Chinese and Indian Professionals Respond Differently to Change Messages

Organizations must continually innovate in order to remain competitive, and many of these organizations do so in diverse cultural contexts around the globe.  So managers find themselves driving change processes across locations around the globe, but do so with little guidance about how different strategies might impact the success of the change in different cultural contexts. 

In an attempt to begin understanding how different change strategies play out in different countries, Dr. Humayun Rashid (DM 2008) studied the reactions of Indian and Chinese (in Malaysia) business professionals toward a large-scale change.  In the spirit of practitioner-scholarship, Dr. Rashid focused on "actionable" strategies that managers can influence - in this case the nature of the change message.  There are three broad forms of change messages: "discrepancy" (does the organization need the change?); "valence"( what's in it for me?); and "support" (are others in favor of the change?). He studied the impact of change messages on "affective" forms of commitment to change, a form of commitment that has been shown in academic research to be particularly important to bringing about change (according to the work of the University of Western Ontario's John P. Meyer, among others).                                                     

Through a series of nested statistical analyses, Dr. Rashid found significant differences in how Chinese and Indian professionals responded to different change messages, and that these differences were also associated with their ages.  For example Chinese professionals over the age of 30 responded with affective commitment to change messages that emphasized "valence" or the value of the change to the individual (i.e. "what's in it for me?").  Chinese professionals under 30, on the other hand, responded with affective commitment more for "discrepant" messages, or those that emphasized the importance of the change for the organization.     Indian professionals generally did not respond to change messages with affective forms of commitment, but instead tended toward more reactive, non-affective forms of commitment ("continuance commitment") based on "valence" and "support" messages.

Dr. Rashid has presented portions of his research at the Academy of Management's Annual Meeting and the Americas Conference of Information Systems.  He is currently working with Weatherhead faculty Dick Boland and Nick Berente to prepare this work for journal submission.

Dr. Humayun Rashid is CEO and Managing Partner of Xavor Corporation, an Irvine, California-based global management & technology consulting firm (www.xavor.com ). Prior to founding Xavor in 1995, Dr. Rashid worked and consulted with global organizations such as AST Computers, Paramount Pictures, Boeing, Standard Chartered Bank, IBM and Microsoft in areas of CRM, SCM, PLM, ERP, Knowledge Management and Human Workflow & Process Integration. In addition to his DM, Dr. Rashid holds a Bachelor in Information Systems from the University of Texas, Austin and an MBA from UC Irvine, California.

Michael Grieves - International Author Completing Second Book

Dr. Michael Grieves (DM 2000) entered Case's Doctorate of Management program as a CEO of a technology company, one of the many successful organizations that he founded over the course of his entrepreneurial career.  It was at a point in his life when he was "looking for something different to do... to transition from CEO to a thought leader."  This is precisely what he did. Dr. Grieves is now one of the world's foremost authorities on product lifecycle management (or "PLM"), an approach to managing all aspects of a product's life and eliminating waste across the supply chain. 

Upon completing the program, Dr. Grieves wrote the definitive book on PLM, titled Product Lifecycle Management:  Driving the Next Generation of Lean Thinking.  The book was published by McGraw Hill in 2006 and has been translated to seven languages and is sold around the world.  He is now completing a follow-up to this book titled Virtually Perfect, which focuses on how organizations can use virtual products to drive lean innovation processes.  According to Dr. Grieves, the Weatherhead DM program was instrumental in preparing him for this portion of his career, in part by exposing him to the canonical works by academic authors, but also by preparing with the ability to "craft ideas and pull them together." 

Dr. Michael Grieves currently acts as a consultant to NASA's space program, and has consulted across a variety of complex product organizations, including those in automotive and aerospace industries.  He continues to have ownership in a variety of organizations, is a leader of the PLM Center for Excellence at Purdue University, and is an Adjunct Professor with the University of Iowa.

Betty Moon Finds Learning Styles & Adaptability Drive Sales Performance

As products continually become more complex, the role of salespeople in bringing these products to market continues to be critical to organizational success.  While research has found that the competence and trustworthiness of salespeople is important for nurturing customer relationships, Dr. Betty Moon (DM 2008), argues that the preferred learning styles of salespeople are particularly important for selling complex, abstract products such as financial services.

To explore this issue, Dr. Moon studied over 400 salespeople in the financial services industry.  She found that an abstract learning style is positively associated with sales performance.  In part this is because a tendency toward abstract reasoning appears to enable salespeople to be more flexible in certain ways. This research is particularly important because abstract reasoning is not an attribute which is typically associated with salespeople. In addition, Dr. Moon's continuing research is focusing on the impacts of adapting and delivering training programs for sales people in which learning styles are explored and discussed.  Early indications suggest that raising the awareness of sales personnel about the impacts their customers' learning styles may play in the relationship selling process can positively impact the customer/salesperson relationship.

Much of Dr. Moon's work is based on the research of Weatherhead Faculty David Kolb and Richard Boyatzis known as the "Learning Style Inventory" and "Adaptive Style Inventory." A prime example of practitioner scholarship, Dr. Moon's research leverages well-established academic theory to help with the particular practice-based issue she faces every day.  She has presented her work at a number of organizations, most recently for the Bank Insurance and Securities Association conference in Miami (March 2010).  This work was also featured in that organization's magazine: http://www.bisanet.org/bism/2010/leveraging.html.

Dr. Betty Moon a Senior Vice President with Bank of America's HomeLoan division based in Charlotte, where she is a member of the National Sales Performance team.  In addition, Betty is a partner of MoonInsights, LLC, a corporate consulting and coaching firm (www.mooninsights.com ).  MoonInsight's consultants provide "Sales Centric" leadership training and employee assessments to improve employee selection and training and positively impact sales outcomes and firm profitability.

17 DM Papers Accepted to Academy of Management Meeting

A key element of the DM program involves learning to conduct research and write research articles that meet academic demands of rigor and theory while at the same time addressing the relevant problems of practice.  Over the course of the program, each student writes three articles: one to report the results of the initial theoretical inquiry; one to communicate the outcomes of a qualitative study; and one to report the findings of a quantitative study. Students are expected to send those  articles to relevant academic conferences for review and presentation.

This work is aimed at major academic events with stringent acceptance and quality criteria, which include the Academy of Management's Annual Meeting, the premier conference for management scholars from around the world. In January, 2010 twenty DM students submitted to the Academy of Management's Annual Meeting and the  results are just in.  These submissions were peer-reviewed and held to a strict academic standard for rigor, relevancy and interest-value.  Results of the review process have been delivered, and 17 of these articles have been accepted - 8  quantitative papers and 9 qualitative papers. Overall our acceptance rate is over 85%, which is well beyond the average acceptance rate of roughly 40%.  

The DM program presents the largest single group presenting research at the meeting. We are very proud of this achievement as it shows that DM students regularly meet the standards of high quality research. Another aspect is the amazing variety of the papers presented. The papers are presented in  multiple major divisions of the Academy of Management including:  Entrepreneurship, Managerial and Organizational Cognition, Organization and Management Theory, Organization Development and Change, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Communication & Information Systems, Public and Nonprofit Organizations, Technology & Innovation Management, and Business Policy and Strategy. Overall it shows that this program - with excellent students,  careful and continued guidance by the faculty, and inspiring intellectual environment - can produce outstanding results.

Author: Kalle Lyytinen

Director of the DM Program

Transformation through Scholarship

Through my work with a number of DM students and alumni, I have come to realize that the DM experience is essentially about transformative change.  There are several ways to characterize this change. First, most students enter the program with the idea that their engagement with the program will help them change their career path and transform it to something different and hopefully better in achieving their personal goals. These "instrumental" goals of learning are not substantially different of those why people enroll in MBA, or some other professional programs, and these goals are often met - many graduates do different things after the program. Many start a new business, change their business focus, or engage more intensely with academia as educators or administrators. But the transformative force of the DM program goes much deeper than career changes.  DM students and alumni widely report a fundamental change in their thinking and world-view.

In most cases DM graduates say that the program transformed how they see themselves as managers, colleagues, or citizens of the world. The deep and intense three year engagement in assimilating, building, critiquing, and communicating knowledge about management challenges and problems has changed what they read, how they read, who they think they are, how they think, with whom they communicate (more with their DM colleagues across the globe!), and how they consequently approach management problems and practice. They are more thorough in their analysis, exercise critical thinking, deploy multiple perspectives, and are open to multifaceted reasoning about a variety of management topics. Of course, this transformative experience is difficult and challenging, but in the end it is the most enduring effect of the program: the DM program literally transforms the self through creating new and different ways of looking at the management world.

This idea of "transformation" informs the overall design of the program. We are engaged in transforming the idea of management scholarship. Instead of remaining mired in abstract theory removed from practice (as is common in doctoral programs), we are trailblazing a new path - one where research practice is intertwined with practical, actionable theory.  We achieve this by cutting across the standard contradictions prevalent in doctoral education and look to synthesize theory and practice, rigor and relevance, and knowledge and action.  We start with practicing managers who seek to learn and engage in the theoretical management discourse and end up with practicing scholars who seek to engage in management action in new ways. In this way the line between practice and theory is blurred: the two are juxtaposed with a transformative impact.

Author: Kalle Lyytinen

Director of the DM Program

Rachel Daniel-Talton Named Top Woman Business Owner

Rachel Daniel-Talton (DM 2010), the president of Synergy Marketing Strategy & Research, Inc. (Synergy), has recently been named one of the Top Ten Women Business Owner in Northeast Ohio, according to the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). The Top Ten event will be Wednesday, April 21 at Landerhaven in Cleveland.

Of course, awards are not new to Rachel, in the past she has been awarded the Crain's Cleveland Business Top Forty under 40,Kaleidoscope Magazine Top 40-Under-Forty leaders in Northeastern Ohio, Who's Who in Black Cleveland, and the 2007 "Most Influential Business Leaders in Northeast Ohio" of the Call & Post. She is also a member of Beta Gamma Sigma International Business Honor Society, has received the Blue Key Oratory Award, Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Minority Business of the Year, and numerous professional and speaking commendations.

Rachel is regularly featured in numerous business publications, and is one of the premier business bloggers among African Americans with her company's blog (http://synergycem.com/blog/). Synergy designs and implements extensive marketing strategy, brand development, and research projects with organizations as diverse and global as Microsoft and Proctor & Gamble and  as targeted and local as the Cleveland Airport and the Neighborhood Centers Association.

Each of these organizations have had a need to understand and influence stakeholder behaviors to drive results. Rachel's firm has been recognized as one of the best and brightest by its peers. Most importantly, it is recognized as an extremely effective and passionate partner by its clients.

Rachel is pursuing her Doctor of Management at Weatherhead, and her research focuses on the importance of companies to build trust in times with the industrial environment is distrusted. She holds an Executive M.B.A. and a B.A. in Psychology from Cleveland State University. Two of Rachel's academic papers, Dare to Build Trust in Times of Distrust: Findings from Banking, Healthcare and Retailing Industries, which she co-authored with Jagdip Singh and Nick Berente, and Winning Consumer Trust and Loyalty in Distrust-Dominated Environments: A Consumer Perspective, have been accepted to the Academy of Management for presentation in Montreal in August 2010.