Business School Faculty Research Articles

Ethics and responsibility in relationship marketing

Purpose– The role of ethical issues is growing in business and in society, but surprisingly, that role is sparsely examined in the relationship-marketing context. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework describing the fundamentals of ethical relationship marketing and analyses the content of six selected textbooks on the subject.Design/methodology/approach– The paper sheds light on ethics in a significant marketing sub-discipline, i.e. relationship marketing.Findings– The findings confirm previous findings from analyses of teaching material in marketing, indicating that ethical issues are superficially treated. None of the books has separate sections devoted to ethical issues. Key words selected to represent ethical issues are sparsely used.Research limitations/implications– There is considerable room for improvement if business schools are to prepare their students for the challenges in the future business world. Through the analysis of the textbook, and the recommendations, this study contributes to such improvement in one marketing discipline which is considered to represent a paradigm shift in marketing because it is fundamentally different from transaction-based marketing.Practical implications– The paper presents suggestions for how to encourage faculty and students to develop awareness about ethical relationship marketing, and recommends courses to improve learning about the subject.Originality/value– The framework of the fundamentals of ethical relationship marketing, a textbook analysis, and implications for business school faculty.

Partnership between CTSI and Business Schools Can Promote Best Practices for Core Facilities and Resources

Biomedical research enterprises require a large number of core facilities and resources to supply the infrastructure necessary for translational research. Maintaining the financial viability and promoting efficiency in an academic environment can be particularly challenging for medical schools and universities. The Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute sought to improve core and service programs through a partnership with the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. The program paired teams of Masters of Business Administration students with cores and programs that self-identified the need for assistance in project management, financial management, marketing, or resource efficiency. The projects were developed by CTSI project managers and business school faculty using service-learning principles to ensure learning for students who also received course credit for their participation. With three years of experience, the program demonstrates a successful partnership that improves clinical research infrastructure by promoting business best practices and providing a valued learning experience for business students.

The Quality of Business Ethics Journals

With growth in the quantity of business ethics journals in recent years, assessments of journal quality are helpful to ethics researchers and administrators, as researchers consider available publication venues, and administrators consider the value of faculty research. The few published evaluations of business ethics journals have predominantly utilized two methods of journal quality determination: citation analysis and surveys of active researchers. This study employs a novel method to assess business ethics journals: 83 Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) business schools provided their internally developed journal lists (IDJ lists) that were used to evaluate faculty research, and the submitted lists were then analyzed for the presence and assessment of business ethics journals. This analysis yielded a ranking of 24 business-ethics-centric (BEC) journals, and this ranking reflects the collective judgments of AACSB business school faculties. The results of this study are pragmatic in that the journal evaluation data employed metrics actually used by business schools to determine the quality of business ethics journals. These findings also provide additional impetus for the recognition of business ethics as a distinct business discipline and business ethics research as a unique field of scholarly endeavor. While studies of business ethics may be influential when they are published in non-BEC journals, such studies may be more powerfully impactful when published in BEC journals.

Dispersed sensemaking: Online career community as a tool for proactive socialization

Organizational entry is critical for individuals as are newcomer socialization strategies applied during it. Research has advocated for individuals to be more proactive, rather than relying on institutionally-led socialization. We seek to enlarge proactive socialization research and practice to illustrate how external referents (in addition to internals) may provide valuable interpretative and psycho-social support, thus expanding sensemaking. To promote this view we followed a geographically dispersed online career community of first year business school faculty. These participants interacted in a blog like space – providing self-reflection and support to one another. Grounded theory of the blogs along with post-hoc interviews illustrates how external referents expand sensemaking.

Tribute to L. L. Waters

In Memoriam Long-time members of the American Society of Transportation and Logistics and readers of the Transportation Journal were saddened by news of the death of Dr. L. L. Waters at age 99 on September 8, 2012. To us, the sense of loss struck by Dr. Waters’ passing was sharpened by our decades-long direct acquaintance with him as a professor, a trusted and caring provider of sage counsel, and a friend. Before going further, we need to explain that the initials “L. L.” stand for “Lawrence Leslie.” Friends and colleagues commonly addressed him informally as “Les.” Infrequently, he would be identified formally in print as “L. Leslie Waters.” In virtually all other instances, ranging from bylines on published articles to title pages in books and entries on signatory pages and business cards, “L. L. Waters” was imprinted. Transportation was Dr. Waters’ primary area of focus during his service between 1948 and 1978 as a faculty member in the School of Business at Indiana University (IU). However, his teaching and research interests and expertise reached across much if not most of the wider sphere of business and economic subject matter. One manifestation of this was his teaching of business policy, the cross-functional capstone course for MBA students. As for his published research, the books, monographs, and articles that he authored and coauthored over the course of his career covered topics involving every mode of transport and extended beyond to migratory labor, manufacturing, trade barriers, executive compensation, taxation, and business management case problems. In essence, he was a true “boundary spanner” before the term achieved popular use. Current space prohibits unabridged recitation of Dr. Waters’ professional biography. However, a sampling of additional specimens of the breadth of his work is in order.

An exploratory investigation into faculty motivation to publish: a study of business school faculty in India

A survey was conducted amongst the faculty of the top business schools of India, to compute a model based on factor loadings, with faculty research publication as the dependent variable. This study shows that faculty in general assign importance to self motivation and to the extrinsic rewards of research grants and job security, while for IIM faculty peer pressure is the main motivating factor to publish. It was also found that years in academics and seniority in rank are favourable to faculty research publication. This study indicates that the lack of ‘publish or perish’ pressure on faculty in India is linked to the dearth of faculty research publications, and it is suggested that the higher education system needs to be reformed so as to incentivise and motivate faculty to publish more.

Deans on Business Schools & Informal Economies

The primary objective or takeaway from this symposium is to stimulate thinking by business school administrators and faculty about how to incorporate the topic of the informal economy into the curr...

From Doctoral Student To Faculty Member: Ph.D. Project Alumnis Evaluation Of Their Preparedness

In response to the important issues regarding diversity in business schools and corporate America, the KPMG Foundation established the PhD Project. The PhD Project helps business professionals and recent college graduates earn doctoral degrees in business disciplines and join business school faculty. While the PhD Project has helped increase the number of minority faculty members in business schools, it may be helpful to gather insights from the recent PhD alumni who have received support from the PhD Project. Our study examines attitudes about preparedness of PhD Project alums for their first faculty position after completing their PhD program. Results show that PhD Project alumni and majority PhD alumni (alumni not associated with the PhD Project) felt they were prepared for their first faculty position, but they were not significantly different in their evaluation in most respects. However, to our surprise, majority PhD alumni felt they were better prepared for research than PhD Project alumni. This difference was significant and further analyses showed that younger faculty and those in the ethnic majority were better prepared for research. Both groups considered themselves well prepared for research and teaching. Neither group was as optimistic about being prepared for service responsibilities and the academic climate or politics of an academic career. Our findings show that the PhD Project is necessary to help ensure that minority faculty members are adequately prepared for research and their academic careers.

Business Journals Combat Coercive Citation

A. W. Wilhite and E. A. Fong (“Coercive citation in academic publishing,” Policy Forum, 3 February, p. [542][1]) perform a valuable service in exposing the practice by some journal editors to increase their journals' impact factors by coercing authors to add frivolous citations to recent works in their journals. Wilhite and Fong point to a handful of business journals as being among the worst offenders. They name names in table S12. As a former head of the Policy Board of the Journal of Consumer Research, I can attest that business journal editors have a strong self-interest in stamping out coercive citation, and they have taken concrete steps to do so over the past 2 years. In August 2010, 15 marketing journal editors met specifically to discuss and root out the practice. On 15 November 2010, 26 editors of some of the most prestigious journals in business wrote a letter to more than 600 business school deans decrying coercive citation ([ 1 ][2]). They argued that journal editors would have little incentive to engage in coercive citation if deans and business school faculties judged articles on their own merits rather than based on impact factors of the journals in which they were published. The 26 editors recommended vigilance in identifying spikes in the ratio of citations coming from their own journals relative to others, which might signal editorial manipulation by a new editorial team. Those efforts have borne fruit; the journals in my own field have taken the pledge. I hope that Wilhite and Fong's Policy Forum will produce a much broader impact across the sciences. 1. [↵][3]1. J. G. Lynch , Frivolous Journal Self-Citation (2010); . [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1212540 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text

Ranking Business and Economics Journals in South America Using the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO)

Access to published research for knowledge creation and education in the administrative science disciplines in South America has been enhanced since the introduction of the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO). Although SciELO has been available as an online journal indexing and publication service since 1998, there have been no bibliometric investigations conducted to identify the quality of journals available through the database. The authors used 4 common ranking measures and an overall index to evaluate the quality of SciELO journals. Age and discipline of the journal seem to be important factors to support impact and ranking. Implications of the findings for business school faculty, administrators, and researchers are discussed.

The PhD Project: How Successful Is It?

The PhD Project’s mission to diversify the work force by increasing the diversity of business school faculty is quite admirable, but is the Project successful? To gather insights toward responding to that question and to offer suggestions, we reviewed three of the Project’s objectives that relate most closely to minority doctoral students and faculty members. We examined the Project’s website, held discussions with Project staff members, and surveyed Project alumni. Among the myriad of PhD Project activities, the most important are its annual November conference for potential doctoral students and its annual minority doctoral student association meetings for each of five academic disciplines (accounting, finance, information systems, management and marketing). The annual conference attracts between 350 and 400 individuals from which about 10% enroll in doctoral programs each year. The doctoral student associations have over 1,400 members of which some 400 are current doctoral students and the others are faculty members. The Project is making significant progress toward accomplishing its mission and objectives. Areas where the Project could improve its accomplishments include identifying why those who have considered enrollment have not done so, placing greater emphasis on teaching and service at minority doctoral student association conferences, and strengthening mentoring relationships.

CHIEF EXPLORATION OFFICER

What can we learn from a global adventurer?Sir Ranulph Fiennes is the world's greatest living explorer, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, as well as a prolific author. Also honoured for his charitable works, he recently spoke to some 400 London Business School MBA students, faculty and guests at Lord's Cricket Ground as part of the school's ‘London Talks’ series. Georgina Peters says the man, and his adventurous achievements, offer valuable lessons.

Some Comments On: A Historical Note On The Proof Of The Area Of A Circle

In a recent paper by Wilamowsky et al. [6], an intuitive proof of the area of the circle dating back to the twelfth century was presented. They discuss challenges made to this proof and offer simple rebuttals to these challenges. The alternative solution presented by them is simple and elegant and can be explained rather easily to non-mathematics majors. As business school faculty ourselves, we are in agreement with the authors. Our article is motivated by them and we present yet another alternative method. While we do not make an argument that our proposed method is any simpler, we do feel it may be easier to communicate to business school students. In addition, we present a solution using a rectangle which could be left as an exercise for the student after a brief explanation in class. Finding the area of a stack of rectangles with a rectangle as a starting point may seem redundant at first. However, we show that it is actually an excellent algebraic exercise for students since it offers a certain challenge which a square does not. We also solve this exercise using the quicker triangular approach and feel it can be appreciated by students in an Introduction to Calculus course. We also provide two interesting links that demonstrate the work of the ancient mathematicians for this well known problem.

Employer Perceptions Of Student Informational Interviewing Skills And Behaviors

Employers continue to report that soft skills are critically important in obtaining employment and achieving long-term career success. Given the challenging job market for college graduates, business school faculty need to provide practical opportunities for students to develop their soft skills in professional settings. A longitudinal study was conducted at a Midwestern university’s AACSB accredited College of Business to determine the soft skills that employers believe students need to improve on to be successful. This paper shares 1) a management-oriented learning assignment that combines soft skill learning and application with professionals in work situations and 2) results of the professionals’ perceptions of the students’ soft skills. Results of this research will help faculty assess and improve their instructional methodology to better prepare students to meet employer expectations.

Short‐term study abroad: a transformational approach to global business education

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer an approach to global business education that offers a transformative experience for students and results in greater confidence and expertise.Design/methodology/approachA model of global business competence is described, as well as an approach to global business education involving a short‐term study abroad experience. Transformational learning practices were embedded in the course design. Surveys were collected at two different times in the short‐term study abroad course to demonstrate changes in students' confidence and expertise. The first survey was conducted after completing reading assignments and classroom‐based instruction (Time 1) and the second was collected upon returning from the study abroad experience (Time 2).FindingsResults indicated a significant change in students' perceptions of their global business competence from Time 1 to Time 2, indicating the benefits of the short‐term study abroad experience beyond classroom instruction and readings.Research limitations/implicationsFurther clarification regarding the specific short‐term study abroad experiences that had the most impact on student outcomes would further our knowledge of how to design and structure these experiences to maximally enhance global business expertise and effectiveness for business students. In addition, future research may explore longer‐term student outcomes as a result of the short‐term study abroad experience.Practical implicationsBusiness school faculty and administrators may identify practices described in this study that they could incorporate to enhance their global business education courses or study abroad experiences.Originality/valueThis paper builds on transformational learning and global business literature to provide a practical approach to graduate business education. A framework for defining global business competence and pedagogical design principles that promote transformational learning is offered and may be of interest to business school faculty and administrators.

The Ethics Of Business School Faculty: A Survey

A mail questionnaire completed by business school faculty and administrators across the United States revealed that both job applicants and business faculty are engaging in unethical behavior. The paper reports this finding by type of unethical behavior, by college of business accreditation status and by degree-levels granted at the institution.

Fourth Annual Logistics Faculty Salary Survey

AbstractWhile the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International conducts an annual survey of business school faculty and administrative salaries, the standard reporting does not specify salary figures for logistics (and related areas such as supply chain management) faculty. Since the growth in the number of logistics faculty positions has continued to exceed the output of doctoral programs in the field for more than a decade, it is logical to assume that logistics faculty salaries, at all levels, are increasing. However, without factual data, questions such as what salary should a new logistics PhD expect, and what should an administrator budget for a logistics faculty position, cannot be answered satisfactorily. Moreover, everyone expects and wants to be adequately compensated. However, for the specific discipline of logistics and supply chain management (SCM), the data on average compensation across different ranks, institutions, and other such factors is not available. In order to provide such factual data, the authors have developed a survey to collect annual data on logistics and supply chain faculty salaries. This year’s survey was the fourth in the past five years.

Selected Ethical Issues in the Analysis and Reporting of Research: Survey of Business School Faculty in Malaysia

This study reports the perceptions of business school faculty on ethical behaviors related to data analysis and research reporting as well as the prevalence of such behaviors in their academic environment. Survey data for the study were obtained from a sample of 102 business school faculty from five government-funded universities in Malaysia. Study results showed that a majority of the respondents considered practices such as fabrication, manipulation, and distortion of data to be ethically unacceptable, and these behaviors were reported to be least prevalent. In contrast, the practice of misapplying statistical techniques was considered ethically acceptable and reported to be quite prevalent. On research reporting, although a majority of the respondents agreed that plagiarism and taking undeserved authorship credit were ethically unacceptable, they also reported having observed the frequent occurrence of such behaviors. Finally, practices such as cutting up research data and simultaneous submissions to more than one publication outlet at the same time were less likely to be viewed as unethical and seen to be quite a common practice. In general, the findings of this study indicate that the perceptions of the ethicality and frequency of occurrence of behaviors related to data analysis and research reporting vary among business school faculty.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Social Identity and Corporate Mergers

Social psychology is concerned with people interacting as members of social groups. Cor- porate mergers provide an interesting field to apply social psychological theory in practice and also provide a context for the test and development of such theories. Mergers and acquisitions have been shown to often fail their financial and other strategic aims – one key reason for this failure is that human resources, that is, the needs of employees involved in the merger, are often considered less important than legal, techno- logical or other factors by senior managers. In particular, it is often the merger’s impact on employee identities as members of the pre-merger organizations and its consideration by change leaders that determines the merger’s failure or success. The article ‘Social Identity and Corporate Mergers’ utilizes a social identity approach to analyze the problem zones of mergers and we provide research suggesting how to lead a merger into success. In particular, leaders should provide reasons for why the merger is necessary, they should demonstrate actual and future continuity to reduce uncertainties due to the merger situation and leaders should pay attention to status differentials (e.g., between employees of the acquiring versus the acquired organization) as employees of the lower status merger partner have different concerns than employees of the higher status merger organization.

Investigation of Factors Affecting Information Literacy Student Learning Outcomes Fails to Undercover Significant Findings

Objective – To ascertain the factors influencing student learning during information literacy instruction (ILI) and create a theoretical model based on those factors.
 
 Design – Mixed methodology consisting of interviews and an assessment test.
 
 Setting – Three Canadian business schools.
 
 Subjects – Seven librarians, 4 library administrators, 16 business faculty, and 52 undergraduate business students were interviewed, and the Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS) test was administered to 1,087 undergraduate business students across three different business schools.
 
 Methods – The authors used an interview script to conduct interviews with librarians, library administrators, business school faculty, and undergraduate business school students at three business schools in Canada. The authors also administered the SAILS test to undergraduate business students at the same three Canadian business schools.
 
 Main Results – ILI works best when it is related to an assignment, part of the curriculum, periodically evaluated, adequately 
 funded, timely, mandatory, interactive, uses handouts, provides the proper amount of information, and favourably viewed within the school. ILI student learning outcomes are affected by whether the students find the ILI beneficial and relevant, their year in the program, gender, status as international or domestic student, and overall academic achievement.
 
 Conclusion – Creation of theoretical model consisting of the three main factors influencing student learning outcomes in information literacy instruction: learning environment, information literacy components, and student demographics.