February 2001, Volume 69, Number 2

Letters A Letter from the Dean An article last August in Business Week outlined complaints from corporate recruiters about their recent experiences recruiting students of the School. The School's external relations have been the subject of many meetings among School deans, faculty, and students this year, and some of the School's alumni/ae have participated in the discussions or have requested more information. The following letter by Dean Robert Joss is a reprint of his response to a member of the Class of 2000 who felt the Business Week article was unfair and asked for the dean's advice on how the community as a whole should respond. I appreciate your note of concern and your offer of assistance. I hope I can be equally thoughtful in reply. Like you, I am concerned about the negative publicity in Business Week, and we have been discussing among a number of the School's friends-students, staff, faculty, and alumni—the best way to react and to respond. The strong consensus is that there is no point in entering a public debate with Business Week. On behalf of the School, I sent a prompt letter to the editor, which was published ["So Many Recruiters, So Few MBAs," September 11, 2000] immediately after the August 28 article appeared about recruiting at the GSB ["Stanford High-Hats Its Way onto a Blacklist"]. I emphasized the high priority we place on recruiter relations and also noted the difficult supply-demand imbalance for our MBAs in a very hot local market. In private reply, the reporter told me she had been very cautious and extremely thorough in her research (she had "three notebooks full") and had tried to be fair and accurate since she knew the story had impact. She also said she had heard from some students who believed the story painted a fairly true picture. Subsequent to that first article, the magazine released its biennial survey of business schools ["The Best B-Schools," October 10], in which recruiters did not rate highly either our students or our placement office. This was certainly disappointing news for all of us connected with Stanford Business School. The best response is to make sure recruiters have a positive and professional experience when they visit here-regardless of their 'success rate' in attracting our graduates." -Dean Robert L. Joss With this background, I don't believe it is credible or wise for any of us to argue that the rating system is unfair or that the only problem is that we just don't have enough graduates to go around for the recruiters who come here. We have a great school, with great students, who receive a unique educational experience at Stanford. Of that I am absolutely certain! The challenge before us is to be certain all members of the GSB community do everything in their power to project this and to enhance our reputation. On the issue of recruitment, I believe the best response is to make sure recruiters have a positive and professional experience when they visit here—regardless of their "success rate" in attracting our graduates. Everyone in the GSB community needs to help achieve this. Our placement office services need to be more user-friendly for recruiters. We need to solicit more and regular recruiter feedback on their experiences here and to make improvements when the feedback indicates. Our students can help us. A recent article in the student newspaper, The Reporter, noted that last year we had 71 no-shows for on-campus interviews. Clearly, these incidents make a cumulative impression on recruiters that can overshadow the many positive interviews. Our alumni can help by the role they play within recruiting organizations and by the way they represent Stanford throughout their careers. There is no one magic answer here, but a whole series of efforts that will collectively project a public image and reality that is in all our interests. This will be the only viable way to cause recruiting organizations to evaluate Stanford GSB in the most positive fashion. You may be aware that the Business Week ratings are largely comprised of a recruiter rating and a student rating. The recruiter rating is based on organizations being asked to rank Stanford relative to other schools with which they are familiar by answering the question: "Which MBA programs produce the best graduates?" Clearly, recruiter experiences and impressions are critical to how they rate Stanford Business School, and the best response we as a community can make going forward is to do everything we can to improve recruiter experiences and impressions. The student ratings are based on the answers to over 30 questions that were asked of the Class of 2000 in the Business Week survey questionnaires. As you and your classmates will know, these questions are mostly those where you were asked to rate Stanford "on a scale of 1 to 10" as to how the school performed in various areas of interest—e.g., quality of teaching in the core, responsiveness of faculty and administration to student concerns, availability of faculty, and so forth. You were not asked to rate Stanford relative to other schools, but instead to rate us according to your own standards and expectations. While you and your classmates were not asked to rank Stanford relative to other schools, Business Week did so by comparing the scale ratings of Stanford students to those of students at the other schools. In this sense, Business Week sees the students as ranking Stanford, rather than Business Week ranking Stanford. Our students have very high standards and expectations—something we value greatly—which means that they graded the GSB in a fairly tough manner. That's just the way the Business Week ratings work, and it is not possible for us to say they are unfair or wrong, since they apply equally to every school. It would be better (but still far from good) survey methodology, in my judgment, if Business Week asked students to rate their school on each of the various questions relative to how they believe their school compares to other schools—but that is not how they did it. While we can encourage them to change the survey methodology, the only certain way to improve our ratings is to improve our performance in the eyes of our own students. I apologize for going over the Business Week stories in this level of detail, but I think it is important background for you and those in your class who want to respond. Your fundamental question to me is: "How should we as a Stanford Business School community together address these Business Week articles?" I believe the only effective way we can address them is through our performance as a community. In any strong community, its members individually and collectively assume responsibility for the welfare and improvement of the community, and each understands his or her role in that process. This means faculty and administration improving our availability, our teaching, and our responsiveness. This means each student accepting responsibility for representing the School in every interaction with the recruiting community. This means GSB staff working with purpose and urgency to see that programs work as intended and that visitors to the School have positive experiences. This means alumni accepting that wherever they go and whatever they do after they leave school will likely reflect upon Stanford, since we as alumni project to the world what Stanford graduates are like. And this means all of us respecting and appreciating each other's roles in the learning process, communicating regularly and openly with each other, and maintaining expectations of each other that are reasonable and appropriate. You can see from my response to your request for guidance that I agree very much with your observation that we need a unified response. I also agree with your view that we must work together to enhance the School's reputation and that we should not be complacent about our position in the world of management education. We need to act with urgency and teamwork. The important thing is we need to do this ourselves and let it show in our performance as students, faculty, staff, and alumni—and not in some kind of public relations effort that might appear too defensive or as a complaint that we just aren't being understood. We are all proud of what Stanford Business School represents, and it is our perpetual challenge to make the continuous improvements necessary to sustain that pride. I hope you and your classmates will agree with these thoughts. Please feel free to share them if you wish. I welcome your concern and interest, and would be pleased to exchange further thoughts with you and anyone else. I especially welcome your commitment to the School and know that acting together we can all lift what is already a fine reputation to a much higher level. ROBERT L. JOSS Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean Stanford Graduate School of Business   Ethics Abroad: Bribes and Human Rights I found the discussion in "A Question of Ethics" [November 2000] somewhat "mushy" and inconclusive. It failed to focus adequately on the two central questions facing those doing global business: 1) Would you approve a bribe, no matter how profitable or common? and 2) Do you have a responsibility to employees in countries other than the United States that goes beyond paying them and providing a safe workplace, and then leaving them to whatever their country's government and culture decide? Perhaps there was not more discussion of corruption and bribery because it is against the law for U.S. citizens. Perhaps it is just uncomfortable to talk about. That does not make it any less of a real issue. As a 30-plus-year Ford Motor Company executive, mostly in international business, I know the reality and effects of bribery. It comes from two sources. First is opportunity and pressure to make bribes that would contribute to corporate profitability. It occurs most often in an environment of common practice. The second source derives from the fact that many companies doing business globally condone bribes, even if it is not legal in their home countries. That means in parts of the world you can be at a clear competitive disadvantage if you do not. Let me satisfy your curiosity. In my years at Ford, I was never asked to approve a bribe. Further, I had every expectation of being fired if I did. I wouldn't have had it any other way. By way of perspective, however, I would be surprised to learn that half the automotive companies in the world would not condone profitable bribes. I believe every business school should teach that bribery is out there, and there are absolute ethics out there as well, which are part of business. Corruption is debilitating in many parts of the world. It never will end unless businessmen end it. Governments won't do it. Responsibility to employees was raised [also in the article]. One panelist stated he would have to try to change things if he believed employees' human rights were being violated. I would have liked to know what each of the panelists believes and why. I am proud of the contribution Ford and other American companies made to the ending of apartheid in South Africa. The engagement of American business with South African society was positive over many years. Today it is politically correct to credit economic sanctions with the ending of apartheid, but the engagement of American business with South African society was a very important contributing factor. By the time I began work there, social activism by American companies and other developments already had created a social movement that could not long be held in check by other than armed force. Obviously, I believe ethics are very much a part of business and businessmen have the ability to change people's lives in ways governments don't seem able to accomplish. Ability brings responsibility. Surely it must be accompanied by ethics. TOM WILLIAMSON, MBA '63 Sonoma, California   Let Innovators Innovate I'm reacting to the article "The Antitrust Case Against Microsoft" in the latest issue (November 2000) of Stanford Business. Paul Romer, the article says, wants by government decree to "return the software industry at least partway" to the competitive situation that prevailed in the mid-1990s. This view is way too Microsoft-centered. Does he think the rest of the world has been standing still technology-wise since the mid-1990s? Innovation is done by innovators left free to do their best, not by bureaucrats and most especially not by legal bureaucrats. It's a good thing that Microsoft now gets its turn on appeal. GEORGE R. LIDDLE, MBA '51 Menlo Park, California

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