Nan (Peter) Liang, Assistant professor at Louisiana State University, is a scholar
in the school of business. His journey as an academic is devoted to answering one
simple question: why people believe and do things when it makes no sense at all. To
seek understanding of this question, his research interests include rationality, theory
of argumentation, communicative action, and the application of these theoretical perspectives
to various issues. During his time as a Ph.D student, he conducted research on malicious
insiders of organization and online deceptions, trying to understand why people turn
against the organization that they work for, and why people spend their time lying
on the Internet. After he received his Ph.D and published several articles on these
two fields, he soon turned to sociology approach, instead of psychology theories,
to study the abnormal belief and behaviors, because he now considers the abnormal
belief and behaviors as more of a societal level problem other than individual phenomenon.
Among many other topics, he is particularly interested in why people believe in absurd
Fake News and conspiracy theories, as well as why academic findings do not often resonate
with non-academic audience.
Liang, N., Hirschheim, R., & Chen, D. (2021). Using argument analysis to understand
the efficacy of written communication for disseminating academic findings to practitioners.
European Journal of Information Systems
Glancy III, F., Biros, D., Liang, P., Luse, A. (2020). Classification of Malicious
Insiders and the Association of the Forms of Attacks. Journal of Criminal Psychology
Liang, N., Biros, D.P., and Luse, A. (2016) “An Empirical Validation of Malicious
Insider Characteristics”, Journal of Management Information Systems
Liang, N., Warkentin, M., Straub, D. (2021). Expanding the Scope of Investigations
into the Application of Neutralization Theory to the Context of Employee Security
Policy Violation. IFIP 8.11 /11.13 Dewald Roode Information Security Workshop, Austin,
TX.
Liang, N. and Schwarz, A., “Relationship Between The Pathological Traits and Different
Types of Malicious Attacks”, IFIP 8.11/11.13 Dewald Roode Information Security Workshop,
2019
Liang, N., Biros, D.P., and Luse, A. “Taxonomy of Malicious Insiders: A Proof of Concept
Study”, AMCIS, Aug, 2016.
Liang, N., Hammer,B, and Pearson, J., “Linguistic Network Analysis of Online Reviews:
A Deception Detection Study”, DSI, Nov, 2016.
Liang, N. and Biros, D.P., Luse, A., “Validating Common Characteristics of Malicious
Insiders: Proof of Concept Study, 19th HICSS, Jan 2016.
Liang, N., Biros, D.P., “Malicious Insiders: Who Might Be the Ephialtes in Your Organization?”,
The Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education (CISSE), Jun, 2016.
Liang, N. and Biros, D.P., “Identifying Common Characteristics of Malicious Insiders”,
Proceedings of the Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law, May 2015.
Bringing high-reliability safety culture decisions into focus: Training with interactive
fuzzy cognitive mapping.
2020-2023
- Funding Agency: National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
- Role: Co-PI, Site PI at LSU;
- Amount: $684,054 Total ($286,832 to LSU)