Lazaridis School of Business and Economics FT50 Publications

Diego Amaya (Finance)

Diego Amaya's research program includes empirical risk asset pricing, credit risk, and derivative pricing. In recent years, his research has focused on the analysis of high frequency prices. He is currently the Goldberg Family Foundation Fellow in Finance at the Lazaridis School.

His inclusion in The Journal of Finance, was part of a large collaborative study of 164 finance researchers around the world. Each team tested the same hypothesis on the same data to better understand the nuance of non-standard errors in the research process.

Mojtaba Araghi (Operations and Decision Sciences)

Mojtaba Araghi is an assistant professor in Supply Chain, Operations and Technology Management group at Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University. Mojtaba received his PhD in Operations Management and MSc in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Araghi's primary research interest is the use of stochastic models in modelling and optimization of operations management in service industries. This FT50 article was funded in part by an NSERC grant Araghi received from the Canadian government.

Leslie Berger (Accounting)

Leslie Berger researchers managerial accounting, or behavioural accounting. This research shows how accounting practices influence organizational behaviour and values.

Her 2025 paper in the Journal of Business Ethics explored the whistleblowing mindset exploring the motivations and pre-dispositions making whistleblowers more likely to unveil wrongdoings at companies.

Recent work includes managerial accounting and knowledge sharing in highly-skilled professions like at engineering firms and law firms.

Michael Blair (Operations and Decision Sciences)

Michael Blair is an Assistant Professor in the ODS area. His research interests lie in sustainability and environmental/energy policy.

More broadly, he studies problems in the social responsibility domain that involve interaction between public agencies, private enterprises, and consumers. Motivated by real-world data, addressing these problems requires various tools from areas ranging from data-driven analytics to game theory.

His latest FT50 article uses smart thermostat data to predict heating, cooling and energy demands in the coming decades.

Shirley Chen (Marketing)

Shirley Chen's research lives at the intersection of cognitive psychology and marketing. Sheuses experimental approaches to unveil how the language we use changes our reality.  Dr. Chen’s experiments illustrate the power language has to transform brand reputation and consumer behaviour.

Her research shows how shifting language, words or in the FT50 research below, even a single letter can have a profound impact on how brands are perceived.

Nikolai Cook (Economics)

Nikolai Cook is an Associate Professor of Economics and current Lazaridis Research Chair in Economic Science. Cook received the Polanyi Prize in 2024, one of the most prestigious prizes in Canada for early-career researchers.

Cook is currently conducting meta-analysis of the use of AI in Economics Research (combining data and insights from multiple published studies). Cook led a group of 13 prominent researchers at Laurier and at universities in Germany, Spain, Czechia, and Australia. With two articles published in Journal of Economic Surveys, the research community sets its own expectations of what responsible AI use looks like and agreed how and when to use AI in ethical and effective ways.

Anne Domurath (Strategic Management)

Anne Domurath is an Associate Professor in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics. She received her PhD in Business Administration from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany.

Her research interests involve growth-related aspects of entrepreneurship, specifically international entrepreneurship, capability development, entrepreneurial networks, and organizational culture development.

Her studies focus on individual-level constructs – including the role of entrepreneurs’ experience, passion (like in the FT50 article below), and social network in entrepreneurial initiatives – as well as firm-level constructs, including the development of organizational identity in entrepreneurial ventures.

Salar Ghamat (Operations and Decision Sciences)

Salar Ghamat received his PhD in Management Science from Ivey Business School (Western University) in 2017, MSc in Operations Research and Management Science from Tilburg University, and MBA from Bilkent University.

His areas of research include strategic supply chain management, and healthcare operations management. His research develops new coordination mechanisms, using emerging data-driven models to update benchmarks in real time.

Advanced analytics and machine learning make smart contracts implementable in practice, helping organizations turn rich but fragmented data into more adaptive, resilient supply and service networks. His FT50 study below, a collaboration with fellow Lazaridis researcher, Mojtaba Araghi, explores the use of financial incentives in healthcare.

Tripat Gill (Marketing)

Tripat Gill is a Professor of Marketing and also the Laurier Research Chair in Consumer Insights and Innovation. He is also the founder of Laurier’s Consumer Research Lab.

Gill’s current research interests include consumer adoption of new technologies (like AI) as well as the impact of new technologies on consumers. He also studies the effects of stereotyping and stigmatization in services, as well as the applications of evolutionary psychology in marketing. His latest FT50 article explores colorism and the perceptions of Indian service professionals based on their skin tones.

Xiaoran (Jason) Jia (Accounting)

Xiaoran (Jason) Jia is an assistant professor whose research is primarily empirical and span applications in financial accounting, the influence of emerging financial technologies, and several other areas.

More specifically, he studies how financial literacy influences the information environment and governance. One of his FT50 research explored this in context of IPO pricing, but continues to research these relationships in other contexts like tax avoidance, bank failures, and ESG disclosures.

Sanghyun (Hugh) Kim (Finance)

Sanghyum (Hugh) Kim is an assistant professor of finance. He received his PhD in Finance from the University of Texas at Dallas and MA in Statistics from Columbia University.

Prior to joining Laurier in 2022, he was a Research Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Hong Kong.

His research explores topics in investments and asset management as well as the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Finance. He recently received a SSHRC grant to further develop research in his area. The FT50 article below uses the collapse of the Lehman Brothers as a natural experiment to explore trading networks of mutual funds.

Catherine Lam (Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Management)

Catherine Lam is an associate professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University.

Her research focuses on social comparison, leadership, emotions, job stress, interpersonal relationships, and team processes in organizations.

Her FT50 paper from 2025 explores the two types of advising styles (directive v.s. participatory). Despite conventional wisdom that collaborative decision making is always better, Lam's research indicates directive advising is as effective as the more collaborative participatory advising in certain situations.

Jie (Kassie) Li (Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Management)

Jie (Kassie) Li is a Lazaridis Research Chair in Workplace Innovation. Her research interests centre on the psychological underpinnings of workplace deviance and employee innovation. These two phenomena both involve violating workplace norms and status quo, and Li’s research provides insights that curb harmful deviance without stifling innovative growth.

Her latest FT50 article explores different workplace ideologies around diversity and cultural accommodation (like polyculturalism, colourblindedness, or multiculturalism), showing how each ideology facilitates or doesn’t facilitate employee effectiveness in cross-cultural and diverse work.

Qiang Li (Operations and Decision Sciences)

Qiang Li is an Assistant Professor of Operations and Decision Sciences. His research interests centre on empirical and healthcare operations.

In their latest publication in an FT50 journal, he offers new insights into the inequitable distribution of medical and healthcare resources. The findings have practical implications for improving the design and delivery of healthcare resources through China’s Medical Poverty Alleviation Program.

Carolyn MacTavish (Accounting)

Carolyn MacTavish is an associate professor studying judgement and decision making in accounting.

MacTavish conducts both experimental and qualatative research and is interested in auditor-client management relationships and negotiations, the role of audit committees within the corporate governance mosaic, the impact of performance measurement systems on management behaviour, and ethics in accounting. She is also interested in ESG reporting and the auditing ESG disclosures.

Her study in the FT50 Journal of Business Ethics explored how codified language in accountant code of ethics surrousinding non-compliance changes the behaviour of accountants to more readily break confidentiality and report fraud and illegal activity.

Kyle B. Murray (Marketing)

Kyle B. Murray is the Dean of the Lazaridis School. His research uses experimental psychology and behavioural economics to better understand consumer choices. He also studies innovation, and has recently wrote a book Automata: The Power of AI with Advanced Robotics.

His FT50 article from 2024, published in his transition from University of Alberta to Laurier, explores how harnessing and aligning the values of pride and awe contribute to more sustainable behaviours in consumers.

Simon Taggar (Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Management)

Simon Taggar is Professor of Management in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University and past Director of the Centre for Strategic Leadership. He is a recipient of various awards, including the 2007 Emerald Literati Network Award for Excellence, Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in 2003, Human Resources Research Institute’s Best Dissertation Award in 1998, and grants totalling over $700,000.

His research explores innovation, leadership, and strategic human resources management. In a collaboration with current Lazaridis professor, Anne Domurath and past Lazaridis professor, Nicole Coviello, the team published at FT50 article in Journal of Business Venturing exploring the role of individual and team passion in entrepreneurship.

Timothy G. Wingate (Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Management)

Timothy Wingate is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Management. One of his main areas of research is hiring, exploring the purpose and decision-making behind tools used in hiring to create better practices and systems.

He is one of the leading researchers in Canada studying job interviews and his paper in FT50 Journal, Human Resource Management unpacks the competing purposes of job interviews and offers insights for employers to strategically target various staffing goals.

Aiqi Zhang (Operations and Decision Sciences)

Aiqi Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Operations and Decision Sciences. As an early career researcher Zhang picked up many best paper and research awards from Management Science and Operations Management organizations.

Her research explores how organizations can make better decisions in public sector settings like infrastructure and health. Her research aims to inform policies that are more efficient, robust, fair and sustainable especially in the face of supply chain volatility.

Xuan (Jen) Zhao (Operations and Decision Sciences)

Xuan Zhao’s research involves utilizing the tools of management science, operations research, economics and data analytics to model, analyze, and derive insights into problems in supply chain management, operations management, marketing and entrepreneurship.

Her recent FT50 article below offers valuable insights into two-sided platforms (retailers like eBay or services like Uber and Airbnb). These findings inform both platform managers and policy makers when regulation is most impactful and when market forces can sustain quality in two-sided markets.