Professor of Management Melissa Carsten recently traveled to the Copenhagen Business
School (CBS) in Denmark to work with professors there on a joint study. She and Winthrop College of Business Administration faculty received a grant from
Denmark's State Health Department to conduct the study. While in Copenhagen she met four Winthrop College of Business Administration alumni.
ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA When Winthrop University faculty members say they maintain
networking relationships with former students, they're not joking.
And if they can combine it with research? Even better!
Professor of Management Melissa Carsten recently traveled to the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark to work with
professors there on a joint study. She and Winthrop College of Business Administration faculty received a grant from Denmark's State Health Department to conduct an evaluation study of middle managers who had participated in a six-month leadership
development program. They surveyed managers, who were employed by a large regional hospital system in
Denmark, and their subordinates before and after the leadership program to measure
its effects on work attitude and commitment.
"Our results actually showed an effect counter to what the organization wanted," Carsten
explained. "We found that the managers' commitment to the work unit went down, and
subordinates' commitment to the manager went down from Time 1 to Time 2. We're explaining
this as an outcome of the training that aligned managers away from their work unit
and more toward the strategy of the organization.
"In essence, subordinates felt like their leader abandoned them and the wellbeing
of the work unit and instead began focusing more on organization level strategic objectives."
She and her CBS colleagues are working on showcasing their results and hope to submit
the paper to the Academy of Management Learning & Education. The idea came about two
years ago when they met at a National Academy of Management Conference.
While in Denmark, she met with four College of Business Administration alumni: Marco Gatzke '17; Louise Jeppesen '18; Magnus Thorsson '15; and Andrea Vestmann
'16.They all work in Denmark, Sweden and Germany, respectively.
"Copenhagen is an amazing harbor city with great food and shopping," Carsten said.
"We visited the palace of the queen, historic churches and old artillery/army bunkers
from World War II."
For more information on this research, contact Melissa Carsten at 803/323-4817 or
carstenm@winthrop.edu.
For more information on the College of Business Administration, visit the website or call 803/323-2186.
