Stephen Downing

Stephen Downing

Assistant Professor of Management

Bio

I am an Assistant Professor of Management at Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business, University of Missouri. I received my Ph.D. from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, in the spring of 2020. During 2019, I was honored to be a visiting Ph.D. student at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, and at Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky.

Research

My research explores how organizations understand and engage with their competitive environment, focusing on the following areas:

  • Competitive dynamics - competitor identification, action repertoires, multimarket contact
  • Entrepreneurship - opportunity recognition, venture syndicate co-opetition
  • Networks - adversarial and cooperative interorganizational ties, cross-industry interdependence
  • Language – natural language processing, discourse networks and content analysis of organizational texts

Within the domains of management strategy and entrepreneurship, this work looks at influences of inter-organizational networks, technological change, and firm public language use in the interactions among rivals and nonmarket organizations.

In the past, I have also had the opportunity to work on projects in myriad areas of strategic management, including platform competition in business ecosystems and two-sided markets, empirical and game-theoretic analysis of corporate social responsibility, and patent citation network analysis for knowledge base comparison.

Awards

Many thanks to the organizers and sponsors of the 11th Annual Topco Scientific Co. Thesis Symposium in Taiwan. I was honored, along with my adviser, to receive the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award in 2018 for my submission and presentation entitled “How Far Is Far Enough To Be Aware? Competitive Embeddedness And Awareness Of Emerging Rivalry.”
This was based upon research done in collaboration with Associate Professor Jin-Su Kang (National Chiao Tung University) and Professor Gideon Markman (Colorado State University).

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Taiwanese Ministry of Science and Technology for their support: MOST-105-2420-H-009-012-DR and MOST-106-2922-I-009-127.