I am interested in 1) how firms socially construct their regulatory and legal environments through mechanisms such as status, and 2) the ways in which regulatory or legal bodies enact or undermine status hierarchies through their decisions and actions.

FDA Drug Approval Project

In this project, I focus on how firm status in the knowledge domain influences regulatory approval speed, and the product safety consequences of these status effects. Firms with high status receive faster approval for their drugs even when status is unrelated to the actual product. The fact that the FDA consumes status for non-product quality reasons suggests that, conditional on approval, high status actors will have lower quality (i.e., more product safety events) products than low status actors.

1. • Regulatory Capture or Organizational Deference? The Effect of Producer Status Positions on FDA Drug Review 1994-2004
   
   Established firms enjoy numerous advantages in regulation. Prior work has focused on political capture or the ability to signal product quality as a source of differential firm outcomes. I argue that firm status in domains valued by institutionalized regulators is an additional source of differentiation in regulatory outcomes. Using review times for 884 New Drug Applications (NDAs) approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 1990 and 2004, I find that firms with higher status in the scientific knowledge domain receive faster approval of their drugs, with roughly an eight month advantage for a top 15% firm over an average firm. The effect of status was stronger when products were targeted for new disease categories, and when the FDA slows down its review following a major product recall. Contrary to the notion that status is a proxy for product quality, the results suggest that status signals of product-specific competencies were less influential in expediting drug review than a firm’s overall position in basic and unrelated areas of knowledge. The paper contributes to the organization theory literature by showing how states not only legitimize firms, but also respond to the legitimacy of firms. The paper also presents a richer picture of the underlying mechanisms of status effects.
   
   (Note: This paper was previously titled “Arbiter of Science: Institutionalization and Status Effects in FDA Drug Review 1990-2004”, and won the Louis R. Pondy Award for Best Paper based on a Dissertation from the OMT Division of the Academy of Management.)
   
   
   

2. • Mistakes Were Made: Regulatory Deference and Product Safety Events in New Pharmaceutical Drugs, 1994-2007
   
   Actors occupying higher positions in the status hierarchy derive greater returns for a given level of quality. This status advantage derives from the fact that evaluator’s are 1) more likely to believe quality claims made by high status actors, and 2) derive additional utility (e.g., legitimacy) from associations with prestigious actors. This  In this paper, I explore the product quality consequences of high status actors receiving less scrutiny in the regulatory domain. In an examination of 314 New Molecular Entities approved by the FDA from 1994-2004, I find that products submitted by high status actors had a higher rate of experiencing post-marketing safety events (e.g., safety-based withdrawals and Black Box Warnings). This decoupling between status and quality, however, did not lead to unfavorable treatment from the FDA, reinforcing the notion that the regulatory agency favors high status firms for non-product quality reasons.
   

Generic Pharmaceutical Industry Project

I examine the emergence of the Generic Pharmaceutical industry following the passage of the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, and how this influenced the status dynamics and legal strategies of innovative and generic pharmaceutical firms.

1. • The Imitator’s Dilemma: Regulation and Status Enactment in the Generic Pharmaceutical Industry
   
   Imitation is typically considered the antithesis of innovation.  Firms take every measure to prevent competitors from imitating their innovations, and regulations are designed to protect firms’ incentive to innovate. In this paper, I examine a regulatory act—the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act—that legitimized the imitation of innovations through looser regulation of generic drugs, and explore its impact on the status hierarchies in the pharmaceutical industry. The key proposition I test is that generic companies suffer an “imitator penalty” when they attempt to offer new inventions. Using data from FDA drug approvals and US Patent citations, I find that stronger generic identities lead to less citations to a firm’s knowledge stock, and lower firm status independent of the actual quality of the underlying inventions.
   
   

Baseball Umpiring Project (with Brayden King)

We examine the conditions under which umpire decisions are influenced by player status, and how these calls made under uncertainty are episodes in which status is enacted.

Prior Publications and Proceedings

1. • Where Do Alliances Come From? The Effect of Upper Echelons on Alliance Formation. Research Policy, 36 (4), 499-514. (with Monica C. Higgins) Download
   
   

2. • Extending the Faultline Concept to Geographically Dispersed Teams: How Colocated Subgroups Can Impair Group Functioning. Academy of Management Journal, 49 (4) 679-692. (with Jeffery Polzer, Brad Crisp, and Sirkka Jarvenpaa) Abstract
   
   

3. • University Patenting and Scientific Productivity: Comment. European Management Review, 5, 111-113. Download
   
   

4. • Arbiter of Science: Institutionalization and Status Effects in FDA Drug Review 1990-2004. In George Solomon (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (CD), ISSN 1543-8643 Download
   
   

5. • Firm Boundaries, Technological Relevance, and the Rate of Product Development. In K. Mark Weaver (Ed.), Proceedings of the Sixty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (CD), ISSN 1543-8643 Download