KLU faculty members, post-docs, and PhD candidates regularly publish the results of their research in scientific journals. You will find a complete overview of all KLU publications below (e.g. articles in peer-reviewed journals, professional journals, books, working papers, conference proceedings and cases). Search for relevant terms and keywords, or filter the list by name, year or type of publication. The references include DOIs and abstracts where available, and you can download them to your own reference database or platform. We regularly update the database with new publications. Please send your enquires about KLU publications to library@klu.org
Journal Articles (Peer-Reviewed)
(In press): EXPRESS: Equity in Health and Humanitarian Logistics: a People-Centered Perspective, Production & Operations Management: .
Abstract: Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are at the core of present-day health and humanitarian logistics. Aid organizations advocate inclusive people-centered approaches to ensure that affected communities receive appropriate aid in an effective and equitable way. Tensions and even conflicts can arise if affected communities perceive the distribution of aid as inequitable. These perceptions are driven by people’s so-called distributional preferences. These preferences are shaped by culture, social bonds, and experiences, and they describe how an individual’s well-being and behavior are impacted by potential inequalities. Their importance is increasingly recognized by aid organizations, but research on equity in health and humanitarian logistics remains focused on equal access and prioritizing needs. Using current examples from the Syrian and Rohingya refugee crises, we show the importance of recognizing and managing distributional preferences. Based on these examples and in line with DEI principles, we discuss several ways that we, as the operations community, can help conceptualize inclusive and people-centered approaches that account for distributional preferences.
(In press): Diversity and Inclusion Under Pressure: Building Relational Resilience into Humanitarian Operations, Production and Operations Management: .
Abstract: In this essay, our analysis takes important insights on diversity and inclusion from the behavioral literature but critically contextualizes them against the reality of humanitarian operations. Humanitarian operations are characterized by system immanent diversity, particularly between local and expatriate aid workers, who not only bring valuable different perspectives to the table but also differ along multiple dimensions of diversity into a so-called diversity faultline. Such a faultline, however, provides fertile ground for continued conflict resulting in relational fractures and, ultimately, inefficient collaboration. While, in theory, inclusion could help overcome the negative effects of faultlines, in practice, the time pressure for humanitarian organizations to quickly respond to disasters makes it effectively impossible to engage in it. Against this background, we argue, humanitarian organizations should take preemptive action before disaster strikes. Specifically, we posit that the pre-disaster phase presents an opportunity to engage in inclusion in order to cultivate relational resilience between local and expatriate aid workers. Such resilience would enable them to not only better weather the inevitable relational fractures during a disaster response (and thus stay more functional throughout), but also quickly realign with each other in the post-disaster phase. We conclude with a set of concrete recommendations for practicing inclusion in the pre-disaster phase.
(In press): Business Model Innovation for Ambulance Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: “Coordination and Competition”, Production & Operations Management: .
Abstract: Several low- and middle-income countries’ emergency transportation systems (ETSs) do not have a centralized emergency number. Instead, they have many independent ambulance providers, each with a small number of ambulances. As a result, ETSs in these contexts lack coordination and ambulances. Using a free-entry equilibrium model, we show that in such decentralized systems, the probability that any given call can be served by at least one ambulance, that is, its coverage, is at most 71.54%, regardless of the ETS’s profitability. We examine three business models that can address the ETS’s lack of coordination and ambulances: (i) a competitor-only business model, where an entrepreneur enters the ETS and acquires ambulances to compete with existing providers; (ii) a platform business model, where an entrepreneur coordinates existing providers; and (iii) an innovative platform-plus business model, where an entrepreneur combines (i) and (ii): setting-up a platform and acquiring platform-owned ambulances. We also examine a government-run platform that takes no commissions from providers. Using a game-theoretic approach, we find that it is optimal for all platform models to incentivize all providers to join. However, only the government-run platform may incentivize providers to acquire additional ambulances. Furthermore, a government-run platform offers higher coverage than a platform-plus only when the platform’s power to coordinate ambulance providers is moderate. Our results can help entrepreneurs and policymakers in LMICs navigate various tradeoffs in improving their countries’ ETS.
(In Press): Comparative Configurational Process Analysis: A New Set-Theoretic Technique for Longitudinal Case Analysis, Organizational Research Methods: .
Abstract: In the past 20 years, researchers have significantly advanced various management fields by examining organizational phenomena through a configurational lens, including competitive strategies, corporate governance mechanisms, and innovation systems. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) has emerged as a primary method for empirically investigating organizational configurations. However, QCA has traditionally struggled to capture the temporal aspects of configurational phenomena. In this paper, we present configurational comparative process analysis (C2PA), which merges QCA with sequence analysis. We introduce the concept of configurational themes—recognizable temporal patterns of recurring combinations of explanatory conditions—to identify and track the temporal dynamics among these phenomena. We also outline configurational matching—a method for empirically identifying these themes by distinguishing theme-defining from theme-supporting conditions. C2PA allows researchers to explore the temporal dynamics of configurational phenomena, such as their stability, emergence, and decline at critical junctures. We illustrate the application of C2PA through a study of shareholder value orientation and discuss its potential for addressing key questions in management research.
(In press): “I Just Don’t Fit There!” Anticipated Cultural Mismatch and Social Disparities in Students’ Intention to Enter Higher Education, Social Psychological and Personality Science: .
Abstract: Despite political and societal efforts to reduce social inequality in education, students from nonacademic households (no parent holds a university degree) are less likely to enter higher education than their peers from academic households. Drawing on Cultural Mismatch Theory, we tested whether social disparities in enrollment intentions are related to students’ anticipated mismatch between their self-construal and expected higher education culture. Experimental data (N = 264) revealed a corresponding mismatch effect between students’ self-construal and expected culture on their anticipated fit in a higher education program. In addition, field data (N = 574) from upper secondary school students revealed that students from nonacademic households more strongly anticipate a mismatch and, in turn, have a lower intention to enter higher education. Corroborating our theorizing, these social disparities are contingent on the expected culture in higher education. These findings highlight the role of students’ self-construal and anticipated fit for higher education enrollment.
(In Press): Tax privacy concerns hamper digitization of the Nanostore Channel, Decision Sciences: .
Abstract: Various entities, such as startups, suppliers and governments, face substantial difficulties in convincing nanostore shopkeepers to adopt digital technologies. Given the informal status of nanostores, we posit that shopkeepers experience Tax Privacy Concerns from their operational records potentially becoming transparent to the tax authorities, which hampers their inclination to digitize. Through the application of a survey and vignette experiments in the field with hundreds of shopkeepers across three cities in Latin America, we find consistent evidence for the negative role of Tax Privacy Concerns, above and beyond shopkeepers' willingness to share data with various entities, trust in the government and other entities, and general privacy concerns. Further, we show that having entities that shopkeepers trust and are willing to share data with offer technological solutions does not mitigate shopkeepers' Tax Privacy Concerns and boosts digitization. In contrast, positive word of mouth that data are unlikely to be shared with the tax authorities does mitigate Tax Privacy Concerns. Overall, our findings provide novel evidence for the existence and influence of privacy concerns for operational data among microentrepreneurs, which answers calls in the extant literature to explore privacy concerns.beyond the consumer context.
(In press): Anti-trafficking and Humanitarian Operations: Transferring Learnings for a Better World, Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management: .
(In press): Demand and supply side effects of COVID-19 on music streaming, Journal of Media Economics: 1-27.
Abstract: Restrictions imposed to fight the Covid-19 pandemic dramatically changed life. This affected the entertainment industry with consequences on the demand (consumer behavior in terms of quantity and preferences) and supply side (quantity of published products). Suffering from revenue losses because of canceled live events due to Covid-19, the music industry heavily relied on streaming revenues so we investigate how the lockdowns and other restrictions affected demand and supply within the music streaming industry. Using daily Spotify streaming data, as well as the MusicBrainz encyclopedia, we empirically investigate changes in the number of streams per day, listening preferences (demand side), and the number of releases (supply side) for the United States, Germany, Brazil, and Indonesia. For the demand side, the results imply that lockdown measures led to a decrease in the total number of streams per day. This coincided with country-specific changes in music preferences such as a short-term increase in the consumption of happy music. On the supply side, a global increase in songs released with increasing lockdown measures was found. Although most effects mitigate over time, they lead to serious ongoing financial consequences for artists, record labels, and streaming services.
(In press): Opening the floodgates:How big companies can reap the benefits of internal crowdfunding, Business Horizons: .
Abstract: Digital technologies enable employees at all levels to participate in distributed decision-making. We examine the design principles, benefits, and challenges of a new type of distributed decision-making: internal crowdfunding. We build on a five-year case study of internal crowdfunding contests at Siemens AG to deepen our understanding of the design principles of internal crowdfunding and its potential for corporate innovation. Based on this data, we discuss the three design choices in internal crowdfunding (contributors, configuration, and control), find four key benefits (decentralization, cross-collaboration, institutionalization, and intrapreneurship), and identify three key challenges (dealing with rejected ideas, evaluation biases, and implementation and follow-on funding) and potential actions by managers to overcome them. The paper contributes to both the emerging literature on internal crowdfunding and the literature on distributed decision-making.
(In press): Marketing inputs and outcome heterogeneity – Using a quantile regression framework in the entertainment industry, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science: .
(In press): The role of inventory in firm resilience to the Covid‐19 pandemic, European Financial Management: 1-33.
Abstract: We study the role of inventory in corporate resilience to Covid-19 in 2020, which triggered exogenous shocks to consumer demand, commodity prices and supply chains. Unexpected drops in consumer demand and commodity prices increase the costs of inventory. Conversely, inventory holdings can buffer against supply disruptions. Empirically, US firms with higher inventory experienced more negative stock market responses early in the crisis due to falling consumer demand. However, since May 2020, inventory has become valuable as a hedge against supply disruptions, improving firm performance. During Covid-19, unlike other crises, inventory played a unique role as a hedge against supply disruptions.
(In press): Women in academic publishing: Descriptive trends from authors to editors across 33 years of management science, The Leadership Quarterly: .
Abstract: Traditionally, leadership scholars often study snapshots of leaders in organizations. However, academic publishing offers a unique, more controlled context to study leadership with implications for leadership scholars and scholarship. Hence, we present a descriptive overview of women’s representation across 33 years in 11 top management journals across levels of leaders in academic publishing (i.e., editors, associate editors, and editorial board members) and authors. To do so, we curated an archival dataset tracking women’s representation over time and across these four levels (i.e., 21,510 authors and 4,173 leaders) with 51,360 data entries for the authors and 320,545 for the leaders. Overall, women’s representation increased over time, which was explained by simple time trend effects. Only 32 of 135 editors were women (i.e., 23.7 %), and the share of women associate editors showed particularly drastic fluctuations. We did not observe a “leaky pipeline” except from the associate editor to editor step, as well as notable fluctuations—particularly after new editor appointments—and between journals. We discuss the influential roles editors and publishers have on women’s representation in academic publishing and science more broadly as well as implications for future research and policy.
(In press): Are women strategic leaders more effective during a crisis than men strategic leaders? A causal analysis of the relationship between strategic leader gender and outcomes during the COVID-19 crisis, The Leadership Quarterly: .
Abstract: Extant research has used the COVID-19 pandemic as a context to test the “women leadership advantage during crisis” hypothesis. An influential paper reported that women U.S. governors were associated with fewer COVID-19 deaths. Building on this work, we demonstrate that methodological assumptions play a critical role in our interpretation of findings. First, we conduct a literal replication (Study 1) of the original study to validate our dataset. Second, a series of constructive replications (Studies 2A-D) shows the results rely on methodological assumptions that are not fully supported. Without these assumptions, we find no evidence for the “women leadership advantage during crisis” hypothesis. Third, in two constructive replications focusing on U.S. counties and Brazilian municipalities, we causally test the relationship between strategic leader gender and COVID-19 deaths using a geographic matching design (Study 3A) and a regression discontinuity design (Study 3B). Again, we find no evidence for the “women leadership advantage during crisis” hypothesis. Collectively, we demonstrate that when following the methodological precedent of extant research, we were able to replicate previously identified relationships between gender and leadership outcomes, but after accounting for endogeneity and basic assumptions of linear models, we were no longer able to replicate these effects. In all our constructive replications, we found no significant difference in the effectiveness of women and men strategic leaders in crises.
(In press): Employee demographic diversity and firm performance, Financial Management: .
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between employee demographic diversity and firm performance measured by future stock returns for a large sample of US public companies. We use novel demographic data extracted from employees' online profiles and resumes and focus on three key aspects of employee demographic diversity: age, gender, and ethnicity. We find no evidence supportive of an outperformance associated with greater employee-diverse companies, neither using portfolio-sorting approaches nor cross-sectional and panel regressions. We also find no significant associations between employee demographic diversity and ROE, gross profit, and labor productivity.
(In press): How Mixed Performance Feedback Shapes Exploration: The Moderating Role of Self-Enhancement, Organization Science: 1-20.
Abstract: We conduct an experiment to examine how providing decision makers with high versus low peer performance information influences choices between exploration and exploitation. Previous work on organization-level learning suggests that a high-performing peer would fuel exploration, whereas a low-performing peer would dampen it. In line with this, we find that individuals who receive information about a high-performing peer explore more than those who receive information about a low-performing peer. However, we also find that compared to individuals with a low tendency to self-enhance, individuals with a high tendency to self-enhance are less likely to explore when receiving information about a high-performing peer. In fact, these individuals explore at levels comparable to those who receive information about a low-performing peer. We explain this behavioral pattern by demonstrating that as individuals learn and improve, information about a high-performing peer increasingly results in mixed performance feedback; under these conditions of relative interpretive flexibility, exploration is moderated by decision makers’ tendency to self-enhance. When these individual dynamics are aggregated, our data suggest that an organization that provides peer performance information may experience either the same or less exploration than an organization that does not, with the exact difference depending on its proportion of high self-enhancers. These insights into the contingencies and aggregate effects of how individuals interpret and respond to peer performance information are particularly relevant given recent interest in designing organizations that shape employee behavior through the provision of feedback rather than through traditional instruments of coordination and control, such as incentives or hierarchy.
(In Press): Adopting additive manufacturing in after-sales: developing a typology of corrective, preventive, and anticipatory approaches, Journal of Business Logistics: .
(In press): Predicting Complaints in Semiconductor Order Fulfilment with Machine Learning, International Journal of Production Research: .
Abstract: Many customers complain when informed that their order will not be fulfilled as originally confirmed, while other customers may be able to tolerate deviations. However, for suppliers, such complaints can be an early indicator of bad publicity, customer churn, and lost sales; and suppliers can prioritise orders to avoid these negative consequences. Ideally, they would know in advance if any order fulfilment change will trigger a customer complaint. To analyse how suppliers can predict these infrequent events in a business-to-business context, we leverage machine learning models on a large real-world dataset from a global semiconductor manufacturer. Our findings demonstrate that extreme gradient boosted trees effectively address the prediction problem. We explore the impact on model performance for different sampling approaches and cutoff values, as tuning the decision threshold is a meaningful calibration strategy before practical implementation. Our feature importance analysis provides evidence that high order fulfilment quality lowers complaint tendencies. Bridging the gap between advanced analytics and customer behaviour prediction, our research contributes to understanding the influence of subpar order fulfilment on customer satisfaction and offers insights into efficient order management despite disruptions. Our empirical study lays the groundwork for proactive supply chain operations when order fulfilment is at risk.
(In press): When lack of control leads to uncertainty: Explaining the effect of anomie on support for authoritarianism, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology: .
Abstract: Studies have shown that anomie, that is, the perception that a society's leadership and social fabric are breaking down, is a central predictor of individuals' support for authoritarianism. However, causal evidence for this relationship is missing. Moreover, previous studies are ambiguous regarding the mediating mechanism and lack empirical tests for the same. Against this background, we derive a set of integrative hypotheses: First, we argue that perceptions of anomie lead to a perceived lack of political control. The repeated failure to exert control in the political sphere leads to feelings of uncertainty about the functioning and meaning of the political world. This uncertainty heightens people's susceptibility to authoritarianism because, we argue, the latter promises a sense of order, meaning, and the guidance of a "strong leader." We support our hypothesis in a large-scale field study with a representative sample of the German population (N = 1,504) while statistically ruling out alternative explanations. Adding internal validity, we provide causal evidence for each path in our sequential mediation hypothesis in three preregistered, controlled experiments (conducted in the United States, total N = 846). Our insights may support policymakers in addressing the negative political consequences of anomie. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
(In press): Exploring Respectful Inquiry in Leader-Team Interactions: The Differential Effect of Leader Question Asking and Listening on Team Interaction Dynamics in Decision Making, Group & Organization Management: .
Abstract: Despite extensive research streams on leadership and team processes, there is a surprising paucity of studies at their intersection. Both research streams share an increasing attention to the social interactions at the core of these phenomena. Leveraging this behavioral lens, this study draws on respectful inquiry theory to explore how specific leader communication behaviors affect team interaction dynamics during decision-making, as one important team process. We conducted a laboratory study with 22 four-person teams and a confederate leader who engaged in a hidden profile task in a personnel selection scenario. We manipulated the leader’s question asking behavior (open questions vs. statements only) and listening behavior (listening attentively vs. not listening) and randomly assigned teams to one of the four conditions. Team interactions were video-recorded and analyzed at the micro-level of communication. Specifically, we explored how leader communicative behaviors affected (1) the quality of team decision-making, (2) the conversational structure (via speaker turns), and (3) constructive communication patterns. We found that team’s yielded the lowest performance in the “disrespectful inquiry”-condition (i.e., asking questions but not listening). This condition was also characterized by increased levels of interaction amongst team members that could be interpreted as an attempt to compensate for the lack of functional leadership. By adopting a consistent, micro-level behavioral perspective, our findings bridge the literature of leadership and team interactions and suggest an update to extant theorizing on leadership substitutions.
(In press): CEO 's Early‐life Experience of Disasters and Corporate Environmental Performance, Abacus: .
Abstract: We investigate the nexus between the early-life disaster experiences of chief executive officers (CEOs) and their firms’ environmental performance metrics. We hypothesize that first-hand experience of the adversities of natural disasters in the formative years of a CEO can catalyze a transformation in their environmental cognizance and perspective. This transformation is postulated to have a beneficial influence on their corporations’ strategic frameworks for environmental risk mitigation. Our results show that entities steered by CEOs exposed to disasters in their early life have fewer incidences of environmental issues. These findings remain consistent even when controlling for other factors or using alternative methods. We suggest that CEOs with early disaster experience have an enhanced perception of risk ramifications, which inculcates a prudential approach to decision making, potentially heightening the environmental risk profile of their enterprises.
(2025): When and how corporate social responsibility promotes innovation: A multi‐level moderated mediation model, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 32 (1): 1325-1345.
Abstract: This study advances and tests a micro-foundations model that reveals when and how corporate social responsibility (CSR) will enhance organizational innovation. Challenging the prevalent assumption that CSR uniformly leads to positive outcomes, we posit that the impact of CSR on innovation is contingent upon the interplay between employee-level psychological processes and organizational-level factors. Specifically, we argue that under conditions of good internal organizational communication, CSR facilitates employees' intrinsic motivation. Then, this motivation can increase organizational-level innovation, but only if employees are also allowed to thrive, when they are psychologically empowered. We examine the multi-level model by utilizing a 4-wave, time-lagged data from one of the largest Korean commercial banks, featuring 2545 employees across 379 branches. The data consist of both survey data and centrally audited CSR data. The results of the analyses bolster our hypotheses, but also highlight unexpected backlash effects where CSR negatively affects organizational innovation. Our findings contribute to the CSR literature by unveiling the complex micro-level mechanisms and boundary conditions that shape the CSR-innovation relationship, thereby addressing the inconsistencies in previous research. Practically, our study suggests that managers should carefully align their CSR initiatives with internal communication strategies and employee empowerment practices to foster innovation. Failing to do so may inadvertently undermine the very outcomes CSR is intended to promote. These insights also speak to the ongoing debate on the role of CSR in driving organizational competitiveness and social impact, underlining the need for a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of CSR's effects. In sum, our results facilitate the integration of previously disparate literatures, while simultaneously also underlining that CSR efforts need to be orchestrated with other improvements if any innovation benefits are to be reaped.
(2024): Studying complex causal processes in technological innovation and entrepreneurship with set-theoretic mediation models, Technovation, 134 (6): 103015.
Abstract: Researchers often turn to linear mediation models to understand the complex causal processes inherent within innovation and entrepreneurship phenomena. However, these models are not always the most appropriate methods for increasing our understanding of these phenomena. This is because linear models depend on the principle of reductionism – which separates causal processes into their independent components – and overlooks systemwide attributes. To advance research findings that do not adequately address complex causal processes, we advocate using set-theoretic mediation models that offer analytical features better suited for holistically uncovering interdependent and intervening pathways. This method enables investigating complex causal processes associated with the conjunction, equifinality, and asymmetry that can occur with multiple interdependent variables. We provide researchers with practical guidance on constructing and testing set-theoretic mediation models using widely available software while demonstrating these procedures with an illustrative analysis. In doing so, we seek to guide researchers interested in integrating these models into their studies and recommend best practices for implementation. We argue that set-theoretic meditation models can be utilized in various contexts, as they offer new research opportunities for exploring unified necessity and sufficiency relational systems in ways existing methods have yet to address.
(2024): Automatically identifying customer needs in user-generated content using token classification, Decision Support Systems, 178: 1-11.
Abstract: Users generate tremendous amounts of data on the Internet every day. This so-called user-generated content (UGC) is valuable input for organizations since it may include individual experiences, opinions, and desires with respect to the products and services they offer. To automatically process UGC, automated techniques, typically referred to as Needmining, have been developed. Existing Needmining approaches extract customer needs from UGC by binarily classifying unstructured textual data into need-content and no-need content. However, they are not able to extract the specific needs. We address this research gap by developing a decision support artifact that re-conceptualizes Needmining from a binary classification problem to a token-classification problem to extract specific needs from informative content. To achieve this, we break down customer needs into components, i.e. attributes and characteristics and develop a token classification artifact. The artifact accurately identifies the need-components and, therefore, can identify specific customer needs in user-generated content. We organize and discuss the value of the artifact's output and further enrich the model with sentiment data to distinguish relevant needs. If applied, the artifact can realize efficiency gains for decisionmakers in the field of product development as it automatically and quickly identifies relevant consumer needs.
(2024): Understanding customers’ choice for digital D2C versus multi-brand operations, Journal of Retailing, 100 (2): 256-273.
Abstract: In recent years, the emergence of highly successful digital multi-brand retailers has facilitated an omnichannel distribution strategy to become the norm for brands. Rather than relying solely on these multi-brand retailers, it is necessary for companies’ omnichannel strategy to establish strong brand-owned direct-to-consumer (D2C) webstores. To help D2C brands make decisions regarding distribution channel choices, this paper investigates the circumstances under which customers prefer brands’ D2C webstores over digital multi-brand retailers and how these circumstances vary across phases of the customer journey. The results from an extensive experimental study demonstrate that, depending on the customer journey, brands’ D2C webstores can compete with digital multi-brand retailers, particularly in product categories characterized by deep assortments, the need for extensive product information, exclusive products, or a high degree of personalization.
(2024): When necessity is the mother of disruption: Users versus producers as sources of disruptive innovation, Journal of Product Innovation Management, 41 (1): 62-85.
Abstract: This study investigates the sources of disruptive innovation. The disruptive innovation literature suggests that these do not originate from existing customers, in contrast to what is predicted by the user innovation literature. We compile a unique content-analytical dataset based on 60 innovations identified as disruptive by the disruptive innovation literature. Using multinomial and binomial regression, we find that 43% of the sample disruptive innovations were originally developed by users. Disruptive innovations are more likely to originate from users (producers) if the environment has high turbulence in customer preferences (technology). Disruptive innovations that involve high functional (technological) novelty tend to be developed by users (producers). Users are also more likely to be the source of disruptive process innovations and to innovate in environments with weaker appropriability. Our article forges new links between the disruptive and the user innovation literatures, and offers guidance to managers on the likely source of disruptive threats.