Four doctoral students in the Department of Management and International Business in the College of Business Administration—Armando Borda, Sokol Celo, Abrahim Soleimani and David Wernick—have been honored in highly selective competitions for dissertation proposals.

“Emerging Multinationals and the Interaction between Learning Capabilities and Host Country Factors: The Impact on the Number, Location and Survival of Subsidiaries,” Borda’s dissertation proposal title, was a finalist for the Academy of International Business (AIB)/Sheth Award for Best Doctoral Dissertation Proposal. He received the award at AIB’s annual conference, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2010.

Celo and Soleimani were two of only six winners of the International Management Division’s (IMD) Most Promising Dissertation Proposal Award at the Academy of Management (AOM) annual meeting in Montreal in August 2010. AOM is the premier management society; its meeting was attended by 10,000.

Celo’s dissertation is titled “Bounded Rationality and Its Effects on International Managerial Decision Making and MNE Performance.” Parts of the proposal have been extended to papers that have been accepted in academic conferences, including AIB and the Strategic Management Society Annual Meeting, in Rome in September 2010.

Soleimani’s dissertation is titled “Essays on Corporate Reputation: Antecedents and Consequences.” The first essay received the Second Best Paper Award at the Reputation Institute Annual Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2010.

“Secondary Stakeholders as Agents of Influence: Three Essays on Political Risk, Reputation and Multinational Performance,” Wernick’s dissertation proposal, is one of five finalists in the 2010-2011 Dissertation Proposal Award Competition sponsored by the Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education. The competition aims “to identify innovative research in core business disciplines that considers the interdependence between business decision making and a wider societal or environmental context.” A panel of academic judges will select two applicants as the winners; all the finalists will be recognized on the Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education website.

“The success of these students is testimony to the excellence of the faculty who are teaching them in their courses and providing guidance on their research projects,” said K. Galen Kroeck, department chair. “Faculty members Aya Chacar, Sumit Kundu, William Newburry and William Schneper spend many hours far into the night and on weekends working with these students. The culmination of their valiant dedication to teaching as well as the committed energy of the students is readily seen through the recognition bestowed on them by the academies of our field.”