INTRODUCTION & BIOGRAPHY

Thank you (or the search engine you employed) for visiting this website.  To the point, you will find information here on my research, teaching and corporate work.  The site is however more than the accounting of articles and courses typically found.  My goal is to provide greater insight into the goals and motivation for pursuing particular research, both in the questions I try to address and the business contexts in which I test them.  I also describe my approach to business education and how to become a more successful manager, executive or entrepreneur.

As the site indicates, I am currently an Assistant Professor of Organization and Strategy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine.  I am also a faculty member associated with the Center for Health Care Management and Policy at the Merage School.  My path to this career is less linear than those of many business school faculty members.  After completing my undergraduate degree in economics (Queen's University, Kingston, Canada) and masters degrees in political economy (Commonwealth Scholar at The London School of Economics) and public and international affairs (Princeton University), I migrated to a career in corporate banking (Royal Bank of Canada).  My responsibilities included corporate account and risk management for large national and multinational clients.  Later I joined a small team responsible for the analysis and development of a strategy for the global corporate banking business.  It was this experience that lead me to obtain a Ph.D. at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.  While my applied field of study was Corporate Strategy and International Business, my disciplinary training was in economic sociology with an emphasis in, and affinity for research design and methodology.  Following my Ph.D. I joined the faculty here at the Merage School.

Like most business school scholars my time is distributed between research and teaching.  My research falls within the fields of strategy (competitive dynamics of market position and entry), organization theory (organization learning, intra-firm knowledge transfer and labor turnover) and health care organizations (quality, access and growth of palliative care in the United States).  Recently most of my energy has been devoted to health care research, in particular how hospice providers respond to competition and government reimbursement policies, and how these responses could adversely affect access and quality of end-of-life care in the United States.  My teaching is designed to develop the strategic thinking and design skills of executives and managers in general business and in health care management.  I do this in the Merage School's MBA programs (full-time, part-time, Executive and Healthcare Executive MBA) as well as in customized executive and corporate education and training when time permits.  Should you wish a complete long form (academic) CV, a short-form CV or a one page bio-sketch please feel free to contact me.  You may also contact me for copies of papers or further information about my courses, seminars and other endeavours.

EXPERTISE IN POLICY & RESEARCH

Health Care Policy and Organization Research

End-of-life care in the United States has grown at a rapid pace over the last couple of decades.  Recent surveys suggest that the total number of adult hospice patients nearly trebled between 1991 and 2000.  With the growing acceptance and value of palliative care, and the aging of baby-boomers, the challenges to providing accessible and quality end-of-life care are immense ($5.9 billion in Medicare spending in 2003).  Research to date has focused on how general demographic, geographic, and patient disease characteristics affect access, cost and quality of care.  A gap exists in this research in that the hospice organization has not been studied in depth.  My research focuses on understanding how a hospice provider's structure and behavior affects access and quality of care.  In doing so my goal is to inform both policy makers (CMS, GAO, MedPAC) on how hospice providers respond to reimbursement structures, and thus how their response affects access and quality of care.  I also hope to inform the managers of hospice providers by examining how skills and knowledge within the organization can be transferred across employees to improve performance.  Some of the papers I am currently working on are:

"Gains from Chains:  Learning and knowledge transfer effects in U.S. Hospice Care"  2006.  Submitted to Health Services Research.
In this study I model organization learning within a large chain hospice provider.  I find that each chain's unit costs decrease with their own experience as well as the experience of other chains in caring for patients.  This is valuable to managers as they can tailor organization structures and communication channels to improve sharing of experience across chains.  It is particularly valuable for policy makers at the Federal and State levels as it demonstrates that their may be cost and potential efficiency benefits to larger chain based hospice organizations in the providing the Medicare hospice benefit.  These benefits must of course be contrasted with possible adverse effects on local market competition.

"The Cost of Hospice Care:  The Policy Challenges of Differing Costs of Care Between Cancer and Non-Cancer Palliative Patients"  Working Paper 2007.  (with Paul Feldstein and Dana Mukamel)
The Medicare hospice benefit has been in place since 1983.  A hallmark of this benefit is that hospice providers are reimbursed based on the number of patient-days of care provided.  This amount, which varies by geography, does not vary according the patient's terminal illness. Very recently there has been anecdotal and case evidence suggesting that providers may shun or redirect more expensive patients.  They may also attempt to economize on the services provided to expensive patients. These consequences raise important questions for Medicare policy if there are ex ante identifiable differences in costs based on disease. This research is the first that systematical models and tests whether patients differ in the cost of care, in particular are cancer patients more costly than non-cancer patients?  We use highly detailed and valuable data on costs of care from one large hospice provider to model a cost function.  We find that cancer patient care is more expensive, in some cases as much as $20/day more expensive than non-cancer patients.  This has enormous consequences on Medicare policy, as it suggests that disease invariant reimbursement rates may lead to relatively more difficult access and reduced quality of care for cancer patients across the country.

"The impact of labor turnover on the quality and cost of palliative care."  Working Paper 2006.
In this research I find that labor turnover, that is departure of existing and arrival of new employees, adversely affects the cost of hospice care.  The adverse effects are however short-lived and generally depreciate within three months.  Preliminary evidence suggests that turnover does have a negative effect on quality of care, but that it too decays quickly.

Useful Information and Research Links
            • United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
            • Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC) (research support for using U.S. Medicare and Medicaid data)
            • OSHPD (Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development - State of California)
            • The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
            • Center for Health Care Management & Policy, Merage School, UCI

Strategy and Competitive Dynamics Research

The methodological and theoretical foundations of my strategy research is organization ecology and structural inertial theory.  I am interested in understanding how experience, in market entry, acquisitions or in contact with competitors, affects strategic decisions and performance.  The contexts in which I study these questions are the international telecommunications service industry, the U.S. hospice industry, and the U.S. beer brewing industry.  In all of my research I employ panel data regression methods or event history analysis.  Some of the papers I am currently working on are:

"Familiarity breeds comprehension:  The effect of experience and resource variation on market entry decisions."  2007 (with Glen Dowell) Accepted for publication, Organization Science.
In this paper we find that local market resource variation (amplitude, frequency and uncertainty of resource variation) negatively affects the likelihood of firm market entry.  We find that as firms gain experience in market entries that they learn how to detect and avoid resource variation in markets, however this experience is supplanted by direct experience if the firm has some prior direct experience with the market.  The context for this study is the international expansion decisions of all firms providing international telecommunication services between the United States and all other countries between 1985 and 2000.

"Learning how to acquire:  Does initial unit cost improve through successive acquisitions."  Working Paper 2006.
Most research into learning effects in business acquisitions examine acquisitions from either across industries and/or with aggregated financial data.  In this research I narrow the context and acquisition in order to model learning more explicitly.  I look at the geographic market expansion strategy of a large single industry chain based company.  I use detailed and confidential costs and volume data to measure acquisition learning by the decrease in the unit cost of production for an acquired operation.  I test whether the company's prior acquisition experience leads to reductions in the acquired businesses'  unit costs immediately following and onwards after acquisition.  I find this effect, and while I cannot determine whether the acquired unit will be financial successful, I can conclude that companies do develop valuable acquisition routines with increasing experience.

"The competitive dynamics of foreign market entry."  Working Paper, 2006
This research focuses on a firm's decision to enter a geographic market.  Research to date has found that firms attend to the market positions of their competitors when deciding entry.  Competitor market density provides information about both the attractiveness and competitiveness of the market, thus leading to the well documented "inverted U" effect between rising density and likelihood of entry.  In this paper I revisit this effect by evaluating the entry decision with the theoretical approach of information economics. I argue, and find, that firms' entry decisions depend on the density (i.e. stock) of competitors in the market, but that the number of recent competitor entries (i.e. flow) significantly moderates the effect of density.  In particular, the likelihood of market entry is significantly increased at low and high levels of density the greater the recent entries into the market.  This finding is consistent research into managerial bandwagons, and suggests that firms are susceptible to trends to the extent that they affect their knowledge about current market conditions.  The context for this study is the international expansion decisions of all firms providing international telecommunication services between the United States and all other countries between 1985 and 2000.

"Forebearance through entry mode choice in multi-market competition."  Working Paper, 2006
In this research I look at the mode of market entry to determine whether firms forebear from competition not through their entry decision (yes/no), but whether they select entry modes that are less threatening and involve limited resources at entry.  By looking at the choice (probit) of entry modes across all US international telecommunications service providers I find that firms are more likely to choose less threatening, lower resource modes at entry the greater the multimarket contact with firms that have a superordinate (i.e. competitive advantage) position in other markets.  The reverse is also true; firms are significantly more likely to invest considerable resources at entry in those markets where the multimarket contact is with firms that have subordinate (i.e. competitive disadvantage) positions in other markets.  

"Gains from change:  The impact of market and mode of service changes on performance in the U.S. international telecommunication services industry."  Industrial and Corporate Change, 7:  pp. 759-767, 1998.

"Introduction:  Special issue on investment in the telecommunications industry infrastructure" Industrial and Corporate Change, 7:  pp. 581-584, 1998, with Will Mitchell.

EDUCATION LEADERSHIP & TEACHING

The primary focus of my teaching is to help improve your ability to make sound business decisions and develop creative and logical solutions to complex business challenges.  I narrow this focus to the extent that I teach business and corporate strategy, however I believe the subject matter is a sub-set of the broader goal of helping people make smarter decisions.  Becoming a smarter manager/executive/entrepreneur occurs through active learning.  Active learning takes place through the understanding and application of a small but powerful set of intellectual tools that allow you to understand and frame the strategic problem accurately, assess the competitive environment systematically, rigorously evaluate options and formulate a successful response.  By successful response I do not mean a strategy that is guaranteed to win, but one that has the greatest chance of success.  This distinction is important.  Common sense tells us that we cannot predict nor control what competition, regulators, shareholder will do, so how can we conclude that any particular strategy is sure fire winner?  My goal is to assist you in becoming an better thinker, problem solver and solution generator, and the skills that you learn in doing so will aid you in tackling complex business challenges throughout your career. In doing so you will become a better manager, executive or entrepreneur, and also evolve into educated consumer (and cynic) of business thinking fads, fashions, clichés and babble.

In all courses and seminars that I design and deliver I believe that learning achieved through activity.  This activity is cyclical -> acquire new tools, apply them to actual challenges, receive results and re-evaluate the tools and responses.  Active learning varies depending upon the context and participants, but almost always involves case learning and discussion, simulations and group exercises.  Given that the subject is strategy I believe lecturing and traditional "stand and deliver" teaching is to be used judiciously.  My goal for any class, course, executive training or seminar is that  every participant understands & believes in the value of the tools for strategic analysis and design, has experience in applying them and formulating their own strategy, and develops a passion to continue their learning well after the class is over.

Graduate Business and Healthcare Management Education

My recent teaching focuses on business and corporate strategy to MBA students ranging from the traditional full-time program to the executive and health care executive programs.  I list here the courses taught and currently teach along with a brief description of electives.

Health Care Business Dynamics (an elective course tailored to Health Care Executive MBA students)
This course is tailored to senior managers through to CEOs of health care organizations.  Its goal is to enhance and sharpen  their ability to effectively and quickly analyse key strategic challenges in order to formulate successful responses.  Topics addressed include drug discovery and licensing decisions, outsourcing of medical care activities, mergers and acquisitions of health systems, management of medical equipment innovation, alliances between and the dynamics of health care negotiations (i.e. government, insurers, providers and patients).  I use cases, group exercises and simulations to achieve are

Business Dynamics - Strategies for Survival (an elective course tailored to Executive MBA students)
Similar to the course above, I designed this course to improve managers and executive's ability to analyse more complex strategic challenges and to formulate winning responses.  It is, in many respects, and advanced and applied course in strategy.  The intellectual structure of the course is based on an ecological framework, primarily structural inertial theory.  The goal is to recognize that strategic change and response is risky and, at times, necessary, and to formulate a strategy that tries to simultaneously reduce these risks but also achieve the desired strategic outcome.  Topics covered include mergers and acquisitions, alliances, innovation, and network alliances.

Management  of Complex Organizations (a core course for Executive, Health Care Executive, Evening and Fulltime MBA students)

Business Strategy (a core course for Executive, Full-Time and Evening MBA students)

Teaching Performance - Over the past few years I have been honored three times by students from the evening and health care executive MBA programs with the school-wide Excellence in Teaching Award at the Merage School. In addition to receiving the highest teaching award at the Merage School I have also twice been a finalist for the Outstanding Teaching award across the UC Irvine campus, and received three awards for curriculum innovation at the Merage School.  You may find a complete and unedited list student evaluations of courses here.

Executive and Corporate Education

I have had the pleasure of leading and participating in a number of seminars and workshops designed to help executives and business leaders improve their strategic decision making skills.  The activity based learning I employ in the MBA program is further emphasized for corporate clients.  To make the learning more salient and valuable I use current strategic challenges facing the client's business and guide participants through the strategic analysis and formulation tools by using facts, data and assessments of the clients current competitiveness.  As in all my teaching, the goal is not to find the guaranteed winning strategy, but to develop executives and managers who can harness their deep knowledge of the business in a logical and analytical fashion to craft the best strategies.  A selection of the clients that I have assisted are Ingram Micro, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Conexant Systems, Skyworks Solutions and Goldtel China. Please feel free to contact me if you would like more information, references or assessments of these programs.

Contact Information

E-Mail	bkillaly@uci.edu
Phone	(949) 824-8782
Fax	(949) 725-2872
Post	The Paul Merage School of Business University of California, Irvine 333 SB Irvine, CA  92697-3125