Dr. Michael Braun - School of Business Administration

Michael received his B.A. in Asian Studies from Cornell University, an M.A. with Fellowship in Publishing and Media from New York University, an MBA from the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, and a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Prior to his arrival in academia, he was a director with a Los Angeles-based boutique merchant bank, Stephens & Partners, where he initiated, raised capital for, and managed leveraged buyout strategies and transactions for private equity firms. In this role, he helped found Intelligrated, a U.S.-based materials handling company with $500 million in annual sales. He was also responsible for managing acquisitions and divestitures for private and publicly-traded firms (including WaterPik, ESCO Technologies, and Esterline Technologies). His early career was spent in business development in publishing, direct marketing, and e-commerce in Los Angeles, New York and Europe, working with clients such as Staples, Auto-by-tel, Conde Nast, 101Communications, and Shop2Give. Michael is Swiss by birth and spent his childhood in Zurich, Brussels, and London.

Michael’s academic research interests involve the exploration of diverse organizational forms and their related structures and strategies during periods of uncertainty and decline. His dissertation was entitled The Governance of Reverse Leveraged Buyouts and detailed the restructuring of the board of directors over the course of a firm's public-private-public buyout cycle. When he’s not teaching or researching, Michael spends time hiking, cooking, and fly-fishing with his wife Daphne, his four children, Madeline, Alexandra, Nicholas, and Rachel, and their dog Piper.

Recent Publications:

"Does Short-termism Influence Firm Innovation? An Examination of S&P 500 Firms, 1990 - 2003." Latham, S. & Braun, M. Forthcoming in Journal of Managerial Issues.

"Jilted? The manager's little book for keeping customers in a recession" Latham, S. & Braun, M. Forthcoming in Journal of Business Strategy.

"When the Big "R" Hits Home: Governance in Family Firms during Economic Recession." Braun, M. & Latham, S. In Journal of Strategy and Management, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009. (see practitioner's version on right)