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FACULTY
 Marketing professor Seenu Srinivasan was
presented the American Marketing Association's highest award for market research at the
organization's annual marketing research conference. Srinivasan, the Ernest C. Arbuckle Professor of Marketing and Management Science, received the 1996 Charles Coolidge Parlin Award for his visionary leadership in the application of science to the discipline of marketing research. Recognized for his development of new concepts and methods for "measuring, understanding, and using consumer preference information," Srinivasan was noted for his widespread influence on both practitioners and researchers. Srinivasan's primary area of academic interest is conjoint analysis, a method of measuring the relative importance of a product's attributes by identifying the tradeoffs that customers make to buy it. The method is used to improve the development of new products and services. Named for Charles Parlin of Curtis Publishing Company, who was recognized for his early benchmarking studies of consumer issues, the Parlin Award has been given annually since 1945. Previous recipients include pollsters Arthur C. Nielsen, George Gallup, and Daniel Yankelovich; advertising pioneer David Ogilvy; and educators and writers Peter F. Drucker and Michael Porter. David Montgomery, the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing Strategy, and former GSB faculty member Marvin Lieberman were awarded the fourth annual Best Paper prize by the Strategic Management Journal. The $5,000 award recognizes papers that have had a durable influence on the profession and is restricted to papers published at least five years ago. Montgomery and Lieberman won for "First Mover Advantages," which was published in the journal in 1988. An endowed chair is one of the highest honors an academic institution can bestow upon its own. In 1996, the five GSB faculty members named below received that recognition. Jeremy I. Bulow, now the Richard Stepp Professor of Economics, is an applied microeconomic theorist whose research spans topics in economics and finance. A faculty member since 1979, he has developed and taught courses on the economic aspects of contracts, competition and markets, and environmental management and policy analysis. A visiting professor at Yale this year, Bulow is a former chair of the Public Management Program's faculty advisory committee. Robert A. Burgelman, the Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management, has been a member of the GSB faculty since 1981. His particular research interests are the role of strategy in the evolution of firms, the role of entrepreneurship within corporations, and the management of technology and innovation. He developed and coteaches Strategy and Action in the Information Processing Industry and is currently director of the Stanford Executive Program. Charles A. O'Reilly III, the Frank E. Buck Professor of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behavior, joined the Business School faculty in 1993. O'Reilly, whose interests include executive compensation and the management of organizational culture, innovation, and change, developed and directs the Human Resource Executive Program. He is the coauthor of Winning Through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal, published this year. George G. C. Parker, the new Dean Witter Professor of Finance, has taught in the MBA, Sloan, and executive programs since he joined the faculty in 1973. He has also served in many administrative roles. Currently an associate dean and the director of the MBA Program as well as codirector of the Financial Management Program and of the Financial Research Initiative, Parker is also a past director of the Executive Education Program and the Sloan Program. H. Irving Grousbeck, named the Class of 1980 Consulting Professor of Management, is codirector of the newly organized Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the GSB, which acts as a center for entrepreneurial training and development on the MBA level. He is coauthor of the textbook New Business Ventures and the Entrepreneur, now in its fourth edition. Two of the chairs were awarded for the first time. The Richard Stepp Professorship honors Stepp, MBA '41. He died in 1995. The Class of 1980 Professorship was endowed by the MBA Class of 1980 to support the GSB's effort to be a world leader in the study of entrepreneurship through research, curriculum development, and teaching. The first Robert T. Davis Faculty Award was presented to James Howell, the Theodore J. Kreps Professor of Economics, for his service to the Business School. The award recognizes the lifetime achievement of a current faculty member. Recipients are selected on the basis of their service to the School over an extended period of time. Howell has directed the School's executive education program, was an associate dean of the School, and has taught a variety of MBA, Sloan, doctoral, and executive courses. He is also coauthor of Higher Education for Business, published in 1959. Known as the "Ford Report," it became a blueprint for sweeping changes adopted by top business schools in the following decades. Partially as a result of its findings, the Ford Foundation provided about $35 million in grants to improve U.S. business education. The award was created in memory of Robert T. Davis, who was the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing. He died in 1995. |
Faculty in the news Fortune turned to Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee Professor of Organizational Behavior, in its Jan. 13, 1997, issue to help analyze the rules executives follow in using power today. Cubicles have replaced corner offices, and many executives are expected to answer their own e-mail. But down deep, today's leaders admit that power is still important to them, although they are less likely to measure power by how many decisions they make. "In a good organization any problem that can be solved through data and expertise will already have been solved before it gets to your desk," said Pfeffer, who is now completing a book tentatively titled People and Profits. Republicans in the 104th U.S. Congress tallied the most conservative voting record since 1947 but still managed to confound the pundits and win the first reelected GOP House majority since 1930. David Brady, with Hoover Institution senior fellow John Cogan and political science professor Douglas Rivers, analyzed November election results in an opinion piece in the Dec. 4, 1996 Wall Street Journal. They found that the Republican conservative stance did not affront the majority of voters who returned 92 percent of the Republican incumbents to the House. And, say the trio, prospects for the continued conservative dominance of Congress are good. Brady is the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Ethics, Political Science, Business and the Changing Environment at the GSB. The increasing sophistication of corporate computing is allowing companies to streamline support operations and make their supply chains hum like well-tuned violins. "Companies are using information technology to focus on areas where they add the most value, and are leaving the bits and pieces to some outside specialists," Garth Saloner, the Robert A. Magowan Professor of Strategic Management and Economics, told the Wall Street Journal. An active member in the Stanford Computer Industry Project, Saloner studies the demand for and effective adoption of information technology and competition within the computer industry. As intermediaries vanish from corporate systems, decision making can also change, said Saloner. Daniel Kessler's study "Do Doctors Practice Defensive Medicine?" touched off another round of media attention. The study, done jointly by Kessler, assistant professor of economics, law and policy, and Mark McClellan of the Stanford Medical School and the economics department, found that when state law decreases the legal liability of doctors, elderly patients with heart disease have lower hospital costs while health outcomes remain the same. The paper, which drew widespread attention last year, was cited in January in a Wall Street Journal editorial and in Forbes. The Wall Street Journal also took Page 1 notice of economics professor Paul Romer's New Growth Theory. Romer argues that ideas don't obey the laws of diminishing returns. Instead, Romer says, knowledge compounds, feeding and accelerating economic growth over time. The newspaper credits Romer with reigniting interest in the causes of long-term economic growth. |
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