Ph.D. alumnus emphasizes faculty need to be accessible for students

Recent Ph.D. graduate Andre Havrylyshyn hopes to carry on the lessons and camaraderie he experienced at the Moore School in his new assistant professor role this fall.

Havrylyshyn says the Moore School Ph.D. program is an excellent place for hopeful management scholars to hone their skills.

“You learn how to conduct the research process strictly, always while ensuring you are asking important questions, and ultimately producing high-quality journal submissions that can meaningfully further the broader academic conversations in the social sciences,” he said.

The Moore School appealed to Havrylyshyn because of the scholars that work with the school and their desire to work together.

“The Moore School is a unique place where first-rate scholars are working here who have expertise in a variety of sub-disciplines within the field,” he said. “They are all willing to work with you and with each other, too, and that reality is what appealed to me.”

Before starting the Ph.D. program, Havrylyshyn worked for a start-up company, where he says he became interested in focusing his Ph.D. on management. While working for this company, Havrylyshyn says he discovered an energy and dynamism within private-sector institutions that were struggling to grow or break even to survive.

“I was interested in issues of how and why some managers are better than others at ensuring their organization can meet its goals in a dynamic marketplace,” he said.

This research, Havrylyshyn says, specifically means that he is a strategy scholar within the management field.

“My work tends to ultimately focus on what predicts firm-level actions, whether that means the profit of the company or just strategic decisions like mergers or choices of who gets hired for a high-level position,” Havrylyshyn said. “That said, I think sometimes strategy scholars, who mostly look at the important issues of environmental and institutional influences, overlook the importance of the people who make up the firm.”

Through his research, Havrylyshyn looks at how the characteristics of the board’s directors predict the gender diversity of the CEO successor candidate pool.

“Thanks to the [Moore School’s] Center for Executive Succession, I was able to leverage uniquely valuable data on the degree different companies do or do not have women executives within their internal pool of CEO successor candidates,” he said. “I had worked on gender diversity in the upper echelons and CEO succession on two other projects prior. I noticed there was very little research to date on how diversity issues are considered within the context of CEO succession.”

Also related to his research, Havrylyshyn and fellow Moore School Ph.D. candidate Melanie Ward, ’23 expected graduation, presented “Where Have You Been? Realizing Absorptive Capacity to Leverage Director International Experience,” at the Academy of Management Conference in July 2021. Their paper was a finalist for the “Best Paper in International Corporate Governance” and “Douglas Nigh” awards.

Between Havrylyshyn’s research and teaching load in more than three years with the Moore School, he said he has improved his time management and concision skills. He says both attributes have also helped make him a better teacher.

“Coming to class prepared is essential for teaching, and time management is critical to making that happen,” Havrylyshyn said. “Concision helps ensure you can answer students’ questions in a meaningful way but also create maximum time to explore the plethora of important topics relevant to any given course.”

Overall, Havrylyshyn says he is grateful for the accessibility and responsiveness of the faculty at the Moore School.

“I know people in other programs who say some professors, while being brilliant scholars, are not as accessible to the Ph.D. candidates as they arguably should be,” he said. At the Moore School, faculty members, no matter how prestigious they are, have been immediately responsive and willing to help me grow in my work.”

Havrylyshyn finished his dissertation during the spring 2022 semester and officially graduated in May 2022. He will be joining the faculty at Binghamton University’s School of Management as an assistant professor of strategic management in the fall 2022 term.

“The group of scholars at Binghamton work on a lot of the same kinds of multi-level issues that are a particular strength of the faculty here at the Moore School, so I think it will be a great fit given my training,” Havrylyshyn said. “I have no doubt that the superb training I got here at the Moore School, as well as the individual efforts of so many faculty here to help me prepare for my job interview itself, helped me immensely in securing what is the ideal job for me personally, so I am tremendously grateful.”

-James Culbertson