Paper presented by ISU College of Business students, professor wins two awards at MBAA International Conference in Chicago

Lyman and Pattengale coauthored a paper titled “The Quest for Nudge in Organizational Behavior,” with McCardle. One of the awards the paper earned is the McGraw-Hill/Irwin award representing the best paper from each of the 12 track divisions participating in the conference.

Lyman and Pattengale also presented the paper within the North American Management Association Division (NAMS) where they earned the second award representing the best paper in the “Teaching Management” category in the conference.

MBAA International is a multidisciplinary business conference founded in 1964. The conference consists of 12 program divisions all representing a different business discipline. The MBAA defines itself as a “gathering of leaders from around the world to present and receive useful research, share effective pedagogy and network in a fun and familiar setting” (mbaainternational.org). The conference brings in individuals from around the United States and other countries in the world, meeting once a year in Chicago. The event in April brought in more than 800 attendees.

“Our students came out highly impressive and totally wowed their audience,” said McCardle of the student’s presentation in Chicago. “There were more than 20 people in the room and a lot of enthusiastic discussions were centered on our paper [which the students] handled with competence and wit.”

The winning paper, “Quest for Nudge in Organizational Behavior” stemmed from the Organizational Behavior course (MGT 4441) taught by McCardle in the fall 2015 semester.

“A ‘nudge’ represents a choice design meant for behavioral intervention that is easy and inexpensive to implement. By designing and executing a ‘nudge’ for the class project, students develop abilities for critical thinking and decision making,” McCardle said. “Business students are future choice architects as managers and leaders. By gaining knowledge about choice architecture and designing the work environment accordingly, they can ‘nudge’ people to make better decisions and thus enhance organizational effectiveness.”

Student Somelina Obiechina, a double major in business administration and psychology as well as an honors student, also presented a paper in the Operations Management and Entrepreneurship Association division of the conference. Obiechina’s paper is titled “A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Competitive Priority and Strategic Alignment in Operational Effectiveness,” and was developed from Obiechina’s honors thesis. In addition to the presentation, she has also won a research award from the ISU Honors Program and before attending the MBAA, presented the paper at the Western Decision Science Institute in early April.

According to McCardle, “the paper focuses on the differential effects of competitive priority and strategic alignment on operational effectiveness in the global cultural context, highlighting the influence of national cultures in global operations.”  

“Somelina’s performance at MBAA as well as the WDSI – were superb. All the students represented our college very well and made me very proud,” McCardle said.

Many College of Business faculty members actively participate in the MBAA International program even serving in various leadership positions. Some of these include Neil Tocher who is a program chair and Joanne Tokle, who leads as the executive director of the Society for Case Research division of the MBAA.