Management chair’s research wins Best Conference Paper, Most Novel Paper at Strategic Management Society Meetings

Rhonda Reger, M. Watkins Distinguished Professor and Management Department Chair, and visiting Assistant Professor Xinran Joyce Wang won two awards for their paper, “Cross Border Social Disapproval: Social Media Coverage, National Animosity, and Nationalism as Integrated Mobilizations,” at the Strategic Management Society Meetings Oct. 30 and 31. They were awarded Best Conference Paper as well as the Most Novel Paper Award from the Behavioral Strategy Interest Group (BSIG).

Rhonda and Xinran’s paper looked at how the rise of social media, national animosity and nationalism affected multinational enterprises (MNE). They followed social media after negative events occurred in the home country, using the United States in their data set, and found that negative events that went viral in U.S. social media spilled over to 49 host countries where the MNE had operations. National animosity between the U.S. and a host country, especially those host countries with a higher level of nationalism, made the negativity on social media spread faster, with more emotion, and to more constituents.

The Best Paper Award was chosen from among 49 papers nominated by track chairs out of the more than 900 submissions.  It carries a prize of $1,500. This is the 20th year the SMS has awarded a prize for Best Conference Paper.