Faculty Interviews
Recently, Gary Lindblad, Assistant Dean and Director of the
MBA Program, spoke with three Merage School professors, Vijay Gurbaxani, Mort
Pincus, and Christine Beckman, regarding the Merage School difference.
Gary: How did the Merage School’s thematic
approach to business education come about? How did you decide on the three themes
of strategic innovation, information technology, and analytic decision making?
Vijay: Based on our knowledge of what drivers affect business
today, we did a lot of research with senior executives, alumni, and current
students which pulled us in the direction of these key drivers that essentially
enable companies to deliver and manage sustainable, profitable growth. We identified
strategic innovation because that’s what companies in developed countries
need to focus on in the global economy. Information technology is an enabler
of innovation and allows workers to be much more productive, and therefore,
more competitive at a higher wage level. However, information technology has
made much more data and information available, and managers struggle with how
to manage in the face of all this information. So, our focus on analytic decision
making derives from the availability of vast amounts of information.
Mort: For instance, in my area of accounting we worry about
the volume of information and in my particular area, in terms of external financial
reporting, we’re trying to understand how companies measure and communicate
their activities, including their innovation, their growth plans, and their
productivity enhancements. But doing it in a way where we understand managers’
incentives for reporting, managers’ discretion that they have over measuring
these various activities, and doing it in a way that conveys what they’re
trying to do without giving away proprietary information.
So, it’s a real challenge with all this information available or being
demanded regarding what the company is doing, and at the same time letting people
know what the company is trying to do.
Vijay: Right. It used to be that companies would take two
or three months to close their books, then it reduced to a week, and now they
may need to do it in 24 hours or less to be successful. It really speaks to
the value of information technology. So, today as you have more pertinent information
immediately available, decision making gets better and reflects the state of
the business as up-to-date and accurately as possible.
Christine: It also changes the nature of work because you
don’t need as many people working on the books and closing the books.
A lot of it can be automated with new technology and so what people are doing
day-to-day changes as well.
Vijay: That’s right. So, you focus much more on the
decision-making and much less on the information gathering.
Gary: Why is it important that our MBAs develop
their own point of view on the changes these influences are making on business
today?
Vijay: Business has moved from what I would call a fairly
steady planning-oriented world, maybe a decade or so ago, to a much more rapidly
evolving world. Many of the lessons of the past may or may not apply to the
future. So, understanding how to react to these discontinuities is really critical.
Mort: And the rate of change is unlike anything I’ve
ever seen in my lifetime, and it seems only to be increasing. So, we’re
trying to get MBA students to think rigorously, analytically, globally, strategically-
and to be very flexible and deal with change.
Christine: I think of analytic decision-making as knowing
how to approach a problem, the questions that you need to ask, data that you
need to collect, and how you want to analyze it. It’s not a specific solution
that we’re teaching, it’s a way of approaching a problem and thinking
about a problem.
Gary: How does this get incorporated in the classroom?
Mort: In my Financial Accounting course, the perspective taken
is that of somebody looking at the company as a whole, so right away most issues
are strategic, big picture issues. Then we can drill down.
So, it’s not an accounting course, per se, it’s an MBA course.
And by the way, we’re going to learn some accounting along the way. As
opposed to focusing primarily on teaching someone to be an accountant, we’re
teaching the ability to talk to your accountant and to understand what he or
she is doing- and to be able to communicate with other managers either in or
outside the company about specific issues such as debt or equity, inventories
or investments, stocks, bonds, a whole vocabulary of things. Before they walk
the walk, they’ve got to be able to talk the talk, and we’re giving
them the talk.
Christine: A lot of innovation comes from diverse teams, expressing
different perspectives and encouraging you to think differently. It’s
an important part of analytic decision making, because you have to be able to
defend your position, you have to come up with solutions as a group. So, that’s
a big part in my Organization Behavior class, teaching people to make decisions
together, where students encourage fellow students to be more creative and more
innovative in their solutions.
Vijay: And if you think about the modern organization, teams
become particularly important because they’re how innovation occurs. Often
these aren’t just single-company teams, but they’re diverse teams
from multiple corporations, multiple countries and the issues of how you foster
innovation, build trust and engage in work are critical.
Christine: Yes, because the work is happening in a distributed
fashion- in India and here and China- and you’re managing people in three
different countries in different time zones, and it’s only if everybody’s
working together, that you end up with an innovative product or service design.
Gary: Why is the Paul Merage School of Business
a great place for students to come to grapple with these issues?
Vijay: Because we’re one of a very few business schools
that is confronting head-on the changes that the business world is experiencing.
And I think many business schools continue to offer the traditional curriculum
and we, by virtue of being in California, which is a high-tech gateway to the
Pacific and the world, deal with these issues much more squarely. The companies
that we are surrounded by bring these issues to our attention frequently. The
faculty here have always been thinking about these issues and being smaller
we’re able to deal with change more easily than some of our traditional
competitors.
Christine: I also think that the case studies we choose are
very important in distinguishing the school. We pick up on the school’s
themes in the cases. In my class, we discuss two cases on innovation. We talk
about the organizational structures as well as the reward systems that promote
innovation. We also talk about eBay and how they’re sustaining growth
and how they’ve grown over time. The cases are a really important way
of learning, a way to develop analytic skills, because you’re trying to
take all the data and come up with an assessment about how a company got to
this point and where they need to go from here.
Vijay: That’s right. Everybody can say they do case
studies, but our case selection is based on what we believe is important, and
that helps define a particular direction for the School. Our focus happens both
inside and outside the classroom.
Christine: Yes, we’re often selecting cases around innovation,
around issues of growth and how technology changes management.
* * * *
Faculty Information:
Vijay
Gurbaxani
Professor, Information Systems
Ph.D.,1987, University of Rochester
MS, 1983, University of Rochester
Mort
Pincus
Professor, Accounting
PhD, Washington University (St. Louis).
MA, Temple University.
BS, Temple University.
Christine
Beckman
Associate Professor, Organization & Strategy
Ph.D., Stanford University
M.A., Stanford University
B.A., Stanford University