Five graduate students in the Electronic Business Technology program (EBT) presented their research projects in the 2018 uOttawa Engineering and Computer Science Graduate Poster Competition. The competition was held on March 27th at the Faculty of Engineering.

Mohammad, Wael, and Ahmad were among the winners of the competition. Mohammad and Wael are both PhD students supervised by Telfer School Professor Bijan Raahemi in the EBT program, a joint Telfer-Engineering and Computer Science graduate program. Ahmad is co-supervised by Telfer School Professors Craig Kuziemski and Pavel Andreev.

Congratulations to all Telfer School participants! Here are the summaries of the winning research posters:

Mohammad Hossein Tekieh: “A Methodology for Reliable Data Mining on Population-Based Health Administrative Data"

Mohammad proposes the use of data mining to analyze population-based health administrative data. Health administrative data contain valuable information such as demographics, environmental factors, and diagnosis codes. By using this methodology, health care professionals could identify valid findings and important patterns in the data that other analytical tools in the system may not allow them to find. As a case study, Mohammad looks at the possibility of implementing a predictive model in pediatric units in which patients suffer from immune-mediated diseases, such as asthma.

Wael Obidallah: "A Multilayer Hybrid Data Mining Architecture for Web Services Discovery"

Companies are constantly improving and adapting to develop web services that match web users’ needs more effectively. Every day users search for the right web services in a wide range of applications in their computers, smart devices, and websites. However, finding the right web service can be a challenge depending on what internet users want and need. Using a data mining technique, Wael proposes a solution that could help enterprises more effectively match the right service to their diverse clients’ needs.

Ahmad Teymouri: "E-Commerce Parcel Volume Challenge for Postal Services - Application of Revenue Management in Capacity Planning"

The current shift towards e-commerce business has increased the number of parcel moving through postal delivery networks. Although online sopping has major advantages for online retailers and their clients, this new trend has however created serious challenges for postal organizations. Ahmad proposes a model that could help postal services in many ways. For example, it could improve the allocation of existing processing capacity while maximizing their expected revenue.

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Almost every person knows of someone who has experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. It is not uncommon for the victims of sexual harassment to feel ashamed and afraid of social retaliation if they speak out. As a result, many people keep their experiences as a secret locked in a box.

But this is slowly changing. Following the recent wake of allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace, an increasing number of women from all over the world has found the courage to unlock these burdensome boxes.

As prominent Hollywood actors, golden-medal winning athletes, and female members of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have come forward to share their stories, we finally began to grasp the extent of the problem.

What seems to be different this time is that these women are finding the safe space to be heard.

“I believe the #metoomovement and the fact that more people are supporting and listening to the victims have really encouraged a lot of women to siege this opportunity to voice their own experiences of sexual harassment in their everyday lives, including at work,” explains Telfer School of Management Professor Jane O’Reilly. Professor O’Reilly is doing research on interpersonal mistreatment in organizations, including sexual harassment.

Who are the primary victims of workplace sexual harassment?

It’s hard to ignore that “sexual harassment happens primarily to women,” explains Professor O’Reilly. According to a 2017 public consultation prepared by Employment and Social Development Canada, women are more likely to have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace than their male colleagues.

A 2017 survey suggests that 53% of Canadian women have experienced some form of workplace sexual harassment at some point in their careers, but the numbers might be higher. As Professor O'Reilly explains, "sexual harassment at work is widely under reported in organizations."

You don’t belong in this organization

Professor O’Reilly explains that women become target of sexual harassment at work for many reasons, but in a male-dominated working environments, “sexual harassment is often used as an insidious tool to push women away; to send the signal that they don’t belong in the organization,” she explains.

Unfortunately, the instigators often succeed in predominantly male working environments: “in many cases, the victims either completely leave the field or move their careers into directions within the organization that are more supportive of women,” Professor O’Reilly notes.

“What’s the big deal?”

Many forms of sexual harassment in the workplace are subtle and, as a result, very difficult to notice. Sexual harassment can be conveyed in nonverbal communication, through subtle but unwanted touches, and under the guise of harmless romantic overtures.  As a bystander, one may not suspect anything harmful when a colleague makes repeated flirtatious compliments towards another colleague.

However, when employees and their managers turn a blind eye on more subtle forms of sexual harassment, they are sending the wrong message: “This attitude can open the door to more severe forms of sexual harassment to happen,” warns Professor O’Reilly.

Bystanders’ reactions matter a lot

In her research, Professor O’Reilly specifically looks at the role a bystander plays after witnessing a colleague’s experience of mistreatment, such as sexual harassment.

A bystander has a lot of power in supporting a colleague who has been sexually harassed at work. For example, one may decide to report on the instigator or simply help the victim navigate administrative grievance procedures. However, a bystander can also make the situation worse by choosing to blame the victim or ignore the seriousness of the instigator’s behavior.

With more explicit forms of sexual harassment, coworkers are more likely to be supportive towards a victim of sexual harassment, but “it is when sexual harassment is more subtle or perceived as ‘not as bad’ that bystanders might react in ways that are less than helpful for a target,” explains Professor O’Reilly.

How organizations can manage workplace sexual harassment

The first step is to have clear policies in place so all employees know who they can talk to if they experience sexual harassment at work, how the situation will be handled, and what is likely to happen after the organizations starts an investigation.

Unclear sexual harassment policies can become one of the many obstacles preventing women from filing formal complains. Therefore, “at the very least, all of these policies need to be clearly communicated and understood,” advises Professor O’Reilly.

Training programs help inform employees about what types of behaviors are not accepted, but they are not enough. To effectively handle workplace sexual harassment before an incident even happens, organizations should go beyond what is required from them in federal and provincial legislations.

For example, organizations can encourage their leaders to take all forms of sexual harassment seriously. Professor O’Reilly believes that “by supporting and respecting those who have been mistreated in the workplace, exemplary leaders become role models and help set those norms into place.”

Hiring the right person responsible for handling sexual harassment complaints is equally important. Professor O’Reilly advises organizations to look for an individual who “is empathic, caring, and who has zero tolerance to any type of harassment.”

By involving role models in the management and prevention of workplace sexual harassment, organizations are likely to reduce the chances that an employee becomes a target of sexual harassment. But more importantly, such actions will help organizations foster healthier employee interpersonal relationships in general.

Insider trading, the use of material non-public information about a company’s performance to buy and sell shares in the stock market, is an illegal practice. Usually exchanged during private interactions between external investors and corporate executives, such information allows meeting participants to better anticipate changes of the value of company shares.

Even though investors are not allowed to obtain specific details about the company when privately meeting with corporate executives, such meetings are still quite popular. According to a Wall Street Journal article, investors spend a staggering $1.4 billion a year only in the United States to buy face time with corporate executives.

Without violating the law, investors can learn a lot by observing corporate executives’ body language and listening to tone of their voice and then use these bits and pieces of information to get ahead of the curve of other investors who didn’t attend these private meetings.

It turns out that investors are not the only ones using private meetings for their own benefit.  A new study published in the prestigious Review of Accounting Studies by Telfer School of Management Professor Shantanu Dutta and his co-authors suggests that corporate executives are actually manipulating what’s exchanged in these meetings to have an advantage when trading their company shares.

Opening the black box of private meetings

“Everyone talks about all the benefits that investors can get from gaining material information about a company in private in-house meetings, but we often forget that corporate ‘insiders’—top executives, board members and their family—can also use these events to manipulate information and benefit from these interactions” explains Professor Dutta.

Proving that these “insiders” were involved in such questionable practices has always been challenging. However, Professor Dutta and his co-authors, University of San Diego Professors R. Bowen and P. Zhu, and East China University of Science and Technology Professor S. Tang were able to connect corporate executives’ trading activities with the meeting dates and content.

To do so, the researchers analyzed a unique hand-collected dataset of approximately 17,000 private meeting reports of Shenzhen Stock Exchange firms from 2012 to 2014. Only Shenzhen Stock Exchange requires listed firms to disclose private meeting details, including meeting dates, the names of external and corporate participants, and a summary of questions and answers exchanged during these interactions.

Impactful research findings

The results were telling: trading within the window of 20 days before and after private meeting dates, corporate insiders cashed $ 8.7 billion, just over 50% of the value of their company stock sales. Corporate insiders’ abnormal returns around meeting dates point to two questionable practices.

First, they may be controlling what is shared during private meetings to influence investors’ trading behavior. Second, corporate executives may be also timing their own trades according to the content of the meetings.

For example, during a meeting, a company CEO may intentionally bring up an indicator that investors may interpret as good news during the meeting. If the CEO decides to hold off trading company shares until the news affects the market, he or she is likely to benefit from such a decision.

“If this is happening in Shenzhen – the world’s 7th largest stock exchange – we can just imagine how corporate executives use those private interactions to benefit when trading at other major stock exchanges” explains Professor Dutta.

Who loses?

What happens in private meetings between investors and corporate executives stays private. Government agencies can only link unusual trading patterns to the content of these meetings after very long and costly investigations.

Clearly, investors are likely lose if corporate executives are controlling what and how much they want to share in their meetings. However, “the biggest danger is that corporate executives’ manipulation of meeting information and profiting stock trades can cause loss in confidence in the market in the long term,” adds Professor Shantanu.

How policymakers can discourage these questionable trades

If government agencies and policymakers decide in the future to ask companies to disclose what executives and investors share in private meetings with investors, they will better understand and monitor how insider trading happens. However, Professor Dutta and his colleagues are aware that companies already struggle with many regulations.

“We not advocating for tougher rules that can discourage corporate executives from privately meeting with investors. When done in good faith,” he adds, “these meetings make sure all relevant parties have access to non-material information.”

Professor Dutta believes that “a good solution could be to ask companies to simply disclose the dates of private meetings.” Knowing when investors and company executive meet can help government agencies more effectively spot insider trading before it leads to a serious financial crisis.

International acclaim

The result of an international research project funded by China’s National Science Foundation, Professor Dutta’s collaborative study has received several best paper awards, including the “Emerald Best Paper Award” from the China Finance Review International Conference. His research team is currently working on two follow-up studies on private meetings between investors and corporate executives.

Bowen, R. M., Dutta, S., Tang, S., & Zhu, P. (2018). Inside the “black box” of private in-house meetings. Review of Accounting Studies. doi:10.1007/s11142-017-9433-z

Telfer School of Management Professors Barbara Orser and Allan Riding have just been awarded a Social Science Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Engage Grant. Their research team will examine strategies to improve gender equality in how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) obtain contracts with the federal government.

“Our research shows that creating inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems contributes to women’s entrepreneurial success,” explains Professor Orser. “We have also learned that one way of transforming research into practice is by engaging with the public sector,” she adds.

This is why their team has collaborated with Public Services and Procurement Canada to start new research on federal SME contracting. These are important areas of economic activity. The government is the single largest purchaser of goods and services, representing, across all levels of government, 13.3 % of Canada’s GDP.

The preliminary phase of their research helped to inform the 2018 federal budget, by establishing benchmarks with respect to the engagement of women-owned firms in federal contracting. The 2018 budget has committed to increasing the proportion of women-owned SMEs from 10% to 15% in the federal procurement supply chain.

In the next stages of the project, Professors Orser and Riding will look at how federal procurement policies can effectively involve a more diverse group of SME contractors, ultimately driving innovation and stimulating growth.

While the 2018 federal budget recognizes the importance of women’s enterprise, Professors Orser and Riding understand that more needs to be done. They are committed to creating impactful knowledge that can support women entrepreneurs and their contributions to the Canadian economy.