Research: Selected Faculty Presentations Etc.

John Elstrott, professor of practice in entrepreneurship and executive director of the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship, spoke to business leaders, students and entrepreneurs in Boulder, Colo., on Sept. 29 as part of An Evening at the Epicenter, a series of interactive talks produced by Best Organics Inc. and Compass Natural LL C, private, Boulder-based businesses dedicated to promoting local, socially responsible and green businesses. Elstrott’s talk, which focused on his role as chairman of Whole Foods Market as well as on his career as an entrepreneur, was produced in partnership with the University of Colorado Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business.

Ana Iglesias

Ana Iglesias, assistant professor of management, presented “What Markets do Firms Enter? The Interplay of the Resource-Based and Multimarket Logics” at the 2011 Strategic Management Society Annual Conference in Miami Beach, Fla. The paper, co-authored with Bert Cannella, Vladislav Maksimov and Tieying Yu, examines how companies make diversification decisions, defined as a decision to operate in new markets (new products or new geographic regions). With the increasing number of acquisitions, diversified companies may encounter the same rivals across multiple markets. In making such decisions, do they take into account their internal resources—for example, experience in a given product or geographic region—or their competitive environment—for example, where rivals are located? Iglesias and her co-authors develop propositions arguing that companies enter markets where they can more easily leverage their existing resource base and avoid the threat of retaliation from rivals.

Eric Smith

Eric Smith, professor of practice and associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, delivered a presentation entitled “The Impact of Federal Regulation on the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry” in October to a group of visiting environmental studies students from Princeton University. Smith also recently presented remarks on “The Regulatory Impacts on the Oil and Gas Industry in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico” in Houston at the International Petroleum Technology Institute, a unit of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In April, Smith helped coordinate a one-day session featuring U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Small Business Administration Administrator Karen Mills in Tulane’s Lavin-Bernick Center. The session, sponsored by the Goldring Institute of International Business and the World Trade Center, was devoted to explaining the National Export Initiative, a proactive effort aimed at expanding trade opportunities for U.S. businesses. In February 2011, Smith discussed the business case for creating a safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industry as a panelist at the Energy Forum, an annual event co-sponsored by Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and PFC Energy, a Washington D.C. energy consultancy. The panel featured representatives from Noble Energy, Chevron-North America E&P, Pride International, BP Global Deepwater Response and PFC Energy.

Benny Zachry

Benny Zachry, adjunct professor of accounting, delivered papers at two recent conferences. In August, Zachry presented “GASB or FASB? An Analysis Suggesting the Need for a Change,” a paper co-authored with Catherine Gaharan and T. K. Patton, at the 2011 American Accounting Association Annual Meeting in Denver, and in September, Zachry presented “Financial Statement Analysis in a Global Economy: The Impact of IFRS on Key Financial Ratios,” co-authored with Krisandra Guidry, at the Financial Services Institute’s Seventh Annual International Symposium in New York.