Events

A finance seminar is given by Hadiye Aslan.

Kicking off  Global Entrepreneurship Week here at UA, The EDGE will be offering walk-in pitch practice hours all day on Monday, November 18th.

No sign up is required for this event, simply drop by The EDGE during operating hours for some last minute pitch practice before the River Pitch Competition.

On Tuesday, Nov. 19, Culverhouse College of Business and the EDGE will host the River Pitch Business Idea Competition. Held annually during Global Entrepreneurship Week, River Pitch is aimed at helping ideas for startups and early-stage businesses further their progress. Winners have the chance to win prize money to fund their business ideas and all participants will likely receive feedback about their business ideas from judges and the local business community. There is no entry fee and the deadline to apply is 11:59 pm on Nov. 8, 2019. Click learn more below for more details on the competition and how to get involved as a participant, judge or sponsor.

River Pitch Competition Agenda:

5:00 – 5:45 pm: Registration, food / snacks, networking

5:45 – 6:00 pm: Welcome remarks – Dr. Theresa M. Welbourne

6:00 – 6:15 pm: Teams move to booths – meet judges, read through the process

6:15 – 7:15 pm: Pitching!

7:15 – 7:45 pm: Judge deliberations – get ready to announce the winners

7:45 – 8:00 pm: Winners announced

8:00 – 9:00 pm: Networking, pictures

As a part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, The EDGE Tuscaloosa will host aspiring entrepreneurs throughout the day on Wednesday, Nov. 20.

The day includes a corporate entrepreneurship power lunch, where corporate professionals talk about their entrepreneurship endeavors; a meet and greet with faculty and local entrepreneurs, where attendees have the chance to learn more about majors, minors and classes in entrepreneurship; an EDGE and EDGE Labs startup exhibit of accelerator companies, the summer academy and current tenants at the EDGE; and the “Becoming an Angel in Alabama” workshop event that teaches how to be an angel investor.

• Corporate Entrepreneurship Power Lunch from 12 to 1:30 pm
• Local Entrepreneurs and Faculty Meet and Greet from 2 to 4 pm
• EDGE and EDGE Labs Startup Exhibit from 4 to 5:30 pm
• “Becoming an Angel in Alabama” Workshop from 5:30 to 6:30 pm

The November SEiR-F session is a series of presentations for faculty who have received grants through the SEiR-F program. Each presentation will last 30 minutes followed by 15 minutes for questions. Light snacks will be served immediately afterward.

1. Kris Hoang & Marcus Doxey

Presentation: Best Practices Surrounding Critical Audit Matter Selection:  A Field Study During a Time of Transition

The US Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved requirements for auditors to report on critical audit matters (CAMs). Beginning in 2020, auditors will publicly disclose CAMs to readers of financial statements, revealing information about judgments made during the audit. We conduct a field study of auditors as they navigate conflicts in implementing these new requirements. Novel and fundamental auditor judgments about CAMs (e.g., What is not a CAM? What functions do CAMs serve?) will involve creating new meanings and knowledge. Our study is a necessary and urgent first step towards a shared understanding of how to report CAMs effectively.

2. Peter Harms & Clay Voorhees

Presentation: Meta-Analytic Investigation into the Effects of Salesperson Traits on Performance and Counter Productive Work Behaviors

Salespeople are critical boundary spanners who are directly responsible for growing revenue and, ultimately, the success of their firms. Given the importance of salespeople to organizational success, firms invest nearly $800 billion annually to incentivize the salesforce and an additional $15 billion to train salespeople once they are hired (Zoltners, Sinha, & Lorimer 2008; Sunder, Kumar, Goreczny, and Maurer 2017). Given the high cost of training and motivating salespeople, a priority among sales managers has been to identify individuals who are wired to be successful in sales regardless of incentive schemes and training. Specifically, practitioners and academics have conducted repeated studies to examine the traits that make salespeople effective. These investigations have ranged from classic examinations of the “Big Five” personality traits (Vinchur, Schippmann, Switzer, & Roth, 1998) as well as more sales-specific traits such as customer and sales orientation (Franke & Park, 2006).

These studies have provided initial insight into the relative impact of salesperson traits on performance and key mediators (e.g., working hard and working smart), but gaps in our understanding remain that we address by conducting a meta-analysis. First, most of these investigations examine one or two traits in isolation, so while they provided initial evidence of a relationship between traits and performance, they stop short of providing a comprehensive assessment of how traits can work in parallel to predict sales performance. Second, most of the existing literature relating personality with sales performance doesn’t examine the process that drives this relationship. Third, emerging research suggests that some salesperson traits can have conflicting results on employee performance. Specifically, salesperson competitiveness has been shown to benefit the firm through increased sales, but can also drive consumers to engage in more deviance at work (Jelinek & Ahearne 2010).

To address these gaps, we conduct a meta-analysis to better understand the effects and processes that link salesperson traits with sales performance and organizational deviance. Doing so, will provide a more holistic understanding of the relative roles that different traits can play in driving performance in a sales organization. In particular, by combining research across samples, we negate the influence of sample-specific results, assess the relative contribution of various personality traits in order to inform selection and training goals, and test potential moderators of these effects (e.g. industry or cultural effects) that would not be testable in single studies.

3. Gregory Givens

Presentation: TBD

Happy Thanksgiving! University of Alabama classes are dismissed and offices are closed.