Bentley Provost Mike Page announced the winners of the 2011 Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award at the recent General Faculty meeting. Otgo Erhemjamt; Jennifer Gillan; Kartik Raman; and Kristin Sorensen were singled out for their impressive research accomplishments.
Otgo Erhemjamts, assistant professor of finance: Using data from 1995-2004, Otgo investigated the role of organizational structure in financial service markets. This led to The Demise of the Mutual Organizational Form: An Investigation of the Life Insurance Industry that was published in 2010 in The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. Otgo found that the insurance firms are demutualizing, falling from 49% in 1986 to less than 10% in 2006 and that the stock form of ownership now dominates. She was able to determine that the motivations to demutualize are driven by value-enhancing rationales such as tax savings and gains in organization efficiencies.
Jennifer Gillan, associate professor, English and media studies: Creative and industrial forces have changed the way we watch TV, and Jennifer authored Television and New Media: Must-Click TV, a book published by Routledge in 2010. This text is an industry study that demonstrates how television programming has changed with the influx of new media, and uses case studies to analyze production, scheduling, distribution and reception. Now adopted at multiple institutions, Jennifer’s book also shows how television studios strive to increase the level of audience interaction during all phases of viewing.
Kartik Raman, associate professor of finance: Kartik published Relationship-Specific Investments and Earnings Management: Evidence on Corporate Suppliers and Customers in The Accounting Review in 2008. His study is the first to explore the impact of earnings management on the level of investment by suppliers and customers and seems to fill a void in the current literature. If firms inflate their reported income, it can favorably (but incorrectly) influence the perceptions held by these stakeholders about future prospects. Kartik found a positive association between the size of the investments and the magnitude of a firm’s accruals and the frequency of large reported earnings. He also found an adverse effect on the duration of customer-supplier relationships.
Kristin Sorensen, associate professor, global studies: In 2009, Kristin completed Media, Memory and Human Rights in Chile, a text published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book examines conditions under which sensitive, politically-charged discourses circulate through Chile’s contemporary media and public culture. Kristin specifically investigated the manner in which television, cinema, the printed press and public protests discussed and analyzed human rights violations during the Pinochet dictatorship of 1973-1990. Her work has been called an “important case study of the interplay of media, collective memory and the search for accountability and meaning in post-Pinochet Chile.” She analyzed a society where fears are still present, where memories and records remain inconsistent and where censorship still exists, and her work is now making a difference in a political sphere.