RESEARCH OVERVIEW
My research broadly focuses on (a) how firms, leaders, and founders manage stakeholders’ perceptions, (b) corporate wrongdoing and business ethics, (c) market intermediaries, and (d) how researchers can improve their methodologies. My work spans several contexts, including financial restatements, regulatory violations, ESG initiatives, corporate activism, strategic leadership, corporate governance, and more. I implement a combination of research methodologies to study these topics, including event studies, natural language processing (text analysis), natural/quasi-experiments, surveys, and interviews.
My research has been published in Academy of Management Review, Organizational Research Methods, Strategic Management Journal and Research Methodology for Strategy and Management.
PUBLISHED JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
Iqbal, F. & Pfarrer, M. D. Using Coreference Resolution to Mitigate Measurement Error in Text Analysis. Forthcoming at Organizational Research Methods.
Abstract: Content analysis has enabled organizational scholars to study constructs and relationships that were previously unattainable at scale. One particular area of focus has been on sentiment analysis, which scholars have implemented to examine myriad relationships pertinent to organizational research. This article addresses certain limitations in sentiment analysis. More specifically, we bring attention to the challenge of accurately attributing sentiment in text that mentions multiple firms. Whereas traditional methods often result in measurement error due to misattributing text to firms, we offer coreference resolution—a natural language processing technique that identifies and links expressions referring to the same entity—as a solution to this problem. Across two studies, we demonstrate the potential of this approach to reduce measurement error and enhance the veracity of text analyses. We conclude by offering avenues for theoretical and empirical advances in organizational research.
Iqbal, F., Pfarrer, M. D., & Bundy, J. 2024. How crisis management strategies address stakeholders’ sociocognitive concerns and organizations’ social evaluations. Academy of Management Review, 49(2): 299-321.
Abstract: Crises are harmful events that can influence organizational outcomes, leading to significant scholarly and practitioner interest in crisis management. A limitation of this line of inquiry, however, is that it typically glosses over stakeholders’ multiple concerns and the multiple factors that comprise organizations’ response strategies. To address this limitation, we delineate stakeholders’ crisis concerns into rational, emotional, and moral aspects. We then develop a typology along two dimensions of crisis response strategies—accountability and attention—to predict the likelihood that a specific strategy mitigates each of these concerns. We theorize that certain strategies mitigate just one type of concern, while others mitigate multiple concerns—albeit with a lower likelihood of success. Finally, we apply our typology to an organization’s social evaluations—that is, important, proximal outcomes affected by a crisis—in order to better understand the trade-offs associated with managing stakeholders’ multiple concerns.
Bundy, J., Iqbal, F., & Pfarrer, M. D. 2021. Reputations in flux: How a firm defends its multiple reputations in response to different violations. Strategic Management Journal, 42(6): 1109-1138.
Abstract: We examine how a firm defends its capability and character reputations in response to different violations. We develop our core theoretical mechanism—stakeholders' situational expectations—to theorize that the effectiveness of a firm's response strategy following a violation depends on the nature of the violation and the reputational judgment being made. We test our hypotheses using two longitudinal violation samples and novel media-based measures of reputation. Generally, we find that a more accommodative strategy is an effective defense following a capability violation, but it is less effective following a character violation. In supplemental analyses, we also discover that a more accommodative strategy is less effective at managing general reputation. Ultimately, our theory and findings suggest that reputation defense is more complex than previously considered.
Iqbal, F., Bundy, J., & Pfarrer, M. D. 2021. Advancing research methods in crisis management. In Hill, A.D., Lê, J.K., McKenny, A.F., O'Kane, P., Paroutis, S. and Smith, A.D. (Eds.), Research in Times of Crisis (Research Methodology in Strategy and Management, Vol. 13): 53-73. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Abstract: Organizational crises are complex events for researchers to assess. However, research in this domain remains fragmented, and advanced empirical techniques remain underutilized. In this chapter, we offer an integrated approach to assessing crises. We first specify a behavioral process model of crisis management comprised of three stages: interpretations, responses, and outcomes. Within each stage, we identify areas of opportunity and provide methodological recommendations that enhance our understanding of crises and crisis management. We also provide recommendations that could be applied across stages of the model. Taken together, we present a framework by which researchers can more effectively measure and analyze critical crisis dimensions.