faculty Q&A with Zahn Bozanic The Bozanic Family
What brought you to Fisher? The college’s commitment to research and the world-class faculty were the major draws. As a new assistant professor, I knew I needed to be in a department where I could be productive immediately. While adequate resources are a necessary element to facilitate research productivity, they are not sufficient—I needed strong faculty members who could provide mentoring. Gratefully, I have been able to start projects with several outstanding faculty members in the short time I have been at Fisher.
Can you talk about your current research projects? I’ve been doing a lot of work on latent/linguistic aspects of corporate disclosure, especially related to management earnings forecasts. One of my papers finds that investors respond to so-called “soft talk” in disclosure, so long as that disclosure isn’t accompanied by a “hard” or quantitative metric to subsume the information conveyed by soft talk. Another paper shows that management earnings forecasts appear to be informative about broader macroeconomic trends. A recent paper with some Ohio State colleagues shows that managers prefer to provide more qualitative prospective disclosure over quantitative prospective disclosure when faced with uncertain information environments and increased investor demand for information.
How has your professional work experience informed your teaching? While I serve as a coach/mentor, I also act as the students’ manager insofar as I supervise several elements of their learning. As my students know, being a good test taker doesn’t imply that he or she will be a good employee. In addition to learning the course material, I try to emphasize the softer skills of communication, expectations management (i.e. deadlines), and teamwork to help bridge the divide between classroom learning and being on the job.
Can you talk a bit about your home life? I’m originally from Michigan but completed my undergrad at Berkeley, so blue and maize seem to run in my blood. While these days I root for the scarlet and gray (it was suggested as a pre-condition for my contract!), and as my wife is also a Cal alum, I rooted for Cal during the Cal-Buckeye game. I’ve been happily married for 12 years now and plan to keep it that way! Kelly and I have two children, Roman and Rachael. While traveling has slowed in recent years since having children, we still consider ourselves avid travelers.
Fisher College of Business
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