Stanford GSB: Stanford Business May 2000

Stanford Business

May 2000, Volume 68, Number 3

photograph Joel Podolny, Anat Admati, and Rod Kramer were named to endowed chairs for the first time in February.
Photograph by Saul Bromberger

Endowed Chairs for Seven Faculty
IN A SURPRISE CEREMONY at a faculty reception in February, seven faculty members were named to endowed chairs—effective September 1—three for the first time. Joel Podolny, named William R. Timken Professor of Organizational Behavior and Strategic Management, is codirector of the Global Organization of Business Enterprise Initiative, which investigates the organizational structures and practices used by large firms to meet the challenges of the globalizing economy. Podolny codeveloped the MBA core course Managing in the Global Economy and served as interim faculty director of the School's Global Management Program. Anat Admati, named Joseph McDonald Professor of Finance and Economics, is a finance theorist who studies market microstructure and trading with asymmetric information. Her research has won her a grant from the National Science Foundation and Batterymarch and Alfred A. Sloan fellowships. Roderick Kramer, named William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior, is an international figure in the study of the social psychology of organizations. His work includes research on trust and cooperation in social systems, the origins and dynamics of conflict, entrepreneurship in organizations, and identity and decision making.

Three of the four faculty who currently hold chairs were named to new chairs donated by alumni/ae. They are: David Baron, who will become the David S. and Ann M. Barlow Professor in Management; Garth Saloner, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management, and Economics; and Robert Wilson, the Adams Distinguished Professor in Management. Former dean A. Michael Spence, who returned to the faculty last fall, was named to an existing chair. Spence becomes the Atholl McBean Professor of Economics and Management.

IN RECOGNITION OF HIS EXTRAORDINARY contributions to the School, Charles Holloway, who served for seven years as an associate dean and today is codirector of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, was honored with the Robert T. Davis Award, presented by the School's faculty.

"They had you in mind when they wrote the description for this award," former dean Robert Jaedicke said in remarks read at a February 27 reception.

Faculty colleague Michael Harrison described two of Holloway's important traits: the value he places on academic enterprise and his behavior toward other people. "The dictionary defines courtesy as generosity, consideration, and cooperation," said Harrison. "Chuck is the most courteous person I have ever known."

Addressing his faculty colleagues, Holloway said: "We are all institution builders in some sense. When you have people who are competitive and who strive for excellence and put them in one organization, it doesn't always work. We have been fortunate to have deans who have been able to take excellent, competitive colleagues and put us together into an organization.

"That has colored what I've done. It's something we as a school have that's not easy to maintain. It's worth striving for."

In the early 1990s, Holloway, the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Professor of Management, helped develop a cooperative program between industry and the business and engineering schools at Stanford. Known today as the Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing, the joint effort was the impetus behind an MBA/MSE degree and a PhD program for scholars preparing to teach in manufacturing programs in major universities.

Holloway coteaches the popular MBA elective Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities, in which students analyze a business opportunity, create a business plan, and make a presentation to a panel of faculty, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs.

THE BOOK Hot Groups: Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using Them to Ignite Your Organization, by Jean Lipman-Blumen and Harold J. Leavitt, was named the best business book of 1999 by the Association of American Publishers. "A hot group is just what the name implies: a lively, overachieving, dedicated group—usually small—whose members are turned on to an exciting and challenging task," say Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt, the Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology, emeritus. The book was published by Oxford University Press in May 1999.

HONORED FOR HIS CONTRIBUTIONS to the development of the science of marketing, Seenu Srinivasan is one of four winners of the 2000 Paul D. Converse Award. The Converse Award is presented about every five years by the American Marketing Association to the scholars it deems the most influential in the field, as judged by a national jury drawn from academia, business, and government. The committee cited Srinivasan's contributions as far back as 1974, when Management Science published his and A. Shocker's article "A Consumer-Based Methodology for the Identification of New Product Ideas," an early explication of conjoint analysis. Srinivasan, who is the Ernest C. Arbuckle Professor of Marketing and Management Science, is scheduled to accept the award and present a paper at the 15th Paul D. Converse Symposium in May.