Best Management Paper

By Brandon Wallace '17

Bradley faculty Dr. Aaron Buchko and Dr. Kathleen Buchko and MBA graduate student Emylee Anderson collaborated on a research paper that was recently awarded “Best Management Paper” by the North American Management Society.

The paper offered managers advice on how to provide constructive criticism to Millennials.

“The Millennials are different from prior generations in many ways, and one of those is how they react to negative information,” said Aaron Buchko, a Business Management Professor. “Yet in organizations, managers frequently need to provide negative feedback to people.  Our paper developed some techniques for providing negative feedback, based on theories from social psychology, counseling, and management, integrating these perspectives to give managers some suggestions for delivering negative feedback effectively.”

The paper discussed the main differences between the different generations of workforce in terms of professional stereotypes, workplace needs, and workplace values. It also covered the different types of feedback systems, and how these apply to dealing with the Millennials.

The original idea came from Anderson. She wrote the foundation of the paper for Aaron Buchko’s Management Theory class. That paper sparked the broader research project with the Buchkos.

“I never thought that an event like this was even available for students,” Anderson said. “Having the opportunity to collaborate with my co-authors and being accepted into the NAMS conference is an honor that I did not expect to receive when submitting my research paper to my graduate level class. I am truly appreciative of this recognition and am grateful that Dr. Buchko found potential in my topic.”