Achievements in Entrepreneurial Research

The Leeds tradition of producing impactful, high-quality entrepreneurship research is alive and well thanks to PhD alumni like Dr. Michael Conger and Dr. Siddharth Vedula. Our entrepreneurial research faculty and alumni are consistently producing nationally-recognized research assessing the impact of entrepreneurship and startups.

Leeds PhD alum (2014) Dr. Michael Conger is currently an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Miami University, Ohio. Dr. Conger has had a productive run of research papers in top-ranked journals in entrepreneurship and strategy. His most recent paper, Category membership, identity control, and the reevaluation of prosocial opportunities, was co-authored with fellow Leeds PhD alumni (Jeffrey McMullen, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Indiana University) and Leeds faculty member and Deming Research Director, Jeff York, and published in the Journal of Business Venturing.

The study examined the growing population of certified B Corps (a new certification for socially and environmentally focused firms) to understand how entrepreneurial ventures become deeply engaged in the B Corp movement. The Journal of Business Venturing is widely considered the premier entrepreneurship specialty journal, a 4* (“world elite”) on the Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Guide (ABS) and on the Financial Times Top 50 Journals Research Rank.

Dr. Conger also has forthcoming research in the Journal of International Business Studies, the top journal in its area looking at how country-level policies, create, or hinder, entrepreneurial opportunity.

Congratulations to Dr. Conger on continuing the Leeds tradition of great entrepreneurship research!

Dr. Siddharth Vedula, who is an Assistant Professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, has had a stream of recent publications in top management and entrepreneurship journals.

His most recent paper, co-authored with Leeds faculty member and Deming Research Director, Jeff York, will appear in the Academy of Management Journal, which is widely acknowledged as the top research journal in management and accepts less than 8% of the papers it receives. Their paper examines the role of entrepreneurs in boosting adoption of sustainability practices, and finds that across the political spectrum, entrepreneurial companies increase adoption of green building when policy and activism fails.

In addition, Dr. Vedula co-authored a study with Dean Sharon Matusik in the the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal that examined venture capital firms’ internationalization decision making, and a paper in Small Business Economics that looked at how the pace-of-life in different cities influences the entrepreneurial efforts.

Congratulations to Dr. Vedula on his research successes!