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Embrace Managerial Bias Even if mid-level managers claim objectivity when evaluating ideas from across their organizations, a study indicates that most show clear bias for ideas that originate from their own units. The study was coauthored by Olav Sorenson, professor of management at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut, and Markus Reitzig, professor of strategic management at the University of Vienna in Austria. "Managers systematically undervalue ideas that are proposed by employees who work outside of their own units," says Sorenson. "This bias can lead to a failure to adopt promising new ideas, hurting company innovation and performance." The co-authors worked with a multinational con- Research Recognitions The European Investment Bank (EIB) Institute has awarded its inaugural EIB Prize to Klaus Zimmerman of the University of Bonn and Elias Papaioannou of London Business School for their studies on the prize's pre-determined topic of 50 September/October 2013 "Growth, employment and convergence, with applications to the European Union." Zimmerman received the EIB Institute's Outstanding Contribution Award for his work that focused on suitable policy prescriptions; Papaioannou received its Young EconBizEd sumer goods company that solicited ideas from its employees as part of a firmwide initiative to spur innovation. In response, employees submitted about 10,000 idea proposals for evaluation. The researchers analyzed those submissions, the evaluations, and the identities of the evaluators and the submitters. Sorenson and Reitzig found that managers accepted ideas from their own units at a rate that was nearly 16 percentage points higher than the baseline acceptance rate of 42 percent. Their bias was greatest when their own units were smaller or of lower status. Those from larger units exhibited less bias in favor of their own units. Similarly, ideas from higher-status units experienced less bias when evaluated by managers from elsewhere in the company. The researchers note that companies should be aware that managers often psychologically identify more strongly with their units than with their organizations as a whole. The researchers call this phenomenon "intra-organizational provincialism." Surprisingly, the researchers do not recommend that companies eliminate bias by assigning managers to evaluate only those ideas that originate outside their own units. Sorenson and Reitzig warn that with this approach, managers often would be evaluating ideas about which they have little relevant expertise, increasing the potential for bad judgment. Instead, the two recommend that companies do just the opposite—they should accept the bias wholeheartedly and assign evaluators to only those ideas submitted by employees from their own departments. This way, says Sorenson, "the process will be biased, but the bias will operate similarly across ideas." "Biases in the Selection Stage of Bottom-Up Strategy Formulation" appeared in the July 2013 issue of the Strategic Management Journal. omist Prize for his research on globalization's effect on business cycle synchronization and the impact of the euro and financial regulation on cross-border banking. The Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRCi) of New York City announced its 2013 prize recipients. The IRRCi gave its practitioner award to Edward J. Waitzer of the Schulich School of Business at Canada's York University, and Douglas Sarro, a student at York's Osgoode Hall Law School, for their paper, "The Public Fiduciary: Emerging Themes in Canadian Fiduciary Law for Pension Trustees." In their study, the authors argue that pension trustees must Jam i e G r i ll/G low I mag es research