Rice’s Zhang receives top award for research and teaching
Jones School professor named Strategic Management Society’s Emerging Scholar

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

After spending the past two months in China, Rice’s Yan Anthea Zhang returned home to a welcome surprise: She had been named the 2010 Emerging Scholar by the Strategic Management Society for her exemplary scholarship as demonstrated in research, education and academic activities that seek to improve the current strategic management practice.

	YAN ANTHEA ZHANG

To students and faculty within the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, it’s no surprise Zhang received the strategic management field’s premiere award. For almost 10 years, she has artfully balanced her record of publication and research with a demanding teaching schedule that includes courses in all three of the Jones School’s programs: Daytime MBA, Executive MBA and Professional MBA. She has more than 25 publications to her name, 19 of which appear in scholarly journals and 16 for which she was the lead or sole author.

“Research and publishing allow me to examine interesting questions and satisfy my scholarly curiosity,” said Zhang, Jones School Distinguished Associate Professor of Management and associate professor of strategic management. “Teaching provides me great opportunities to interact with people and disseminate knowledge that I gain from research. Although these two tasks often compete for time, they are closely related and reinforce each other.”

Earlier this year, Zhang was able to share with her students the findings of a study she co-authored about CEO succession planning, one of her primary research interests. The study, which continues to get cited in the news media and other publications, found that when a company wants to appoint a new CEO for strategic changes, they would be better off in the long term by promoting someone from inside the company rather than hiring someone from the outside.

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“Indeed, being a good researcher helps me to become a good teacher because I have some original ideas, evidence and knowledge to share with my students,” Zhang said. “Observing new management and strategy phenomena, coming up with new ideas and testing whether the ideas are correct — it’s so fascinating.”

Zhang is currently working on a study with Margarethe Wiersema at the University of California, Irvine, that adds significant new knowledge to the understanding of boards of directors’ decisions about CEO dismissals.

“Most previous studies have examined the internal factor, but here, we look at the role of external constituents — security analysts and their ratings of companies’ stock — in boards’ decisions to dismiss or retain CEOs,” she said.

Her other research focuses on the strategies firms use in emerging markets. She is particularly interested in issues that have important implications for multinational companies’ (MNCs) globalization and for the growth of indigenous firms in emerging markets, like China. She said she seeks to address questions about how MNCs deal with innovation in emerging markets.

“The topic has become increasingly important given the critical role of emerging markets in global economic growth,” she said. “That has become an area of focus for our students too as they have become more globally minded and have an increasing demand for ideas, knowledge and practices about globalization and emerging markets.

“The fundamental reason I am invested in the work I do is that I really like it and enjoy what I’m doing with my colleagues and co-authors. I wouldn’t change it for any other job.”

And she wouldn’t trade her experience at the Jones School for anything. She joined the school right after completing her doctorate in University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

“The Jones School — its administration, faculty and staff — has been very supportive and provided necessary resources for me to do research and teaching,” Zhang said. “The school’s environment is very collegial, and the students are fun, hardworking and very interested in learning new ideas and management practices.”

She also credits her balancing ability to a very supportive family and husband, Haiyang Li, associate professor of management in the Jones School.

“He shares a lot of the household work,” Zhang said. “Even my kids, 11-year-old Sophie and 5-year-old James, understand that sometimes Mommy is busy and may not be available.”