About

Michael Bednar is an Associate Professor of Business Administration, Academic Director of Experiential Learning, and Robert & Karen May Faculty Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His primary research interests include corporate governance, executive leadership, and the relationship between organizations and the media. He joined the University of Illinois in 2008 after receiving his PhD in strategic management from the University of Texas at Austin. He also holds a BS from Brigham Young University, graduating cum laude in 2002. Bednar has received numerous teaching awards, including the Gies College of Business Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award in 2019 and the Dean’s Impact Award in 2018. He serves on the editorial review boards for Strategic Management Journal and for Academy of Management Journal.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Public relations
• Business
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Economics
• History
• Social psychology
• Optics
• Advertising
• Psychology
• Demographic economics
• Media studies

Selected publications

• Expressed or repressed values? How external governance mechanisms shape the relationship between CSR and TMT pay dispersion

  Journal of Management & Governance · 2026-04-08

  article
  PublisherDOI

• When the Headlines Fade, the Story Goes On: Investigating How Local Newspaper Decline Affects Firm CSR Engagement

  Organization Science · 2026-03-20

  articleSenior author

  We investigate how the decline of local newspapers affects firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement. Historically, local newspapers have shaped firms’ informational environments by providing two interconnected functions that influence local stakeholders’ perceptions: external monitoring and enhanced visibility of corporate behaviors. Their decline weakens both functions simultaneously, creating uncertainty about how firms adjust behaviors sensitive to scrutiny and public recognition. We develop a contingency framework explaining how firms respond to this dual erosion depending on the broader informational environment. We theorize that nonlocal informational intermediaries—national newspapers, financial analysts, and credit rating agencies—shape whether firms continue to experience credible accountability pressures or opportunities for public visibility, and that firms respond differently to local newspaper decline based on the availability of these intermediaries. When such intermediaries remain active, firms face sustained evaluative scrutiny and retain channels through which CSR activities can be communicated, increasing the strategic value of CSR. When they are absent, diminished oversight and limited visibility reduce both the pressures and incentives to maintain CSR, making retrenchment more likely. Interviews with journalists and corporate executives contextualize and refine the proposed mechanisms by illustrating how firms interpret the erosion of local oversight and visibility and navigate evolving informational ecosystems. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design exploiting local newspaper declines across U.S. counties from 1996 to 2014, we find evidence consistent with these heterogeneous responses. Our theory advances understanding of how firms strategically adapt their CSR engagement to evolving informational environments. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2024.18968 .

  PublisherDOI

• Director compensation as an inducement for director capital

  Corporate Ownership and Control · 2024-07-22

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In the current study, we examine whether the compensation that directors receive to serve on corporate boards has an inducing effect on the market for directors. More specifically, we examine whether director compensation is related to the human and social capital that directors bring to their boards. As part of our examination, we focus on the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), which serves as a type of natural experiment, to show that boards increasingly use compensation as a way to attract director capital. We, therefore, tested our hypotheses on a cross-sectional panel sample of 1,704 S&P 1500 firms over the period of 1998 to 2006 (8,332 firm-year observations) using generalized least squares (GLS) regression correcting for first-order auto-regression. Our findings suggest that inducing effects operate in the market for directors and lend particular support to the importance of the resource provision function of boards.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Local Media Coverage and Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Sociology

  This study examines the impact of local media coverage on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity. To obtain an exogenous variation in a firm’s coverage by local media, we exploit a quasi-natural experiment provided by the closures of local newspapers that occurred between 1996 and 2014 in the United States. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we find that firms respond to an exogenous decrease in local media coverage by increasing their engagement in CSR. This effect appears stronger among high-performing and larger firms, and it becomes stronger over time. Our study represents one of the very first attempts to examine the impact of local media coverage on CSR behaviors and informs our understanding of the importance of local media in the information environment of firms.

  PublisherDOI

• CEOs as a Prism: How CEO Self Promotion Affects Journalists’ Evaluation of Controversial Firm Event

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Public relations

  In this study, we investigate whether and how corporate leaders’ tendency toward self-promotion can influence the tenor of journalists’ reporting about controversial corporate events. Prior studies have suggested that CEOs are increasingly using self-promotion tactics to shape how external audiences perceive corporate actions. Drawing from the research on the social judgment process, we argue that CEO self-promotion can enhance the perceived competence of leaders and prompt journalists to render relatively more positive articles about corporate layoff announcements. We further identify conditions under which the self-promotion effect is attenuated. Specifically, we find evidence that the effectiveness of CEO self-promotion will depend on CEOs’ tenure, gender, and level of compensation. We find strong empirical support for our hypotheses by utilizing a comprehensive media coverage dataset for large U.S. publicly traded companies between 2007 and 2017. Our results help to reconcile equivocal findings about the self-promotion effect in corporate leadership and make important contributions to research on social evaluation by highlighting limitations to the effectiveness of media as a social arbiter of corporate activities. More broadly, our study suggests that individual characteristics of CEOs can serve as a prism through which corporate actions may be differentially perceived by journalists.

  PublisherDOI

• Birds of a feather flock (even more) together: An intergroup relations perspective on how # <scp>MeToo</scp> ‐related media coverage affects the evaluation of prospective corporate directors

  Strategic Management Journal · 2022 · 11 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology

  Abstract Research Summary This study examines how incumbent director reactions to media coverage of the #MeToo movement have impacted the evaluation of prospective corporate directors. We argue that heightened intergroup anxiety related to male–female interactions leads incumbents to seize on social attributes that bolster category‐based trust in the reliability of prospective directors' interpersonal behavior. We predict that in response to #MeToo coverage, incumbents evaluate board candidates more positively when they share demographic characteristics or have prior social connections, and these effects are strengthened when incumbents socially identify with the firm. Empirical analyses using a longitudinal survey of evaluations of director candidates support these predictions. Our findings suggest how social movements can produce unintended consequences by inadvertently triggering psychological processes that partially offset the anticipated benefits of the movement. Managerial Summary Increased coverage of #MeToo has heightened concerns among board members about male–female interactions on the board. Our study finds that as #MeToo coverage increases, incumbent directors evaluate potential board candidates more positively to the extent that they share demographic characteristics, including gender, race, functional background, education and age, or when they are connected through the social network of board appointments. These effects are especially pronounced for incumbents who psychologically identify with the firm, meaning that their self‐concept is aligned with features of the organization. Our study suggests how psychological reactions of corporate directors to #MeToo may inadvertently reduce board diversity and overall board effectiveness, and we call for research‐based interventions to correct this unfortunate side effect of a critically important social justice movement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Stakeholder Management and CEO Compensation: Main Effects and Interactions

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2019-08-01

  articleSenior author

  This study examines the relationship between an organization’s reputation for stakeholder management and CEO compensation. A monolithic perspective on stakeholder management dominates extant research. In contrast, this study theorizes that organizations develop distinct reputations for “doing good” and “avoiding harm”. The current study finds that a reputation for “do good” stakeholder management is positively associated with CEO compensation while a reputation for “avoid harm” stakeholder management is negatively associated with CEO compensation for a sample of S&P-500 companies over a 9-year period. The study also explains and finds partial support for the role of financial performance, board independence, and information uncertainty as moderators of the relationship between stakeholder management reputation and CEO compensation. This study contributes to both the compensation and stakeholder management literatures by providing a more nuanced view of the relationship between stakeholder management and executive compensation.

  PublisherDOI

• Changing of the Guard: Shifting the Conversation Surrounding CEO Turnover

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2018-07-09

  article

  The importance of CEO turnover for organizations is well established. Indeed, CEO turnover is inevitable in organizations and can have a significant impact on firm outcomes. Given its importance, researchers have dedicated a great deal of attention to studying this organizational event and the processes surrounding it. Specifically, most research in this area can be largely classified into three areas of inquiry: the antecedents of CEO turnover, the forms of CEO turnover, and the consequences of CEO turnover. While research in these three areas has advanced our understanding of CEO turnover, much is still to be understood. In this panel symposium, we shift the theoretical conversation surrounding CEO turnover by discussing new and important research opportunities within each of these three areas, including investigating the CEO succession planning process, examining other forms of turnover, such as retirement and death, and looking at the impact of CEO turnover on firm reputation.

  PublisherDOI

• The Role of the Media in Corporate Governance

  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management · 2017-08-22 · 4 citations

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  Corporate governance scholars have long been interested in understanding the mechanisms through which firms and their leaders are held accountable for their actions. Recently, there has been increased interest in viewing the media as a type of corporate governance mechanism. Because the media makes evaluations of firms and leaders, and can broadcast information to a wide audience, it has the potential to influence the reputation of firms and firm leaders in both positive and negative ways and thereby play a role in corporate governance. The media can play a governance role and even influence firm outcomes by simply reporting about firm actions, giving stakeholders a larger voice with which to exert influence, and through independent investigation. However, despite the potential for the media to play a significant governance role, several barriers limit its effectiveness in this capacity. For example, media outlets have their own set of interests that they must strive to fulfill, and journalists often succumb to several cognitive biases that could limit their ability to successfully hold leaders accountable. While significant progress has been made in understanding the governance role of the media, future research is needed to better understand the specific conditions in which the media is effective in this role. Understanding how social media is changing the nature of journalism is just one example of the many exciting avenues for future research in this area.

  PublisherDOI

• Are Boards Designed to Fail? The Implausibility of Effective Board Monitoring

  Academy of Management Annals · 2016-01-01 · 352 citations

  article

  In this review, we challenge the idea that directors are well positioned to be effective monitors of management. Moving beyond the logic of incentives and ability, we conceptualize a model based on the premise of boards as groups of individuals obtaining, processing and sharing information and explain how variation in information-processing demands at the director, board and firm level may challenge effective monitoring. We draw on multiple theoretical perspectives to identify these barriers to effective board monitoring. Our goal in reviewing these barriers is to help us take stock of existing research in corporate governance and to better explain board behavior beyond traditional agency and resource dependency accounts. We also aim to uncover gaps in the conceptual and empirical research and suggest areas of fruitful future research.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ruth V. Aguilera

  26 shared

• Steven Boivie

  22 shared

• Joel Andrus

  18 shared

• James D. Westphal

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  10 shared

• Nathan A. Bragaw

  University of Delaware

  4 shared

• E. Geoffrey Love

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  4 shared

• Michael G. Hendron

  Brigham Young University

  3 shared

• Vilmos F. Misangyi

  University of Delaware

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Gies College of Business Excellence in Graduate Teaching Awa…
• Dean’s Impact Award in 2018
• Best Paper Award at Academy of Management Best Paper Proceed…