Helping organizations thrive and navigate declines
NDSU Distinguished Professor in marketing and management, Chanchai Tangpong, provides vital insights to help businesses and organizations in the Fargo community and across the state succeed.
His research focuses on how organizations can work together to innovate and thrive, along with how organizations manage and reverse performance declines.
“I study both high-performing and struggling organizations. I look at how organizations can collaborate to innovate and create new value, bringing new products and services to market. I also observe how organizations facing decline attempt to turn themselves around and make a comeback,” Tangpong said. “In essence, my research covers a major part of organizational life: how organizations innovate and grow through collaboration and how they recover from decline during their worst times.”
Through his research, Tangpong hopes to provide insights that help organizations in North Dakota and around the world become stronger and more resilient, ultimately benefiting the people and communities they serve.
“Organizations are an organ of our society. They are the places where many of us work and draw our livelihood from. When organizations struggle or are poorly run, they can make employees miserable with stress, which they then carry home to their families,” he said. “For organizations that innovate and create greater value, they better serve our society and create meaningful work for the people inside them. This ideal is simply why I care about this research and why I feel it is important.”
Tangpong’s research has been published in numerous academic publications and has earned national and international recognition from organizations, including the Academy of Management and the Decision Sciences Institute.
For Tangpong, teaching and research are closely connected. While undergraduate students aren’t directly involved in his research, he credits their senior projects, which highlight emerging industry trends, for sparking new research ideas and refreshing his thinking. Graduate students play a vital role in Tangpong’s work, ranging from helping with data collection to collaborating on publications and presentations.
But beyond the research itself, it is the opportunity to help students grow and inspiring them to do great things that makes teaching especially rewarding for Tangpong.
“I hope I can help our students to become individuals who make sound judgments and informed decisions,” he said.
In addition to his strong connections with students, Tangpong prides himself on collaboration, which is a big part of his research process.
“I collaborate with my colleagues from different disciplines and from different parts of the world. They have brought in different perspectives, capabilities and practices, which help renovate my research and rejuvenate me as a scholar. They practically help me become a better researcher,” he said.
As he looks ahead, Tangpong hopes to pursue more collaboration, especially international collaboration.
“This type of collaboration has enriched my perspective, both professionally and culturally, and helps broaden the relevance of research across geographic boundaries,” he said. “I have been fortunate that, over the past twenty years or so, NDSU has provided me with the infrastructure and great colleagues to work with, both of which will remain vital to my research in the next decade. As NDSU expands its international activities and outreach, it will further energize my effort in international collaboration.”
NDSU Marketing and Communications
Source: Chanchai Tangpong
Writer: Meghan Arbegast
Photos: Justin Eiler