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Recent graduate Morgan Crostarosa had the opportunity to present her work focusing on the online retailer Zappos, at the 57th Annual meeting of the Eastern Academy of Management from June 24 to 26, 2020. The conference was initially to be located in Portland, Maine but due to COVID-19, it was attended digitally.
Graduating with a degree in speech communication with a concentration in public relations and a minor in business management, Crostarosa was encouraged to submit her research after taking a class on organizational behavior as an independent study with Dr. Ankur Nandedkar in the fall of 2019.
“Throughout the semester I used the organizational behavior concepts and theories to conduct research on a real company,” says Crostarosa. “I used Zappos, an online shoe and clothing retailer. I used my research to write a case study on the company, which we later submitted to the EAM conference.”
The conference had several different categories such as strategy, international management, entrepreneurship, human resource management and organizational management for individuals to share their work. Crostarosa’s case study fell under the organizational behavior category.
“The Organizational Behavior category focused on papers that studied individuals and/or groups in organizations as well as the dynamics of those organizations in terms of things such as practice, growth and change,” says Crostarosa. “The theme of the conference was ‘Being Human in the Digital World.’ As the world continues to become more and more technology driven, human skills are even more of an asset. What they wanted to do with this theme was identify what those skills are.”
Within her case study, Crostarosa explored Zappos’ corporate culture, customer service and structure using secondary sources. She also emphasized on Zappos commitment to excellent customer service rather than a unique company culture.
“I learned a lot about this company and how they incorporate organizational behavior concepts and theories into their workflow. However, another thing I learned during this entire research process about myself as an individual, is that this is the type of environment I strive to work in someday.”
Along with being able to showcase her work to other professors and professionals across the county, this presenting experience allowed her to receive valuable feedback to move forward in her field.
“I gained a lot of feedback from my case presentation from everyone who joined our session, which Dr. Nandedkar and I are very grateful for. We are working on revising the case to ultimately have it be published in a journal. I would love to see it be used as a learning tool in future Organizational Behavior courses at MU.”
Crostarosa credits her education from Millersville for helping her succeed with this opportunity.
“I think that from my freshman year until now I’ve learned, developed and really focused in on my skillset. My public relations courses have been extremely beneficial to me in vastly increasing my grammar, writing and editing skills to get me to where I’m at today.”
