CEO connectedness and expropriation: A pitch

: This pitch letter shares my personal experience of applying the pitch template to my research topic as well as my personal reflection on this pitching exercise. The pitch template is a systematic approach which helps me understand the paper, structure the research design and organize the introduction of my paper. I truly encourage every academic researcher to apply this tool to their research.


Introduction
The motivation of this paper is to share my personal experience of applying the pitch template developed by Faff (2015) and expanded upon in Faff (2017) to corporate finance research.I was initially attracted to the idea of pitching research when the 'pitch doctor', Professor Robert Faff, firstly introduced this tool in his course, 'Research Process in Business', in my first semester of the PhD study.Since then, I believe the pitch template is an origin of my PhD research.
The benefits from the application of pitching research are mainly categorized into three parts: helping me understand the literature, structuring my research design and providing a clear direction of introduction writing.While many researchers focus on a literature study during their research, some researchers have a biased understanding of the core part of the literature, especially rookies.They just wander off the topic and easily become overwhelmed.With the template in mind, it is easier to navigate the literature and realize the essential parts of the literature.Moreover, I feel that the pitch template serves as a lighthouse which guides my personal research in a systematic way and highlights all aspects that need to be addressed.The logic of the pith template could be regarded as one of the classic and standard structures of the introduction.Thus, the structure of the introduction is already built when finishing this template.In short, I am writing this letter to share pitching research with all the researchers and hope more researchers take advantage of this tool.
The remainder of this letter is structured as follows.In Section 2, I describe the process of applying the pitch template to my personal research topic.Section 3 provides my personal reflections on what I have gained from the application of the pitch template.Lastly, Section 4 is the conclusion.

Application of pitching research template
Following the pitching template structure proposed by Faff (2015Faff ( , 2017)), I completed my own pitch on the topic of "CEO connectedness and expropriation", displayed in Table 1.Based on the frame of the template, I first summarized my basic research question in one sentence, whether connections that new CEOs develop with directors could be accounted for expropriation behavior.Before beginning our research, one crucial process is to read huge amounts of literature and identify the key papers.At this time, three papers came to my mind.One was the most recent and relevant empirical paper related to my research, referencing Khanna et al. (2015).The rests of key papers were both of "seminal" paper and "method" paper.Based on the logic of the pitch template, I began to think about the motivation of my research.To my knowledge, managerial compensation structure is mainly determined by the board and executives have strong motivation to get benefits by "gray" behavior such as expropriation.A major absence from previous literature is an analysis from the perspective of directors who are appointed by the new CEO as well as the role of their connections, which lay the motivation of my study.
After solid preparation, I focused on three core aspects of any empirical research project displayed in the pitching tools.Following the instruction, I articulated the central idea and hypothesis of my topic: "when new CEOs appoint new directors during his/her tenure, he/she could get high perks and excess compensations."Thus, my independent and dependent variables were obvious and I illustrated their definition and measurement in the Item (E).Considering the endogeneity of my topic, I also found two instrumental variables to address this problem.Turning to the Item (F), Data, I identify the time period of my data and gave an explanation for it.I listed all the data sources in the table.In addition, regression model approaches are commonly used in corporate finance research so that I described how regression model approaches were applied to examine my hypothesis in the Item (G).
The next essential part of the pitch template engages the two key questions, "what's new?" and "so what?".These questions are essential to every researcher as it would be a waste of time to do something that is of no theoretical and practical importance or repeat what others have already done.Beyond the "strict" or "serious" instruction of the pitching tool for research, we could also get fun from finishing those two questions since the pitch template guides us to start from an interesting picture, a generic version of "Mickey Mouse".My topic is based on the characterization of three relevant areas of literature, as shown in Figure 1.I believe the novelty of my research is the application of connectedness between CEOs and directors to account for expropriation and highlight one potential mechanism.Thus, the results of my research are worth close attention by investors, regulators and governance specialists.After answering these two key questions, the contribution of my topic came automatically to the Item (J) in the pitch template.
Finally, I assert that the pitch template is a useful comprehensive tool for researchers as it inspires us to think about other considerations which are sometimes ignored by some researchers.For instance, we should consider whether we need to collaborate with others and what is the target journal for our research.Following the instruction, I carefully summarized all other considerations for my topic in the Item (K).

Personal reflection on the pitching exercise
The original purpose of the pitch template is to help the novice researcher begin their research journey and effectively communicate the seeds of their research proposal to a field expert (Faff, 2017).The pitch template design accommodates both quantitative studies (e.g Ali, 2016) and qualitative studies (e.g.Shahzad, 2016).However, when it comes to theoretical review papers or model inference papers, some parts of the pitch template, such as "Data" and "Tools", may be not be readily applicable.Overall, the pitch template could be used for any type of research.
As a rather novice researcher who is at the very early stage of the research career and has relatively limited knowledge in research, I perceive that the two biggest obstacles impeding any research topic are where to start with and how to progress forward.After learning the pitch template, I find that this tool is not only useful to understand papers, but also it helps me to frame my own research design and introduction.I illustrate my points below.

CEO connectedness
Expropriate Behavior X First of all, my research journey starts from the pitch template since this tool teaches me how to understand papers.I believe reading papers is one of the crucial parts of a research career while not all of researchers understand publications effectively.I studied engineering in my original university experience and publications in engineering science have some clear differences to papers in business.Papers in engineering science pay more attention to its experiments and method and so given this personal prior experience I still concentrate on the method section when I study in finance.Although the method section is still important for papers in finance, researchers attach more importance to the "story" including background, motivation, contribution and analyzing the results.Based on the structure of the pitching tool, I am astonished to find that how many critical sections I had ignored before.After reverse engineering papers into the pitch framework, I feel more assured in my understanding of each publication.It allows me not only to figure out what a given paper is researching but also challenges more critical thinking about each paper such as whether there is the potential weakness of its logic or research design.Therefore, the pitch template teaches me how to understand a paper more efficiently and effectively.
What's more, the pitch template gives me advantages to structure and develop my own research design.A few months ago, I started my research with the topic of CEO connectedness according to my practical experience.With experience on the pitch template, I could identify the key papers and illuminate my motivation to this topic.Following the logic of the pitch, I began to organize my basic research questions and core hypothesis.Then, I pondered whether I could get data to make my research feasible.When turning to contribution part, the pitch inspired me to realize the novelty of my topic and ask "so what"?
The complete pitch process helped me move towards the research objectives in a wellorganized way.After finishing my own pitch template, other people, even those not specialists in my area, could have a workable and clear understanding of my research, which helps me to discuss my topic with others more effectively.
Finally, the pitch template gives me an initial guide on how to write the paper, especially the introduction of the paper.From my perspective, the introduction section is the most important and difficult part of the paper.When setting up the introduction, I also get lost or overwhelmed.The pitching tool provides an excellent structure for the introduction.In other words, when accomplishing the pitch template, a major part of introduction in our own paper has already been designed.

Conclusion
This letter outlines my personal experience on applying the pitch template to my research topic as well as the main benefits I took from this tool.The pitch template not only helps me to understand papers effectively, but also allows me an organized structure for dealing with my own research.A completed 2-page pitch template could be a powerful and efficient communication approach with others since it depicts a clear structure of my research topic and highlights all the key points.My PhD research journey starts from the pitch template and I believe researchers in all stages would benefit from using this tool.Thus, I recommend the pitch template to every researcher.