Category: Past Seminars

Date: 14 November 2025, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Anti-Consumerist Hedonism” by Fleura Bardhi Bayes Business School Abstract  Despite the rich literature on hedonic consumption, the hedonistic aspects of resisting consumerism remain less explored and theorized. Building on a long-term ethnographic study of an anti-consumerist initiative in Athens, Greece, we advance the notion of anti-consumerist hedonism, which involves the joys and pleasures gained in resistive consumption practices. We identify three distinct dimensions: joys in the alternative, in the collective, and in ongoing engagement. We also explore the conditions that help cultivate and sustain anti-consumerist hedonism, including anti-market sociomateriality, horizontalist structures and spatiotemporal permanence. Importantly, we show how their effectiveness is always tentative, subject to ongoing aesthetic, collective organizing and stewardship work. Overall, our study contributes to the theoretical…

Date: 12 November 2025, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 " Don’t judge a leader by their reluctance" by Bahar Moralıgil Loughborough University Abstract  Organizations lack the leadership they need. Despite investing billions in high-potential (HiPo) programs, most organizations fail to identify and develop effective leaders. A major barrier to the success of these programs is the misrecognition of true potential, where individuals with potential are overlooked during HiPo selection. Drawing on evidence from three studies, this research examines whether reluctance to lead (RTL), which is conceptualized as the hesitation of a high-potential individual to exercise leadership, contributes to the misrecognition by masking the true potential. Across three studies, I developed and validated the first dedicated RTL measure, tested whether HR professionals’ HiPo selection decisions are biased against reluctant…

Date: November 6, 2025 Time: 12:30 - 13:30 Place: MA -205 “Talk Green, Act Dirty? Textual ESG Disclosures and Scope 3 Emission Misalignment” by Hajar Novinsalari (Advisor : Assoc. Prof. Ahmet Şensoy) Abstract:  There has been a surge in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures in recent years, driven by investor demand and regulatory pressure. However, concerns about greenwashing remain persistent. While many studies assess the credibility of ESG reports, few directly compare a firm's sustainability language with its actual environmental performance, particularly concerning Scope 3 emissions, which often account for the majority of a company's carbon footprint. This research proposes a novel approach to detect hidden greenwashing by quantifying the misalignment between green language in ESG disclosures and actual Scope 3 carbon emissions.

Date: 5 November 2025, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Disengaged Consumers: Privacy Notices Lead to Suspicion" by Zeynep Gürhan Canlı Koç University Abstract  In the digital landscape, consumers are frequently asked to make decisions regarding the privacy of their data. In this research, we aim to provide insights regarding consumers’ experiences in making these privacy decisions. With a multi-method approach including text analysis, a six-year span of field and quasi-field experiments, and online experiments, we demonstrate that privacy notices activate consumers’ persuasion knowledge and trigger suspicion, ultimately leading to disengagement with the brand. Designing the choice architecture or privacy notice content in a way that reduces suspicion can decrease disengagement. The effect mitigates for consumers who are not knowledgeable about the persuasion tactics of marketers. Our findings deepen…

Date: 24 October 2025, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Can Nonprofits Save Lives During Financial Stress? Evidence from the Hospital Industry" by Merih Sevilir IWH Halle Abstract  The number of for-profit hospitals has grown tremendously in the U.S. We show that the vulnerability of for-profit hospitals to negative external financing shocks generates adverse outcomes for patients. Using confidential patient-discharge data matched with hospital financial data, we show that negative shocks in external capital markets in[1]crease patient mortality at for-profit hospitals but not at nonprofit hospitals. This effect is robust to refined controls for hospital characteristics, patient demographics, diagnoses, and treatment procedures. The effect is concentrated among patients hold[1]ing public insurance and facing greater health risks. Our evidence points to nonprofit hospitals’ deeper cash reserves serving as a cushion…

Date: October 23, 2025 Time: 12.30 – 13.30 Place: MA -205 “Integrating Customer Shopping Behaviour into Predicting Online Return: A Data-Driven Approach” by Vefa Övünç Özer (Advisor : Assoc. Prof. Fehmi Tanrısever) Abstract:  The continued expansion of online retail, particularly in the fashion sector, is accompanied by the significant operational and financial challenge of high product return rates. These returns impose substantial costs related to logistics, inventory management, and sustainability. To address this challenge, this study introduces an optimized clustering framework that employs optimization technique to systematically determine the ideal number of clusters and feature weights for segmenting users, products, and suppliers. By constructing high-order interaction features from these optimally predictive segments, the framework captures the non-linear relationships that drive return behavior. The results demonstrate that this approach yields a…

Date: 22 October 2025, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 “Supply Management Criteria to Reassess if Suppliers Are Strategic: An Engaged Scholarship Approach” by Turanay Caner NC State University Abstract  This engaged scholarship study examines how procurement executives reassess strategic suppliers to determine whether they remain strategically attractive. Problem formulation and theory development activities revealed that executives apply principles from three primary theories when reassessing strategic suppliers: transaction cost economics, capability theory, and social capital theory. The field-based policy-capturing study design, which analyzes 1,770 executive reassessments, finds that most theory-driven criteria associated with these three theories have a significant influence on reassessments. However, some expected factors are underweighted in practice, and executives often significantly weight different criteria. Field-based problem-solving activities reinforce our findings and underscore how empirically grounded informed…

Date: 17 October 2025, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Fascism as a management philosophy" by Dirk Matten York University Abstract  This paper analyses the advent of fascism as a management philosophy, and its growing influence in the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary business practice. While many contemporary management practices identified as fascist in nature have existed isolated and been analysed for considerable time the paper delineates the threshold of characterizing the thought and practice of fascist management by the criterion of conformity with enlightenment principles. On this basis, some dominant practices in contemporary management are analysed and their fascist nature is identified. The paper closes with some observations around the implementation of fascism as a new management philosophy. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5203477 Ethics Approval The author has no relevant financial or non-financial…

Date: 15 October 2025, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Empty Creditors: How Public Credit Guarantees Impair Loan Restructuring" by Cem Demiroğlu Koç University Abstract  Public credit guarantees (PCGs) are increasingly used worldwide to stimulate lending during economic downturns, yet their impact on loan restructuring remains unexplored. This paper shows that PCGs can transform banks into "empty creditors" with reduced loss exposure, leading to inefficient defaults. Using comprehensive loan-level data from Türkiye's 2017 PCG program---the world's largest at the time---we find that, conditional on distress, PCG loans exhibit substantially higher default rates and lower restructuring rates than non-PCG loans, even when comparing loans to the same firm in the same quarter. The effect strengthens with higher guarantee coverage and weakens as banks approach portfolio-level loss caps, demonstrating moral hazard…

Date: 08 October 2025, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Unintentionally Prestigious: Exclusivity Through Bulk Purchases" by Cenk Koçaş Sabancı University Abstract  Consumers typically buy bulk for their cost-saving benefits. Drawing on costly signaling theory, we argue that such commitments, however, serve as subtle unintentional signals of status. Although consumers buy bulk for cost saving purposes, observers consistently perceive bulk purchasers (long-term subscribers, clubhouse shoppers, loyalty card holders) as higher in status not only because they appear to possess greater financial resources, but also because they are seen as respected customers. Consequently, such customers are afforded a way of costly signaling where the risk of being labeled a show-off is minimized due to the low-cost disguise. Hence, bulk purchases essentially come with a reward of exclusivity that customers do (consciously…