Scout report, academic

Materials · screening/scout-academic.md

# Scout report: Academic track

Sources read: lakeshore-asst-prof.md, employers/lakeshore.md, candidate/record.md. Nothing else.

## Lakeshore University: Assistant Professor, Organizational Behavior and Technology (tenure track, start Aug 2027)

### 1. What the employer is actually selecting for
- **A methods gap.** All three technology-and-work faculty use field data from firms. No one runs experiments with AI agents or builds computational testbeds. The posting's line about "experiments, field data, or computational methods" is general, but the packet shows that experimental and computational work on AI is the part they lack.
- **Strategic priority.** The dean lists "AI and the future of organizations" as a hiring priority for 2026 to 2028.
- **A top-journal track record.** Recent hires published in Organization Science, ASQ, and Management Science before review. The bar is publishing in top journals, not just "can be published."
- **Someone to teach the core.** The required MBA OB core has eight sections a year. The hire will almost certainly teach general OB, not a technology elective.

### 2. Jordan's evidence (from record) and gaps
Supports the application:
- PhD in Organizational Behavior, Ridgeview, 2016. This meets the degree requirement.
- Hale & Moreno (2019), *Organization Science*. Published, first author. This is one of the department's target journals.
- Ibarra et al. (2021), *Journal of Applied Psychology*. Published, third of four authors. Jordan contributed the measurement model and robustness analyses. Ibarra led design and data collection.
- Hale (2026), "Message drift in chains of language-model agents." **Under review** at *Management Science*, first round, submitted July 2026. Not accepted. Covers language-model agents only.
- Relay testbed (2024 to present, self-funded, independent). This answers the gap in AI-agent experiments and computational testbeds directly. It includes judge validation against 300 hand-coded messages and a caught configuration error.
- Hale (2025), "Rehearsing experiments with simulated participants." **Working paper**, self-posted, not submitted. All participants were simulated.
- Invited talk: "When can a language-model judge be trusted?", Measurement in AI Workshop, Varrow, May 2025.
- AOM 2019 "Late dissent": a competitively selected paper session. The record lists it under "Invited" but says it was **not invited**. Do not present it as an invited talk.
- "Building an agent testbed" (2025) is a **self-produced** recorded walkthrough. It was not a talk and was not invited.
- Lab experiments on group decisions (postdoc 2016 to 2018). Industry experiments and measurement work at Parcel and Kestrel (2018 to 2024).

Missing or weak:
- **Teaching effectiveness evidence: absent.** The record has only TA work for the MBA OB core (2013 to 2015) and one guest lecture (2021). It has no evaluations, no courses taught as instructor of record, and no teaching since 2021.
- **Referees: absent.** The record names no letter writers. Three are required.
- **Recent peer-reviewed output.** The last publication was 2021. Since then there is one paper under review and one unsubmitted working paper.
- **AI work does not involve people.** Relay has been used only with language-model agents and never with people or organizations. The posting asks how technology changes work, teams, and organizations. Jordan would have to make the case that agent-chain findings bear on human organizations, and the record contains no such evidence.
- **No academic affiliation since 2018.** Jordan has been an independent researcher since 2024.

### 3. Materials and submission
- Required: cover letter, CV, research statement, teaching statement, evidence of teaching effectiveness, one or two writing samples, three reference letters.
- Submission is through the university portal, with each document uploaded as a separate PDF. The portal requests letters from referees automatically, so Jordan needs referee names and contact details.
- Review begins November 1, 2026, which is about three weeks from today (2026-10-12).
- Likely writing samples: the 2019 *Organization Science* paper (published) and the *Management Science* submission, labeled under review.

### 4. Strongest case against applying
Jordan has been out of academia for eight years, has no peer-reviewed publication since 2021, has no record of teaching as instructor and no teaching evaluations, and has no named referees. Meanwhile the job's daily work includes teaching sections of the MBA OB core. The AI research has only been run with language-model agents, so the committee may see it as not yet about organizations. Also, the main AI paper is in its first round of review and could be rejected before decisions are made.

### 5. Title vs actual work
**Partial divergence.** The title and research expectations focus on technology. The teaching is the general required MBA OB core (eight sections a year across the department), which matches Jordan's TA background rather than the AI work. Jordan should expect a mostly general OB teaching load, with the technology focus mainly in research.

**Verdict: pursue.** This is the strongest fit in the department: Jordan fills its stated methods gap and the dean's AI priority, and has an Organization Science paper. Before November 1, Jordan must confirm three referees and decide how to show teaching effectiveness, since the record has no evaluations.