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Fox School of Business

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Aaltonen studies where big data meets the real world

Aleksi AaltonenAssistant Professor Aleksi Aaltonen is interested in how people work with data in real-world business settings. “Not just data analytics–there are a lot of people studying that. I’m interested in data as a new kind of resource for economic activity.” It’s an interest that goes back to Aaltonen’s Ph.D. thesis.

“You need to think about finding, cleaning, integrating, and interpreting the data before you can actually analyze it. We often ignore or gloss over this work,” he says. But, he stresses, if the business world wants to harness the increasingly massive data at its fingertips, someone must pay attention to these practical matters.

One of Aaltonen’s recent projects, forthcoming in the Journal of Management Information Systems, looks at a company with a new business model. “They wanted to turn a mobile network into an advertising space,” he says. People in the network would get advertisements via text message. But counting how many people receive such an ad can be a surprisingly complex thing, according to Aaltonen. After all, no one is going to buy an advertising space unless you can prove someone will pay attention to it.

“If we send a message to a person does that count as a person seeing it? Or do they need to take some other action for it to count?” he asks.

“Solving these problems is surprisingly laborious,” says Aaltonen. The flashier subjects of data analytics and artificial intelligence get more research attention, according to Aaltonen. “But answering these mundane questions is just as important when it comes to actually make use of data in a business setting.”

Aaltonen is also exploring new ways of organizing information. “I’ve studied Wikipedia a lot, and what is most fascinating is the question of how is the system managed. How did Wikipedia learn to govern the 1 billion contributions into a high-quality encyclopedia with no managers?” He thinks part of the answer lies in transparency. On Wikipedia, for example, “you can see who added, removed or changed every a comma,” notes Aaltonen.

There’s a tendency in big business to exert managerial control over everything, according to Aaltonen. “But the ultimate aim of a firm is not to control things, it’s to make a profit. And if you can make better products that people want to use, then you have to look at that,” he says. Wikipedia is probably the most used reference product in the world. “It’s a new way of creating valuable products and businesses have to stay on top of that.” 

Havakhor on the cutting edge of technology policy solutions

Taha HavakhorIn his research, Assistant Professor Taha Havakhor zeroes in on the intersection of technology and policy. His current work investigates how big data, big tech, and entrepreneurship impact a fast-changing world. And his findings suggest policy solutions for some of today’s tough business problems.

One of his ongoing projects looks at current well-intentioned cyber security laws and shows how these laws can actually stifle digitization growth. As it stands, the laws force firms to disclose even the smallest security breach to shareholders and the public. This can be a disincentive for businesses to digitize at all. Businesses fear legal ramifications, says Havakhor. “This legislation is one size fits all. However, it’s often the bigger firms that are the targets of cyber security incidents,” he says. His research suggests that it would make more sense for these laws to be contingent on company size. 

Another project explores how access to big data can be harmful to main-street investors using trading apps like Robinhood. “When you give this kind of tech to investors who don’t have the financial literacy required to understand it, they lose money and worse,” he says. Back in June, one such 20-year-old investor ended his life after seeing a negative balance of more than $700K on his Robinhood dashboard, notes Havakhor. “There needs to be more regulations to oversee digital financial services that are offered to main-street investors,” he says.

Also under review is a paper titled, “To Break Them Up Or Not?” This work takes a deeper look at the venture capital arms of the big tech companies. “When these tech executives go to legislators, they talk about how they are encouraging innovation by investing in startups, but we want to understand if that’s really happening or not,” says Havakhor. His research indicates that the opposite is more likely true. “When you look deeper, you see it decreases the radicalness of the breakthroughs. In the areas where the big tech VC arms have entered, digital breakthroughs are not as big as they used to be,” he explains.

Sunil Wattal explores the frontier of digital transformation

Sunil WattalFifteen years ago, it was possible to do strategic planning on a five-year timeline. That was before technology changed the global economic landscape. For some, this constant disruption brings frustration. But not for Sunil Wattal, Associate Professor of MIS at the Fox School. “Digital transformation—that’s the thing I love most,” he says.

Wattal’s research has appeared in prestigious journals including Management Science, MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research. He’s interested in social computing and innovation in the tech sector. “Most of my work has been on online consumer behavior and the different phenomena in how people behave online,” he explains.

Over the course of his career, his research projects have tracked with seismic changes in trends. Some of his early research examined email marketing; it showed that consumers responded negatively when companies used their names in sales emails. Later, his attention turned to crowdfunding and ridesharing platforms.

Wattal and his colleagues were among the first to research crowdfunding back in 2013. “We looked at Spot.US, a donation-based platform to fund journalism,” says Wattal. An analysis of data from the platform showed how seeing the giving behavior of others—each donation amount was visible on the website—affected consumer behavior.

“We thought that seeing a lot of people contributing would make someone more likely to contribute,” says Wattal. To his surprise, the research found that the reverse is true. People seem to want to give where their gift has more impact, not to a project that already has plenty of funding. That study also revealed that projects that took longer to get funded got more reader engagement than ones that were funded quickly.

Another of Wattal’s notable projects revealed how the introduction of Uber in a city impacted drunk driving fatalities. “We worked with data from the California Highway Patrol as well as publicly available data from Uber,” he says. The research found that when Uber enters a city, drunk driving fatalities are reduced by 3 to 5 percent.

Today, Wattal’s research has pivoted to answer emerging questions. How do consumers react when a company uses its Facebook fan page to push them to an e-commerce platform? Preliminary findings suggest that shoppers on average may not like it, and may unsubscribe from the fan page. He’s also interested in cryptocurrency. “What are the factors that make an ICO successful? Do social media mentions play a role?” he asks.

“Whenever you digitize something, you are not only making it more convenient but you’re also creating all this data and opportunities for research,” says Wattal. “Things are getting transformed in such a way that the next few years are unimaginable.” And for him, nothing could be more exciting.

Gong’s research finds the unexpected in consumers’ behavior

Jing JongJing Gong’s research looks at the intersection of economics and information systems, analyzing what impact technology has on consumer behavior and business profitability. One of the thing she most enjoys about her work? The results can be somewhat surprising.

“Some of the findings aren’t intuitive when you first think of them, but if you dig deeper, you can usually find theories to support what’s going on,” Gong said. “For good research, you should have strong theories to support your findings. Or if you can create a new theory, that’s good, too.”

Take her current research, looking at how the growth of Uber has affected car sales in certain Chinese cities. Looking at registration data, she found that car sales had increased an estimated 8 percent per month after Uber entered a market.

“People thought there’d be a decrease in sales and that may be true for people in Philadelphia or New York, they may stop buying cars and start to use Uber to go to restaurants and bars. It’s very easy and they don’t have to worry about drinking or missing the bus or missing other transportation,” she said.

For example, “a lot of marginal people who are deciding whether or not to get a car, if they have the money, are getting the car because it can give them an additional income,” she said.

Or consider Gong’s first published research paper, a collaboration with her Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Michael D. Smith, and Prof. Rahul Telang, a work that was printed in the Journal of Retailing in June 2015. The researchers looked at how changing the cost of digital movie sale prices affected digital rentals of those movies. Contrary to expectations, reducing movie sale prices did not negatively affect rentals. In fact, price promotions in the sales arena boosted rental sales.

“Traditionally, you would expect one channel to cannibalize the other channel. But here there actually was a positive spillover across channels,” said Gong, who is also doing research that looks at online freelancing platforms and crowd funding sites.

Gong joined the Fox faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor in Fall 2018. In addition to her Ph.D. in Information Systems and Management from Carnegie Mellon, Gong holds a Bachelor’s in Information Management and Information Systems from Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Her research has been used to shape public policy and private marketing decisions.

This Spring, Gong taught Data Analytics, a requirement for undergraduates majoring in Management Information Systems that builds a foundation for storing and analyzing data.

“Teaching them to analyze is a lot of fun,” she said. “We teach student different methods so they can discover hidden patterns in the data or predict what consumers are going to do in the future.”

Bauman is building the next generation of learning software

BaumanKonstantin Bauman’s research – building novel machine learning models – sounds challenging. Then he provides more details.

For a recent experiment with the University of the People, a non-profit online higher education institution, Bauman developed systems that were able to assess a student’s overall course work, find weaknesses and then make specific study recommendations before the final exam. The experiment showed that students who received personalized tips received significantly higher grades than the students who received no guidelines or generalized ones. 

It was a very simple algorithm but we really helped real people with their studies,” Bauman said.  “I’m really proud of the results of these first experiments and now we’re looking at going to the next stage, not only telling students what to read but saying, ‘You should participate in this online discussion’ or ‘You should watch this video.’

Assistant Professor Bauman, who joined the Management Information Systems Department of Temple University’s Fox School of Business for the Fall 2017 semester, has undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Data Mining and earned his Ph.D. in Geometry and Topology in 2012 from Moscow State University. 

Before coming to the United States to work as a postdoctoral research scientist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Bauman was in charge on machine learning research at Yandex LLC, “the Russian version of Google.” One of his projects there involved developing algorithms to determine which advertisements would be most appealing to users. Even a slight increase in the click-through-rate can mean millions of dollars for a business, he said.

Everything you do – any application you use or your clicks on a website — generates data,” said Bauman, who is teaching a course this semester on data mining. “A good business person should know how to get knowledge and insights from the data.

Many people don’t realize that machine learning and recommender systems are already making their lives easier, he said. It’s the technology behind email spam filters, Google’s top search results, Amazon product recommendations and Yelp restaurant suggestions. It is moving beyond algorithms identifying that someone who enjoyed the first book in the Harry Potter series should read the second one. 

That’s something that’s most likely already on your radar. We should provide new recommendations or unexpected recommendations,” he said. “We have information coming at us from everywhere and trying to consume it all would be overwhelming so we need this advice.

Bauman’s current projects include creating algorithms to make better restaurant recommendations based on user input and further exploring how machine learning can help humans in their studies. He is collecting data from students in his current programming class with the hope of aiding future students.

Since it’s a first programming course for most of our students, the best approach would be to practice, practice a lot.  We are developing a system where students can study online and take the provided learning activities in any order,” he said. “My idea is to find a way to recommend the ideal path so they don’t take all of the assignments, just the ones that will be beneficial to them. These recommendations should help students reach their learning goals in the most efficient and effective way.

ITACS alumnus Abdul Koné on finding his niche and launching a career

Abdul Koné loves his job.  

As an IT Audit Manager for Santander Consumer in Dallas, Texas, Koné’s day-to-day goes beyond sculpting and planning audits for the company and into nearly every aspect IT. 

“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert in one area, but I’ve gotten such a good understanding of every area,” he says. “Also, I’ve found that managing people, empowering them, watching them grow in their field is something I love to do.”  

Growing up in West Africa’s Ivory Coast, Koné’s dream career wasn’t in management or technology, but aviation — he’d always wanted to be a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot. “I came to realize that wasn’t going to be so easy,” he says with a laugh. Instead, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science at the Canadian University of the Arts, Sciences and Management in Abidjan. Before coming to the U.S., he did some homework on the IT industry and its career possibilities, and was intrigued by the job prospects in IT auditing. Temple’s Fox School of Business was the only school of the handful he visited that offered anything like the IT Auditing and Cyber Security program. In 2012, he enrolled; by 2013 — before he had even graduated — he had his professional certification and three job offers.      

“I can say that ITACS really helped me understand the business,” he says. “One of the really good parts of the program was that all of my instructors came straight from the industry, so they knew how to take all of these concepts and put them into real-life context, with practical examples. It was incredibly helpful.”  

In fact, he says, it was the practical, business-focused structure of the ITACS program — from the real-life experience the capstone project provided to the resume support at the Fox School’s Center for Student Professional Development — that helped shape his career. Well, he adds, that and the quality of the people involved in the program.   

“The professors were so knowledgeable, and so patient,” he says. “I had a great mentor, Michael Griffith, who taught me so much of what I know. He believed in me, which meant the world to me.”   

It was Griffith, Koné says, who encouraged him to apply for the job that he ended up taking right out of ITACS — a coveted position with Morgan Stanley as an information technology auditor. A year later, when his wife’s job took them to Dallas, Koné landed at Santander, where’s he’s steadily climbed the ranks since 2014. Not only has the job given him the chance to put to use the skills he sharpened at Temple, but the career pathways in the industry are growing all the time in today’s world, he says. (In fact, he recently hired a former ITACS classmate as a senior officer at Santander.) “It’s definitely a field that’s full of opportunity,” he says.

MIS senior presents research at major national conference

Erick KoeckReceiving notable recognition for a research paper is not what senior Eric Koeck originally set out to do.

What started as Koeck’s summer research project turned into a presentation he delivered at the 2017 Winter American Marketing Association (AMA) Conference in Orlando. The paper, “Tweets, Retweets, and the Brand Positioning of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidates,” is co-authored with two professors from Temple University’s Fox School of Business – Dr. David Schuff and Dr. Susan Mudambi.

Koeck, a 22-year-old senior who majors in Management Information Systems (MIS), utilized different tools to scour the Twitter feeds of each presidential candidate. Then, he analyzed the difference between word choice and how those words affected the virality of their tweets. To do this, candidates were split into two groups: insurgent candidates (or those who never held political office with their respective political parties) and establishment candidates (those who had).

“I’m very interested in data analytics and I wanted to complete a project that would give me the opportunity to work with that,” said Koeck, a Collegeville, Pa., native. “I was forming this project when the presidential primaries were in full swing. I’m interested in politics and an active Twitter user. It lined up nicely as something into which I could really immerse myself.”

The main findings, Koeck said, showed that insurgent candidates were more likely to express both positive and negative emotion, as well as gender references, while establishment candidates were more likely to express affiliation. In addition, the traits most positively linked to retweets were negative emotion and female gender references.

Impressed organizers of the AMA conference waived Koeck’s fee, and his travel expenses to and from the conference were sponsored by Temple’s Creative Arts, Research, And Scholarship program.

The three-day event provided eye-opening exposure for Koeck.

“It was a really great experience,” he said. “I learned a lot about academia and business research. One professor from a university in Canada asked me to send her my presentation, because she was interested in her students following the election closely.”

While Koeck remains humble, his capabilities, as they pertain to research, have not gone unnoticed.

“They were both wonderful,” Koeck said of working with Mudambi and Schuff, Professor of MIS. “Dr. Schuff has been mentoring me on this project the whole way through, and Dr. Mudambi helped us integrate different marketing concepts into the paper so that it was appropriate for AMA. Dr. Schuff’s work is relevant to my interest in analytics and statistics, which made sense for our collaboration. I was really glad when he agreed to work on this with me.”

As the trio work to get the paper published in an academic journal, Koeck prepares to present the project to state legislators at Temple Undergraduate Research Day April 24.

Future opportunities for Koeck, a graduating senior, already have sprouted. Said Koeck: “Starting in September, I’ll be working for PricewaterhouseCoopers in their Advanced Risk and Compliance Analytics practice. I interned there last summer and had a good experience so I’m excited to start my career there.”

— Carine Lavache

Murphy garners 2016 MIS Student Leadership Award

ciara murphyCiara Murphy doesn’t give up easily — especially when it comes to helping others.

As she wound her way through five different majors — education, then special education, journalism, photojournalism, and marketing — finally landing in MIS, she knew she wanted that perfect fit that combined her desire to help people with an intellectually stimulating career.

It’s this stick-to-itveness, and the success that has followed, that helped garner Murphy, the vice president of operations for Association for Information Systems, the 2016 MIS Student Leadership Award.

“It’s an extremely competitive group of students this year due to the quality of the candidates,” said Jeremy Shafer, assistant professor of Management Information Systems. “However, Ciara is well deserving of the award, since she has demonstrated a willingness to take on challenging tasks, such as Hootathon and other successful fundraising efforts.”

In fact, Murphy’s determination shone throughout her efforts for Hootathon, a fundraising event for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as she led her team in a series of diverse fundraising efforts, such as canning at football games and running a kickball tournament. Ultimately, her team raised the most funds of any group at Temple University, to the tune of more than $7,600.

What drives Murphy through all of this is a desire to give back and help others, since she sees herself as the beneficiary of that type of generosity growing up in Boston, Mass.

“I was practically raised in the Boys and Girls Club, from my school work to my swim team,” Murphy said. “It has always been really important to me to give back to people, because they’ve given to me.”

This pay-it-forward commitment is reflected not only in her role as a TA for the introductory course for MIS majors, where she guides many students through the intellectual and emotional challenges of navigating their way to a major, but also in her role with AIS, where she coordinated fundraising events, such as the aforementioned Hootathon, and social events for the group.

Murphy sees the social events for AIS as more than just a time to have fun and bond; in her mind, these events are helping her fellow MIS students gain important soft skills, such as empathy and networking, that are crucial for future success.

“I think it’s important to create that sense of community within an organization,” said Murphy, noting that the organization’s members typically only meet twice a week to hear invited speakers. “Ten years down the road, we are going to be in positions all over the country, and these social events will catalyze our future network. I think that’s invaluable for your future in this field.”

Murphy, who had an internship at JP Morgan and Chase, plans to continue to focus on ways she can help others with her job at Cigna, where she will help develop ways to use technology to incentivize people to improve their health.

“I really enjoy being able to understand and engage in meaningful ways with both IT and the business side of things,” said Murphy, who feels the MIS program equipped her with the determination and skill set to solve problems creatively and act as an effective liaison. “I guess that’s really just a theme for me.”

The MIS program has left her feeling well prepared for the next step of her journey, as an endpoint asset management analyst for Cigna’s Technology Early Career Development Program, and she even feels she has the foundation to reach for her ultimate goal: CIO.

“Everyone who graduates has big dreams, and I’m just going to keep at it and do my best, and hopefully, I will be granted the opportunity to take on leadership activities in the corporate world” she said. “This program has helped make me feel like that’s a feasible goal, preparing me in ways I didn’t even know were possible — and I’m just very grateful.” 

Read more about Murphy’s future plans here.

Writer: Elizabeth Hillaker Downs

Peter Hwang steps up and wins

Peter HwangIt came as a complete surprise to Peter Hwang to learn that he’d won the 2015 Student Leadership Award given by Fox School‘s Management Information Systems Department and Institute for Business and Information Technology.

But win he did, and he, along with several other honorees, received his award at the 15th annual Information Technology Awards event on April 14, 2015.

Hwang is a Junior, majoring in Management Information Systems. The award is given annually to a full time undergraduate, or part or full time graduate student, who’s made a significant contribution to the students and extended community of the MIS department.

It’s unusual for such a young student to get the award, but Hwang has been stepping up as a leader since his sophomore year when he first joined Temple AIS (the founding student chapter of the Association of Information Systems.)

The organization offers students a chance to hone a variety of skills directly and indirectly related to MIS, through workshops, resume critiques and forums with speakers.  It also gives students a chance to promote their current field of study, MIS.

“I tried to be active as possible. I would go to all the events and participate in their mentorship program.” Hwang says about his sophomore year with AIS.

“I applied to be the Director of IT my junior year. After the first semester, the VP of Operations stepped down. I was offered the position and gladly accepted.”  Hwang says he had a strong desire to help out. By taking on the dual role, Hwang was effectively doing twice the standard level of volunteer work, which was seen by fellow students as well as faculty as much more than “helping out.”

Plus, he did it with a positive attitude.

Since arriving at Temple, a choice he made because it was close to home and he was interested in business, Hwang says he’s transformed.  In high school, he was not as involved in academics. Now, he is “able to give back, to give workshops.”

One thing that hasn’t changed during his college career– his love of tennis.  Hwang was the captain of his tennis team at Marple Newtown High School, and continues to play club tennis.  It is, he says, for balance in his life. “It’s important to be physically active.”

Other people honored for making a significant contribution to the students and extended community of the MIS department include:

  • Faculty Leadership Award – James Moustafellos
  • Administrative Leadership Award – Debbie Riley
  • Administrative Achievement Award – Jillian Reilly
  • Faculty Teaching Award (full-time) – David Schuff
  • Faculty Teaching Award (part-time) – Amy Lavin
  • MIS Researcher of the Year – Paul Pavlou