Six new assistant professors join Harbert College of Business

The Harbert College of Business welcomes new assistant professors Adam Bross, Yejee Lee, Lucas Swider, Elizabeth Tori, Zheyi Xu and Di Yuan. Their teaching and research span the fields of accounting, business analytics and information systems, and management.

In addition to these six early-career faculty, Harbert College welcomed distinguished researcher and academic leader Jennifer Blackhurst as the McWane Chair in Supply Chain Management.

"We are fortunate to welcome these exceptional faculty members—who together with our current faculty—will enrich the Harbert College of Business classrooms, research and engagement," said Harbert College Dean Jennifer Mueller-Phillips. 

An assistant professor in the School of Accountancy, Adam Bross conducts research at the intersection of managerial accounting and auditing. In particular, his work examines how the actions of managers, clients and auditors influence one another.

While a doctoral student at Washington State, Bross conducted an award-winning study on the effect that the review process has on employee performance. His research paper, which he co-authored with his PhD advisor, won the 2024 Outstanding Paper award at an American Accounting Association’s Management Accounting section meeting, as well as an Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) Doctoral Scholars grant.

“We examined whether people had different psychological reactions to when their work was reviewed by a peer versus a superior,” said Bross. “Individuals wanted the superior to help them learn and figure out how to improve their work—sort of a teach a person to fish mentality. In a peer review, though, employees wanted more direct answers…and didn’t want to feel like they were being lectured by the peer.”

In a related area of research, Bross is studying the effect that tier-based leaderboards have on employee motivation and performance. He received IMA research funding to support this project. 

Bross is excited to launch his faculty career at Auburn and the Harbert College of Business, where he is teaching Intermediate Accounting I (ACCT 5110).

“Auburn is the perfect place [because of] the priority they place on doing great research, the support they give students and the values they have, which align very much with my values,” he said.

Bross, who is a CPA, spent three years with KPMG’s audit practice in Columbus, Ohio, working with insurance industry clients earlier in his career.

A big sports and fitness fan, he enjoys playing golf, hiking with his dog, and spending time with his family.

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She earned her PhD in business from Indiana University (IU), where she published two papers in prestigious management journals—Journal of International Business Studies and Strategic Management Journal—and received the IU DeVault Award, a highly coveted PhD student research award.

In 2024, she earned a Strategic Leadership and Governance Interest Group Best Paper award at the Strategic Management Society conference for her work on the compensation of new CEOs hired at firms that had engaged in socially irresponsible practices. She and her co-authors found that new CEOs are likely to receive higher initial compensation to offset potential risks that the focal firm’s negative reputation may spill over to their personal reputation.

She is impressed with the collegial atmosphere in the Harbert College of Business and the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship.

“Everyone is so welcoming and friendly,” said Lee, recounting her campus visit during the interview process. “I felt the support not only for my research and teaching, but I could feel the strong support for helping junior faculty grow, as well.”

At Auburn, Lee plans to build on the research she published in the Journal of International Business Studies, which focused on how multinational corporations can utilize smart disclosure technology to reduce suppliers’ engagement in human rights violations. More specifically, she is examining how firms react to disasters caused by poor labor conditions within supply chains.

She is teaching Strategic Management (MNGT 4800) and looks forward to working with students.

“I love every aspect of teaching, engaging with students and being able to bring my research into the classroom,” said Lee, who taught strategic management as a doctoral candidate in the Kelley School of Business at IU.

In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, baking, and exploring new coffee shops. 

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Lucas Swider, an assistant professor in the School of Accountancy, conducts experiments that examine how interaction with technology and aspects of the tax system influence the judgment and decision-making of individual taxpayers, accounting professionals, and investors.

As a doctoral candidate at the University of Oklahoma, he received a prestigious dissertation completion fellowship for his research on individuals’ willingness to adopt tax advice from AI-based software versus CPA preparers.

“These AI-based [tax preparation] platforms are out there and people are using them. I found that they are more willing to rely on them when they’re providing aggressive, or tax minimizing, advice,” said Swider. “I also found that people seem to rely on a CPA professional to a greater extent than AI due to a perception that the CPA has greater tax expertise and is more committed to helping the taxpayer minimize their tax burden.”

In another project, Swider is examining how requiring taxpayers to disclose their engagement with digital assets—for example, buying or selling cryptocurrency—affects the likelihood that they’ll accurately report related income.

While at Oklahoma, Swider also won several teaching awards while completing his doctorate. At Auburn, he is teaching Income Tax I (ACCT 5410).

Earlier in his career, he worked as a senior accountant in KPMG’s tax practice in Milwaukee, where he performed tax compliance, audit, and consulting services for clients across multiple industries and helped lead the integration of AI technologies into the tax compliance process.

He chose to launch his faculty career at Auburn because of Harbert College’s commitment to student success and teaching and research excellence.

In his spare time, he enjoys being outdoors, hiking, exploring new areas, trying new restaurants and spending time with his family.

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Elizabeth Tori, an assistant professor in the School of Accountancy, conducts research on company financial disclosures and legal and regulatory environments. In research begun as a doctoral candidate at Texas A&M, she co-authored a paper examining what happens to firm valuation and board of directors’ compensation when independent directors are at personal risk of being sued. The paper was published in the Contemporary Accounting Research journal—a top-tier publication.

In another research project, she explored the incentives that drive private equity (PE) firms, which have limited regulatory oversight, to voluntarily disseminate public media releases. She found that PE firms issue more media releases when trying to raise new rounds of funding and that the releases succeed in attracting more investors, especially for PE firms with lower past performance.

“Private equity is a huge industry that’s opaque by nature—they don’t have to disclose information publicly because they can just communicate privately with their investors,” she said. “Even so, we found that they ramp up their press releases ahead of issuing new funds in almost an advertising role.”

Tori joined the Harbert College of Business after spending four years as an assistant professor at Oklahoma State’s Spears School of Business, where she taught courses on ethics for public accountants and emerging issues in the accounting profession. At Auburn, she is teaching Accounting Information Systems (ACCT 5510).

According to Tori, Auburn is one of those rare institutions that value both teaching and research excellence, which is a big reason she looks forward to continuing her career here.

“Auburn has a really positive culture, the people are very team-oriented and that environment permeates the School of Accountancy, the college, the entire campus and community.”

Earlier in her career she worked with retail clients in the audit practice of Grant Thornton in Atlanta.

In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, hiking and having other outdoor adventures with her family.

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Zheyi “Zoe” Xu, an assistant professor of business analytics and information systems, conducts research on how individuals react to user- and AI-generated online content such as social media posts and customer reviews, as well as how IT investments and strategies influence a firm’s operational outcomes.

One of her projects examines the effect that AI-generated product reviews have on individual customer’s search strategy. Since 2023, Amazon and other companies have begun creating  single-paragraph product reviews that are based on large numbers of actual user-created reviews.

“What I found was that the AI summaries don’t influence how much people will search, but they do influence how they search,” said Xu. “For example, if a summary mentions customer complaints about the value [of a product], then individuals who read that summary will want to [later] seek more [individual] reviews that mentioned product value.”

A second research project investigates how IT capability enhances a company’s creativity. In her econometrics analyses, Xu found that firms with advanced IT capabilities, compared to those with more basic IT capabilities, can strengthen the impact of knowledge management and communication methods on creativity. She describes her results in a paper that she submitted to the journal, Information Systems Research.

Xu earned her PhD in Information Systems in 2025 from the University of South Florida, where she taught Business Data Communications, Global Cyber Ethics and Systems Analysis and Design. At Auburn, she is teaching Telecommunications Management (ISMN 5040).

Xu said she chose to launch her faculty career at Auburn primarily because of Harbert’s positive atmosphere.

“When I came for my campus visit, I realized that the colleagues here were very, very friendly. The campus was also very beautiful with minimal traffic” said Xu.

In her spare time, she enjoys her pet cats, sci-fi movies and theme parks.

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Di Yuan, an assistant professor of business analytics and information systems, conducts research at the intersection of AI, algorithms and economics. More specifically, she examines fairness and productivity issues that arise when online platforms adopt AI technology.

As a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh, she won the 2021 Best Student Paper award at the Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST) for her research on fair advertising practices and whether certain demographic groups see economic opportunity ads on social media as often as other groups.

According to Yuan, ads that promote education—such as a university degree program—are an example of economic opportunity.

“Universities sell economic opportunity rather than common merchandise that retailers sell,” she said. “The competition [among retail advertisers] to reach the female audience is severe, so it will crowd out advertising efforts by universities, for example, to reach women and that causes an unfair imbalance.”

In the award-winning paper, Yuan proposed the concept of equal-exposure fairness, which aims to increase the visibility of economic opportunity ads to women and minorities. Her research results indicated that if social media platforms adopted the equal-exposure fairness concept it would lead to increased competition between advertisers and ultimately more revenue for the social media companies.

She has submitted the paper to Marketing Science.

At Auburn, she is teaching Introduction to Information Systems Management (ISMN 2140).

Yuan was drawn to Auburn because of the collegial atmosphere among the faculty in the Department of Business Analytics and Information Systems, which she had read about and experienced during the interview process.

“The faculty support one another not only in research, but personally, as well,” she said. “I feel Auburn is a place where I can contribute and grow.”

In her spare time, she enjoys photography, cooking, baking and playing tennis.

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