Daphne Teh Studies the Relationship Between Corporations and Their Communities
Daphne Teh points out of her office door. «There is a colleague down there who is researching corporate social responsibility. Another colleague, down the hallway, is studying corporate misbehavior. I have the feeling I am in the right place». A newly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Technology, Daphne Teh joined Bocconi in September 2018 after a PhD at INSEAD. She mainly researches the relationship between corporations and their communities. «Bocconi was a natural choice for me», she says.
Daphne Teh grew up in Singapore. She moved to the US on her own to attend college in Wisconsin. After one year, she transferred to NYU's Stern School of Business where she double majored in International Business and Marketing. «As an international student brought up in Singapore, where a lot of global companies are based, I was naturally curious about how business is done internationally. Also, my interest in innovation and how people could be influenced attracted me to Marketing».
While studying in New York, she worked for several companies including a marketing research company, a consulting firm, and a tech startup that matched service buyers to service providers. «It was a scrappy startup and a truly a fascinating experience», she recalls, smiling. «As an intern working in a small team, I was involved in strategy and planning. At the same time, I had a role in executing ideas. It was an interesting educational experience».
After graduating in 2010, Daphne Teh spent two and a half years at Accenture in Singapore where she was exposed to a variety of corporations and nonprofit organizations that would eventually become the focus of her research. When she embarked on consulting, she felt curious about an academic career, but she didn't think about it too seriously. Over time, she started missing the intellectual freedom of academia and eventually enrolled for a PhD program in Management at INSEAD. «While working on a project on the spread of bank runs, I became aware of how vulnerable are firms to the influence of their environment. It also made me conscious of how important communal trust is to their survival».
In a paper she is currently preparing, Daphne Teh examines how connections between Fortune 500 firms and nonprofit organizations influence firm practices. «We tend to assume that board interlocks have the same effect all the time. I found that firms are less likely to engage in deviant behavior when their connections with nonprofit organizations are held by audit committee-only directors. It is true that a director's connections with the broader community is a reflection of a desire to manage impressions. It is also true that his role within the board can affect his focus on monitoring».
In a theory paper published in 2018, Daphne Teh and her co-author Henrich Greve proposed the integration of the institutional theory and the behavioral theory of the firm in order to develop a theory on organizational responses to external goals. She is currently studying the relationship between hashtag movements and corporate activism in social media.
«There a lot of new and interesting things happening in this Department. Because of that, I imagine that my agenda will evolve over time», Daphne Teh says. She came to Milan for the first time over five years ago as a tourist. «I like it a lot better now», she says. «I find the contradiction between history and modernity exciting. Coming from Asia, Milan looks very exotic and offers a very different way of life».
Find out more
Henrich Greve, Daphne Teh, The Consequences of Organizational Misconduct: Too Much and Too Little Punishment, in K. Smith-Crowe, R. Greenwood & D. Palmer (Eds.), Organizational Wrongdoing: Key Perspectives and New Directions, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Henrich Greve, Daphne Teh, Goal Selection Internally and Externally: A Behavioral Theory of Institutionalization, in International Journal of Management Reviews, vol. 20, 2018.