NJIT Business Professors Win Seton Hall Awards for Best Articles

A trio of faculty at NJIT's Martin Tuchman School of Management picked up Bright Idea awards from nearby Seton Hall University recently, recognizing the best business writing from college educators statewide.

Seton Hall's Stillman School of Business opened the awards 21 years ago and officials said there were 144 submissions for the year. They observed trends in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), entrepreneurship, and social media.

Winners from New Jersey Institute of Technology included Cesar Bandera, who co-authored "The dark side of entrepreneurship education: A Delphi study on dangers and unintended consequences," in Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy, plus Shanthi Gopalakrishnan and Haisu Zhang, who co-authored "Staying Grounded! Organizational Identification and Perceived Control During Crises," in Journal of Organizational Change Management.

Bandera said that while entrepreneurship education is generally praised, students engaging in entrepreneurial practices can develop unhealthy behavioral traits. He said the dangers to students can include the illusion of expertise or of low risk, too much focus on startups versus skills and too much focus on self-achievement versus societal benefits. (Bandera jointly organizes NJIT's annual new business model competition, where winners are selected largely based on societal impact.)

He said these concerns can be addressed by teaching students about uncertainty — for every celebrity dropout, there are far more failed endeavors — and by teaching holistic pictures of entrepreneurship, along with the value of learning skills versus simply making money.

Gopalakrishnan and Zhang's work, as explained in their abstract, is that organizational identification "could play an important role during crises if it contributes to individuals' perceptions of control," they stated. "This study examines this relationship and unpacks some of its complexities by investigating the mediating role of job satisfaction and citizenship behaviors that have previously been examined as outcomes of organizational identification in noncrisis contexts."

"The authors also investigate the moderating role of the perceived severity of the crisis on the relationships between organizational identification and job satisfaction and citizenship behaviors. There is limited empirical research on these relationships in a crisis context, and studying them is important for understanding the role of identification in diverse contexts and for crisis management research and practice," they wrote.

"Our MTSM faculty conduct outstanding research. We are honored that this research was recognized with Bright Idea awards," said Melodi Guilbault, assistant dean, who attended the awards function in her support of NJIT faculty. "We are proud to contribute intellectual capital that can be used by academicians and also by practitioners.