Ulya Tsolmon
Associate Professor of Strategy, Department of Management
Ulya Tsolmon is associate professor of strategy in the Department of Management at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned her PhD in Business Administration (Strategy) from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and previously held a faculty position at the Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis. Her research sits at the intersection of corporate strategy and the managerial labor market, examining how organizations shape, allocate, and retain managerial talent and how these choices become sources of competitive advantage. Her work appears in leading outlets including the Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, and the Review of Economics and Statistics, and has been recognized with the Academy of Management’s Outstanding Dissertation Award and multiple best-paper awards. She serves on the editorial review boards of the Strategic Management Journal and Organization Science and holds elected leadership roles in the Strategic Management Society.
Education
Academic Appointments
Research Interests
Teaching Interests
- MGMT 494BI: Business Policy and Strategy (required capstone)
- MBA 689 (Capstone)
- AI-strategy Elective
- Seminar in Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- Seminar in Organizational Theory
- Seminar in AI and Business: Technology, Firms, and the Future of Work
Recent Honors
Media, Industry, and Public Impact
- Founder and Organizer, Women in Strategy and Entrepreneurship (WiSER) Conference (2019, 2024)
- Master Certified Academic Coach and Mentor; founded and ran the SMS Strategic Human Capital IG mentoring programs for pre-tenure faculty and doctoral students (four years)
Selected Working Papers / Current Research
- Best of Both Worlds: The Advantages of Hybrid CEOs in Multi-Unit Firms (with Tingyu Du) — under review.
- Corporate Advantage from Human Capital Redeployment: A Revised Logic (with Rocio Bonet and Tim Folta) — under review.
Professional Links
Selected Publications
Du, T., & Tsolmon, U. (2026). Post-M&A Retention of Top Managers: The Role of Structural Knowledge. Organization Science, 37(3), 942–968. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2024.18686 Best Paper, STR Division, Academy of Management (2023).
Tsolmon, U. (2024). The Role of Information in the Gender Gap in the Market for Top Managers: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment. Strategic Management Journal, 45(4), 680–715. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3563 Distinguished Paper (2022) and Best Paper (2022), STR Division, Academy of Management.
Tsolmon, U., & Ariely, D. (2022). Health Insurance Benefits as a Labor Market Friction: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment. Strategic Management Journal, 43(8), 1556–1574. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3378
Belenzon, S., & Tsolmon, U. (2016). Market Frictions and Competitive Advantage of Internal Labor Markets. Strategic Management Journal, 37(7), 1280–1303. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2395
Fabrizio, K., & Tsolmon, U. (2014). An Empirical Examination of the Pro-Cyclicality of R&D Investment and Innovation. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 96(4), 662–675. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00412