UVA Darden School of Business Professors Recognized For Advancing New Knowledge

Evidence-based business practices drive innovation, improve managerial technique and lift corporations. Faculty researchers at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business develop many of those practices. To recognize their excellence in advancing new business knowledge, the School awarded four professors with The Wachovia Awards for Research Excellence.

Professors Frank Warnock and Rich Evans received the Wachovia Award for Significant Publication in a Peer-Reviewed, Discipline-Based Journal. Warnock’s winning paper, “U.S. International Equity Investment and Past and Prospective Returns,” published in the American Economic Review, overturns years of established theory and transformed the practice of central bankers across the world. Evans’ paper, “Mutual Fund Incubation,” published in the Journal of Finance, tackles methods to optimize mutual fund performance.

Warnock, reappointed last year to the Paul Hammaker Professorship, received a second recognition, the Wachovia Award for Significant Publication Aimed Directly at the Practicing Manager, for his work on capital flow waves. Professor Tom Steenburgh, John L. Colley Research Chair, also received an award in this category for his research publication “Motivating Salespeople: What Really Works,” published in the Harvard Business Review.

Professor Martin Davidson received the Wachovia Award for Significant Publication in a Book Form for The End of Diversity As We Know It : Why Diversity Efforts Fail and How Leveraging Difference Can Succeed, published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Davidson, who chaired the sixth annual Diversity and Inclusion Seminar 2013 in Barcelona, will release a second book on leveraging difference called Embrace the Weird. This highly anticipated book will explore how companies can gain big from understanding the value of employees who are “a little different.”

This year’s awards were presented on Tuesday, 26 February, during First Coffee. The Research and Course Development Committee includes Raj Venkatesan, committee chairperson and Bank of America Research Associate Professor of Business Administration; Professor S. Venkataraman, senior associate dean for faculty and research; Sean Carr, director of intellectual capital for the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Steve Momper, director of Darden Business Publishing; Professor Saras Sarasvathy, Isadore Horween Research Chair of Business Administration; and Professors Rich Evans and Scott Snell.

Wachovia, which merged with and is now part of Wells Fargo, established an endowment in 1982 to fund research and case development awards at Darden. The awards alternate each year between recognition of course materials and honoring faculty for their outstanding research and publications.