Description
Professor Hiatt’s research is aimed at discovering how institutional factors can affect sector growth and technology development and adoption by mediating and moderating uncertainty. His work encompasses two related research questions:
1) How can institutional factors such as formal laws and informal rules of the game, including efforts by collective actors, adjudicate uncertainty regarding new technologies and business strategies and affect sector growth and technology adoption?
2) How do institutional voids affect organizational processes and how can organizations strategically deal with them?
Empirically, Professor Hiatt focuses on the Energy and Agribusiness sectors in domestic and emerging markets.
Energy and Agribusiness
* Effect of legal ambiguities on U.S. geothermal technology adoption and innovation
* Impact of collective actors on innovation in the U.S. biodiesel industry
* Identity counterframing as a strategic response to collective actor activism in the U.S. biomass sector
* Third party signaling, social movement activism, regulatory approval of genetically modified organisms
* Climate change policy threats and the development and adoption of enhanced oil recovery technologies in the U.S. oil and gas sector
Emerging Economies
* Biomass energy opportunities in Brazil
* The impact of political and civil violence on new venture planning and survival
* Military ties, new ventures, and political risk management in emerging economies
* State failure and entrepreneurship: Impact of drug cartels on Mexican new ventures