4 New Tenure-Track Faculty Join Carlson School

Studying firms’ boundary spanning-activities is especially fitting for Assistant Professor Xuege (Cathy) Lu as she holds degrees in multiple fields: journalism, public policy, and management. Before earning her PhD at Cornell University earlier this year, Lu served as a World Bank consultant focusing on climate change and sustainable energy access. Her work in this role drew her to explore ways firms can generate pro-social benefits.

Department: Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship
Research Specialties: Corporate sustainability and innovation
Fun Fact: Is a professionally trained pianist

"I enjoy my research the most whenever I find ways to connect with practitioners and industry experts on the ground, especially moments when they relate to my work or when they spark insights that open up my way of thinking about strategy and organizations."

Working as a marketing manager and having to design a sales strategy made Assistant Professor Byungyeon Kim want to explore a deeper understanding of sales management. While earning his PhD in Business Administration at Harvard University, Kim analyzed how incentives, route-call planning, and price promotions affect salespeople’s behavior.

Department: Marketing
Research Specialties: Sales management, personal selling, business-to-business marketing
Fun fact: Recently became a dad

"Salespeople serve as the face of an organization, and proper management of the sales force is the cornerstone for the growth and prosperity of sales-driven organizations. Through research, I seek to understand how sales management policy design impacts salespeople’s behavior and focus on ways to better motivate them to achieve an organization’s objectives."

Assistant Professor Dayton Steele joins the Supply Chain and Operations Department after completing his PhD in Operations earlier this year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. His research projects include developing a deeper understanding of how the resale market impacts retailer pricing decisions.

Department: Supply Chain and Operations
Research Specialties: Retail operations, operations/ marketing interface, innovative processes, empirical operations
Fun Fact: Won an outstanding teaching award at UNC

"Retailers are uniquely positioned as a bridge between the customer and the production process. I enjoy working with companies to understand the interaction between supply and demand, particularly when retailers consider innovations where historical data may be limited in providing answers."

Assistant Professor Semi Min joins the Carlson School after completing her PhD in Information Systems at New York University earlier this year. Her current research centers on understanding the diffusion of blockchain technology. Her study entails using natural language processing to complete an archival analysis on the discourse about blockchain to examine how expectations about the new technology were constructed and disseminated.

Department: Information and Decision Sciences
Research Specialties: Emerging technology, innovation, technology adoption
Fun Fact: Studied classical literature

"I have been interested in how stories and narratives shape people’s minds and behaviors. Some technologies, despite their advantages, take a long time to be adopted and used in society. I want to understand how narratives play a role in this process."