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A School of Business pilot initiative helps jump-start new inquiries

Research & discovery

Two teams land funding through Medium Research Grants program.

The two teams that received Medium Research Grant awards are (top, from left) One-Ki Daniel Lee and Seong Byun; and (bottom, from left) Thomas “Bowe” Hansen, Mi “Jamie” Zhou and Prabin Paudel.

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Two teams of researchers representing three disciplines have received startup funding for their projects through the VCU School of Business Medium Research Grants program. The pilot initiative is designed to support new research projects that have strong potential to advance high-impact scholarship aligned with the Opportunity 2030 strategic plan, said Mayoor “Max” Mohan, Ph.D., associate dean for strategic affairs and research initiatives.

“We launched the program to fill a gap between small and larger awards,” Mohan said. “As a result, we’re providing more colleagues with access to meaningful support to help start new projects.”

Under program guidelines, recipients receive up to $10,000 per project. Receiving the inaugural grants are:

  • One-Ki Daniel Lee, Ph.D., associate professor of information systems, and Seong Byun, Ph.D., associate professor of finance, insurance and real estate. Their project will investigate the diverse approaches for deploying effective artificial intelligence strategies for businesses that rely heavily on digital technology.

    “We’re examining the interdependent relationships among various types of AI automation of organizational functions that typically require human intervention or manual effort,” they said, “to provide a comprehensive understanding of the AI opportunities and challenges for today’s businesses.” 

  • Thomas “Bowe” Hansen, Ph.D., associate professor of accounting, and Mi “Jamie” Zhou, Ph.D., associate professor of accounting, with accounting Ph.D. candidate Prabin Paudel.  

    “We’ll be using the funding to conduct two related projects,” they said. The first one will investigate whether firms make disclosures that overstate their investments in AI to distract from financial-report manipulation or if they use those disclosures as an alternative mechanism to hype their company. The second project will use employment data to create a measure of companies’ investments in ESG (environmental, social and governance). The researchers said they’ll evaluate the relation between this measure and measures that rely on companies’ disclosures “to determine if the differences between them can provide a more robust measure of greenwashing,” a marketing ploy to make a company appear to be more environmentally friendly than it actually is.

Small Research Grants program

In other grants news, several business school faculty members have received funding under the Small Research Grants program, which provides up to $2,500 per faculty member per fiscal year. “This long-standing program has provided crucial funding to help our colleagues take their projects across the finish line,” Mohan said.

The individual recipients, by discipline, are: