Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Read the June 2026 issue here.
Published in top academic journals, Carroll School professors keep bringing original research to peers in their disciplines—and to students in their classrooms. Over the past year they’ve illuminated facts about lagging CEO performance, employee satisfaction, and even long waits for inpatient care, among many other questions. Here’s a sampling.
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Do Remote CEOs Slack Off?
Yachts don’t normally explain executive performance, but Ran Duchin, the Coughlin Family Professor in the Seidner Department of Finance, believes they may factor into some CEOs’ decisions to work remotely. In The Review of Financial Studies, Duchin and a colleague find that the performance of firms with remote CEOs suffers. In investigating why, CEOs’ indulgence in leisure seemed one explanation: Companies with CEOs who live in a beach house or own a yacht underperformed peers. Other likely contributors to the lagging performance were “short-termism”—remote CEOs are less committed—and a weaker ability to acquire internal information, the researchers say. Luckily, these problems have a simple solution. “When the same CEO ends a remote arrangement and moves to the headquarters during a continuous employment spell, their firm’s operating performance and valuation increase,” said the researchers, who gleaned their data from real estate ownership records and other public sources.
People Are Better Paid Than They Think
Mandated disclosure of the CEO pay ratio—the gap between the CEO’s total compensation and that of the median employee—was intended to help investors evaluate executives. In an article in Management Science, Mary Ellen Carter, a professor and the Joseph L. Sweeney Chair in Accounting, and colleagues find the disclosure had an unexpected benefit: It made employees happier with their paychecks. Since 2018, public companies have had to disclose their ratios. Before that, most workers didn’t know what colleagues earned. The researchers discovered that, after median pay was published as part of pay ratios, employees’ satisfaction with their own pay increased. Why? Many people overestimate what peers earn. When the data showed median pay was lower than they expected, they realized their salaries were better than they thought. “Disclosing the median employee pay level may have provided employees with a new benchmark,” the researchers write.
Corporate Strategy Lags AI Advances
Agentic AI, which can plan and execute tasks, complicates corporate thinking, as it’s both an asset you own and a helper you collaborate with. Sam Ransbotham, a professor of business analytics and Peter F. Drucker Chair, and colleagues write in MIT Sloan Management Review that this dual nature—machine and mind—has created a rising risk for companies: “Agentic AI is spreading across enterprises faster than leaders can redesign processes, assign decision rights, or rethink workforce models.” To better use agentic AI, companies need to reconsider their workflows, update their governance, and rethink their organizational structures, the scholars say. In an AI-forward firm, managers will oversee hybrid teams of humans and bots. That will require upskilling humans and creating an “HR for AI” that can train, evaluate, and even fire automated helpers. “The challenge of agentic AI is organizational, not technological,” the researchers write. “Many organizations are adopting this technology at a breakneck pace, often before they have a coherent strategy in place.”
Delivering Results While Avoiding Overwork
A group of IT professionals studied by Vanessa Conzon, assistant professor of management and organization, has found a way to resist overwork pressures. In a paper published in Organization Science, Conzon and a colleague call the software developers’ approach “concerted quantification.” The researchers explain that the developers first assigned points to tasks based on how long they’d take. They then persuaded clients to assess their output using those points rather than face time at the client’s office. “This establishes completion of these [points]—rather than, for instance, long work hours or an indeterminate number of tasks—as a key criterion of success,” the researchers explain. By arranging their work this way, the developers avoided overwork while still satisfying clients. It helped that the developers could structure their workflows and were seen as experts in their field.
Shamed Insurers Shed Dirty Bonds
Public shaming worked for the Puritans. DJ Stockbridge, assistant professor of accounting, and colleagues show it still works today. In an article in the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the professors find that a 2016 California law requiring insurers to list their fossil- fuel holdings on a public website helped induce them to change their investments. The aim was to inform external stakeholders, who might then push firms to opt for greener investments. That worked: On average, disclosing insurers cut their fossil-fuel bond holdings by about 20 percent compared to nondisclosers, prompted by pressure from stakeholders such as environmental groups. Larger, more visible companies were more likely to shift their holdings. The researchers conclude the changes are likely permanent. After the mandate ended in 2019, most companies didn’t revert. Instead, they updated their longterm investment policies to shun “dirty” holdings.
Startups Are Scarcer But Stronger
Simcha Barkai, assistant professor in the Seidner Department of Finance, noticed something odd: Labor economists were fretting about fewer startups even as venture capitalists were thriving. VCs invest in startups, so something seemed amiss. His insight led to research published in the Journal of Finance in which Barkai and a colleague show that the number of startups and the jobs they’re creating have, in fact, declined. But that doesn’t mean their overall economic contribution has waned. Startups’ wealth creation, measured via stock market capitalization, and sales keep chugging along, the researchers find. So fewer young, high-growth firms exist, but they’re sturdier. “Recent cohorts of new firms are not necessarily ‘weaker’ than their predecessors but rather different in terms of how their revenue and employment relate to each other,” they write. Barkai and his colleague argue that today’s startups have a greater ability to mark up prices, so each has more economic heft.
Better Scheduling Helps Patients and Profits
Nan Liu, the William S. McKiernan ’78 Family Faculty Fellow and a professor of business analytics, and colleagues have developed a more efficient way for hospitals to use their diagnostic technologies, like CT scanners, while improving inpatient care. In an article in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, they introduce a scheduling approach they call “advance notice,” which “strikes a fine balance between the two classic scheduling paradigms”—reducing patient waiting and giving providers flexibility in using their service capacity. Traditionally, hospital diagnostic services have served emergency admissions first, outpatients next, and then, whenever capacity became available, inpatients. This often led to frustrating delays for inpatients and their care- givers. The proposed approach gives inpatients advance notice to prepare for testing and a guaranteed service-time window.
