Ned Smith is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Sociology, core faculty member of the Northwestern Institute for Complexity (NICO), and faculty associate at the Northwestern Institute for Policy Research. Prior to joining Northwestern, Ned was the NBD Bancorp Assistant Professor of Strategy at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2010 (specializing in sociology and economics) and BAs in Political Science and Chinese literature & language from Yale University in 2003.
Ned has three main areas of research. First, he studies the effects of social structure on the behavior and decision-making of individuals and organizations. His research in this area was awarded a Kauffman Foundation Fellowship in 2009. More recently, Ned's articles on investor decision-making in the hedge fund industry ("Identities as Lenses," Administrative Science Quarterly), and market responses to new executive appointments ("Better in the Shadows") were awarded the (2012) Best Published Paper Award by the Academy of Management and the (2016) Best Paper Award by the Academy of Management, respectively. Second, Ned works to connect research on cognitive processes and network theories of social capital to better understand how people utilize (and squander) the resources available to them in their social networks. This research analyzes how people mentally construct their social worlds, i.e., their social networks, according to various psychological and situational factors. Third, Ned researches colletive intelligence and the "wisdom of crowds." Using empirical data from financial markets and large-scale experiments, Ned and his collaborator, Joshua Becker, are seeking to understand the conditions--for instance, structure and decision-making rules--under which a crowd will outperform the individuals (even expert indivduals) comprising the crowd.
Ned has published his research in leading management and sociology journals including the American Journal of Sociology, the Annual Review of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Management Science, Organization Science, Social Networks, Strategic Management Journal, Social Science Research, Industrial and Corporate Change, and Research in Organizational Sciences. He is currently a senior editor at Organization Science and is a member of the editorial board at Administrative Science Quarterly.
Ned teaches MBA and executive-level courses on strategy and organizational design, social networks, strategic alliances, social media, and change management, as well as doctoral-level courses on quantitative research methods. While at Michigan Ned was the recipient of the Neary Award for Teaching Excellence (top professor as voted by students). Since coming to Northwestern Ned has been selected as a Searle Teaching Fellow (Searle Center for Advancing Learning & Teaching) and ASCEND Fellow for the 2018-19 academic year. For his doctoral-level teaching, Ned recieved the 2019 Kellogg Research Mentorship Award. His MBA and executive courses are consistently among the highest evaluated courses at Kellogg. In 2019 Ned launched an online executive-level course on leading change, "Strategic Change Management." To date, more than 500 managers and leaders from around the world have enrolled in this course.
