Faculty Updates DR. XIAO CHEN, assistant professor of management, completed a collaborative research project with a labour economist at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. The project examined the effects of different goalsetting interventions on Chinese ride-hailing drivers’ performance. Dr. Chen presented the project findings at the PEI Senior College (January 2019), UPEI Faculty of Business Research Colloquium (March 2019), the annual conferences of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) (Lisbon, Portugal, June 2019), and the Academy of Management (Boston, USA, August 2019). At the 2019 EURAM conference, Dr. Chen’s work won the “Most Inspirational Paper Award” (as the sole recipient, with a 1000 EURO cash prize) as well as the “Best Paper Award” (with a 100 EURO cash prize) of the EURAM Organizational Behavior Special Interest Group. This paper is being prepared for submission to a top-ranked management journal. In collaboration with researchers from the University of Toronto, University of Central Florida, and University of Haifa (Israel), Dr. Chen (lead author) recently submitted a manuscript, entitled “An enumerative review and a meta-analysis of primed goal effects on organizational behaviour” to the highlyregarded Applied Psychology: An International Review, the official journal of the International Association of Applied Psychology. Dr. Chen received UPEI’s SSHRC Explore Research Grant to study the effect of priming subconscious goals on team creativity. Dr. Chen was nominated finalist for the EURAM Best Reviewer Award. Dr. Chen recently also taught Organizational Behavior at the UPEI campus at the University of Canada, Egypt, in Cairo (June 2019).
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ENGAGE MAGAZINE | FALL 2019
SAM KOLAHGAR is a new assistant professor of finance in the Faculty of Business. Mr. Kolahgar is currently completing his PhD in Finance from Concordia University; he holds an MBA from the University of Northern Iowa, USA; an MSc in finance from Shahid Beheshti University, Iran; and a Bachelor of Business from Tehran University, Iran. He currently teaches corporate finance and integrated cases in finance and has previously taught financial management, finance theory, and corporate finance at Concordia University to undergraduate- and graduatelevel students. His research interests include corporate finance and capital structure, corporate governance and stakeholder relationship, mergers and acquisitions and spin-offs, and fintech. He has published in Journal of Public and Municipal Finance, as well as Pensions: An International Journal, and has presented his research at many national and international conferences such as the World Finance Banking Symposium, the International Corporate Governance Society, and the European Financial Management Association. Mr. Kolahgar has extensive consulting experience in investment, venture capital, private equity, business analysis, and managerial accounting fields. DR. MELISSA JAMES, assistant professor of marketing, successfully defended her dissertation entitled “Understanding International Student Recruitment as Export Marketing Behaviour in Higher Education Institutions”. She received her PhD from Lancaster University, UK, in October 2018. Dr. James currently has several manuscripts related to international marketing of higher education under peer-review and will expand her research into the internationalization of higher education in the coming months.
