Intrigued by the high quality of research as well as the multidisciplinarity at FEB, Jana Oehmichen decided to move from Germany to Groningen. She is appointed as a Professor of Organisation and Management Studies.

Q. How did you end up in Groningen?

A. During a conference in 2011 I heard of the University of Groningen for the first time. A Groningen research master student presented her first paper there and I was seriously impressed seeing such high-quality research output from a master student. Since then, I met many further researchers from RUG who not only convinced me of the high quality of the research conducted in Groningen but also clearly demonstrated the multidisciplinarity in research from Groningen. Getting the chance to collaborate with colleagues from accounting, finance, international management, organizational behavior, and strategy all interested in a common topic such as corporate governance convinced me to come to Groningen.

Q. Could you tell us more about your career so far?

A. I started my academic career with a master degree in industrial engineering and management and a PhD in management from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany. During these studies, I lived, studied, and worked for several months in the U.S. and in Malaysia. Until then, I primarily focused my research on particularities of the German corporate governance system such as the two-tier board system. After my PhD, I joined the Center for Corporate Governance at the Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) as postdoctoral researcher. There, I had the chance to broaden the scope of my research, and I laid the foundation of my interest in international corporate governance. The last years, I spent as Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Göttingen in Germany.”

Q. Your chair is in Organisation and Management Studies. What issues are dealt with in your research?

A. My research covers three main areas: First, I am interested in the question how an effective firm-level corporate governance should look like. I am studying effects of specific ownership and board structures, incentive systems, as well as antecedence and consequences of employee stock ownership programs.

Second, I am interested in the quality of firm-level strategic decision making. My research identifies for instance antecedents of strategic change and successful M&A decisions, but also evaluates the uniqueness of strategies.

Third, in many of my studies I challenge, whether the institution context shapes the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and strategic outcomes. I am studying effects of the formal institutional context such as the regulatory quality but also rather informal aspects such as the structure of country-level elites.” 

Q. And how about societal relevance?

A. From my point of view, the effectiveness of corporate governance has a significant societal relevance as it matters for several firm stakeholders. Let me give you an example. Having a look at the German car industry, we still see many executive compensation arrangements that are primarily based on short-term sales targets. Compensation focused on sales measures might cause a certain single-mindedness in strategic objectives such as prioritising the number of cars sold over all other important strategic dimensions. One could even say that this focus on sales targets caused a certain blindness when it comes to emission software (a large scandal that just recently struck the entire German car industry). Furthermore, the focus on short-term compensation arrangements is making its contribution to the fact that no car company is willing to seriously invest in battery development and production. In this disruptively changing industry, such strategic decision might create new strong dependencies, significantly reduce the competitive advantage of German car companies, and thereby compromise one of the major German industries (including the future of its employees).

Q. What can we expect of you in the future?

A. In the coming decades, the relationship between managers’ behavior (including the question of how we control and incentivise them) and corporate strategic decisions will become increasingly important. I am curious to examine, how a firm’s corporate governance should optimally look like to enable the firm to cope with the disruption that the new digital world brings. To answer such research questions I am also looking forward to working with my innovation colleagues at my department. In a first study, we might focus on the question of how compensation arrangements should look like to stimulate the willingness to engage in disruptive innovation.

Furthermore, I would like to connect my research further to the national and regional context of Groningen. I am looking forward to contribute my expertise to new projects with Dutch RUG colleagues and thereby learn more about the context and build a network in the region.

Selected Publications:

• Oehmichen, J., Schrapp, S., & Wolff, M. (2017). Who needs experts most? Board industry expertise and strategic change—a contingency perspective. Strategic Management Journal, 38(3), 645–656. http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2513
• Oehmichen, J., Braun, D., Wolff, M., & Yoshikawa, T. (2017). When elites forget their duties: The double-edged sword of prestigious directors on boards. Journal of Management Studies, 54(7), 1050–1078. http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12275
• McGuire, J., Oehmichen, J., Wolff, M., & Hilgers, R. (2017). Do contracts make them care? The impact of CEO compensation design on corporate social performance. Journal of Business Ethics, in press. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3601