Award-winning faculty research

Depression is a leading mental health problem. Despite its prevalence in our society, there are scope and methodological limitations in traditional clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) for detection and proactive intervention.

This paper presents a social influence-based contrast language analysis framework that incorporates natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) methods to detect depression, and potentially offer proactive recommendations for early intervention, diagnosis and customized treatment plans.

With the popularity of online social forums, there is tremendous value in integrating usergenerated content (UGC) from patient interactions to enhance the scope of CDSSs. By analyzing the contrast language patterns of different user groups, the study shows the potential of uncovering actionable insights into the pain points and characteristics of users with early signs of depression as decision support signals for clinicians.

The paper offers a methodological framework to derive constructive insights from language based on social influence theory. More importantly, their framework addresses the gap between model accuracy and interpret-ability by providing self-descriptive and actionable insights into the differences in users’ mental health state.

Anteneh Ayanso’s research covers the application of machine learning techniques and text analytics to solve problems in e-commerce, e-government, healthcare and other related domains.

Kareen Brown Associate Professor of Accounting Director CPA Centre for Public Policy and Innovation in Accounting

This paper examines a sample of retiring CEOs who potentially seek new positions as board members after they retire. Brown and her co-authors examine if boards of directors consider whether or not those CEOs manipulated financial statements while they were employed as CEOs.

Our results show that the director labor market responds positively to accrual management strategies that increase firm value but punishes CEOs who engage in fraudulent activity. However, the director labor market rewards real earnings management activities that are more detrimental to shareholders, such as overproducing inventory or cutting R&D expenditure, suggesting that boards are unable to unravel real manipulations.

The study suggests that the competition in the director labor market can provide incentives to CEOs to act in the long-term interest of shareholders with regards to accruals but may have the opposite effect with regards to real earnings management.

Kareen Brown’s research examines how various factors influence earnings management. She also studies how mandatory stock ownership affects firms’ investment, reporting and disclosure choices. Brown teaches introductory and intermediate accounting and accounting theory courses.

Thongpapanl

Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies

This study examines how employees’ sense of organizational disidentification might reduce the likelihood that they undertake change-oriented citizenship behavior, with a particular focus on how this negative link might be mitigated by their access to two personal resources (self-enhancement motive and benevolence) and two contextual resources (citizenship pressure and job involvement).

The hypotheses were tested with survey data collected among employees who work in the telecommunications sector in Canada.

Organizational disidentification curtails voluntary efforts to improve the status quo, but this effect is weaker when employees (1) find it important to make a good impression on others, (2) are benevolent toward others, (3) perceive that their organization encourages voluntary efforts, and (4) are highly involved with their jobs.

This study contributes to extant research by explicating the contingent effect of a hitherto overlooked consequence of employees’ sense of organizational disidentification, that is, their change-oriented voluntarism.

For organizations, this study highlights various means they can use to diminish the risk that employees’ negative beliefs about their organizational membership escalate into a reluctance to add to organizational effectiveness on a voluntary basis.

Dirk De Clercq’s research interests include entrepreneurship, innovation and social exchange, with a particular interest in how these vary between different countries and cultures.

De Clercq, D. (2022). Organizational disidentification and change-oriented citizenship behavior. European Management Journal, 40(1): 90-102.

Mobile commerce is important for organizations attempting to grow market share and revenue, gain competitive advantage, and promote long-term profitability through their expansion into global marketspaces. However, one of the greatest challenges lies in carefully managing their websites and interfaces across multiple markets in response to differences in consumers’ mobile shopping behaviors.

Our multinational research team concentrated on three areas. First, because individuals in different countries may perceive value differently, a more multidimensional perspective and a contextualized investigation—where five value dimensions were examined. Second, because human behavior is known to be a consequence of both behavioral conscious and unconscious decision-making, we investigate the competing roles of intention and habit in predicting m-commerce use for consumers across countries with varying degrees of m-commerce readiness that we conceptualize at the country level. Third, because when the mobile interfaces don’t offer the experiences that are in line with consumers’ motivations, they will most likely leave mobile websites and visit a competitor, we consider the simultaneous but differential effects of motivations on the intentional and habitual uses of m-commerce across various m-commerce readiness countries, both early and advantage stages.

Results revealed that across countries, not all value dimensions played an equally important role in driving consumers’ motivations to use m-commerce. We demonstrated that consumers at an early readiness stage are more likely to be utilitymotivated and tend to use it intentionally.

Narongsak (Tek) Thongpapanl’s research covers new product development, innovation and technology management, e-commerce, wine marketing and strategic marketing management.

Ashraf, A.R., Thongpapanl, Anwar, A., Lapa, L., and Venkatesh, V., “Perceived Values and Motivations Influencing M-Commerce Use: A Nine-Country Comparative Study,” International Journal of Information Management (59), 2021, 102318. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.ijinfomgt.2021.102318