Graziadio Business Report Blog

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In this video interview, Kurt K. Motamedi, PhD, Professor of Strategy and Leadership at the Graziadio School of Business and Management, discusses strategy, strategy execution, leadership styles (including neurotic managers and their impact), keeping employees motivated, and the shift away from economic opportunism occurring in the U.S. and worldwide. Continue reading ‘The Art of Strategy During a Recession’

Can’t see the above video? Click here to watch or you can read the transcript.

In this video interview, Kevin S. Groves, PhD, Assistant Professor of Organizational Theory and Management at the Graziadio School of Business and Management, discusses his research on executive development and succession planning, managerial thinking styles, social and emotional intelligence, and organizational change.

Dr. Groves’ article, “Integrating Leadership Development and Succession Planning Best Practices,” earned him a Highly Commended Award for Outstanding Paper from the Emerald Publishing Group as part of the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2008. Continue reading ‘Values-Centered Leaders More Successful in the Long Term’

This post first appeared in BizDean Talk and is reprinted with their permission.

Linda Livingstone, PhD

A prominent hedge-fund manager pleads guilty for running a scam with worldwide investor losses as high as $50 billion. A Texas billionaire is accused of conducting an $8 billion investment fraud. A major assisted living operator and its founder are accused of massive securities fraud on $2 billion worth of housing that soured as the real estate market dived. Owners of a company that manage hundreds of millions of dollars for universities and charities stands accused of bilking $100 million from the organizations they purported to help.

And these are just the headlines since December. It leaves an ordinary person with a sense of wide-eyed wonderment. “Who in the world could do such things? How did they get that way? Do they even have a heart?”

As Dean of a large business school, I am often asked about character. Could leaders with some virtue have steered clear of these temptations? Where does character come from? Can business schools influence character? Should they? How?

I would argue that ‘yes,’ character clearly counts in the business world, and ‘yes,’ graduate business schools do have a role in encouraging and developing character.

Countless studies have shown that corporate leaders who demonstrate positive character traits positively impact the long-term reputation of the company. That is why in many business schools, the stated mission focuses on developing leaders with character. As a group, business schools have dedicated tremendous resources to researching, analyzing, teaching and scrutinizing character development. But clearly there is more that needs to be done if the impact is to be meaningful and lasting. Continue reading ‘Putting the Heart Back into Business’

Joseph Lee

Barack Obama swept into the nation’s capitol, and with a few scribbles of his name, started the process of dismantling eight years of Bush policies. He faces a Congress that will largely embrace his changes, mostly because the Democrats have a comfortable majority in the House and only a 2-seat deficit to get to the filibuster proof super majority in the Senate. The economic stimulus package was passed after a hard fought battle. Washington will get its change.

The news from the business world continues to disappoint, but perhaps most surprising is not that the economy is tanking, but the fact that even in these tough times (or perhaps because the times are tough), we discover Madoff’s brazen $50 billion ponzi-scheme, the $1 million renovation of Merrill Lynch’s CEO Office, or the $18 billion of bonuses paid to managers of those very financial institutions that are begging for bail-out funds. Obama instituted a $500,000 max on executives from companies that receive bail-out funds, but it just seems business executives simply “don’t get it.”

Actually, they do get it. The truth is that self interest is the surest way to get ahead in our society. Business leaders simply follow in the footsteps of their bosses, and those bosses are the ones that have shown the rest how to rig the system in their own favor. Board members, even outside directors, are executives of companies who do not want their boards to clamp down on their own compensation packages—it is simply not in their self interest.

Continue reading ‘Why Change Happens in Politics–NOT in Business’

Linnea Bernard McCord, JD, MBA

Peter Drucker, the famous management consultant, who is credited with creating the professional field of management, died a few years ago at age 95. He was the quintessential non-emotional thinker—a voracious reader who observed dispassionately what was going on around him without bias or preconception. He invented the word “knowledge worker” decades before it became a reality.

When asked how he could “see the future,” Drucker is reported to have said that he didn’t see the future; he simply saw what already existed today that others could not and would not see.

While attending university in Germany, Peter Drucker worked as a journalist. Adolf Hitler had already clearly outlined his vision of the world he wanted to create in his book, Mein Kampf, and Drucker had read every word.

As soon as Hitler took office as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Drucker left Germany because he “saw the future.”

Instead of wishing and hoping that Hitler would not be as bad as his book indicated he would be, Drucker dispassionately evaluated the situation as it was. By acting unemotionally on the facts at hand, not what he hoped the facts would be, Drucker escaped the fate of 12 million people who later died in German concentration camps.

Continue reading ‘What You Need to Know About the Future’

This is a guest post by Sean D. Jasso, PhD, practitioner faculty of economics.

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

~ Peter F. Drucker

The big question on the minds of most people is: What is the future of the economy?

The answer is not always found in the news—today’s journalism is often polarized, biased, or not focused on reporting the story, but rather on enhancing a perspective of the story for the benefit of a targeted audience. For example, for several months economists, journalists, and politicians alike have hesitated on how to characterize the state of the economy.

These so-called experts are afraid of saying the r-word, most often associated with recession, or, correctly defined, a contracting economy. Any astute observer can see that the economy is contracting in certain industries while also growing in many others. This ebb and flow is nothing new and since World War II, to use as a benchmark for the modern economy, every decade has experienced the natural phenomenon of growth and decline.

This article’s central objective is to elaborate on the issue of the apparent economic slowdown while providing insight on how history and theory help minimize the confusion. The answer to the big question is not simply recession, but rather, another r-word—resilience. Continue reading ‘The R-Word and the Future of the Economy’

This is a guest post by Linnea B. McCord, JD, MBA, Associate Professor of Business Law

We are only just beginning to comprehend how bad an ethics mess we’re in—but it’s likely to be a real doozy.

Failing CEOs walk away with more than $100 million and Wall Street investment bankers pay themselves many billions of dollars in bonuses even as investors’ returns plummet. State and federal politicians with little or no money when they enter public life are worth tens of millions of dollars just a few short years after leaving office. All of this is against the backdrop of the worst housing downturn since the Great Depression, a massive credit crunch that threatens to wreak havoc on our financial system, mounting layoffs, the possibility of millions losing their homes, rapidly declining state budgets, crushing personal, corporate and federal debt and jihadist Islamic groups that wish to destroy us.

While our first inclination may be to blame “them” for all of our current ethics fiascoes—and there are plenty of “thems” to choose from these days—as a free nation and a free people, we bear the ultimate responsibility for allowing ourselves to get into this ethics mess.

How did we do this you might ask?

The answer is simple—by allowing ourselves to become so ethically confused over the past forty years.

Continue reading ‘Our Ethics Mess’