Spreadsheet One

Stilling the Sound of Money

Illustration by Sarah Wilkins

AS THE NOVEMBER ELECTION approaches, the only thing louder than the clamor for campaign finance reform is the sound of special-interest money. Even if Congress were to set aside its own self-interest and vote to clean up the way campaign money is handled, the question would remain, how to do it. Business School economics professor Jeremy Bulow and a colleague, Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, have an answer--a scheme that at first glance seems odd, or at least counter-intuitive. But think about it for a moment.
       Rather than demand full disclosure of campaign contributions, as many would-be reformers are doing, Bulow and Ayres call for the opposite: anonymous donations. Any political gift of more than, say, $200 would be channeled through a blind trust. Candidates would not learn who gave how much to whom until a certain number of years after they left office: This would make them immune to the influence of big-bucks donors.
       "Imagine a world with anonymous donations," Bulow and Ayres write in the Boston Review. "No more selling nights in the Lincoln bedroom. No more ambassadorships or trade missions for successful fundraisers." Individual donors, corporations, unions, and political action committees would all be affected.
       But what's to keep a donor from publicly dropping a couple thou for a plate of chicken and frozen peas at a fundraising dinner? Or from signing and mailing a check as the candidate looks on? Bulow and Ayres would limit the price of the chicken to cost and restrict campaign workers to passing out postage-paid envelopes to the trust along with the after-dinner mints. As for stuffing the envelope in front of the candidate, Bulow and Ayres recommend that all trust donations be subject to a 10-day cooling-off period in which the donor could privately take back the donation.
       And what's to keep the donor from telling the candidate about a giant contribution? "Probably nothing," say our two reformers. "But talk is cheap." For now, that's the only thing that is in American politics.

Building for the Future
IT MAY SEEM like only yesterday that the GSB classroom and staff office building opened, but 32 years have left their mark. With an eye to the future, the MBA Class of 1998 voted to initiate a New Building Seed Fund (née the Bulldozer Fund) as its class gift.
       Money raised by the class is earmarked for a full-scale student center in a new building. Even though their classmates recognize that construction definitely will be post-millennium, cochairs Roger Kearns and Mary Jo Torres report that more than half the class had pledged $114,315 by July. The class goal: 100 percent participation and $200,000.

We're Number Three!

Illustration by Sarah Wilkins

SOME PEOPLE WON'T SETTLE for anything short of first place, but we at Stanford Business are quite thrilled with the bronze medal for periodicals publishing improvement we received this year from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), which is a sort of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for college and university publications. "The judges were particularly impressed with the way your staff took an already high-quality magazine and strengthened it both visually and editorially," they told us. Well, we can handle that.
       Our contributing writer Todd Barrett, MBA '95, also did us proud. In fact, he one-upped us by winning a silver medal for best article with his tongue-in-cheek defense of business jargon in the June 1997 issue of this magazine.

They're Number One!
WONDER OF WONDERS, Business Week and U.S. News & World Report finally agreed on a biz school winner. In Chicago last spring, a group of national business writers and editors, which included journalists from the two rankings rags as well as the Chicago Tribune and the Wall Street Journal, named the GSB student newspaper, the Reporter, best of breed out of seven entries.
       The person most responsible for the honor claimed a more prestigious prize in June. Reporter editor-in-chief Adam Fawer was selected by his classmates for the Ernest C. Arbuckle Award, which was presented at commencement.
       The two words his classmates used most often to describe Fawer were "vision" and "voice," said Susan Arbuckle, the daughter of the late dean, in presenting the award, and the Reporter was the place where Fawer exercised both. In his year as editor, Fawer brought the nonprofit newspaper back from a deficit and involved all segments of a diverse student community in its content and production, she noted. Yet despite the need to meet deadlines in class and on the paper, "he was always there to help anyone who needed it."

Quality Shows

Photo by Anne Knudsen

JIM PATELL is the GSB's 1998 Distinguished Teacher because he practices what he preaches: continuous quality improvement. Patell, who teaches Business Process Design and the MBA core course in operations, collects course ratings from students in the middle of each term, analyzes the results in class, and then executes them. "This is an exhaustive commitment to continuous improvement, and it really makes a difference to us students," said one of his nominators, Jonathan Hoyt, MBA '98.
       Patell, who is the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management, came to the Business School in 1975 and began his teaching career as a highly regarded accounting researcher. Over the years, he served as associate dean for academic affairs and director of the MBA Program. He also helped redesign the Public Management Program (PMP) in the late 1980s. "The position of prominence that the PMP achieved nationally simply would not have been possible without his strong and steadfast support, which continued long after he left the dean's office," says outgoing PMP director Jim Thompson.
       Since returning to the regular faculty in 1991, Patell has taught the core operations course along with other classes related to manufacturing, technology, and quality management. He currently serves as codirector of the Stanford Integrated Manufacturing Association, a cooperative research and industry venture with the School of Engineering.
       "What distinguishes Professor Patell is his dedication to student learning," wrote another student nominator. "While many professors seem to believe that impressing students requires a dramatic or comical stage presence, the truth is most students are impressed by a professor who is able to heighten their learning experience. When GSB students leave Professor Patell's class, they don't utter 'finally, it's over,' but 'wow, that was a great class.'"

"American business is desperate for intelligent, flexible people who know how to create relationships and value within their corporations, and it's impossible to do this if you don't have balance in your life."

BETH SAWI, MBA '81, executive vice president of Charles Schwab & Co., speaking to Women in Management. Sawi is currently writing a book about leading a balanced life.