A top-selling and highly ranked strategic management textbook has cited an article co-authored by Dr. Michael D. Michalisin, professor of management and program coordinator for the business program at Penn State Worthington Scranton.
The textbook, Strategic Management: Competitiveness & Globalization (10th ed.), written by Michael Hitt (Texas A&M), R. Duane Ireland (Texas A&M), and Robert Hoskisson (Rice University), cites research published in an article entitled "Entrepreneurial Drive in the Top Management Team: Effects on Strategic Choice and Firm Performance", which Dr. Michalisin co-authored with Dr. Matthew S. Wood, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
The textbook is used in undergraduate and MBA level courses in Strategic Management. The cited article was originally published in a 2010 edition of the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies.
Dr. Michalisin's and Dr. Wood's citation states: "In addition to determining new strategic initiatives, top-level managers develop a firm's organizational structure and reward systems. Top executives also have a major effect on a firm's culture. Evidence suggests that managers' values are critical in shaping a firm's cultural values. Accordingly, top-level managers have an important effect on organizational activities and performance. Because of the challenges top executives face, they often are more effective when they operate as top management teams."
"Our article was indeed a high-risk academic inquiry in that it pushed the envelope in many ways - theoretical, methodological, empirical, and how to expand future research in new ways to test this dynamic theory using intangible trace evidence, such as the cognitive attributes of management team members, including their entrepreneurial mindset and its impact on their strategic choices," said Dr. Michalisin.
The pair discovered that senior management's entrepreneurial nature impacts a team's puzzle solving capabilities, specifically its identification of strategic choices available to them, the strategic choices they make, and the resultant impact on performance.
"In other words," Dr. Michalisin says, "the entrepreneurial nature and drive of one senior management team will differ across firms and thus lead to different strategic choices and performance outcomes, which will change the business landscape and possible set of strategic choices and performance outcomes, and so on."
Dr. Michalisin obtained his Ph.D. in strategic management and macro-organizational theory from Kent State University, an MBA in finance from Duquesne University, a B.S. in accounting from The Pennsylvania State University, and is a licensed certified public accountant. In addition to his academic experience he has worked in industry at Ernst and Young, LLP, Westinghouse, and Finalco Group, Inc.
His main research interests include the Resource-Based View of the Firm, Business and Environmental Sustainability, Top Management Team Dynamics, and Strategic Entrepreneurship, among others. He has published numerous journal articles, a book chapter, and presented numerous theoretical and empirical papers at top academic conferences.
