Costello Research Careers

The inescapable “negotiator’s dilemma”—i.e., whether to take a competitive or cooperative stance—is less vexing if one remembers that the long-term relationship between the counterparties is often more valuable than the stakes of any one negotiation, says George Mason University management professor Einav Hart.

As workers enter new organizational roles, join new employers, or transition into different fields, they often experience emotional turmoil associated with changes in their professional identity. To ease the adjustment, they can train their “transition muscles” by learning from past experiences and anticipating future changes, suggests a new book chapter from George Mason University management professor Sarah Wittman.

How fast is too fast to reply to a prospective employer? Wrong question, argues George Mason University management professor Einav Hart. Across several settings and contexts, Hart and her co-authors found that once a hiring manager is interested enough to reach out, even the slightest delay in responding could harm your chances.

Management professor Kevin Rockmann’s research concerns the often-ignored, multifaceted value of workplace relationships. In a recent executive education course at Costello College of Business, Rockmann put his findings into action, with strongly positive results for a leading company.

Glassdoor data show pandemic-era disruption was especially hard on audit team leaders. Worse, the effects have likely lingered until the present day.

Balancing and combining different kinds of intelligence may be even more important than how much you know, or how you think. In a recently published piece, Matthew A. Cronin, professor of management at Costello College of Business at George Mason University, deconstruct intelligence into three modalities, which they label the Scientist, the Artist and the Judge (or “SAJ,” pronounced “sage”).

Two Costello College of Business accounting professors are exploring how inherent personal traits may influence business success—and their early findings will gratify the left-handed among us.

Organizational coherence and trust begin with the stories that individual employees tell themselves about their complex identities.

Leaked payroll data may contradict everything you thought you knew about the economic impact of high-skilled legal immigration.

Not all organizations measure success in dollars and cents. There are also the purists, whose unswerving integrity may deliver outsized market benefits—if they aren’t fatally misunderstood first.