Simy Joy

Doctoral Advisor-Advisee Pairing in STEM Fields: Selection Criteria and Impact of Faculty, Student and Departmental Factors

Unlike the doctoral programs in places where students are paired with advisors at the time of admission itself, most US programs require the students to choose their advisors, and the advisors to formally accept the students as advisees. Little research has been done to understand how students and faculty approach this mutual selection and pairing process. This paper examines this process in STEM departments (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), with specific focus on factors influencing the decisions. Based on focus groups and interviews of doctoral students and faculty from STEM departments in an American university, we identify criteria applied by students and faculty in making their choices. Students were found to assess faculty on available funding, area of research, personality, ability to graduate students fast, and career prospects for students, and faculty to assess students on their qualifications/credentials and perceived ability to contribute to research. We also found that this mutual assessment was not objective, but influenced by perceptions associated with faculty gender and career stage, and student nationality. In the end, whether students and faculty were actually paired with persons of their choice depended on departmental factors including prevalent pairing practices, restrictions on student numbers per faculty, and reward structure. We discuss implications of the findings for research and practice.

Applying Bourdieu’s capital-field-habitus framework to migrant careers: Taking stock and adding a transnational perspective

Abstract HRM and Migration scholars increasingly employ Bourdieu’s concepts of capitals, fields and habitus to explain the interrelationships between migrant careers and context. Both literatures employ a Bourdieusean framework to examine devaluation of migrant capitals in host nations and migrant responses to such devaluation. However, their explanations are based on different assumptions of context. HRM literature regards migrants as confined to the host nation context, whereas Migration literature places them in a transnational context, spanning both originating and host nations. In this conceptual paper, we argue for integrating transnational perspectives into HRM literature to offer a more accurate portrayal of contemporary migrant lives, and to capture greater nuance in migrant career experiences. We seek to expand the conceptual lexicon to support new conceptualisations of transnational context, and to explore how locating a Bourdieusean framework in transnational contexts enhances its ability to explain migrant career experiences.

Venture technological innovation, social value and economic value: The influence of customer-beneficiary alignment

The technological innovation literature has widely considered the process and outcomes of market driven firms. However, research on the innovation process and outcomes of socially driven firms, particularly socio-technological entrepreneurial ventures, is very limited. In particular, the influence of the alignment of customer versus beneficiary needs has not been addressed within this literature yet is an important consideration for socio-technological venture development and subsequent innovation impact. As a result, in this paper we present a conceptual model explaining how technological innovation impact is influenced by venture orientation, organizational structure, and customer/beneficiary alignment. Unlike a market oriented venture that typically selects a for-profit structure, a socially oriented venture may select from a choice of for-profit, nonprofit, or hybrid structures, influenced by founder experience. We also posit that customer-beneficiary alignment can influence the relationship between structure and innovation impact. When customer and beneficiary preferences are less aligned, a non-profit structure offers the greatest innovation impact for social value with minimal impact on economic value while a hybrid structure offers greater innovation impact for both social and economic value and a for-profit structure offers greater impact for economic value. However, when customer and beneficiary preferences are more aligned, a for-profit structure offers the greatest innovation impact for both social and economic value.

Intra- and Inter-organizational Controls in Outsourcing: Controlees’ Perspectives

Control is central to effective IS development. In the past, when the projects were carried out within the organization, controls were primarily intra-organizational. With outsourcing, controls are both intra-organizational and inter-organizational, since the controlee (vendor project team) is controlled by controllers from their own (vendor managers) as well as external organizations (client managers). The current research on outsourced projects focuses only on the inter-organizational aspect of controls. We argue that when internal as well as external controllers with potentially conflicting goals try to implement controls to fulfil their own needs, it creates challenges for controlees. Based on a field study of teams that deliver IT services globally, this paper examines both intra- and inter-organizational controls operating in outsourcing contexts, and brings to light the specific challenges created by their simultaneous presence. In doing this, unlike the previous approaches that give prominence to ...