ISOI Activities

Distinguished Speaker Series

Intended to be different from a traditional research paper seminar, the ISOI Distinguished Speaker Series focuses on opinion, viewpoints, and debate about our research field(s), and also to make a connection to practice. Since 2021, ISOI has invited leading academic speakers and those with experience leading organizations to participate in the Distinguished Speaker Series on the Past, Present, and Future of Strategic Organizations.

Andy Hoffman
Holcim (US), Inc. Professor of Sustainable Enterprise
University of Michigan

Rebecca Henderson
John and Natty McArthur University Professor
Harvard University

Paula Jarzabkowski
Professor of Strategic Management
University of Queensland & University of London

Jerry Davis
Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration
University of Michigan

Fiona Kun Yao
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Davis Smith
CEO and Founder, Cotopaxi

J. Eric Smith
Former President
Swiss Re Americas

Venkat Venkatakrishnan
Director of Research
Discovery Partners Institute

ISOI Research Paper Award

This award is presented annually to a published journal article or book that embodies and furthers the mission of ISOI, which is to address unmet demand by academic communities and corporations for transdisciplinary research in strategic organizational design and management.

To be eligible for the ISOI Research Award, the journal article or book must have been authored or co-authored by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty member and published within the last five years.

View Past Winners

2023: Sonali Shah, Associate Professor of Business Administration
"Jewels in the Crown: Exploring the motivations and team building processes of employee entrepreneurs," coauthored with Rajshree Agarwal (Maryland) and Raj Echambadi (Northeastern) and published in Strategic Management Journal. Read Paper

2022: Fiona Kun Yao, Assistant Professor of Business Administration
"Do Individual Employees' Learning Goal Orientation and Civic Virtue Matter? A Micro‐Foundations Perspective on Firm Absorptive Capacity," coauthored with Song Chang (Hong Kong Baptist University) and published in Strategic Management Journal. Read Paper

2021: Gopesh Anand, Professor of Business Administration
"Sustainable process improvements: Evidence from intervention‐based research," coauthored with Aravind Chandrasekaran (Ohio State) and Luv Sharma (South Carolina) and published in Journal of Operations Management. Read Paper

2024 Research Paper Winner

Arkadiy Sakhartov, Associate Professor of Business Administration

“Corporate Diversification and Risk: Portfolio Effects and Resource Redeployability,” published in Strategy Science.

This study develops a formal model to scrutinize implications of corporate diversification for corporate risk. The model incorporates the key distinction of corporate diversification, economies of scope, that qualifies the analogy between corporate and portfolio diversification.