John Busenbark
Biography
John Busenbark is a highly awarded corporate governance expert who offers both cutting-edge research and years of experience to students in the Mendoza College of Business, where he is the Mary Jo & Richard M. Kovacevich Associate Professor of Management & Organization. John is particularly recognized for his insights on how social and political factors influence executive and shareholder behavior, often necessitating unique approaches to corporate governance that shatter the one-size-fits-all mold of most regulatory strictures. Prior to becoming an academic, John worked as an executive at a nonprofit focused on improving medical conditions in underdeveloped nations, as well as for (what was at the time) the largest independent record label in the world. In addition to his focus on corporate governance, John is also internationally renowned for his work in quantitative modeling and econometrics, the backbones of predicting what might happen next in increasingly dynamic international markets.
COURSES:
Corporate Governance (MBAE 70476)
International Capstone (MBAE 74480)
Publications, Commentaries & Research
John Busenbark and his research partners introduce the concept of organization-investor (O-I) fit, which reflects the compatibility between an organization and its investors, particularly in their temporal preferences.
Professor John Busenbark explores why some conservative CEOs take liberal stances, focusing on how their personal ideologies interact with the ideological leanings of their organizations using the example of CEO opposition to North Carolina’s 2016 “bathroom bill.”
John Busenbark works with his fellow researchers to examine the challenges of nonnormal dependent variable distributions in organizational studies, particularly when variables include negative values, such as firm performance measures.
John Busenbark and his team use an example of CEO compensation to provide an intuitive overview of Bayesian methods for analyzing nested data, demonstrating how these techniques can yield interpretations that differ meaningfully from traditional frequentist approaches.
In the News
John Busenbark shares research highlighting the shifting landscape of CEO activism, noting that many executives once felt compelled to adopt sociopolitical stances to align with stakeholder expectations.
John Busenbark talks to Fortune about how backlash against political stances has shifted CEOs like Bob Jordan toward minimizing sociopolitical involvement.
