shooting, she renders a mixed verdict. “I think they did a better job than they had in the past with Parkland and Columbine” in terms of focusing on the victims instead of the shooter, she concludes. However, the conflicting and changing reports in the hours and days after the shooting could have been curbed or condensed out of respect for the community.

“If we’re going to have an ongoing debate about how police should be responding to school shootings, it’s important that we have accurate information,” Yuckenberg says. “The more eager you are to release anything that comes through from a source for clickbait purposes or whatever, the more you risk muddying those waters and making it impossible to get your hands on the facts.”

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Costello College of Business Faculty Research

Building a crypto economy that works for everyone

Colleen Rich — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 19:49:38 +0000

Building a crypto economy that works for everyone Colleen Rich Wed, 03/23/2022 - 15:49

Photo by Getty Images

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 with a joint appointment in ��AV's School of Business and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. While most mainstream conversations about blockchain confine themselves to specific applications—the investment potential of cryptocurrency, for example—it’s the wider implications that draw her attention.

“Yes, there’s always technological change in innovation,” Manski said. “But what’s qualitatively different about this time period is that the technologies that are new are decentralizing.”

As she terms it, these technologies redistribute “power, information and value from the center to the edges.” And Manski predicts the maturation of the technology in the years ahead will give rise to the biggest paradigm shift since the arrival of the internet.

As an example, Manski said decentralized finance has the potential to replace banking and national currencies. Capital could be raised and deployed entirely within blockchain platforms, such as Solana and Ethereum.

The possibilities—for good and ill—are staggering, she said.

In her article "No Gods, No Masters, No Coders? The Future of Sovereignty in a Blockchain World" published in the journal Law and Critique, Manski acknowledges that both utopian and dystopian possibilities exist for the future of sovereignty under blockchain, and they range from techno-totalitarianism to the establishment of a “global cooperative commonwealth.”

Manski dedicates her research efforts to the latter. She is a leading voice in the “Crypto-Commons” movement—an international affiliation of technologists building distributed ledger applications to be the foundation of an economy that works better for everyone.

Manski said she is particularly excited by new organizational forms, such as the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which allow for frictionless and transparent governance. In time, she believes DAOs could be a vehicle to form networks of worker-owned cooperative businesses that could issue exclusive crypto-tokens, thereby achieving a high degree of economic autonomy.

“If you own your own employment and you have a say in what you do and you share in the profits, you’re going to be happier, healthier, more inclined toward democracy as a citizen," said Manski. "That’s my project—to transform the world worker-owned cooperatives."

In addition to working with privately owned businesses to explore potential for transitioning to the cooperative model, Manski speaks at events both within the crypto-commons community and in the general blockchain space and advises organizations on the ethical implications of new technologies.

At the moment, one of her main research interests is how advancements in crypto dovetail with the evolution of the Spatial Web, i.e., the increasing overlap of the digital and physical worlds that encompasses VR, augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

Manski said she has high hopes that fusing physical with virtual can help societies overcome inequities inherent in each of the two spheres. She theorizes that the Spatial Web will enable the crypto-commons to scale its movement into the mainstream.

“It would be very easy to share knowledge from place to place, because every city needs a coffee shop, grocery store, etc.," said Manski. "Once that cooperative template works in one place, it could theoretically be shared for free everywhere utilizing a common token.”

But do such hopeful musings hold water, given the darker, self-interested side of human nature? Manski suggests biocentric design, or design inspired by the natural world, is the key is to building systems where individuals working for their own benefit also benefit the system as a whole. Game theory, as an example, allows for the design of crypto-communities that provide pro-social outlets for self-centered impulses, essentially gamifying altruism.

“They’re building all these reputation systems in. You will get rewarded, and people will know you did the good thing,” Manski said. "[This] utopian vision won’t happen unless we make it happen, but I’m heartened by the fact that a lot of people are working on it.”

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Costello College of Business News

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Business Foundations Faculty Research

Costello College of Business Faculty Research

Integrating Liberal Education, Business, and High-Impact Practices: The Case of ��AV's School of Business

Marianne Klinker — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 21:46:43 +0000

Integrating Liberal Education, Business, and High-Impact Practices: The Case of ��AV's School of Business Marianne Klinker Thu, 02/10/2022 - 16:46

In This Story

Anne Magro

Lisa M. Gring-Pemble

In College Learning for the New Global Century, the National Leadership Council of Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) argue for a liberal education for all students because “(i)n an economy fueled by innovation, the capabilities developed through a liberal education have become America’s most valuable economic asset.” (LEAP, 2007). The Business for a Better World Center and the School of Business at ��AV endorse this view and have applied the liberal education approach to the study of business. This paper aims to explore the current environment of business education, the role of liberal education and the school’s programs and their benefits.

This paper was published by the Journal of International Education in Business, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print on January 14, 2022. Learn more and download the paper here.

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Accounting Faculty Research

Business Foundations Faculty Research

Sustainable Beekeeping, Community Driven-Development, and Tri-Sector Solutions with Impact

Marianne Klinker — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 21:44:37 +0000

Sustainable Beekeeping, Community Driven-Development, and Tri-Sector Solutions with Impact Marianne Klinker Thu, 02/10/2022 - 16:44

In This Story

Lisa M. Gring-Pemble

As the Academy for Business in Society considers the theme “Business in Society: Measuring Impact and Creating Change,” one fundamental question emerges: how to collaborate with universities to create positive impact and sustainable business models. This paper offers a case study of the Honey Bee Initiative (HBI) from ��AV’s School of Business.

Authors Lisa Gring-Pemble and Germán Perilla discuss the Initiative’s tri-sector domestic and global partnerships, community-driven development approach and innovative solutions as an exemplar of business as a force for good.

This paper was published in the March, 2021 issue of Corporate Governance. Learn more and download the paper here.

The paper is also featured in Accelerating Education for the SDGs in Universities: A guide for universities, colleges, and tertiary and higher education institutions published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

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Management Faculty Research

Business Foundations Faculty Research

Categorizing Professionals' Varied Goals for Environmental Communication and Identifying Implications for Graduate Education

Marianne Klinker — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 21:41:52 +0000

Categorizing Professionals' Varied Goals for Environmental Communication and Identifying Implications for Graduate Education Marianne Klinker Thu, 02/10/2022 - 16:41

In This Story

Lisa M. Gring-Pemble

The study of environmental communication originated as a diverse multidisciplinary field encompassing a wide array of communicator perspectives. However, as the field evolved, mass media and journalism became its perceived scholarly focus. As a result, environmental communication processes may be less well-understood across other settings, such as scientific and research institutions, non-governmental organizations, and federal agencies. To understand how communicators describe their goals, ethics, and strategies within these contexts, we conducted a three-part study of researchers and practitioners working on environmental issues in the Washington, DC, region between October 2019 and January 2020. Employing Q methodology, we identified four distinct perspectives: capacity-builders, translators, policy and decision-supporters, and cultural changemakers. Each of these perspectives is associated with a different range of goals, ethics, and strategic approaches. We describe graduate educational competencies for each of the perspectives and discuss implications for the design of communication research to meet practitioners’ needs.

Lisa Gring-Pemble is an author on this paper, published in Environmental Communication, Volume 15, 2021 – Issue 4. Learn more and read the full text here.

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Business Foundations Faculty Research

Patriarchy Prevails: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Equal Pay Discourses

Marianne Klinker — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 16:53:24 +0000

Patriarchy Prevails: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Equal Pay Discourses Marianne Klinker Thu, 02/10/2022 - 11:53

In This Story

Lisa M. Gring-Pemble

Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (2007), the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act, and Walmart v. Dukes (2011) brought renewed attention to pay equity in the policy sphere. Nevertheless, comprehensive pay reform ultimately failed and this essay seeks to explore why. Specifically, the essay offers an in-depth examination of the role of discourse in upholding the status quo. Drawing on feminist rhetorical criticism, the essay analyzes judicial and congressional equal pay discourses in the past decade, contextualizing them in historical views of women's wages. The findings suggest that contemporary debates over equal pay, like their historical counterparts, are framed in terms of a traditional male breadwinner-female homemaker model. This discursive framing, in turn, prevents consideration of progressive ideas around equal pay.

Lisa Gring-Pemble is an author on this paper from Women & Language, Volume 41.2. View the full text here.

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Business Foundations Faculty Research

Integrator or Gremlin? Identity Partnerships and Team Newcomer Socialization

Marianne Klinker — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 18:33:45 +0000

Integrator or Gremlin? Identity Partnerships and Team Newcomer Socialization Marianne Klinker Tue, 02/08/2022 - 13:33

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Shora Moteabbed

Kevin Rockmann

When newcomers enter teams, they seek out identity resources from team incumbents to help their socialization. In turn, team incumbents offer identity resources to newcomers to support incumbents’ existing held team identities. Based on theories of identity and socialization, we make a case for the identity partnership, a relationship in which identity resources are exchanged between an incumbent team member and a team newcomer. We first explore the identity needs of both team newcomers and team incumbents and how such needs drive proactivity. We then examine the initial selection of possible others for identity partnerships and the evaluation of initial exchanges between parties once initial selections have been made. Finally, we discuss partnership formation and shared identification as dyadic outcomes. We conclude with a discussion of how the dyadic identity partnership relationalizes our understanding of newcomer socialization.

Kevin Rockmann and Shora Moteabbed are authors on this paper, published in the Academy of Management Review, Volume 46, No. 1. Learn more here.

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Management Faculty Research

Business Foundations Faculty Research

Business Foundations Faculty Research

Assoc prof awarded Mason’s Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence in Diversity & Inclusion

In This Story

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An 'ethics of care' for journalists covering mass shootings

In This Story

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Building a crypto economy that works for everyone

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Integrating Liberal Education, Business, and High-Impact Practices: The Case of ����AV's School of Business

In This Story

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Sustainable Beekeeping, Community Driven-Development, and Tri-Sector Solutions with Impact

In This Story

Topics

Categorizing Professionals' Varied Goals for Environmental Communication and Identifying Implications for Graduate Education

In This Story

Topics

Patriarchy Prevails: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Equal Pay Discourses

In This Story

Topics

Integrator or Gremlin? Identity Partnerships and Team Newcomer Socialization

In This Story

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Integrating Liberal Education, Business, and High-Impact Practices: The Case of ��AV's School of Business