Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Nancy King Studies Zoo Employees to Learn about the Future of Work

The management discipline is continually looking to understand what motivates people to be engaged, learn, and lead effectively in organizations. Answers often lie in novel incentive structures, cultural change, and top management leadership.  Rarely do managers and scholars look to the relationships of those people as a source of motivation.
Nancy King (DM 2004) focused precisely on such relationships in her DM research, and she argues that relational elements of organizing are particularly important in contemporary society.  To explore the interplay of relationships and organizing, Dr. King studies a novel set of research subjects: zoo docents.  Zoo docents are those folks that teach zoo visitors about the animals.  They are a particularly interesting group because they are completely devoted to the zoo, actively take on additional responsibilities, are continually, enthusiastically learning, and go to great effort to teach new docents.  Most importantly, docents are paid nothing.  That's right, Dr. King was studying volunteers.
In studying volunteers, Dr. King was free to focus on the unorthodox elements of their motivation.  After extensive observation and interviewing, she concluded that "relational practices" are the primary elements of the docent experience, and these relational practices are important to the passion,autonomy, and responsible ethic that is critical for docent-like performance. 
Dr. King argues that docents give us a view into the future of work, an alternative to command-and-control bureaucracies and standardized processes: "In light of the tendencies toward individualization in late modern society, relational organizing provides an opportunity for volunteers to experience a passion for their work, achieve desired social proximity, and be highly efficacious and respected.  In a larger sense, the docents' agency produces a relational model of self-organizing that stands as an alternative to that of bureaucratic, staff-managed volunteerism and, more broadly, to that of impersonal, technocratic and proceduralized depictions of organizing."
Dr. King has co-authored a book chapter on this research with her advisor, Paul Salipante.  The book,Relational Practices, Participative Organizing, (Steyaert & Van Looy eds). will be published later this year by Emerald Publishing in its Advanced Series in Management.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Mary Reidy Leading $4 Million in Smart Grid Training Grants

In April, the Obama Administration announced $100 million in grants for 54 Smart Grid workforce training and development programs across the country.  These programs are expected to train 30,000 Americans to help modernize the electric grid and to develop and implement Smart Grid technologies.
Mary Reidy's (DM 2001) organization, National Grid, won two of these grants for the U.S. northeast region, totaling over $4 million.  Their organization is expected to train between 2600 and 4900 utility workers.  Dr. Reidy was instrumental in the application effort, and managed the relationship with Syracuse University who is a key partner.  She will be leading both projects.
Dr. Reidy joined the strategy team of National Grid after completing the Weatherhead DM program, and has since been involved with the regulatory and commercial sides of the organization.  Last year she was charged with managing relationships with universities, researching Smart Grid opportunities, and applying for U.S. grants.  She credits the DM program with equipping her to provide value in a variety of leadership roles within her organization because it the program enabled her to deal with complex issues by bridging academic scholarship.  When referring to the wealth of untapped academic research she indicates that the program enabled her "to understand, read, and translate what all that means."
In addition to her role with National Grid, Dr. Mary Reidy has also lectured at Union College and has acted as a quantitative methods advisor with the DM program.  In her thesis "Political Economy and Price Ratio Changes: Electric Industry Under Transition," Dr. Reidy explored electric pricing changes from 1990-2000.  She worked under the guidance of Peter Gerhardt and Paul Gottlieb and found that, among other things, deregulation did not appear to be significantly associated with lower electric prices.  She futher argued that while lower electric pricing does appear to foster economic development, it does so in combination with cooperation from all levels of government and industry.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Agustin Arbulu Grows Home Healthcare Business 45%

In 2009, Agustin Arbulu (DM 2000) was recruited from his faculty position at Northwood University's DeVos Graduate School to become CEO of Metro Home Healthcare in Dearborn, Michigan (http://www.metrohomehealthcare.com).  Since that time he has grown the organization 45%, in-part through his focus on high quality and exceptional delivery of service, word-of-mouth marketing, and adding personnel whose values align with those of the organization.  
Dr. Arbulu credits the Weatherhead DM program with helping him "think deeper about a challenge... bringing lessons from other fields and applying them to a problem at hand."   He indicates that his history of continuing education and a background of diverse professional experiences together equip him with the skills to tackle a variety of short term and long term challenges that he faces as an executive - many of the same skills have also enabled him to excel as a graduate educator.
Dr. Arbulu studied workforce development in small manufacturing companies for his doctorate research under the guidance of Paul Salipante and John Aram.  He also holds a JD from the University of Detroit, and a LLM (in Taxation) from New York University.  Over the years he has led a variety of organizations, including a hospital, a manufacturing company, and a community development agency.  In addition to Northwood University, since earning the DM degree Agustin has also held teaching positions with Walsh College, Lawrence Technological University, and Madonna University.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

In Praise of Practitioner Scholars

Practitioner scholars in the Doctor of Management program at Weatherhead are doing some of the most exciting research in the social sciences. There are many reasons that contribute to the importance of their research, and I will present just two of them here. Others will no doubt have different reasons for supporting practitioner scholarship, especially as it is found at Weatherhead, and I hope they will share them with us.
First, practitioner scholars at Weatherhead have a passion for their research topic that is rooted in their lived experience. It is one thing for a non-practitioner scholar to become engaged with a research topic, but something very different for a practitioner to do so. Non-practitioners develop an interest in a research topic as a way of applying and testing theories they are immersed in. There is a pragmatic bent to their interest, but it relates to their inner life-of-the-mind, not their lived experience, and in that sense can verge on being narcissistic.
Practitioner scholars, on the other hand, become interested in a research topic because of their personal experience of having been immersed in the flow of organizational action - struggling with a difficulty that borders on a dilemma and touches an ethical nerve. Our practitioner scholars begin with a deeply human concern, arm themselves with a range of potentially relevant theories, collect and interpret raw data on the phenomenon, and are then in a position to make original and important contributions. Non-practitioner scholars, in contrast, are lucky if they can get beyond their theoretical framework to collect genuinely relevant data, and seldom produce truly interesting findings.
Second, practitioner scholars at Weatherhead are openly committed to changing the world. Non-practitioner scholars see themselves as disinterested observers and carefully avoid contaminating the objectivity of their research with a personal desire to shape the world in a particular way. Our practitioner scholars know first-hand the folly of trying to be disinterested, since they have experienced over and over the impossibility of acting as a manager without creating change. They have a heightened sense of the ethical responsibility each manager has for using organizational power to make the world a better place. They are pragmatists in the best sense of John Dewey, and engage in inquiry with the highest human motive. They seek knowledge to enable action that transforms some aspect of the world toward a more desirable state of affairs.
It is often said that non-practitioner scholars live in something like an ivory tower and seek truth with a capital T about aspects of managing and organizations that they assume to be a stable essence. But, as Chris Argyris argues, by not taking a critical stance aimed at changing the status quo, they are implicitly taking a normative position in favor of maintaining it. Ironically, this implicit commitment to maintaining the status quo contradicts their espoused position of being a disinterested observer.
Richard J. Boland is a Professor of Information Systems and Cognitive Science at the Weatherhead School of Management, and has been involved with the DM program since its inception.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Kathy Buse and Alice Walker Earn Awards at ShowCASE 2010

Kathleen Buse and Alice Walker (both DM 2011) won awards for their research in Case Western Reserve University's annual "Research ShowCASE" event (https://ora.ra.cwru.edu/showcase/index.cfm).  Over 400 researchers were selected from across campus to present posters of their research at the event, and judges rated each presentation for creativity, design, and significance of research.
Kathleen won a "Second Place" award for her research entitled "Against the Odds: Women Who Persist in Non-Academic Engineering Careers."  Under the guidance of Diane Billimoria and Richard Boyatzis, she reported on her research into the factors that affect the decisions of women to remain in engineering positions. 
Alice received an "Honorable Mention" for her work entitled "The Paradox of Evidence Based Management in Higher Education." Under the guidance of Richard Boland, this research studied how a variety of educational institutions went about attempting to implement evidence based management practices.
Alice Walker is the Director of the Human Services Program at Lakeland Community College and holds bachelors and masters degrees in education from Cleveland State University. Kathleen Buse a consultant with CareerCurve and she holds a masters in electrical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology and bachelors degrees in chemical engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Ann Kowal Smith Finds that Balancing Leadership Approaches Drives Innovation

In order to innovate, contemporary leaders are encouraged to be visionaries, to engage and nurture their teams at much higher levels, and to transform organizational cultures.  The command-and-control micromanagement of the industrial age is a relic of the past - certainly no way to bring about the innovation required for modern organizations.  According to a recent study by Ann Kowal Smith (DM 2010), however, leaders should not entirely jettison their top-down managerial repertoire - because in certain circumstances this approach can actually increase organizational innovation.  According to Ann, leaders should actively seek to balance different styles of leadership to encourage increased innovation and better organizational performance.
Management scholars often think about organizational innovation as a dichotomy between exploration and exploitation.  Exploration refers to activity that fosters more radical, longer-horizon innovations that depart from an organization's traditional business activity, whereas exploitation refers to more incremental, shorter-horizon innovations that are extensions of that organization's current business. Recent work has found that visionary, "transformational" leadership encourages exploration whereas top-down, "transactional" leadership drives exploitative innovation. 
In analyzing data from 111 companies across 42 countries, Ann found that the dynamics between leadership and innovation are not quite so simple.  She found that the combination of both transactional and transformational leadership drove the more exploratory forms of innovation that lead to sustained earnings growth, whereas a sole focus on transformational leadership may indirectly inhibit earnings growth over time. According to Ann, "These findings, in fact, seriously question the transformational/transactional leadership dichotomy represented in the academic literature and confirm that good leaders, in practice, must balance multiple, even at times counterintuitive, behavioral styles and approaches to drive innovation and performance.  The right "cocktail" of these behaviors is highly dependent on the context and desired outcomes." 
Ann is currently working with Kalle Lyytinen and Nick Berente to prepare this work for journal submission.  She will be presenting her research at the 2010 Academy of Management's Annual Meeting based on an early version of the paper entitled "The ‘Where' and ‘How' of Exploration and Exploitation: Balancing Leadership Styles to Drive Innovation and Performance."
Ann Kowal Smith is an independent consultant, counseling individuals and organizations on strategy and leadership issues, coaching, communications, and project/initiative management.  She is currently actively involved in issues at the intersection of education and economic development. Previously, Ann held senior-level positions with Heidrick & Struggles, McKinsey & Company, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, LLP, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP, and KeyCorp.  She has taught and been actively involved in the development of curriculum in a Montessori environment, and serves as Chair of the Board of The Montessori High School at University Circle, a new high school that opened to students in Fall 2008. Ann holds a B.A. in History of Art from Bryn Mawr College, an M.A. in History of Art from the University of Michigan, and a J.D. from Case Western Reserve University. 

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Surendra Khambete’s Innovative Product Featured in Business Week

Surendra Khambete (DM 2006) is the president and CEO of Indratech, a company that is radically transforming the $40 billion foam industry.  Their innovative cushioning material, known as "Indura Performance Fiber," which is a safe, green replacement to polyurethane foam, was recently featured in Business Week as an important "Material Innovation" (see:http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/01/0128_material/10.htm).
Polyurethane foam is a ubiquitous product - in virtually every chair, sofa, or mattress - but the material can be harmful to humans and to the environment in a number of ways.  Indura Performance Fiber addresses many of these concerns using polyester which is completely recyclable, hypoallergenic, and naturally flame resistant (http://www.indratech-us.com/index.html ). Indratech has received a bit of notoriety for its innovative product in the press, and is now operating two plants (in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and Elkhart, Indiana).  The company has also recently announced a multi-million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Justice for prison mattresses.
Prior to founding Indratech, Dr. Khambete was the president of 3D Solutions, an engineering firm specializing in product design and engineering for the automotive industry.  He was also formerly the vice president and senior director, technology and development, for Collins & Aikman Corporation. His DM research focused on supplier relationships in the automotive industry, where he developed a concept he called "rational divergence" to explain why good collaborative practices are difficult to duplicate across contexts, and why collaboration in a supply chain so often results in sub-optimal performance.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Evidence-Based Management and the Weatherhead Doctorate in Management

Evidence-Based Management is a movement initiated by several past presidents of a leading academic professional association, the Academy of Management.  It seeks to improve managerial practice by encouraging organizational leaders to use evidence from rigorous scholarly research as a guide in their decision-making.   However, at a time when leaders are seeking new ideas to respond to complex challenges in many fields of management, scholarly knowledge has found little application.  Lack of use is partially due to managerial ignorance of such knowledge and reliance on less rigorously-produced knowledge, and partially to the irrelevance of much scholarly knowledge to managers' practical problems.

A premise of research in the DM and PhD in Management Programs is that the gap between scholarly knowledge and managerial practice can be closed through the proper definition of research studies, definition that produces knowledge that is both rigorous and relevant.  Program members pursue research that 1) is framed in terms of problems experienced by managers, 2) synthesizes theories and prior empirical studies that provide insight into these problems, and 3) uses rigorous methods to produce evidence that has practical value.  Program members engage in field-based studies of this type from the program's first session, providing them with immediate and continuing experience in practical research not provided in traditional PhD programs. Through their own research experiences, members learn both the value and limitations of research-based knowledge and Evidence-Based Management. With other program members and graduates, they form a community of practitioner-scholars that shares knowledge and produces evidence to guide managers' practical decisions.  At the same time, they learn to apply rigorously-produced knowledge to problems and opportunities in their own managerial endeavors.
Paul Salipante is Professor of Marketing and Policy Studies at the Weatherhead School of Management, and has been a faculty member with the DM program since its inception.
Articles on evidence-based management suggested by Prof. Salipante:
Aram, J.D., & Salipante, P. (2003).  Managers as knowledge generators:  The nature of practitioner-scholar research in the nonprofit sector.  Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 14(2), 129-150.

Rousseau, D.M., & McCarthy, S. (2007). Evidence-based management:  Educating managers from an evidence-based perspective.  Academy of Management Learning and Education, 6, 94-101.
Rousseau, D.M, Manning, J., & Denyer D. (2008). Evidence in management and organizational science:  Assembling the field's full weight of scientific knowledge through syntheses.  In A Brief & J. Walsh (Eds.),Annals of the Academy of Management,  Vol. 2.
Briner, R.B., Denyer, D., & Rousseau, D.M. (2009).  Evidence-based management:  Concept cleanup time?  Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(4), 19-32.
Reay, T., Berta, W., & Kohn, M.K. (2009).  What's the evidence of evidence-based management?Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(4), 5-18.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Charles Moses Awarded Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Grant

Charles Moses (DM 2004) was recently selected to be a Fulbright grant recipient from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. This prestigious award funds up to a year of study in Jamaica. Dr. Moses will be teaching a course in entrepreneurship and conducting research on regional competitiveness.  According to Dr. Moses, "Caribbean nations often enjoy comparative advantages but lack competitive advantage.  They have many resources and natural strengths, but they battle to optimize them."  He plans to use his fellowship to examine regional trade and cooperative agreements and how the current global trading rules impact emerging nations.  He will be working at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.
Dr. Moses is currently an assistant professor at the Clark Atlanta University School of Business, where he teaches a variety of management courses and has a noteworthy publication record. He has has published four academic articles, has another forthcoming, His most recent article titled "Entrepreneurial Emergence: Key Congruence Factors and Community Processes." was published in the Spring edition of the International Journal of Business and Economics Perspectives. He is a co-author of the highly influential "Darfur: Making Peace, not war: a Human Rights Perspective", a white paper promoting  civil society in the Sudan.
Dr. Moses credits the "superb training" he received in the Weatherhead DM program with enabling him to win his Fulbright, and to succeed with so much of his research. He is the first DM program graduate to achieve this distinction.  "The DM program changed my life.... it is a very interesting approach to learning and scholarship and they have really, really great teachers who are all very supportive."  As with many transformative experiences, he notes that the DM program was quite demanding intellectually. "It was the most challenging academic experience of my life... a very, very intense intellectual experience. It is unbelievable the way they stretched my brain."  He indicated that the Weatherhead DM program has a unique position within academia: "I know there are other schools out there that are trying to adopt the model, but the DM program is very special. It has been around for ten years ... the fact that they have kept it on the cutting edge is very laudable."
Dr. Moses has a rich and diverse body of experience to draw upon in his teaching and his research. He is also a Visiting Lecturer at the Mona School of Business at the University of the West Indies, where he teaches an MBA course in strategy and a doctoral level seminar entitled "Internationalization of SME's". He has worked for a variety of organizations around the world, including Newsday and New York Newsday, Labat Africa, Deloitte & Touché (South Africa), and Edupark (South Africa).  He has also served in as a cabinet-level advisor to former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and as a Deputy Press secretary for the New York City Comptroller.