“Business Schools: Irrelevant No More - YAHOO!” plus 4 more |
- Business Schools: Irrelevant No More - YAHOO!
- contact business - Auburn Plainsman
- Business is bad for business lunch around Woodland - Woodland Daily Democrat
- As Crisis Fades, Banks Cling To Old Way of Doing Business - CNBC
- Business owners are making New Year's resolutions - Pantagraph
| Business Schools: Irrelevant No More - YAHOO! Posted: 01 Jan 2010 05:11 AM PST Almost since their inception more than 100 years ago, the death of business schools and MBAs has been predicted to be imminent. Stuck between a business world that thinks them academic, in the derogatory not the complimentary sense, and universities that think them unacademic, in an equally derogatory sense, it is not surprising that business schools periodically suffer serious bouts of self-doubt. We are currently in the midst of one such period. I am going to argue that far from being on their last legs, business schools are on the cusp of a new dawn that will see their significance and size expand to greater heights over the next few decades. The criticism from business is that business schools teach people what business knows best, namely how to manage. By the same token it is why universities are disparaging about business schools because this puts them into the same category as cooking and car maintenance programs. We in business schools have in part contributed to this perception because in the rush to be perceived by business not to be unworldly, we have actually exacerbated the criticism that we are irrelevant. Business education is not or should not fundamentally be about "how to" manage a business. It is as much about "why" and "what." What should business be doing and why do it in one way rather than another? As soon as one poses those questions, then one can see that the type of education a business school should provide is much more in line with what universities traditionally teach. Context for Business Let me illustrate this in relation to a typical MBA program. This might start off with some unifying course on the firm: what is it and how it is run, governed, and led. Then we are off into the constituent components of the firm -- employees, investors, financial performance -- and we are on the safe ground of organizational behavior, finance, and accounting. This has little or nothing to do with how business is formed or develops. The creation of a corporation is about finding an organizational solution to a specific scientific innovation, a particular product development, a market need, or a social problem. The skill of management comes from designing the organization to fit the innovation, product, market, or social need. It is therefore inherently embedded in the science, technology, political, and legal context, and organizations need to be designed in conjunction with a fundamental understanding of the science, medicine, politics, and law. That makes the role of business education fundamentally different. It is no longer "how to" in a generic sense but "what" issue is business addressing and "why" do it in one form rather than another. That is what business cannot do because while it possesses the knowledge of how to run firms, it does not have access to the underlying science, politics, and law that govern what it should be doing and why. As the interface between business and academia, business schools will be playing a role that neither business nor academia on their own can perform. Entrepreneurship's Challenges I would like to give three illustrations of this. The first is in the field of entrepreneurship. There are many facets to this -- identifying and incentivizing entrepreneurs; the creation of entrepreneurial firms and their financing; the cultural, economic, and political influences on entrepreneurship; the psychological analysis of the makeup, motivation, and risk preferences of entrepreneurs; and the scientific and technological innovations that drive them. So to be able to research, teach, and advise on the creation of new firms, knowledge needs to come from economics, engineering, human and physical sciences, politics, psychology, and sociology. Let me take a second example: globalization. The issues that businesses face in emerging markets are in many cases quite different from those in Europe and North America: sustainable growth, infrastructure, and legal and financial institutions. Understanding how these should be addressed requires a fundamental appreciation of economic, historical, legal, and social conditions in those countries that other departments of universities have studied for decades. A final example is a topic that is exercising a lot of business and policymakers' minds at present and that is how, in a globally mobile world, nation-states can levy taxes on corporations that can transfer profits if not their physical operations almost at will to different parts of the world. Answering this requires a mixture of legal, economic, and political expertise that, again, business schools acting as the interface with the wider university can provide. Synthesis of Expertise Does this matter for MBAs as well as executive education and research? The answer is unquestionably yes. Future generations of business leaders will have to be equipped to address these issues of entrepreneurship, globalization, and taxation. They will need to understand how to source the relevant expertise from different disciplines and they will have to be able to evaluate and implement the information they receive. So in designing management degrees in the future, we will have to give increasing attention to providing our students with the tools that will allow them to perform these functions. This places management education much more squarely in the domain of a university education that challenges students to formulate and analyze problems. In addition, it will require business schools to draw on skills that come from across universities, from the sciences and humanities as well as the social sciences. As the gateways to academia, business schools alone will be in a position to provide the knowledge that business and businesspeople will require. Far from pronouncing its death, welcome the rebirth of the business school. The response that Sam Goldwyn of MGM fame gave on being asked "How is business?" is apt for business schools at the beginning of the 21st century: "colossal and growing." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| contact business - Auburn Plainsman Posted: 01 Jan 2010 07:13 AM PST The Gnu's Room Have a question? Want more information? Contact this business using the form below. your e-mail address: your question: Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Business is bad for business lunch around Woodland - Woodland Daily Democrat Posted: 01 Jan 2010 08:10 AM PST The recession means most businesses' expense accounts have gone the way of Lehman Brothers. Along with the decline in money for meals goes the business lunch. Local restaurants are feeling the pain. Morrison's Upstairs has seen a 50 percent drop in lunch sales in the past couple years, according to owner Jim Morrison. Starting today, Morrison's will no longer serve lunch upstairs with the exception of larger groups. The downstairs bar and the deli and catering will also continue with its regular hours. Dinners at Morrison's Upstairs will continue as usual. Morrison's opened in July 1986 and always served a lunch and dinner crowd, particularly with the business people. "This was a very difficult decision for the Morrison family to make," Morrison said in statement, adding the family is saddened to make the change. Morrison's is not alone in feeling the pain. A decrease in income due to furloughs has people such as Janis Holt eating out about twice a month instead of her usual three times a week. Holt works for Yolo County Housing and never had an expense account. One recent Tuesday, Holt enjoyed a rare business/personal lunch with a friend and colleague Bill Martin at Morrison's Upstairs. Martin is a frequent business luncher. His job requires him to network and build partnerships. He said he likes Morrison's because it's "conducive to the business environment." Morrison said people enjoy the private dining experience. The restaurant has seen more than 50 marriage proposals at their tower table, and not a single rejection yet. The proposals will continue -- just not at lunch time."There are a whole lot of traditions that go on here," Morrison said. He spoke fondly of all his lunch regulars and the specific tables they sit at and services they request. Whether it's the heel of the bread loaf or wanting an especially dim table, Morrison said not being able to take care of his lunch regulars is the worst part of ending the lunch service. For businessmen and women still looking to do some business lunching, the pickings in Woodland are getting slim. Maritime Restaurant shut down earlier this year and the Capital Saloon is closed with no signs of reopening. However, one recent afternoon Savory Cafe was swamped with people trying to get a bite to eat, and Tazzina's Bistro and Ludy's are available. "It's always special to come here with people you used to come here with 20 years ago," Mimi Lyon said while looking over the Morrison's lunch menu for one of the last times. She's retired but used to come to Morrison's for business lunches when she worked. Across the country and world people are cutting back on lunches and Morrison doesn't anticipate the practice coming back anytime soon. "This was a change people needed to make," Morrison said. "We can't live that extravagant lifestyle. I think the business lunch is basically gone." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| As Crisis Fades, Banks Cling To Old Way of Doing Business - CNBC Posted: 01 Jan 2010 08:03 AM PST After staging one of the most remarkable comebacks in business history — because of taxpayer lifelines and other support from Washington — the giants of the banking industry are entering a new phase of the postbailout period. While, for many Americans, the dark fears of the crisis have given way to indignation over the Lazarus-like recovery at big banks, few on Wall Street expect 2010 to be as profitable as 2009. All told, the half dozen biggest banks have already made more than $50 billion in the first three quarters, and are on track to deliver a year of hefty profits — and bonuses — that could rival those of the boom years. But at this pivotal moment, big questions loom: Will the economy stage a robust recovery or just muddle along? Will the stunning rally in the stock market last? As the debate rages over how to prevent future crises, will Washington impose tough new rules on banks? More important, will banks fundamentally change the way they do business, or simply carry on as before? "That is the larger issue hanging over the industry at this point," said Lawrence H. Summers, the chief economic adviser to President Obama. "I think the view of some in Manhattan and the view from rest of the America, including the administration, is very different." Rarely has the divide been so deep between Wall Street and Main Street. Even as Mr. Obama urges banking executives to do more to help the economy recover, many homeowners and small businesses say banks are reluctant to make loans. The banking industry has throttled back lending for the last 15 months, draining more than $3 trillion of credit from the economy. When housing prices were rising, Peter M. Allen might have had little trouble refinancing the mortgage on his home in Palo Alto, Calif. Now, like millions of Americans, Mr. Allen, 50, is out of work, and the banks are turning him away. "Things have changed," Mr. Allen, an engineer, said. "They were basically closed for business." As banks enjoy a recovery, lending may slow further as the Federal Reserve shifts its focus from spurring growth to heading off inflation, reversing the current period of ultralow interest rates that has been a boon to banks. Right now, low rates are fattening banks' profit margins, since many lenders are not passing on their own low costs to borrowers. Lending rates will also spike as the government withdraws its trillion-dollar support of the mortgage market in the spring. "Are they going to kill the housing market?" said Laurence D. Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, a big money management firm. "That is an issue." Most banks are hunkering down in anticipation of another big wave of real estate and consumer loan losses. Small and midsize banks are expected to be hit especially hard: They must absorb nearly $900 billion of commercial real estate losses over the next few years, causing several hundred banks to fail. The big banks, meanwhile, face a range of new regulations that take effect in 2010. Rules curbing overdraft fees and predatory practices in the credit card business are expected to squeeze the flow of billions of dollars from penalty income. They will also have less wiggle room as regulators require them to hold larger cash reserves, reducing their returns and forcing them to be more conservative. That heralds a sharp drop in profits, especially if the ebullient stock and bond markets, which generated billions in trading revenue last year for Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street giants, tapers off in 2010. Analysts say that bank profitability might fall by a third from its precrisis levels, to where it was in the '60s, '70s and '80s. "We tend to believe it is back to the future," said Frederick Cannon, a senior banking analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods. Wall Street has responded by beefing up its financial lobby in Washington to win big concessions. Among other things, the industry is working to ease rules governing derivatives and to weaken a proposal for a consumer financial protection agency. Already, there is the sense that the political momentum to force meaningful changes has ebbed as banks returned to profits and bonuses last year, and broke free of government control. "This is no time for a return to business as usual," Paul A. Volcker, the chairman of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said in a recent speech in Germany. "The rally in world stock markets from recession lows has brought renewed hopes on Wall Street and the City of London for a return to outlandish bonuses for financial operators and a vigorous defense of established vested interests." The industry's leading executives insist that they have cleaned up their act and that reforms dragging through Congress will draw a line under the crisis and correct the failings that caused it. "There were significant flaws that came out of financial services," said Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's chairman and chief executive. "Some things are going to change forever." The question is how much. Exotic financial products, like the so-called C.D.O.-squared, are unlikely to return. Bundled loans, which financed so much of the mortgage boom, will come back as a smaller, more conservative business. Bankers, badly bruised by the crisis, are putting a dagger in the "Ninja" loan — which required "no income, no job or assets" to pass muster with a credit officer. After two decades of deregulation, they will now have to contend with more stringent rules. Some of the banks are cutting back on their risk-taking. And while they are paying out heavy bonuses, they are making sure they can claw back the paychecks if employees make big losses in the future. James P. Gorman, the next chief executive of Morgan Stanley, a Wall Street firm that nearly went under during the crisis, said: "There will be real progress in 2010. I am pretty optimistic.The industry understands what has happened and what needs to be done." But a year after the crisis, there is still a looming question about how to deal with banks that are too big to fail. Despite heated debate, the government has still not decided how to support a failing bank without pumping in billions of taxpayers' money to avoid contagion in the broader financial system. But the banks that a year ago were too big to fail are now bigger than ever. "Fear has dissipated, greed has returned — but these structural problems are still there," said Peter Nerby, an analyst at Moody's. Without a plan for shutting down banks that stumble, the nation's biggest banks still enjoy an implicit guarantee from the government: If they run into trouble the taxpayer will bail them out. Economists worry this is only encouraging them to take risks again, which could mean another crisis in the future. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Business owners are making New Year's resolutions - Pantagraph Posted: 01 Jan 2010 08:39 AM PST NEW YORK -- Small business owners aren't just putting together budgets and sales projections as 2010 approaches: Like the rest of us, they're making some New Year's resolutions. These goals aren't about losing weight or exercising more. Business owners are resolving to fix problems in their companies or come up with ideas for working smarter in the new year. Here's a sampling of resolutions made by small business owners: SPEND SOME QUALITY TIME WITH CLIENTS Merilee Kern plans to set aside time for a leisurely, friendly chat with the clients of her public relations firm in Poway, Calif. Kern realized that the one time when she and clients aren't talking about business is when they call her during the holidays to say thank you for the gift baskets she sends. "It's the only conversation a year where we stop and ask about kids and really transcend the normal stuff," said Kern, president of Kern Communications. "I want to take an opportunity to not talk about business." She plans to chat with a different client each week. But she's not thinking in terms of a coffee klatch. "At the end of the day, especially in a service business, you have to perform, but it is all about relationships" with clients, Kern said. PROTECT THE COMPANY CASH FLOW Heather Logrippo sometimes finds herself waiting for customers to pay for the ads they take out in her Boston-based real estate magazine, Distinctive Homes. So her resolution is to accept credit cards to be sure she's paid on time. She also wants to be sure she doesn't get burned when customers say they'll buy ads but never send in the copy for it, leaving her with blank space and lost revenue. "I'm not a bank," Logrippo said. "For too long I've been sympathetic," Logrippo's customers are real estate agents who want to list their properties. But once a house is sold, "they don't feel any urgency. ... There's no rush to pay me." Many small business owners have had problems getting paid during the recession because their customers are struggling, not forgetful like Logrippo's. And many have also turned to credit cards to preserve their cash flow. There is a downside to credit cards, and that's the fee that a small business must pay the card issuer. But, said Logrippo, "it's a better assurance that I'll get paid on time." MAKING IT OFFICIAL Howard Ankin started his law practice in 1997, and it has grown to 25 employees. In the early years, he didn't worry about formulating policies for vacation and sick time and other personnel matters. Now, though, he says it's time to formalize those policies and put them in writing. "When I had a smaller office, the informality worked well for me, and now, at this point, the informality is working against me," said Ankin, whose firm is based in Chicago. So one of his resolutions is to create an employee handbook, something that human resources professionals urge small business owners to do. The beginning of the year, before employees start asking for time off, is an ideal time to do it. Ankin has also decided his firm needs a cohesive marketing strategy. He's hired a public relations agency, is having a new Web site created and is using Twitter and other social media to get some notice for the firm, which specializes in workers compensation and personal injury cases. "Instead of having a happenstance marketing program, where someone calls and asks, 'do you want to put an ad in the Yellow Pages,' for 2010 we're trying to have a plan in place," he said. Ankin is embarking on something he's never done before with a marketing program. Many publicity pros believe his timing is right, at the start of the economic recovery, when companies will be doing more business and needing more help. WORKING ON THAT WORK/LIFE BALANCE Hope Katz Gibbs wanted to spend less time at work in the new year and more time with her two children. But, "instead of dialing things back for a work/life balance, ramping it up seems to be the best strategy at this point," said Gibbs, president of Inkandescent Public Relations. Her Washington, D.C.-based company, which targets entrepreneurs, expects to have more work as more people start businesses. So she's taken a step back and looked at her family life to see how to make it better for everyone in the new year. And she realized that overbooking her 14-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter with after-school activities wasn't the answer. "The trend is to overextend them, give them a million activities, make them competitive," Gibbs said of children. "I'm trying to have more fun with them rather than micromanage them." So Gibbs and her husband plan to involve her children more in her work, taking them to child-appropriate work events when possible. She likes the idea of exposing them to the business world, so they can find out how it works. "It's balancing in a different way," she said. PUTTING MONEY INTO HUMAN ASSETS Barbara Monteiro plans to keep looking for ways to save money, and to spend more on her employees. Monteiro, who owns a New York-based public relations firm, will be swapping out her PCs with Macintosh computers. Because Macs are less susceptible to viruses, she'll be spending less money on eliminating them from her computers. And she'll be looking for ways to buy computer paper and other office supplies cheaply. The money will go toward things that will let her employees know how much she values them: subway fare cards, coffee, pizza lunches. She has already been doing that, but in the new year, Monteiro wants to step up the pace. "In bad times, employees appreciate if you stick by them and even skip a paycheck yourself to keep the business going. When good times come back, those employees will think twice before leaving," she said. Monteiro said she's also looking to work on her personal finances. As soon as she can, she's going to invest in tax-free bonds. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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