Matthew S. Bothner

Matthew S. Bothner researches social status and its effects on the performance and strategies of venture capital firms, competitive crowding and risk taking in tournaments, and innovation diffusion in high-technology environments. "My interest in status as an intangible asset was fueled by Merton's 1968 work on the Matthew Effect, which refers to positive feedback between scientists' prestige and research output over the course of their careers," explains Bothner.

The Academy of Management awarded Bothner the 2006 Glueck Best Paper Award for the most outstanding new research in Business Policy and Strategy. He was honored for his paper, "Status Volatility and Organizational Growth in the U.S. Venture Capital Industry," coauthored with Jeong-han Kang, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University and Wonjae Lee, a PhD student at the University of Chicago Department of Sociology. Bothner, a recipient of the Chicago Booth's Faculty Excellence Award for Teaching and a Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneurship Research Grant, hopes his students leave his class with an ability to understand how to organize the firms they lead to achieve superior performance in the market.

Several of Bothner's other papers have appeared in academic journals such as the American Journal of Sociology and the Journal of Mathematical Sociology. Most notably, his paper, "Relative Size and Firm Growth in the Global Computer Industry," was awarded the Louis R. Pondy Award and Newman Award by the Academy of Management. Additionally, Bothner is an ad hoc reviewer for a number of journals and a member of the Academy of Management and the American Sociological Association.

Bothner earned a bachelor's degree in sociology and American history in 1994 from Boston University. He then enrolled at Columbia University, where he earned two master's degrees and won the Alex Inkeles Award for highest performance on comprehensive exams in 1998 and a PhD in 2000. His dissertation was unanimously awarded distinction by the Department of Sociology. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2000.

Outside of the classroom, he enjoys basketball, running, and weight training.

Selected Publications

"Competition and Social Influence: The Diffusion of the Sixth Generation Processor in the Global Computer Industry," American Journal of Sociology (2003).

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With Toby Stuart and Harrison C. White, "Status Differentiation and the Cohesion of Social Networks," Journal of Mathematical Sociology (2004).

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