New USF study: Rapid change makes leaders seem less authentic

Employees trust gradual growth more than overnight changes

University of South Florida

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Danbee Chon, assistant professor of management, University of South Florida Muma College of Business

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Credit: USF

Click here for the press kit, including a PDF of the journal article

Key takeaways:

• Slow and steady change builds credibility: Employees view gradual behavior changes as more genuine than rapid shifts, even when they’ve asked for those changes.
• Quick fixes can backfire: Leaders who alter their behavior too quickly risk being seen as insincere — especially when the change is difficult.
• Authenticity keeps communication open: When employees believe a leader’s growth is genuine, they’re more likely to keep sharing feedback and speaking up.

TAMPA, Fla. (Oct. 7, 2025) – When it comes to giving feedback, especially to bosses, employees want their voices heard. Some crave more coaching. Others seek a better leader-team connection. Still others pine for managers who inspire, while practicing patience.

But leaders shouldn’t rush to change their behaviors too fast, according to new research from the University of South Florida. If change happens too quickly, skepticism may arise, and employees are likely to believe it’s too good to be true.

Published in the Academy of Management Journal, the authors found that employees see quick change in response to feedback as less authentic than gradual change.

“For leaders, sometimes it’s not enough to just change. We have to consider how it might also be perceived, and people believe that true change takes time,” said lead author Danbee Chon, assistant professor of management in the Muma College of Business.

The results are from three studies in which Chon and co-authors Ovul Sezer of Cornell University and Francis J. Flynn of Stanford University examined how leaders respond to employee concerns. The first study surveyed 205 doctoral students from research universities. The other studies sampled over 2,000 employees using leadership action plans written by real executives in response to 360-degree feedback.

Conventional wisdom suggests managers should make swift changes in response to feedback, to show employees that their concerns have been taken seriously. But surprisingly, the opposite seems to hold true.

The study’s findings showed:

• Leaders who jump too fast to change their behaviors are seen as less authentic, even when employees ask for those changes.
• Employees viewed managers who make swift changes as less sincere, while a slower, gradual rate rings true.
• The “authenticity penalty” is especially strong when the change is difficult.
• Genuine change is what keeps employees speaking up.

Chon noted that the study’s conclusions relate to voluntary feedback concerning a leader’s behavior. The authors believe that changes in response to feedback related to other concerns, such as routine business operations, may yield different results, because such changes may not require “changes in the leader’s core sense of self.”

Chon said they do not recommend leaders always take a slow approach to a change in behavior. Instead, consider the trade-offs when deciding which approach makes the most sense.

“When change is easy, leaders who change rapidly may be viewed as less authentic, but more responsive — enabling employees to feel seen and heard,” she said. “Authenticity is one — important, but nevertheless, one — facet of leader evaluations.”

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About the University of South Florida

The University of South Florida is a top-ranked research university serving approximately 50,000 students from across the globe at campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota-Manatee and USF Health. In 2025, U.S. News & World Report recognized USF with its highest overall ranking in university history, as a top 50 public university for the seventh consecutive year and as one of the top 15 best values among all public universities in the nation. U.S. News also ranks the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine as the No. 1 medical school in Florida and in the highest tier nationwide. USF is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), a group that includes only the top 3% of universities in the U.S. With an all-time high of $738 million in research funding in 2024 and as a top 20 public university for producing U.S. patents, USF uses innovation to transform lives and shape a better future. The university generates an annual economic impact of more than $6 billion. USF’s Division I athletics teams compete in the American Conference. Learn more at www.usf.edu.

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Journal

Academy of Management Journal

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Not So Fast? Rapid Response to Voice Leads to Perceived Inauthenticity

 

FIU cybersecurity researchers develop midflight defense against drone hijacking

Florida International University

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FIU cybersecurity researchers developed SHIELD, a real-time defense system against drone hijacking. The research team from L-R: PhD candidate Jean Tonday Rodriguez, undergraduate student Mohammad Kumail Kazmi, lead researcher and associate professor Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman and PhD candidate Muneeba Asif.

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Credit: Chris Necuze/FIU

MIAMI (Oct. 7, 2025) – As drones become increasingly common in U.S. skies – delivering packages, inspecting bridges, even monitoring crops – the danger of cyberattacks has grown too. A drone hijacked by hackers could suddenly veer off course, speed up, stall in midair, or crash. Once compromised, the machine is useless, often left as little more than expensive junk.

Florida International University researchers have found a way to fight back. At the IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, FIU computer scientists unveiled SHIELD, a defensive system that can detect and neutralize cyberattacks on drones in real time and, crucially, allow the drone to finish its mission.

“Without robust recovery mechanisms, a drone cannot complete its mission under attacks, because even if it is possible to detect the attacks, the mission often gets terminated as a fail-safe move,” said Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman, lead researcher and associate professor in FIU’s Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences. “What’s important about our framework is that it helps the system recover, so the mission can be completed.” 

Safeguarding the security of drones may soon become more important than ever before.  This summer, the Federal Aviation Administration proposed expanding commercial drone use across industries. From Amazon to agriculture, the FAA expects more businesses to deploy unmanned aircraft, raising urgent questions about safety in the face of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

Traditionally, attack detection has revolved around sensors that help the drone perceive its surroundings and fly safely but can be easily manipulated. SHIELD goes further, monitoring the drone’s entire control system. It detects abnormalities not just in sensors but also in hardware, where hackers often try to hide their tracks. A sudden battery surge or overheating processor, for instance, may signal an attack underway.

The system then uses machine learning to diagnose the type of assault, much like a doctor identifying an illness. Each attack leaves behind a unique signature, and SHIELD responds with a tailored recovery protocol. In lab simulations, the FIU team’s approach identified attacks in an average of 0.21 seconds and restored normal flight in 0.36.

Next, Rahman’s research group at FIU will scale up testing, preparing SHIELD for real-world deployment. With drones poised to reshape commerce, infrastructure monitoring, and disaster response, FIU researchers say securing them is no longer optional.

“Reliable and secure drones are the key to unlocking future advancements,” Rahman said. “It’s our hope this work can play a role in moving the industry forward.”

Multimedia assets, including photos and video for media use, are available here.

For more information about this study, please visit https://go.fiu.edu/droneresearch.

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DOI

10.1109/DSN64029.2025.00070 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

"I will always be by your side": A Side-Channel Aided PWM-based Holistic Attack Recovery for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Kennesaw State researcher aims to discover how ideas spread in the digital age

The research is funded through a collaborative National Science Foundation grant to explore information diffusion

Kennesaw State University

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Mehmet Aktas

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Credit: Matt Yung / Kennesaw State University

From viral videos to debates over new products, ideas move faster than ever in today’s digital age. Mehmet Aktas, an associate professor of data science and analytics, is leading National Science Foundation-funded research that looks into how those ideas spread, evolve, and shape communities.

Funded through a collaborative NSF grant, Aktas is working with colleagues from Georgia State University and Georgia Gwinnett College to explore new ways of modeling information diffusion.

Aktas’s project studies how information flows within networks of people. Traditional approaches treat communication like a chain of one-to-one interactions, but research shows ideas are often exchanged in groups.

The team is using a new mathematical tool called the “sheaf Laplacian,” which allows them to represent group interactions with far more accuracy than older methods. The tool helps distinguish whether a message being passed is supportive, misleading, or contradictory. This makes it possible to explain why communities and certain voices polarize or gain influence on certain topics.

“Instead of looking at a simple phone call between two people, we’re analyzing how group discussions shape the spread of ideas,” Aktas said. “That gives us a more realistic picture of how communities interact online or in settings like classrooms and health care teams.”

There are many potential applications. Businesses could use these models to decide which influencers to partner with when launching new products. Hospitals could better match patients with the right providers. Policymakers and community leaders could also use the findings to understand how misinformation spreads and to encourage more responsible communication.

Each institution in the project brings unique expertise. Georgia State University contributes artificial intelligence expertise, Georgia Gwinnett College leads the theoretical side, and Kennesaw State University drives the data science applications.

Yiming Ji, interim dean of KSU’s College of Computing and Software Engineering, said Aktas’s work reflects the type of impactful research the college aims to support.

“Dr. Aktas’s research represents the very best of CCSE’s mission, blending strong theory with practical applications that can improve society,” Ji said. “By studying how information spreads across communities, his work not only advances scientific knowledge but also provides tools that can guide better decision-making in business, health care, and civic life.”

Aktas has received a startup grant to recruit graduate and undergraduate researchers. With the anticipated opening of the new Interdisciplinary STEM Building, he expects even greater opportunities for collaboration.

“Data science at KSU is vibrant and collaborative,” Aktas said. “Our project will bring in new students, spark fresh conversations, and help us better understand the networks that affect all of our lives.”

 

Jamestown colonists brought donkeys, not just horses, to North America, old bones reveal

University of Florida

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An illustration of a donkey in colonilal Jamestown.

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Credit: Paula Calle Lopez, Courtesy of Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia)

A new study published in Science Advances about centuries-old horse and donkey bones, unearthed in Jamestown, Virginia, is rewriting the story of how these animals first arrived in North America.

While written records from the earliest English explorers show that horses were among the animals brought to Virginia, the new zooarchaeological analysis of animal remains found at Jamestown is the first to show that colonists also brought donkeys to the New World.

The study also reveals a dark ending to these equids in the colony: The horses and donkeys were likely butchered and eaten during Jamestown’s infamous winter of starvation.

“There are no written records of donkeys on ship manifests and reports, yet evidence suggests they were valued as dependable work animals,” said John Krigbaum, Ph.D., professor and chair anthropology at the University of Florida. Krigbaum served as the senior author on this study alongside lead author William Taylor, Ph.D., at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The team’s work is a testament to the vast amount of information researchers can glean from just a small collection of centuries-old animal bones. With their preliminary tests, archaeologists linked the earliest parts of the settlement to the "Starving Time" winter of 1609-1610, a connection later confirmed by radiocarbon dating. The study provides an early glimpse into how and why horses and donkeys were transported and managed and how they were able to spread and establish wild populations across the continent.

Assisting Krigbaum with both the research and writing were George Kamenov, Ph.D., a senior associate in the Department of Geological Sciences, UF doctoral student Diana Quintero-Bisono and Nicolas Delsol, a former postdoctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural History who currently works at Université Laval in Quebec.

With the species and timeframe confirmed, further tests unveiled new insights into how these animals once lived. Wear and tear on the bones showed evidence of bridling, suggesting their use as work animals. Ancient DNA and bone chemistry analysis of the isotopes in tooth enamel suggested that the donkey did not originate in Great Britain but was picked up by settlers along the route of their transatlantic journey.

“Ancient DNA points to Iberia or West Africa, which is consistent with its isotope signature, but the isotopic evidence is also consistent with Trinidad and Tobago, which is not far off the route sailed,” said Krigbaum. 

Examining the wear and tear on the samples also revealed a tragic end for many of these animals. Faced with hunger during the Starving Time and having soured their relationships with nearby indigenous people, settlers were forced to eat their animals and, in the direst situations, their dead. While we have records that horses were consumed during this time, this can also be observed with other samples, including donkey remains. “They show that adult horses were eaten, butchered and cooked or boiled, with most elements split open to extract even the minutest nutritional resources including dental pulp,” the team wrote in their study.

For Krigbaum and his colleagues, the Jamestown assemblage is just the beginning. Their next project will examine horse remains from the 16th century Spanish settlement of Puerto Real, in the Caribbean, to uncover further evidence of how horses and donkeys helped shape the earliest chapters of American history.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adw2595 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Early transatlantic movement of horses and donkeys at Jamestown