Ph.D. Student and Faculty Collaborations
Advancing scholarship through partnership
Collaboration is at the core of our program. Ph.D. students work closely with faculty on every phase of the research process — from idea generation and study design to data collection, analysis and publication.
Because of our collegial and research-oriented culture, Ph.D. students are viewed not just as learners but as colleagues, partners and co-authors. This approach encourages students to collaborate with multiple faculty members and contribute to high-impact scholarship across diverse areas of management.
The examples below highlight some of the many ways current and former Ph.D. students have partnered with faculty to publish in leading journals and advance the field.
To view all Ph.D. student publications, visit here. To view all Ph.D. student presentations, visit here.
Human Resource Management (HRM) and Organizational Behavior (OB)
Ph.D. students and faculty in this area examine how people and organizational practices shape performance, well-being and workplace dynamics, with collaborations on topics such as family-friendly work systems, algorithmic management, situational judgment tests and the influence of music and attire in the workplace.
Yingyi Chang collaborated with faculty on studies of family-friendly work systems and workplace attire, contributing to research on how organizational practices shape employee outcomes.
Yingyi Chang is first author on two articles related to family-friendly work activities (FFWA; i.e., work-life benefits) that started while she was a Ph.D. student in our program and are now “in press” at Human Resource Management and Group & Organization Management. In one of these articles, Yingyi and her colleagues (Chang et al., in press-a) use bibliometric performance and mapping techniques to review 40 years of FFWA research across different scientific disciplines to then synthesize the existing knowledge and identify its contributing entities (e.g., authors, journals), collaborations among some of the entities (e.g., co-author relationships), and main themes. Based on their analyses, Yingyi and her team organized and integrated the cross-disciplinary literature using the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) model, which illustrates the nomological network of FFWAs’ antecedents and consequences.
In the other paper, Yingyi and her colleagues (Chang et al., in press-b) apply the systems perspective from the strategic human resource management (SHRM) literature to conceptualize family-friendly work systems (FFWS), define their key domains, specify the FFWAs within them, and clarify their hierarchical structure (i.e., policies, practices, and processes). Based on their model, Yingyi and her team identified inconsistencies as well as strengths and weaknesses in the existing literature. Accordingly, Yingyi’s review concludes with guidelines and recommendations for future research and offers practical recommendations for policymakers and organizations striving to create more family-friendly workplaces. In another project, where she is first author, Yingyi developed an integrative review of the impact of clothing in the workplace, which was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Chang & Cortina, 2024).
Imran Kadolkar partnered with faculty to study algorithmic management in the gig economy, using NLP-based topic modeling to define key dimensions and outcomes.
Imran Kadolkar is lead author on an article that explores the use of algorithmic management (AM) in the gig economy. This article was published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior (Kadolkar et al., 2025). Partly due to the newness of the topic, the AM-related literature is fragmented with scholars disagreeing on the conceptualization and measurement of AM as well as how AM influences various gig worker outcomes. To address these issues, Imran and his colleagues systematically reviewed the cross-disciplinary academic literature related to the AM of gig workers using natural language processing (NLP)-based topic modeling. Based on their findings, Imran and his team provide a comprehensive definition of AM, including its key dimensions, and highlight main mediating pathways through which the individual dimensions of AM impact various gig worker-related outcomes. Imran is also the co-author on two other articles that were just accepted at Journal of Management and Organizational Research Methods.
Sheila Keener contributed to a review of situational judgment tests and coauthored multiple articles on test validity, editorial practices and research quality with VCU faculty.
Sheila Keener is a coauthor on a recent review article on Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs) that is “in press” at the Journal of Management (Kepes et al., in press). SJTs are a popular assessment approach that helps organization identify and select highly qualified job candidates. In this review, Sheila and her colleagues integrate the fragmented SJT literature, which spans various scientific disciplines (e.g., medical and educational sciences, psychology, management) using bibliometric mapping techniques. Based on a developed organizing framework, the authors provide recommendations to encourage greater knowledge sharing between scientific disciplines and outline an agenda for future research. As this article illustrates, our faculty continues to collaborate with students after they have left our program and started to work as faculty members themselves. While being a Ph.D. student in our program, Sheila Keener was also an author of several other articles with Mike McDaniel and Sven Kepes in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice. One article examines the construct validity of situational judgment tests (McDaniel, List, & Kepes, 2016), one addresses the need for editors to lead change efforts during the editorial review process (Kepes, List, & McDaniel, 2018), and another discusses how our field assesses research quality (Kepes, Keener, & Banks, 2020). For some of her research projects in the area of Research Methods, please see below.
Kate Keeler developed a theoretical model linking music characteristics to workplace outcomes and coauthored methods-focused work on model specification and interactions with faculty.
Kate Keeler is first author on an Academy of Management Review article on the relationship between music characteristics and workplace outcomes (Keeler & Cortina, 2020). Research from a wide variety of scientific fields has demonstrated that music affects our behavior through various physiological, affective, and cognitive processes. In this article, Kate proposed a theoretical model arguing that music characteristics (i.e., musical key, tempo, complexity, volume) influence job performance through cognitive self-regulatory processes (i.e., executive functions). Specifically, she explains how music, via its physiological and affective consequences, can influence executive functions, and how, in turn, this impacts various task performance outcomes. Kate is also an author on various methods-related articles, including co-first author on an award-winning article in Organizational Research Methods that examines the disconnect between models that authors claim to test and the models that they actually test (Cortina, Green, Keeler, & Vandenberg, 2017) and a Journal of Management paper on restricted variance interactions (Cortina, Koehler, Keeler, & Nielsen, 2018).
- Chang, Y., & Cortina, J. M. (2024). What should I wear to work? An integrative review of the impact of clothing in the workplace. Journal of Applied Psychology, 109, 755–778. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001158
- Chang, Y., Cobb, H. R., Kepes, S., Her, D., Zhou, Y., & Matthews, R. A. (in press-a). A cross-disciplinary bibliometric review of family-friendly work activities and agenda for future research. Group & Organization Management. doi: 10.1177/105960112513204
- Chang, Y., Kepes, S., Wong, C. M., Cortina, J. M. (in press-b). Family-friendly work systems: A systematic review, critical assessment, and future research agenda of the work-life benefits literature. Human Resource Management. doi: 10.1002/hrm.70027
- Cortina, J. M., Green, J. P., Keeler, K. R., & Vandenberg, R. J. (2017). Degrees of freedom in SEM: Are we testing the models that we claim to test? Organizational Research Methods, 20, 350-378. doi: 10.1177/1094428116676345
- Cortina, J. M., Koehler, T., Keeler, K. R., & Nielsen, B. B. (2018). Restricted variance interaction effects: What they are and why they are your friends. Journal of Management, 45, 2779-2806. doi: 10.1177/0149206318770735
- Kadolkar, I., Kepes, S., & Subramony, M. (2025). Algorithmic management in the gig economy: A systematic review and research integration. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 46, 1057–1080. doi: 10.1002/job.2831
- Keeler, K. R., & Cortina, J. M. (2020). Working to the beat: A self-regulatory framework linking music characteristics to job performance. Academy of Management Review, 45, 447–471. doi: 10.5465/amr.2016.0115
- Kepes, S., Banks, G. C., & Keener, S. K. (2020). The TOP factor: An indicator of quality to complement journal impact factor. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 13, 328-333. doi:10.1017/iop.2020.56
- Kepes, S., Keener, S. K., Lievens, F., & McDaniel, M. A. (in press). An integrative, systematic review of the situational judgement test literature. Journal of Management, 51, 2278-2319. doi: 10.1177/0149206324128854
- Kepes, S., List, S. K., & McDaniel, M. A. (2018). Enough talk, it's time to transform: A call for editorial leadership for a robust science. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 11, 43-48. doi: 10.1017/iop.2017.83
- McDaniel, M. A., List, S. K., & Kepes, S. (2016). The “hot mess” of situational judgment test construct validity and other issues. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 9, 47-51. doi: 10.1017/iop.2015.115
Strategic Management (SM) and Entrepreneurship (ENT)
In this area, Ph.D. students and faculty investigate how organizations compete, govern and innovate through collaborations such as meta-analyses of CEO overconfidence and entrepreneurial orientation, offering insight into how leadership and strategy shape firm performance across cultures.
Chao Miao collaborated with faculty on meta-analyses of CEO overconfidence and entrepreneurial orientation, advancing understanding of leadership traits and firm performance.
After graduating from VCU, Chao Miao has continued publishing with VCU faculty. He is lead author on two meta-analyses, one of which investigates CEO overconfidence and firm performance with the second investigating entrepreneurial orientation as a mediator of the human and social capital - firm performance relationships. The first article (Miao, Coombs, Qian, & Oh, 2025), published in Journal of Management & Organization, presents a meta-analytic investigation of CEO overconfidence and its influence on firm performance. Despite the seemingly negative attributes associated with CEO overconfidence, empirical results examining its relationship with firm performance are inconsistent. After identifying relevant articles, Chao and his colleagues used meta-analytic techniques to investigate the relationship. In doing so, they provide evidence of a positive relationship between CEO overconfidence and firm performance. Additionally, drawing from trait activation theory and national cultural differences literatures, the authors reported that cross-cultural effects moderate the focal relationship. More specifically, results suggest that the CEO overconfidence–firm performance relationship is stronger in high assertive, low institutional collectivistic, low in-group collectivistic, high future-oriented, high gender egalitarian, high performance-oriented, low power distance, and low uncertainty avoidance cultures.
In a second study (Miao, Coombs, Qian, & Sirmon, 2017), published in Journal of Business Research, Chao and his colleagues used meta-analytic structural equation modeling to test whether entrepreneurial orientation (EO) mediates the human and social capital–firm performance relationships. In a sample of 74 studies, the authors reported EO partially mediates the human and social capital - firm performance relationships, social capital is positively associated with human capital, the relationship between social capital and firm performance is mediated in two steps, first, by human capital, and then, by EO, and the human capital–EO relationship is stronger in high in-group collectivistic, low future oriented, and high uncertainty avoidance cultures. Chao is currently a faculty member at Salisbury University where he continues meta-analytic work across a range of topics that have resulted in publications at leading journals, including Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and Small Business Economics.
- Miao, C., Coombs, J. E., Qian, S., & Oh, I-S. (2025). CEO overconfidence and firm performance: A meta-analytic review and future research agenda. Journal of Management & Organization, 31, 1814-1836. doi:10.1017/jmo.2023.58
- Miao, C., Coombs, J. E., Qian, S., & Sirmon, D. G. (2017). The mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation: A meta-analysis of resource orchestration and cultural contingencies. Journal of Business Research, 77, 68-80. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.03.016
Research Methods (RM)
Ph.D. students and faculty advance the tools that make organizational research rigorous and reliable, collaborating on projects that address publication bias, heterogeneity in meta-analysis, questionable research practices, reproducibility and statistical modeling.
Wenhao Wang collaborated with faculty on influential studies of publication bias and heterogeneity in meta-analysis, developing best-practice guidelines that continue to shape organizational research.
Wenhao Wang was deeply involved in several research methods projects while studying at VCU. In one of her first efforts, which was published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, Wenhao and her colleagues summarized the literature related to publication bias, which exists when the published literature on a particular topic is systematically different from all existing literature on the topic (Kepes, Wang, & Cortina, 2023). Based on their review, which includes an evaluation of the statistical methods to assess publication bias, Wenhao and her team developed a 7-step user’s guide with best-practice recommendations to assess and quantify publication bias in meta-analytic reviews. During her last year in the program, she co-led an extensive research project on heterogeneity (i.e., between-study variance) in meta-analytic effect sizes, which was published in Organizational Research Methods (Kepes, Wang, & Cortina, 2024). To determine how research studies in the organizational sciences address heterogeneity, Wenhao and her team conducted two studies, one at the meta-analytic level, one at the primary study level. Based on their findings, Wenhao and colleagues discuss implications for practice and provide recommendations for how heterogeneity assessments should be conducted and communicated in future research. Currently, Wenhao is a faculty member at the NEOMA Business School in France and France and is leading two related projects with faculty at VCU that should yield high quality publications in the next few years.
Sheila Keener partnered with faculty on meta-science projects addressing questionable research practices and later coauthored a cross-disciplinary review on research trustworthiness in psychology and management.
Sheila Keener, in addition to her involvement in content-oriented research (see above), was also deeply involved in research methods-related projects, particularly meta-science projects. Broadly speaking, meta-science research compares current research practices with best practices and suggests strategies for bridging the gap. In one of these projects (Kepes, Keener, McDaniel, & Hartman, 2022), Sheila and her colleagues used a sample of researchers from 10 top research-productive management programs to compare hypotheses tested in dissertations to those tested in journal articles derived from those dissertations to draw inferences concerning the extent of engagement in questionable research practices (QRPs). Their results indicated that QRPs related to changes in sample size and covariates were associated with unsupported dissertation hypotheses becoming supported in journal articles. Other results suggested that many article hypotheses may have been created after the results were known (i.e., HARKed). Articles from prestigious journals contained a higher percentage of potentially HARKed hypotheses than those from less well-regarded journals. Finally, articles published in prestigious journals were associated with more QRP usage than less prestigious journals. This article received considerable attention online and is in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric.
After Sheila became a faculty member at Old Dominion University, she was also the first author on a project regarding the trustworthiness of the cumulative knowledge in industrial/organizational psychology, which was published in Acta Psychologica (Keener et al., 2024). Together with a Ph.D. student from Germany and one of our faculty members (Sven Kepes), Sheila reviewed the relevant literature and outlined steps to address a “crisis of confidence” that has and still is plaguing many disciplines in the social sciences. In light of recent cases of plagiarism and academic fraud at institutions across the country this study provides an important and timely review of the current state of research findings in academia, especially fields related to psychology and management.
Jamie Field worked closely with faculty on projects related to HARKing, effect size benchmarks and reproducibility, and later led a collaborative study demonstrating how bias and outliers affect turnover research.
Jamie Field published extensively with our faculty while being in our Ph.D. program. Jamie was a co-author in a journal article on HARKing in Personnel Psychology (Bosco et al., 2016), an article on effect size benchmarks in Journal of Applied Psychology (Bosco et al., 2015), and articles introducing metaBUS, including one published in Personnel Assessment and Decisions (Bosco et al., 2015), as well as a book chapter about maximizing reproducibility in our field (Bosco & Field, 2017). Jamie was the first author on an article that was started while he was in our program but published in the Journal of Business and Psychology after he became a faculty member at West Virginia University (Field at al., 2021). In this article, Jamie examined the impact of outliers and publication bias, as well as their combined effect, on meta-analytic results on employee turnover. His results revealed that meta-analytic results on turnover are often affected by publication bias and, less frequently, outliers. Jamie and his colleagues concluded that about 33% of the recommendations for practice provided in the original systematic reviews on turnover were not robust to outliers and publication bias.
George Banks collaborated extensively with faculty on studies of publication bias and meta-analytic methods, contributing to a body of work that earned him early career recognition for advancing methodological transparency.
George Banks published several papers on publication bias while he was a student in our Ph.D. program. His contributions to research methods won him the Early Career Contributions award from the Research Methods Division of the Academy of Management in 2017. He is first author on a chapter examining publication bias that was published in the famous statistical and methodological myths and urban legends series edited by Lance and Vandenberg (Banks, Kepes, & McDaniel, 2015). He is also first author on publication bias papers in International Journal of Selection and Assessment (Banks, Kepes, & McDaniel, 2012) and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (Banks, Kepes, & Banks, 2012). He was a co-author on several other articles directly or indirectly related to meta-analytic methods and publication bias that were published in Organizational Research Methods (Kepes et al., 2012), Journal of Applied Psychology (O'Boyle, Forsyth, Banks, & McDaniel, 2012a), Journal of Business Venturing (O'Boyle, Rutherford, & Banks, 2014), and two in the Journal of Business and Psychology, one of which relates to publication bias (Kepes, Banks, & Oh, 2014) and another on meta-analytic reporting standards and practices (Kepes, McDaniel, Brannick, & Banks, 2013). He was also first author on a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Assessment and Selection (Banks & McDaniel, 2012) and The Oxford Handbook of Work and Aging (McDaniel, Pesta, & Banks, 2012).
Ernest O’Boyle partnered with faculty on meta-analyses of publication bias and family involvement in firm performance, publishing widely in top psychology and entrepreneurship journals.
Ernest O’Boyle published extensively while a student in our Ph.D. program. His extensive contributions to research methods won him the Early Career Contributions award from the Research Methods Division of the Academy of Management in 2015. For instance, his article on publication bias is published in the top entrepreneurship journal, Journal of Business Venturing (O'Boyle et al., 2014). He was first author on another Journal of Business Venturing article, this one a meta-analysis on the effects of family involvement on firm performance (O'Boyle, Pollack, & Rutherford, 2012b). He was also first author of a meta-analysis published in the top journal in organizational psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology (O'Boyle et al., 2012a).
- Banks, G. C., & McDaniel, M. A. (2012). Meta-analysis as a validity summary tool. In The Oxford handbook of personnel assessment and selection. (pp. 156-175). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press.
- Banks, G. C., Kepes, S., & Banks, K. P. (2012). Publication bias: The antagonist of meta-analytic reviews and effective policy making. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 34, 259-277. doi: 10.3102/0162373712446144
- Banks, G. C., Kepes, S., & McDaniel, M. A. (2012). Publication bias: A call for improved meta-analytic practice in the organizational sciences. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 20, 182-196. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2389.2012.00591.x
- Banks, G. C., Kepes, S., & McDaniel, M. A. (2015). Publication bias: Understanding the mythsconcerning threats to the advancement of science. In C. E. Lance & R. J. Vandenberg (Eds.), More statistical and methodological myths and urban legends (pp. 36-64). New York, NY: Routledge.
- Bosco, F. A., Aguinis, H., Field, J. G., Pierce, C. A., & Dalton, D. R. (2016). HARKing's threat to organizational research: Evidence from primary and meta-analytic sources. Personnel Psychology, 69, 709-750. doi: 10.1111/peps.12111
- Bosco, F. A., Aguinis, H., Singh, K., Field, J. G., & Pierce, C. A. (2015). Correlational effect size benchmarks. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100, 431-449. doi: 10.1037/a0038047
- Bosco, F. A.; Steel, P., Oswald, F. L., Uggerslev, K.; and Field, J. G. (2015) "Cloud-based Meta-analysis to Bridge Science and Practice: Welcome to metaBUS," Personnel Assessment and Decisions, 1, Article 2. doi: 10.25035/pad.2015.002
- Field, J. G., Bosco, F. A., & Kepes, S. (2021). How robust is our cumulative knowledge on turnover? Journal of Business and Psychology, 36, 349-365. doi: 10.1007/s10869-020-09687-3
- Keener, S. K., Kepes, S., & Torka, A.-K. (2023). The trustworthiness of the cumulative knowledge in industrial/organizational psychology: The current state of affairs and a path forward. Acta Psychologica, 239, 104005. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.104005
- Kepes, S., Banks, G. C., & Oh, I.-S. (2014). Avoiding bias in publication bias research: The value of "null" findings. Journal of Business and Psychology, 29, 183-203. doi: 10.1007/s10869-012-9279-0
- Kepes, S., Banks, G., C., McDaniel, M. A., & Whetzel, D. L. (2012). Publication bias in the organizational sciences. Organizational Research Methods, 15, 624-662. doi: 10.1177/1094428112452760
- Kepes, S., Keener, S. K., McDaniel, M. A., & Hartman, N. S. (2022). Questionable research practices among researchers in the most research-productive management programs. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 43, 1190-1208. doi: 10.1002/job.2623
- Kepes, S., Wang, W., & Cortina, J. M. (2024). Heterogeneity in meta-analytic effect sizes: An assessment of the current state of the literature. Organizational Research Methods, 27, 369-413. doi: 10.1177/10944281231169942
- Kepes, S., Wenhao, W., & Cortina, J. M. (2023). Assessing publication bias: A 7-step user’s guide with best-practice recommendations. Journal of Business and Psychology, 38, 957-982. doi: 10.1007/s10869-022-09840-0
- O'Boyle, E. H., Forsyth, D. R., Banks, G. C., & McDaniel, M. A. (2012a). A meta-analysis of the Dark Triad and work behavior: A social exchange perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97, 557-579. doi: 10.1037/a0025679
- O'Boyle, E. H., Pollack, J. M., & Rutherford, M. W. (2012b). Exploring the relation between family involvement and firms' financial performance: A meta-analysis of main and moderator effects. Journal of Business Venturing, 27, 1-18. doi: j.jbusvent.2011.09.002
- O'Boyle, E. H., Rutherford, M. W., & Banks, G. C. (2014). Publication bias in entrepreneurship research: An examination of dominant relations to performance. Journal of Business Venturing, 29, 773-784. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2013.10.001