@Mays - Spring 2010

@ MAYS

Spring 2010

Mays Business School, Texas A&M University

Ethics 101:

Right vs. wrong is easy.

What will you do when the choice is right vs. right?

Contents

@Mays Spring 2010 Director of Communications and Public Relations Pam Wiley @Mays Editor Chrystal Houston Editorial Assistant Shae Ford Design Linda Orsi, HSC Marketing and Communications Illustration Tamara Strecker Photography Dan Bryant Brittany Hardin Michael Kellet Jim Lyle Nicholas Roznovsky James D. Smith

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Š 2010 Mays Business School

Features

@Mays is an annual publication for the former students and friends of Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. This publication is made possible by the generosity of private donors.

22 Ethics 101 Right vs. wrong is easy to figure out. But what do you do when the choice is right vs. right? Mays faculty members are developing ethical business leaders in the classroom.

Monthly news updates are available in Mays’ online magazine, Mays Business Online, at maysbusiness. tamu.edu.

Information about the majors, degrees and programs offered by Mays Business School is available at maysbschool.tamu.edu.

25 Friend me Understanding how mobile and social media has shaped the mindset of Gen Y-ers can benefit your business and your work team.

28 Photo Essay: Same same but different See the exotic beauty of life in Southeast Asia, as experienced by a Mays student in a study-abroad program.

@ MAYS Mays Business School, Texas A&M University

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Departments 04 Over Coffee Sips of news from around Mays

30 Partners People that help Mays thrive

10 Network Mays students—current and former—that are making a difference

36 Ideas@Mays Faculty research for your career

12 9-to-5 Tips and trends from the workplace

Spring 2010

Over Coffee

Gilbert receives Kauffman Foundation Fellows grant Research focuses on clustering and green technology

L Mays student honored with top award at 2009 graduation

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ndrew Spencer Welch of Round Rock, Texas, was one of three graduates singled out for special honor at A&M’s spring 2009 commencement.

Welch was presented with the Robert Gates-Muller Family Outstanding Student Award, which recognizes an outstanding graduating senior at A&M who has demonstrated those qualities of leadership, patriotism and courage exemplified by Dr. Robert M. Gates, former president of the university and current U.S. Secretary of Defense. The award included a $5,000 gift.

Welch graduated with a bachelor’s in accounting and a master’s in financial management with a perfect 4.0 GPR. In presenting the Gates-Muller Award, then Texas A&M President Elsa Murano described Welch as someone who strives for excellence in everything he does.

Outside the classroom, Welch helped to establish a leadership program for business students called Horizons and served as a mentor to other students. He was also active in numerous Mays organizations and served as a coordinator for a mentoring program for local elementary school students.

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ast May, Brett Anitra Gilbert, assistant professor of management at Mays, was chosen as one of five recipients of the annual Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research. The fellowship provides $50,000 over two years to support Gilbert’s research activities.

Other recipients of 2009 Kauffman Fellowships hail from Harvard and UCLA. This prestigious award recognizes tenured or tenure-track junior faculty members at accredited U.S. universities who are beginning to establish a record of scholarship and exhibit the potential to make significant contributions to the body of research in the field of entrepreneurship.

Gilbert’s research focuses on the effect of clustering on innovation. Her research asks whether having a cluster of related business in the same region (e.g., Silicon Valley) advances or hinders innovation. With this new source of funding, Gilbert will examine how clustering impacts new ventures in the area of disruptive technology (innovations that will eventually replace an older technology completely). Specifically, she plans to look at innovations in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

“I want to help eliminate some of the barriers so that these technologies can be brought to the marketplace,” Gilbert said.

Supply chain program ranked #8 nationally for industry value

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n a 2009 evaluation by AMR Research, the supply chain program at Mays was ranked 8th in the nation for industry value, defined as how well they prepare students to “manage increasingly global integrated supply chain organizations.”

The program also ranks 5th for program scope and 9th for depth of programs offered. A&M is the only school in Texas to be named in these rankings. To arrive at these rankings, AMR surveyed 126 companies about what skills a supply chain graduate must have to be successful in the field.

Their responses led to an in-depth analysis of supply chain programs at 19 top U.S. universities to distinguish which programs are producing the bestprepared graduates by industry standards.

Over Coffee

A lesson from the dean Mays’ Dean Strawser leads freshman seminar

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he Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 10,000 mark a few months ago for the first time in more than a year.

What did it mean for the economy?

E-mail usage is waning in the age of Facebook, Twitter, and texting. What is the impact of this progression on business?

How does this change the way we work and communicate?

These are the sort of conversation starters you might have heard in “Understanding the Wall Street Journal,” a one-hour seminar class taught by Dean Jerry Strawser last fall. The 12 students in the class, all firstsemester freshmen, were probably relieved to hear there would be no textbooks, tests, or research papers for the course. It

was hardly a free ride, though. Instead of lectures, the format was interactive: students read the Wall Street Journal everyday, then met once a week to discuss what was happening in the world.

Students were given grades at the end of the semester, and while it may be the only class Strawser teaches where his students didn’t have to learn accounting principles for an A, the freshmen hopefully finished the course with an approach to thinking about current events and business.

The point was for them to “practice communication skills in a non-threatening environment,” said Strawser, who had students give oral reports on Wall Street Journal articles and write responses to

editorials in addition to the classroom discussion of current events.

Strawser’s class was one of 68 freshman seminar sections offered at A&M last fall.

The classes have 15 students or fewer and concentrate on a topic suggested by a faculty member and approved by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Programs.

Topics range from the science of surfing, to musical theater, to life on Mars. The classes are designed to give new college students a classroom setting where they feel comfortable speaking up and expressing their ideas, and where they can build relationships with other students and a faculty member.

maysbusiness.tamu.edu

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Over Coffee

Did you see…?

Our faculty members’ expert advice is always in demand.

In 2009, their names popped up in some top publications.

In case you missed the coverage, here’s a quick recap.

USA Today Republican leaving a political office and looking for a position on a company board?

You might find the job market less than inviting, as former congressmen and Cabinet members of the party in power stand a better chance of landing a corporate board seat than members of the party out of power, says research from Richard Lester, clinical associate professor of management. To influence government funding and contracts, as well as favorable legislation, corporations often align management with popular politics. ~January 15, 2009, “Are Businesses Feeling More Blue?”

The Washington Post The impression you make in the first few informal minutes of an interview are more important than you might think, says Management Professor Murray Barrick.

A good handshake, rapport-building small talk, and confident body language cues can really be a boost to the interview. Barrick’s team staged mock interviews with students and human resource staffers. Those who appeared outgoing, ambitious, gregarious and even narcissistic received much better ratings.

much of their social stigma. But beware, not everything is a better deal at these stores. ~September 3, 2009, “Dollar Stores Might Not Save You Most”

Wall Street Journal Smart Money

corporate leader. What matters in the position: execution and organizational skills.

The traits that correlated most powerfully with success were attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours. ~May 18, 2009, “In Praise of Dullness”

Chronicle of Philanthropy

~March 20, 2009, “The Interactive Interview”

For those in the philanthropy biz, finding the right hook for your audience is vital.

If you’re hoping to attract money for an overseas charity, target women, says research from Karen Winterich, assistant professor of marketing. Women are more likely to give to charities, period, and also more likely to give to a remote cause (e.g., Indonesian tsunami victims), than are men, who prefer to give to causes closer to home.

New York Times

~June 15, 2009, “Women Are More Inclined to Support Charities Overseas”

Are you boring? You might make a good CEO, says Management Professor Murray Barrick. A study found that strong people skills—such as being a good listener, a good team builder, an enthusiastic colleague, a great communicator, etc.—correlate loosely or not at all with being a successful

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MSNBC.com It’s not only low-income people who shop at value stores, says Cheryl Holland Bridges, director of the Center for Retailing Studies. In fact, as the economic recession makes thrift trendy, dollar stores have lost

Shopping a sample sale? You might find some great bargains—designer brands at 80 percent off! —but watch out: you may also come away with a lighter purse and an assortment of things you don’t need or can’t use. Cheryl Holland Bridges, director of the Center for Retailing Studies, advises shoppers to check prices (a true sample sale price should be below wholesale—less than half of retail). Also, review for quality. Don’t assume items are free of wear and tear. ~September 21, 2009, “7 Tips to Get the Most Out of Sample Sales”

Christian Science Monitor Entrepreneurship has become an attractive option for many unemployed people in this down economy, says Richard Lester, clinical associate professor of management. “Prices are down, good people are available, customers are interested in potentially changing their brand loyalty.

Today’s environment is a great time to be an entrepreneur.” ~October 9, 2009, “Universities Try Innovative Ways to Get Grads Jobs”

Over Coffee

Texas A&M Full-Time MBA Program listed among top ten in nation by Financial Times

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n new rankings released by Financial Times, the Full-Time MBA Program at Mays Business School is now listed among the top ten public schools in the U.S. This year the program has climbed two places, moving from 11th to 9th (tied) among public programs in the nation. Overall, the A&M program ranks 28th (tied) in the U.S. In the “Value for Money” category, the Texas A&M program ranks 1st in the U.S., with alumni reporting increased salaries after graduation and lower tuition costs relative to other

programs. Placement is another area of excellence: the program was ranked 6th in the nation in placement, as 89 percent of graduates are employed after three months.

Globally, the program has moved up as well. This year it is ranked tied for 54th in the world, up from last year’s rank of 57th.

For more information about the MBA program, see ftmba.tamu.edu/ or contact the office at ftmba@tamu.edu.

INFO grad students sweep regional IT competition

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Members of the winning team Beth Lipton, Lakshminarayan Subramanian, and Bedanta Talukdar pictured here with team advisor, ‘Jon Jasperson, assistant department head and director of the Center for MIS at Mays.

hat’s the value of IT management? Ask graduate students from the Master of Science in Management Information Systems (MS-MIS) program at Mays: a team from the program won a regional case competition on the strategic value of IT management, held in Tucson, Arizona, on November 12.

Mays’ team beat out competition from the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Arizona to qualify for the international competition finals. In May, the team will travel to Las Vegas, Nevada, to compete in the final competition at the CA World 2010 symposium.

Congratulations to the members of the winning team: Beth Lipton, Lakshminarayan Subramanian, and Bedanta Talukdar. maysbusiness.tamu.edu

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Over Coffee

Tickled PINK Mays student interns for Victoria’s Secret

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o, her job has nothing to do with modeling underwear, says Chelsea Benner ’11. That’s usually the first question people ask her when they hear that she’s interning with Victoria’s Secret.

Instead, she’s one of 135 young women across the nation serving as reps for the company’s PINK brand on college campuses, promoting the clothing line to her peers. The brand is “fun, flirty, trendy, and comfortable,” says Benner. She wears PINK items like sweat pants, tee shirts, and jerseys around campus and gathers feedback to report back to the company. She also plans events to promote the brand, such as a party to watch the televised Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and encourages everyone she meets to join PINK Nation, a mailing list that provides special offers to fans of the brand.

The program is about more than connecting college gals with cute clothes. It’s also about giving back to the community. As part of the internship, Benner and the other two PINK reps on the A&M campus are collecting donations for Phoebe’s Home, a shelter in Bryan, Texas, for battered women.

Benner has also worked in the fine jewelry department of Stanley Korshak, a luxury boutique in Dallas.

She plans to graduate in May 2011 with a degree in marketing and certificate in retailing and pursue a career in the fashion industry.

The rewards were even bigger than the checks, as Mays students had the opportunity to demonstrate their marketing skills before a panel of experienced professionals. Winners pictured here are (l-r) Dusty Oney ‘09, Luke Luecke ’10, Lauren Heintzelman ’11, and Garrett Cathey ’11.

Marketing students take the top spots in university-wide sales contest

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orty-eight students from across the A&M campus participated in a collegiate sales contest called Aggies exSELLing, hosted by Mays on November 7. The event was open to all A&M majors and tested the participants’ ability to perform in a mock B2B sales setting. Two marketing majors, Garrett Cathey ’11 and Lauren Heintzelman ’11, nabbed the top spots, taking home prizes of $1,000 and $700 respectively.

They faced stiff competition not only from other marketing majors, but also from members of the agriculture and industrial distribution programs.

Each participant was judged by a panel of industry representatives from companies such as PepsiCo and Hormel Foods, who ranked them on their ability to sell a given product to a hypothetical company.

Ready for the change? Mays preps students for accounting standards shift

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Victoria Secret interns (L-R) Chelsea Benner ‘11, Jessi New ‘10, and Lauren Richards ‘10 show off their PINK items on campus.

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@MAYS Spring 2010

s business becomes an increasingly international or multinational endeavor, accounting for assets in a uniform way is an ever more complicated job. To simplify the process, international financial reporting standards (IFRS) have been developed by the International Accounting Standards Board. As IFRS is adopted throughout the world and may eventually replace American standards, the faculty at Mays is making proactive changes to the accounting curriculum to prepare students for this shift—making them some of the first in the country to do so.

To read about their efforts, see the article on Mays Business Online at: mays.tamu.edu./ifrs.

Over Coffee

Mays student places 1st in national WSJ competition

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eing an early riser benefitted Drew Carden ’10, who placed first in the nation in a solo event at the annual Fisher School of Business Biz Quiz in November.

Hosted by Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, the Biz Quiz tested participants’ knowledge of material in six-weeks’ worth of The Wall Street Journal.

Fifty-four students from 18 colleges and universities from across the nation participated. Carden says to prepare, he woke up early to read the Journal for two hours every weekday for a month.

Carden placed first in the marketplace competition, which taxed his memory on only that section of the newspaper. There was also a team event at the Biz Quiz, in which the Mays team (comprised of Carden and two others) placed 5th out of the 18 competitors. The Mays team jockeyed for position against several of the nation’s top colleges including Emory, UT, and SMU. In addition to individual preparation on the part of the team members, Risa Holland, the team’s advisor, quizzed the students on WSJ content each week. “I am very proud of our students,” said Holland.

“They represented Mays extremely well and

I have confidence they will continue to excel in their course work and after graduation.”

Members of the 2009 Mays Biz Quiz team were Corey Walter ’10, finance, Certificate of Trading and Risk Management Program; Jeremy Knop ’10, finance; and Drew Carden ’10, Professional Program, finance track.

Drew Carden ’10 (far right) poses with his teammates (Corey Walter ’10, left, and Jeremy Knop ’10, center) after he beat out stiff competition at the 2009 Biz Quiz to claim a solo first place victory. Also pictured is group advisor, Risa Holland.

Mays’ H1N1 Straw Poll We asked the Mays community about the plague du jour.

Here’s what they said:

77%

59%

Know someone who has had it.

68%

Have NOT been vaccinated and DO NOT plan to be.

Have implemented new procedures due to the the threat of H1N1.

91%

Have NOT had the H1N1 flu.

62%

Have modified their behaviors to prevent infection.

maysbusiness.tamu.edu

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Network

Fighting for freedom Mays graduate helps disabled Iraqi children find freedom of mobility

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hen most people think of entrepreneurial success, their minds jump to dollars and cents. Brad Blauser ’92 has found his own measure of success: the smiles of children with disabilities who can now lead a more normal life, thanks to his nonprofit organization, Wheelchairs For Iraqi Kids (WFIK). Blauser founded the organization in 2005, with a mission to provide free wheelchairs to the estimated 1.5 million children in Iraq who live with disabilities.

That population includes kids with birth defects, as well as those wounded as a result of war. Without the wheelchairs, these children are doomed to a life of isolation, as when they become too large for their parents to carry, their only options are to stay at home or to drag themselves along the ground.

As of November 2009, Blauser had given away 720 wheelchairs sponsored by corporations and individuals. He was recently recognized by CNN in their Heroes program. The honor came with a $25,000 check—which he promptly used to purchase more wheelchairs.

There’s no other help available for these destitute children who are the invisible citizens of Iraq, says Blauser. The wheelchairs, which cost $350 apiece, can change the lives of the children as well as their families. In a country that has been ripped apart by political conflict for decades, Blauser notes this is an opportunity for his fellow Americans to show compassion.

Giddyup!

Aggie QB drafted by Dallas Cowboys

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eeks before he graduated with an MS in marketing, Stephen McGee ’07 received a job offer unlike that of any of his classmates: he was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys.

McGee, who was a starting quarterback for the Aggies for two years, was chosen in the fourth round of the NFL draft on April 26.

McGee’s selection by the iconic Texas team is a dream come true for the athlete, who has admired the Cowboys since childhood. Much more than just a football player, McGee has also made academics 10

@MAYS Spring 2010

The children aren’t the only ones to benefit. Many American soldiers have helped Blauser to deliver the wheelchairs, giving them a bright spot in the bleakness of wartime trauma. “This actually gives them something good to remember, that they can look back and say, ‘I did help change lives,’” he says.

Blauser holds degrees in management and marketing from Mays.

He first went to Iraq as a civilian contractor. In 2008, he quit his job to work on WFIK full time. It was a risk, but Blauser says that putting all his efforts into fighting for the resources these children so desperately need has been the most rewarding decision he has made thus far.

To learn more about his organization, see wheelchairsforiraqikids.com.

and community service priorities during his five-and-half years at A&M. He holds a bachelor’s in marketing from A&M. He has also been a frequent speaker in the community for youth and charity events, using his celebrity status to benefit others. For his efforts, McGee was recognized with the 2008 Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ Bobby Bowden Athlete of the Year award. The national prize is given to one college football player each year that epitomizes the student-athlete persona: one who conducts himself as a model in the community, in the classroom, and on the field.

In 2008, McGee was recognized by his teammates with the Aggie Heart Award, the highest honor for an A&M football player. The award honored McGee for his effort, desire, determination, competitiveness, leadership, and courage. McGee hails from Burnet, Texas.

Network

From doodles to dollars L

ike many students, finance major Katie Decker ’10 likes to doodle in the margins of her notes while sitting in class. Unlike many students, Katie’s doodles may someday provide her livelihood. Instead of smiley faces and rainbows, she likes to sketch designs for rings, pendants, and earrings.

A lifelong fascination with jewelry led Katie to an internship with Judith Ann Jewels in Houston in the summer of 2009. She showed her sketches to the store owner who was impressed with her delicate designs and offered Katie space in her store. Pieces from Katie’s Ivy and Renaissance collections are on sale there now, ranging from a pair of gold vine hoop earrings laden with diamonds for $1,200 to a large Tahitian pearl pendant capped with swirls of gold and gems for $7,400—pieces Katie hopes will become family heirlooms for their purchasers.

Though the market for big-ticket items has taken a hit over the last year, Katie says she’s sold about 80 percent of what she’s made so far to vendors who are eager to display her pieces. Her ivy hoop earrings were her first creation, and they are still her biggest seller.

“Finding someone to make the jewelry is the most difficult part, because it’s the biggest kept secret in the jewelry business,” says Katie as she discusses the arduous manufacturing process. She is currently working with manufacturers overseas, and says the communication takes up much of her time. In an industry that is all about subtlety and precision, it’s very important that each item is made to Katie’s exact specifications.

Katie plans to graduate with a degree in finance this spring and then pursue an MBA. It’s her dream to expand her business after she graduates.

Until then, she will continue to draw her beautiful designs, while also sketching out plans for her future business. “It is very exciting for me to see my designs come to life, and even more exciting when other people want to wear them.”

See more of her designs at www.katiedecker.com/.

Quiz time!

Mays faculty faces U

sually teachers are the ones asking all the questions. Not today! We’ve turned the tables on one of the most recognizable faculty members at Mays, Stan “The Man” Kratchman. Whether he’s in front of a class or on a stage, his quirky charm makes him an easy audience favorite.

What’s your dream job? Lead actor in a ma jor motion picture.

What’s your secret talent? As a teenager and in my early 20s, I played accordion in several dance bands and had a dance band of my own.

Hobbies? Acting, radio, sports, jazz music and recently I have been learning a little Taekwondo. I host Big Band Stage Door Canteen every Monday on the local public radio station.

What do you like about the practice of accounting? Everything!

But mostly looking at gender issues, governmental and not-for-profit accounting, and ethical issues in business and accounting.

What business book should everyone read? The Fair Tax Book by

Neal Boortz and John Linder. Our current tax system needs to be debated and this book represents a good start.

What’s your favorite piece of general advice? Enjoy every day!

Make sure you laugh at least once every day!

How many years have you been at Mays? How many students would you estimate you’ve taught? I’m currently in my 33rd year at A&M. I estimate that’s about 9,000 students taught. Also, I’ve attended the graduation of every senior and graduate student that I have taught.

maysbusiness.tamu.edu

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Network

The ride of a lifetime Mays student cycles across the U.S. to raise awareness for people with disabilities

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pending eight hours a day on a bike, climbing mountains and crossing the nation on a 4,000-mile trek transformed Matt Proctor’s body. Spending countless hours with people with disabilities transformed his heart.

In all, Proctor ’11 says the 64 days he spent riding in the Journey of Hope made him a man. “I consider this to have been my rite of passage,” he says. “I’ve never done anything that made me grow more as a person.”

Proctor, a marketing student, spent the summer of 2009 riding from coast to coast for the Journey of Hope, an event that brings awareness for and encouragement to people with disabilities. Three teams of riders made the trek from San Francisco and Seattle to Washington D.C., stopping in towns across the U.S. to put on puppet shows, play wheelchair basketball, and simply visit those with mental and physical disabilities. They also presented grant checks to organizations and centers that support people with disabilities.

The money for those grants came from the riders themselves: each participant raises at least $5,000 for the Journey of Hope before the ride. Proctor exceeded his goal, raising $5,750 by the end of the summer. All funds raised, including corporate sponsorships, brings in about $500,000 per year to support the organization’s programs.

This year, the group of 115 riders raised almost $700,000.

The Journey of Hope is organized by the nonprofit Push America, the philanthropic arm of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, of which Proctor is a member. The activity doesn’t match the frat stereotype, but Proctor says that after spending the summer beating his body and breaking his heart on a daily basis with the other men on the ride, fraternity is the perfect word for the relationship that developed.

“We really became a family,” he said, recalling how they all wept when the ride was over.

Proctor’s passion for people with disabilities is obvious once he starts telling stories from the summer. There was the little girl with cerebral palsy, who with a beautiful smile and precious personality captured the hearts of all the riders. “We couldn’t stop talking about how stunningly gorgeous she was,” he says. Or playing wheelchair basketball and getting schooled by a team of “disabled” athletes who

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@MAYS Spring 2010

et eople I m p g in z a m st a ies." of the mo tweigh her disabilit e n o s a w u far o "Tonya r abilities e H . r e m all sum whipped them soundly, despite the fact that they were without the use of some of their limbs. And the person that taught him most strikingly to never judge a book by its cover, Tonya. She had severe cerebral palsy and little control over her body at all, and yet was so capable mentally that she organized the Push America visit to her assisted living home.

It was like a reverse service project, he says. “I felt like I couldn’t give enough. People would say, ‘It’s so great that you’re doing all this,’ but it was the people that we were there to serve that were changing our lives, so much more than we were changing theirs.”

Now that he’s back on campus, Proctor is trying to maintain his fervor. He is encouraging five others in his fraternity to participate in the ride this summer, mentoring them as they complete the application process, physical training, and fund raising. He has also organized an event on campus involving a stationary bike challenge and passing out fliers to raise awareness of people with disabilities.

Under his direction, his chapter is going to begin partnering with local organizations regularly in activities with people with disabilities. He says he wants everyone to understand that, “Their abilities far outweigh their disabilities,” and that for most, their biggest limitation is not from their own minds or bodies, but from society. The disability is ours, he says, in the way that we view them.

“These people don’t need our pity, they need our friendship.”

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of time for personal reflection when you’re biking 50-80 miles per day. Proctor says there was one thought he couldn’t escape while he peddled: people with disabilities aren’t a tragic mistake or a burden to society. They are on this earth for a special purpose—to teach us how to love.

Network

Wiener dog races, dining dollars, and selfless service Mays students discover the joy of giving The joy of giving Magic.

That’s how Theresa Mangapora describes the outcome of the Mays student- project Aggies Collecting Dollars for Cans (ACDC). The students involved in ACDC collaborated with campus dining services to enable university students to give money from their meal plan accounts to the Brazos Food Bank: The effort netted $4,119. “They saw an opportunity that had been wasted,” said Mangapora, executive director of the food bank. “All the pieces fell into place…they were able to make magic happen.”

Every $1 contributed to the food bank buys five pounds of food, so the students’ contribution provided about 20,000 pounds—one semi truck-full— of food.

Team ACDC and 80 other student groups (nearly 600 students in all) served the community as part of a sophomore-level business class. When tasked with the creation of $1,000-worth of value to a nonprofit, the response from Mays students was varied: some chose

to build ramps for the disabled, others chose to mentor at-risk youth. The projects taught students a variety of lessons, from teamwork to professionalism. More importantly, it taught the value of selfless service.

Team En Fuego When it came time to decide where they would focus their efforts, the seven members of Team En Fuego didn’t have to discuss their options for long.

“We all had a keen interest in animals,” said group member

Texas. Over the course of the semester they facilitated an annual Meet Your Neighbor mixer for the residents and also planted an herb garden in memory of a former staff member of the facility. The bulk of their time, however, was spent creating a play crafted for the residents.

Team member Nida Haq ’12 says that what started out as a class assignment evolved into something more over the sixweeks her group was active at Waldenbrooke. “It wasn’t only community service. It was a relationship,” she said.

Mays 6.0 Christopher Reed ’12. That shared passion led them to work with the Brazos Animal Shelter.

The organization immediately put them to work, adding them to the planning committee of their annual fundraiser, Wiener Fest. Group members met their $1,000-goal by helping to organize and execute the event, which this year had nearly triple the attendance of previous years and raised $47,000.

Team Capace Team Capace group members gave of their time at Waldenbrooke Estates, a retirement community in Bryan,

Partnering with the recognized A&M student organization The PB&J Project, members of the group Mays 6.0 sold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to raise money for meals for children in Kenya. Students manned a table in one of the main halls of Wehner over the lunch hour for several weeks, encouraging their classmates to give up their lunch money in exchange for a PB&J and the privilege of providing a meal for someone in need.

Over the semester, the project collected more than $2,500.

A scoop of Texans’ favorite in Colorado

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ave you ever had blackberry cobbler served in a waffle cone? These Blue Bell favorites are all the rage in Estes Park and Fort Collins, Colorado, thanks to James Contos ’86 and his ice cream parlors.

Contos and his crew serve up southern favorites to the Colorado consumers, who have been swept off their feet by banana pudding and chocolate chip cookie dough varieties.

Born and raised in Texas, this Mays alum decided to introduce one of his home state’s favorite desserts to Colorado—where you can’t buy Blue Bell at the grocery store.

Contos is finding success at converting Coloradans one scoop at a time. In fact, he’s opening a third shop later this year. He serves up ice cream on nights and weekends, and during the day runs the Mountain Valley Home Health and Hospice. He used his degree in marketing to earn the company presidency, but he uses his education as a businessman to keep his ice cream habit going strong.

The future of business: Innovation, customization, and connectivity Renowned scholar C.K. Prahalad presents at Mays

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sari-clad housewife in rural India coughs as she cooks over a smoky “chulha” stove, burning wood or cow dung for fuel.

The walls around the cooking area, like her lungs, are smeared with black residue. The amount of toxins she breathes in while preparing meals for her family each day is equivalent to 20 cigarettes. She coughs again, her eyes burning from the smoke. She wishes there were another way to cook, but she, like millions of other poor people in the world, can’t afford a better stove.

Until now.

A new product was recently unveiled, designed specifically for the needs of the poor. The Combination Chulha is smokeless, can use biomass or natural gas, is durable, and most significantly, it’s affordable. It is also better for the environment (it has fewer carbon emissions than her previous method of cooking) and good for the local economy, as housewives are becoming entrepreneurs, selling the stoves.

What’s brilliant about this story is easy to overlook—a company saw the opportunity embedded in poverty. It’s a concept that has transformational significance, says C.K. Prahalad, who is excited 14

@MAYS Spring 2010

about the opportunities that exist at the bottom of the wealth pyramid. Opportunities to make money, yes, but also to change the world.

Prahalad, an author, educator, and businessman of renown, recently spoke to students at Mays about the changing landscape of global business.

Need spurs invention Volatility is everywhere: Climate change; terrorism; genocide; pandemic flu; unpredictable consumer reactions; wild swings in commodity markets such as oil; major shifts in government in the United States, India, Japan, and Russia; and let’s not forget the global recession. “It’s not just a financial crisis,” says Prahalad. The crisis is all-encompassing.

But don’t panic. With adversity comes innovation. The opportunity before us now? The total transformation of business.

“In a range of industries there is a fundamental reset that is taking place,” says Prahalad—a boon for young people entering the marketplace, as they will be on the cutting edge of this change, with

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the opportunity to influence the way we do business in the future.

How is it possible to offer a quality product at that kind of price?

According to Prahalad, a new economic model is rapidly emerging, It’s the old adage, “necessity is the mother of invention.” Prahalad one that will be characterized by low capital intensity and increased says in the U.S., where people have money and insurance, there customer intimacy, paired with new consumption patterns. isn’t such a focus on super-low design cost. In India, where extreme As in the example of the Combination Chulha, Prahalad says poverty is widespread, engineers are forced to work smarter to create we are moving from a firm-centric society to a a product at an affordable price. consumer-centric society—one where consumers Because if it’s not affordable, it won’t sell. If it Capital intensity dictate what products are made and at what doesn’t sell, the business dies.

The amount of fixed or real price they are sold, and businesses respond with capital present in relation to products tailored specifically to the needs of their Connectivity fuels the future other factors of production, especially labor. audience.

In addition to innovation from the bottom up, PraPrahalad points to the Build-a-Bear Workshop halad sees connectivity as the major transformative N=1 business model as another example as it’s a highly customized element in business today. How would it change A business where each product, tailored to the individual customer (an business, he asked, if every person in a company product is custom made “n=1” business model). While the product is a contributed to projects in a wiki format, so that for the consumer. teddy bear, what consumers are spending their $80 the talents of each are fully utilized?

On a larger scale, Prahalad asked his audience on is an individualized experience. This is in direct to consider how to improve a cardiac pacemaker. If they aren’t imopposition to the traditional toy industry model, which focuses on proved via obvious means—making them smaller, cheaper, or with mass production of a homogenized item at low cost. a longer battery life—how could they be made better? By making As the recession makes paupers of more and more of the them an n=1 product: monitor the activity of each patient’s pacemakpopulation, Prahalad says that businesses need to figure out how to er; when it’s activated due to a heart problem, a computer would send offer Build-a-Bear service at a price that is affordable to the world’s an automated text message to the patient; if medical attention is poorest. Like Jaipur Foot (jaipurfoot.org), an Indian company that needed, the patient would receive directions to the nearest hospital, creates high-quality prosthetic limbs—an n=1 product, as each limb where the staff would be notified of his impending arrival and his must fit the patient precisely—for about $35 a piece. That’s mere medical records would be sent so that his care would be immediate pennies on the dollar for what an amputee would pay for a prosthetic in the U.S., where artificial limbs can cost $10,000 to $15,000. and accurate.

Where some see only poverty, C.K. Prahalad sees opportunity. There are 4 million poor people in the world. They have many needs. Prahalad contends that business people can find ways to work smarter to meet those needs and make a profit, while improving the lives of their customers. Example: this woman in India, who’s method of cooking is bad for her health (the smoke she breathes daily is equivalent to 20 cigarettes) and for the environment.

For her, engineers have designed a new kind of stove that is inexpensive, efficient, and green, too.

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“I believe we have a huge opportunity to build a world that’s totally different from what we’ve inherited. We cannot get to this place through analysis. We must imagine this world. We must have personal courage, passion, humanity, and humility. We cannot analyze our way into this opportunity, we must imagine our way into this opportunity.”

This type of service can’t be offered by one provider, but it is possible with a network of providers working together in a complex ecosystem. Eventually the idea of a supply web will replace the traditional supply chain. And that, says Prahalad, is the future of business. As consumers demand more personalized products, connectivity will make it possible.

We are in a new age of innovation, he says, one where every consumer has a voice and where information and commerce are becoming democratized. “I believe we have a huge opportunity to build a world that’s totally different from what we’ve inherited,” he said, commenting that every person must have access to high quality products and services, as well as the means to buy them. “We cannot get to this place through analysis. We must imagine this world. We must have personal courage, passion, humanity, and humility. We cannot analyze our way into this opportunity, we must imagine our way into this opportunity.”

For more information see our website at mays.tamu.edu/ prahalad.

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More about C.K. Prahalad

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ast fall, Mays initiated the Dean’s Distinguished Scholar Lecture Series as a forum

to present the best in scholarly thought from an array of business disciplines. The premiere speaker was C.K. Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.

Prahalad is an educator, entrepreneur, author, and consultant. He has been voted as the most influential living management thinker by Thinkers 50, The Times of London and

Prahalad studied physics at the

Suntop Media, and has won the

University of Madras (now Chenai)

McKinsey prize four times for the

before continuing his education in

best article in Harvard Business

the United States, where he earned

Review.

a PhD from Harvard. He has

His accomplishments include

received honorary doctorates in

writing or coauthoring five highly

economics (University of London),

influential books on strategy,

engineering (Stevens Institute of

including The Multinational

Technology), and business (Tilberg,

Mission, Competing for the Future

The Netherlands and Abertay,

(hailed as the best business book

Scotland). He was a member of the

of the year in 1994), The Future

UN Blue Ribbon Commission on

of Competition (voted one of the

Private Sector and Development,

best business books of the year

which seeks economic reform

by Business Week and Strategy +

solutions to create human

Business in 2004), and The Fortune

development.

at the Bottom of the Pyramid (voted

He is active and prominent

the top business book of the year

as a business consultant, and his

by The Economist, Fast Company

clients include some of the world’s

and Amazon.com editors in

leading companies. He sits on

2004). His most recent book is The

the boards of NCR Corporation,

New Age of Innovation: Driving

Pearson, plc., Hindustan Unilever

Cocreated Value through Global

Limited, TVS Capital, The World

Networks, coauthored with

Resources Institute, and The Indus

M.S. Krishnan.

Entrepreneurs.

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Retail: moving forward Summit explores retail business during and after the recession

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ast May, calamity struck the well-loved Texas retailer Jim McIngvale (“Mattress Mack”) of Gallery Furniture: arson damaged his showroom and destroyed his main warehouse. A hundred thousand square feet burned, causing more than $20 million in damages.

While not ravaged by literal fire, the U.S. economy faced its own overwhelming challenges last year as millions of jobs were lost, banks collapsed, and the credit market froze. Retailers were hard hit when their customers padlocked their wallets and hunkered down to wait out the economic storm. Many stores closed their doors permanently.

Mattress Mack refused to shutter his doors, opening a renovated and restored warehouse and showroom a mere 44 days after the catastrophe. Like Gallery Furniture, U.S. retailers are starting to see advances after a long, hard year. Rising from the ashes, store owners are realizing that the retail landscape has changed dramatically. New tactics are needed to woo customers who don’t shop the same way as they did before the recession.

Those new tactics were the topic of the 2009 Retailing Summit, hosted by Mays’ Center for Retailing Studies, held in October 2009 in Dallas. Missed the summit? Here are the highlights. You can see the full version of the story on our website at mays.tamu.edu/retail09.

Short takes from the summit: From her position as vice president of Neiman Marcus’ Last Call Stores, Gayle Tremblay observes that consumers, even luxury consumers, have a new relationship with money: they are more mindful of their spending in an uncertain future. Retailers will have to stay laser-

focused on customer needs and be flexible, she said.

What are her customers looking for? She says that family values and eco-friendly initiatives have been generating sales.

What’s not working in retail?

Shopping malls. That’s the conclusion of Michael Exstein, a senior retail analyst at Credit Suisse, who reports that the business model of malls is no longer viable. There are too many of them and they are too dependent on the productivity of anchor stores. He foresees further consolidation in the retail sector as more and more shopping is done online rather than on-site.

The Home Depot CEO Frank Blake asserts that growth will come from existing rather than new stores, so he’s investing in his stores by investing in his people and merchandise. It’s the people who work in the stores who have the greatest impact on the company’s brand, profit, and success, he says.

After all of the shake up of the recession, companies need to reinforce their brands, especially if the brand has been repositioned due to the economy. Stan Richards, founder and leader of the Dallas-based Richards Group advertising agency, advised the audience about his Spherical™ branding technique. With spherical branding, the brand is implemented at every contact point. Relationship marketing, public relations, even the company’s internal communications—these messages must all be integrated with the brand, he says.

Dave Pickins, president of Olive Garden Restaurants also spoke about brand management, and the unique promise an organization makes through a brand.

“If a brand promise has easy substitutes among competitors, then the brand is a commodity,” that is, a good that anybody can produce without differentiation across the market. A brand should differentiate a company from its competitors so that consumers understand the product or service is something you can’t get anywhere else. When you achieve that level of brand loyalty, your customers become apostles for the brand, he says.

Today’s consumers are interested in real experiences and lasting products, says James Gilmore, author of Authenticity: What consumers really want. In an ever more commercialized, intentionally staged, and technologically mediated world—an increasingly unreal world—people want the real from the genuine, not the fake from some phony, says Gilmore. His advice to retailers is to think about experiential ways to improve business by focusing on how you do things rather than what you do. Retailers must engage the consumer’s five senses and create a unique, memorable, real experience.

Sam Duncan, CEO of OfficeMax, argues that there is a lack of integrity in corporate America today. He says employees must think about the company and customers first, while applying focus, energy and discipline to all they do. To the students in the audience, Duncan provided a model of servant leadership, where success is defined not by multi-million dollar compensation packages but by “being honest, even when it hurts.”

Planning for the 2010 Retailing Summit is underway. Find details at www.crstamu.org/.

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Serving up the works Jason’s Deli founder Joe Tortorice ’70 shares leadership lessons You want to succeed in business?

Then don’t learn how to manage people, learn how to serve them.

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hat’s the advice of Texas entrepreneur Joe Tortorice ’70, founder of Jason’s Deli. Tortorice says servant leadership is the backbone of the corporate culture he’s so proud of, and the secret behind the success of his sandwich-making venture. “How do you get people to follow you? I believe it’s to serve them,” says Tortorice. Do more than merely pay them well: through encouragement, humility, and generosity, help them to live well.

People frequently ask him, “Joe, where do you get your people?!”

He loves when others recognize his outstanding employees, but his response is always the same: The same place you get them. It’s what happens to them after they join the company that makes the difference.

Like the Jason’s Deli Fishing School, named for the “teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” adage. The Fishing School offers free classes on life skills to employees at every level—financial planning, marriage enrichment, spiritual and physical wellness.

“You’ve got to do something other than work to be better at work.

To be more effective at work, spend more time with your family…. you’ve got to balance your family, your health, your spiritual, and your professional areas,” says Tortorice, who believes that’s as true for him—president of the company—as it is for the hourly wage earner mopping the floors or making sandwiches. When you help your people to accomplish their goals, they will do all they can to help you accomplish the company’s goals.

“You can have everything you want in life, if you will just help other people get what they want,” he says, quoting Zig Ziglar. “You have to get buy-in from your people. How do you get buy-in so that they will follow you? By being humble and constantly encouraging them, and by being a generous person…Generosity is one of the great business secrets of all time.”

That mindset is evident in the Jason’s Deli Leadership Institute, a management-training program that takes line workers without a college degree and turns them into store managers. Nearly a third of his managers come through the program, a point of pride for Tortorice, who sees it as an opportunity to change lives—not only for the employee, but for their family, as well. The Leadership Institute also offers courses for managers on topics such as emotional intelligence—a trait that Tortorice feels is invaluable in creating the environment of service leadership he strives for.

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“How do you get people to follow you? I believe it’s to serve them.”

Even in a recession economy, even though there are many, many places where one can buy a sandwich, Tortorice says the business continues to thrive. He chalks it up to service—and not the yourorder-is-right kind of service. Serving customers to him means crafting a menu that is more than delicious, it’s also healthy: the chain has eliminated MSG, trans fats, and high fructose corn syrup from their food, and many of their ingredients are organic. He admits it costs more to do business that way, but he believes it’s

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“We’ve got to produce more for less and with greater speed than we’ve ever done before. The only way to do that in a sustained way is through the empowerment of people. And the only way to get empowerment is through high-trust cultures and an empowerment philosophy that turns bosses into servants and coaches.” ~Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf the right thing to do. He’s worried about the childhood obesity epidemic—“Do you know that kids today are the first generation predicted to not live as long as the generation before them?”—and his commitment to healthier menu offerings is part of his contribution to solving the social problem.

His efforts haven’t gone unnoticed: In 2008, Parents magazine listed Jason’s Deli second on their top ten best fast-casual family restaurants, based on their nutritious and value-conscious kids menu.

Tortorice started out managing a sandwich counter at his father’s dry cleaning store; today there are 215 Jason’s Delis in 28 states, including his first store in Beaumont, Texas. He says he never dreamed his business would get so big. “I started out just to make a living, to make ends meet, and somehow by the grace of God, we’ve had some good things happen to us.”

Spirituality is an important element to Tortorice’s business, as he says, “Grateful people can’t be unhappy.” He opens meetings with prayer and posts inspirational thoughts, appropriately called “daily bread” in each of his stores. He encourages employees to be thankful—to realize that all of the good things around them aren’t accidents, they’re blessings. “Start your day out giving thanks for something. I do, and it’s made a world of difference for me.”

Joe Tortorice is about more than making sandwiches, or making money. As a servant leader, he says he wants to bring joy and enthusiasm to his people. “We’re in the people business,” he says. “Our product just happens to be sandwiches.”

Joe’s rules for servant leadership 1. S et a vision for your organization and then remove obstacles in front of your people’s goals to accomplish that vision.

2. S erve yourself first. Leaders are readers. Improve yourself daily.

3. Continuously encourage others.

4. A lways remain humble. Listen to your people and heed their suggestions.

5. P ractice caring spirituality. Pay attention to your inner restlessness and need for purpose.

6. Be generous.

7. Emotionally connect with others.

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Ethics 101 Right vs. wrong is easy to figure out. But what do you do when the choice is right vs. right?

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arnings are down slightly and things are not looking great for your company this quarter. Your boss comes to you and says, ‘Look, if you could tweak the numbers— just a teensy bit—it will look like we didn’t lose money. We can make up the difference next quarter, no problem. Besides the amount is so small, it’s not a material difference.’

If you don’t do it, then three people will lose their jobs, including your officemate who has a family of four to support on her income alone.

What do you do? It’s right to report earnings truthfully, but it’s also right to help your coworkers keep their jobs.

How about this one: Your boss lets you know that staff reduction is inevitable in the coming months due to budget cuts, but the information is confidential. One of the staff members you know is going to be pinked asks you directly, “Do I need to start looking for a new job?” How do you respond?

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Everyday in the workplace, decisions like he said, commenting that to get to that point, Four categories these are being made. Sometimes the choices are he must strip the students of their armor of of ethical dilemmas prejudgment and positive self-regard. so commonplace that we make them without thinking, operating on ethical autopilot.

Visser works with students in the required 1) Truth versus loyalty Autopilot mode can get us in trouble, though, sophomore-level course Integrated Work-life 2) Individual versus community if like the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling Competencies. Part of the curriculum for the class water, it leads to complacency that can be fatal— focuses on ethics training.

3) Justice versus mercy at least to your career.

It’s a tough subject to teach when most of the 4) S hort-term versus long-term Encouraging students to analyze these students think they understand it all already. decisions is the goal of faculty members at Mays Visser challenges students’ preconceptions who are committed to training this next generation of business through small group discussions of ethical scenarios like the ones leaders to be ethically sensitive, not merely technically proficient. mentioned already, teaching them how to analyze the situation to discover “the higher right” instead of only looking for the correct The first challenge: strip the armor answer.

Part of the problem with teaching ethics is that we all tend to see One of the most compelling cases they discuss is that of Betty ourselves as fairly moral individuals already, says Roemer Visser, Vinson, a midlevel accountant who was instructed to commit clinical assistant professor in the Undergraduate Special Programs fraud by her boss, kicking off the Worldcom scandal. She spent five Office. Students often think ethical training doesn’t apply to them. months in prison and five months under house arrest for her actions.

“Most of us, our students included, fool ourselves into thinking, Visser says that this case in particular resonates with students, who ‘I would never do that,’ when it comes to unethical behavior,” says can identify with Vinson, a good person caught in a bad situation: Visser. He describes an automatic judgment that happens when we lie or lose your job. “She was trying to do the right thing, yet…she hear of a scandal: That person did something unethical, ergo he or ended up being the first one to go to jail.” she is an unethical person. I, however, am an ethical person, so I wouldn’t behave that way.

This kind of cyclical reasoning is dangerous, he says, because given the right circumstances, just about everyone—even highly moral people—will behave unethically.

“I’m trying to get them to understand, not only up here,” he points to his head, “…that just because their parents taught them good values does not inoculate them against ethical transgressions,”

“If we screw up, we blame it on the circumstance.

If somebody else screws up, we blame it on their character.”

Test your ethical prowess Two-thirds of the ethical dilemmas you will face in the workplace will relate to personnel, says Visser, citing a study.

As such, test your ethical fitness with this case study he used for classroom discussion: You’re managing a team of salespeople. Tom has been a pillar of the company for 20 years, demonstrating consistent, strong performance, until the last year when his numbers started to decline. Jacqueline has only been with the company for three years, but she’s setting sales records with her performance. There is a management-training program available that you can send one

team member to each year. Completing the program guarantees promotion within the company. Tom asks you pointedly to consider him for the program this year.

Which employee do you send and why?

Remember, before you choose, stack up your arguments on both sides so that you can decide impartially.

Now what do I do?

Here are some practical tips you can employ in the workplace: 1) F ind a mentor: Talk to someone whose opinion you can trust when you’re faced with a tough decision.

2) K now your “exit card”: Predetermine what conditions constitute

grounds for quitting, according to your own set of ethical standards.

3) Find accountability: Don’t act in a vacuum. Share your decisions and process with others in your workgroup to make sure you’re being reasonable.

4) Don’t depend on your gut: Take the time to fully explore the arguments on both sides before seeking a resolution.

5) P ractice ethical fitness: Spend time pondering ethical decisions in advance, rather than operating on autopilot.

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Real-world lessons You would expect that with all of the current events to choose from—the financial collapse blamed on fraudulent accounting practices, Ponzi schemes, bank bailouts and inflated corporate compensation—that Visser would include plenty of headline news in his curriculum. Not so, he says. While some of these events illustrate the four kinds of ethical dilemmas (see sidebar), they don’t have much traction in the classroom.

“As informative as they are, most of the business cases I’ve worked with don’t really hit home [for students]. So, they become detached, clinical exercises in intellectual acrobatics and reasoning,” rather than scenarios students can identify with. Besides, “All of the cases we read about in the paper are the right versus wrong cases,” says Visser. That doesn’t make for much conversation. It’s the right versus right scenarios, where there are sound arguments on both sides, that bear further investigation.

“If you don’t know who you are, powerful people can make you who they want you to be.”

It’s tough for students to acknowledge right versus right problems. “This generation is all about ‘right’,” says Visser. Even when they are told ahead of time that there is no one right solution to a problem, after spending a class period discussing the arguments of both sides of a case, they will still ask “What’s the right answer?”, and leave frustrated when there isn’t one.

“We need to be compassionate with this generation of students,” says Rushworth Kidder, the renowned ethicist who created part of the curriculum for Visser’s class. “They have basically been raised in a right versus wrong atmosphere.

Everything they soak up, from talk radio, from the blogosphere, from the television news channels, from the way that people argue in public, it’s all about right versus wrong.” Kidder used politics as an example. “We don’t argue for the rightness of

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one candidate, we argue for the wrongness of the other,” he says. We criticize the opposition and turn the vote into a right versus wrong debate.

Accepting that both options are right and you still have to choose one is uncomfortable.

Don’t rely on your gut Part of the process of making sound ethical decisions is learning to not always go with your gut. Often we come to ethical decisions too quickly, says Visser. Our choices are reactive rather than analytical. When presented with a hypothetical dilemma, he asks students to build arguments in favor of both options in the scenario, but to refrain from making a decision about action. If you make the decision before you do the reasoning, it’s not reasoning, he says. It’s rationalizing. And when you’re rationalizing, you can make almost any choice seem defensible—even a wrong choice—“if you massage it long enough.”

“Often we respond to a gut feeling—oh this is wrong, or this is right—and we act on it. We don’t challenge it, we don’t interrogate it,” he says.

“So we need to get people to recognize when that is happening and hit that pause button, to say ‘I know that this is what I’m feeling right now, but do I have all the information?’”

The label “ethics” can be a turn-off for students, because it sounds heavy and philosophical, says Visser. The truth is, when you reduce it to a process of analysis, of weighing all the information impartially, students realize that it doesn’t feel like “ethics”—it feels like problem-solving.

Roemer Visser is a clinical assistant professor in the Undergraduate Special Programs Office.

He specializes in teamwork, communication, and ethics.

Michael Shaub is a clinical professor of accounting. His blog, Bottom Line Ethics is featured on our website at mays.tamu.edu/bottomline.

Training ethical accountants

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y his calculation, Michael Shaub, clinical professor of accounting at Mays, is involved in the training of about one percent of all the new CPA candidates going into the marketplace in the U.S. each year. That’s a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly, especially when it comes to instilling them with essential moral reasoning skills.

Students that wish to sit for the CPA exam are required by state law to take an ethics course that covers independence, integrity, objectivity, and moral reasoning. Shaub is well qualified to teach the topic, as ethical issues in accounting— specifically in large firms—has been his research specialty for the past 20 years. He’s published dozens of articles and won several grants examining what motivates accountants to lie, how they do it, and what the consequences are.

With every ethical decision there is a cost/benefit analysis says Shaub, as the decision maker weighs duties against consequences.

Duties include rules—laws, standards of your profession, and your own personal code of conduct.

Consequence is the potential cost of upholding your duty—or not.

One of Shaub’s goals for his students is to be aware of how they make ethical decisions with that formula. He also wants them to think about making decisions in advance; he wants students to be thoughtful, not reactive, when it comes to these choices. “In a business environment when they’re being wined and dined, they make all kinds of judgments in the short-term.” Those kind of on-the-spot decisions usually emphasize the consequences, not the duties—and that’s when you get into trouble, he says. “People in those environments make decisions they wouldn’t make in other

environments, because they’re not logical about it.”

He compares it to staying faithful to your spouse. “You don’t make that decision when you’re at a hotel at a convention and you’ve had one too many glasses of wine. You make that decision long before.”

To aid in that premeditated decision-making, Shaub has students create a list of their professional principles as their final project. “I want people to confront who they are and decide what it is that they actually believe and what truly drives them. I think a lot of times people haven’t thought it through—what are the principles that drive me?”

Professional integrity is vitally important in the accounting field, yet most accountants lie on a regular basis, says Shaub. “Accounting is like dating,” he says. “You overstate your assets and you understate your liabilities.” This leads to “a habit of tweaking the truth that’s really destructive when you’re in a profession that relies on truth-telling.”

While it’s acceptable in accounting to estimate and get close enough to the truth for your numbers to be “not materially misstated,” Shaub says that’s not nearly good enough.

There’s a big difference between “material” and “truthful”—if you can book an adjustment and get closer to the truth, even if it makes the company look bad, you should do it. “I’m committed to truth telling. We can’t always get to the exact right answer, but to the extent that we can get closer to truth, we ought to do that.”

His most important advice to students? “If you don’t know who you are, powerful people can make you who they want you to be. So it’s worth the time to clearly define who you are and say, ‘This is where I stand. These are my principles.’”

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Friend me Understanding how social media has shaped the mindset of Gen Y-ers can benefit your business

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ays students use social media sites such as Facebook for everything from keeping up with campus news to organizing group projects. It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s efficient, and it’s everywhere. When these students graduate and join the workforce, they will expect to use mobile and social media to make the business world smaller and the speed of work faster.

In the past few years, the business world has welcomed the first group of employees to never know life before the Internet and to have been shaped indelibly by social media. What should employers expect from new hires who appear to have been born with Intel processors instead of brains and who seem incapable of making a decision without running it by a few friends first?

As a member of Gen Y, I have grown up with technology growing with me: I have watched the brick cell phone become the iPhone, the Nintendo

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that end, communication through social media Entertainment System become the Wii, and I Generation Y could be important for boosting company morale have never known a world that wasn’t dominated through colleague connectivity, says Wendy

by Microsoft. In elementary school my peers a.k.a Generation Next or the Net Boswell, associate professor of management, and I played computer games to learn instead Generation Mays Research Fellow, and director for the of using flash cards, and in high school how Set of people born in the U.S. Center for Human Resource Management many friends we had on MySpace was a more between roughly 1980 and at Mays. important report card than the ones we received 1999.

On a related note, if businesses make it in the classroom. clear that they endorse networking via social Now that we’re in college, MySpace is passé, media channels, it creates a better fit for Gen but social media is still vitally important. We Taken from the Y employees who are used to communicating use social media for work and play. We are fans Beloit College that way. That fit is important, as it is linked or followers of all the things that matter to us, Mindset List for the to higher employee loyalty, retention, and so that when something is going on, we don’t class of 2013 performance, says Boswell. have to search for information—it comes to us.

Generation Y is not asking companies to Right now, our tech-enabled communication is Students in the class of 2013 make special accommodations, we simply want centered on Texas A&M, which is our biggest • Have never used a card to be able to share information in the manner focal point and where we spend our time. Our catalog to find a book. that we are accustomed to. tweets, iPhone apps, and Facebook profiles • Have always been able to Some businesses might also look to providing reflect how we connect with the university: read books on an electronic their own mediums if they are concerned with through course work, Aggie athletics, university screen. personal affairs spilling over into the workplace. news, and relationships with other members of • Have always watched wars, A company instant messaging system or the Aggie family. We are so used to logging into coups, and police arrests social media network could be great for office this network to find information and socialize, unfold on television in real morale, too. If a corporation likes the idea of that when we graduate and join a company, the time. instantaneous communication, but wants to natural step for us will be to connect with that • Have always known what the have some control over the interactions, setting company through the same channels. It’s become evening news was before the Evening News came on. up a closed, company-wide IM or network is a the way Gen Y sends and receives information. good way to keep the conversation going and the When I hear about an organization that • Text has always been hyper.

Facebook time limited. blocks social media sites, the first word that That idea appeals to Andrea Braugh ’11, a pops into my mind is “counterproductive.” management major. “I think it’s okay for a company to use Facebook Companies shouldn’t waste their time blocking Facebook, Twitter, to connect its employees if the company is small; it’s not a bad idea.

YouTube and the like. Instead they should realize the channels’ However, if it’s a bigger company, they should provide their own potential. As President Obama can attest, there is enormous social network,” she says. power in connecting with young adults in this way. If it can help a Silvio Canto’s opinion echoes Braugh’s. Canto ’09, a student in relatively unknown politician become arguably the most influential the Professional Program with a concentration in finance, speaks man in the world, what can it do for a company? from his internship experiences with KPMG and Accenture. He was This kind of communication is great for transmitting news, but Facebook friends with many of his colleagues, but quickly learned it’s better for fostering relationships. Did you know that engaged there’s a boundary line within the business culture: when you are employees—ones that build relationships with colleagues and are discussing a work-related matter, use e-mail. When it’s less formal involved and committed to their work and organization—tend to communication or networking, use Facebook. be more motivated in the workplace and stay on the job longer? To

“As President Obama can attest, there is enormous power in connecting with young people via social media. If it can help a relatively unknown politician become arguably the most influential man in the world, what can it do for a company?” maysbusiness.tamu.edu

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Features

Takeaways for managers

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as the age shaped the medium, or has the medium shaped the age? While the answer is as imponderable as the chicken and the egg, the fact remains that this generation’s adoption of social media reflects some important details about their personalities and expectations in the workplace.

• Gen Y-ers are relationshiporiented. They want to know and be known. Sometimes called the “Look at me” generation, this group is eager to engage. They are interested in others’ opinions and will often make decisions based on friends’ recommendations.

Business Application: Encourage group work and sharing between team members. Also, give frequent feedback.

• Gen Y-ers have short attention spans. This group is used to finding information very quickly and easily via the Internet—patience is not their strong suit. They multi-task constantly (e.g., texting while driving) and know

how to manage multiple streams of information by scanning each.

Business Application: Keep information concise and direct. If you’re sending an e-mail to your workgroup, shorter is better.

• Gen Y-ers expect to have fun while working. They have a more free-spirited approach to work and prefer to blend work and play.

Business Application: How can you inject fun into your workplace? A game of trashcan basketball isn’t a waste of time if it rejuvenates your employees and makes them enjoy their jobs more—making them more productive and decreasing the likelihood of turnover.

• Gen Y-ers are informal and egalitarian. Respect is earned through thought leadership, not titles. They expect to add as much to the conversation as their superiors, and have their opinions considered despite their relative inexperience.

Business Application: Create an environment of respect, where all ideas are welcomed.

Sources: Cheese, Peter. “Netting the Net Generation.” BusinessWeek: March 13, 2008.

Pew research center for the people and the press. “A Portrait of ‘Generation Next’: How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics.” January 9, 2007 http://people-press.org/report/300/a-portrait-of-generation-next Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Twitterpated: Mobile Americans Increasingly Take to Tweeting.” February 12, 2009 http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1117/twittertweet-users-demographics Judge, Timothy A., Carl J. Thoresen, Joyce E. Bono, and Gregory K. Patton. The job satisfaction-job performance relationship: A qualitative, quantitative review.”

Psychological Bulletin 127:3 (2001): 376-407.

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When companies began creating e-mail accounts and assigning Blackberries in the early aughts, many employees were faced anew with the challenge of separating their work and personal lives. The struggle of shifting boundaries led to the stereotypical Smartphone-bound workaholic moms and dads that many of us were raised by— and have vowed not to become.

Boswell says that it is likely that Gen Y has already figured out how to create their own personal boundaries, since they’ve never known a time when mobile devices didn’t blur them.

“I think it has been easier for Generation Y to draw their boundary lines simply because they are already so used to managing their lives on a computer before they enter the workplace,” Boswell says.

“As long as we have four bars, there is nothing we can’t accomplish.”

Today, most professionals’ work lives have gone mobile. As long as we have four bars, there is nothing we can’t accomplish. Boswell calls it “the electronic leash,” and it is something I will already have around my neck when I enter the workforce.

Unlike my Boomer and Gen X predecessors, however, I already manage my life on an iPhone, so it won’t be anything new when that’s expected for my job.

That doesn’t mean Gen Y-ers will want to take work home every night merely because it’s convenient. Braugh has already drawn her boundaries. “I don’t mind working from home [after hours] every once in awhile, but I will have a problem with it if it ever becomes an expectation,” she says.

What is attractive about the electronic leash is that it gives us the option to be productive at home if we want to—and often, we do. It becomes a negative only when we’re expected to log regular workday hours in an office on top of being available at all hours remotely. Cyber commuting is becoming easier as employees, with their proclivity for mobile devices, are used to working from home, or the coffee shop/beach/park bench/

Features

etc., so that no matter where the work occurs, performance isn’t negatively affected.

In fact, if cyber commuting makes your workers happy, performance will likely be enhanced.

Gen Y-ers are adopting the microblogging site Twitter faster than any other group, according to recent statistics. However, most students I’ve talked to don’t use it or find it worthwhile.

“I don’t use it at all,” says Canto. He notes that professional athletes and other celebrities are keen on the medium, but he doesn’t have the time or the inclination to share his updates in one more place. “It’s too much…I just use Facebook.”

While it’s true that Facebook users still greatly outnumber Twitterers at present, I do see it having potential within a corporation. Twitter (or an internal Twitter-like service) would be useful for keeping employees updated on upcoming events, big contracts, and what colleagues are doing in real-time, without the formality of an e-mail.

That’s important, because Gen Y doesn’t respond to formality.

It doesn’t resonate with a highly social, interdependent, nonhierarchical, egalitarian mindset. Part of social media’s popularity is its informality. Most of the time, the communication is short, with little emphasis placed on correct spelling or rules of grammar. We have a thought, we share it, others comment. No one’s post is more important than anyone else’s. It’s attractive in its simplicity and lack of pretention.

Like a newswire, a tweet sends concise information out to the masses instantaneously.

But unlike a newswire, a company can control who can read it. A medium in which a company can share important information concisely and instantly might make for a good investment, especially for companies with employees in many locations.

Imagine this scenario: I tweet that I’m getting ready to start working on a deal involving XYZ Company’s services. One of my colleagues reads the tweet and responds that he used to work for XYZ Company. This potentially valuable contact would not have been made if e-mail were the preferred mode of communication in an office, as employees don’t transmit status updates via e-mail. Real-time news is Twitter’s selling point in corporate consideration, and the idea of being able to update the entire company on minor issues in real-time with just a few keystrokes is an attractive alternative to lengthy e-mails.

However, corporations might have to look into a more professional-sounding site if they want their employees to take them seriously, as Twitter has the reputation of being the place to catch up on celebrity gossip. Perhaps Twitter, by another name, would smell sweeter to the next generation.

More conversation, more information, more connection—in real time: that’s what this age is all about. Providing that kind of environment in your office is important as my generation joins the marketplace. Even if social media seems questionable as new applications are explored in the work setting, companies that embrace it will undoubtedly be the ones that will stay ahead in the game by attracting and retaining the best young talent.

Shae Ford ’11 is an English major from Burleson, Texas and a student writer in the Mays Business School Office of Communication. She happily uses Facebook and is completely obsessed with her iPhone.

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Features

Same same but different A photo essay by Brittany Hardin ‘09

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rittany Hardin ’09 is a management major from Houston.

Her final semester as an Aggie was spent touring Southeast Asia and completing her last few credit hours at the National University of Singapore. She captured the experience on camera and in blog posts. To read her blog, visit mays.tamu.edu/ singaporeblog/.

 A view from my climb to the

top of the tower at the Kek Lok Si temple in Penang, Malaysia; as the largest Buddhist temple in Southeast Asia, it provides a great view of the city and the neighboring mountains.

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1A t the conclusion of my midnight hike up to the top of volcano Mt. Merapi outside of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, I was greeted by a classroom of local children.

2 T a Prohm temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia, left me awestruck. The trees that are taking over add to its majesty, but will eventually turn this 12th century temple into rubble.

3 My first attempt at grocery shopping. I was overwhelmed by the completely foreign produce.

4H a Long Bay, Vietnam, is full of floating fishing villages, complete with homes, dogs and schools. Many women sell fruit to tourists from their boats.

5 T he streets of Vietnam are packed with people working, eating, and playing all kinds of games, from mahjong to badminton. maysbusiness.tamu.edu

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The first shall be last Earle Shields ’41 leads a life of service and success

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World War II veteran, a small town mayor, a dedicated community volunteer, a loving parent and grandparent, a die-hard Aggie. There are many ways to describe Earle Shields ’41, but one word sums it all up: servant. That’s why it’s no surprise that he has chosen to impact Mays with a recent gift of $500,000, which will be matched with funds from Lowry Mays ’57. The resulting $1 million gift will be used to create the Earle A. Shields, Jr. ’41 Chair in Investment Advising in the Department of Finance.

Shields hopes the faculty member that will one day fill the chair will inspire students to follow in Shields’ own footsteps: He has worked in the field of finance for 61 years in various positions.

After a fulfilling career twice as long as many men experience, he was looking for a way to give back to the profession as well as his alma mater. As he wasn’t aware of a program at any university that prepares students specifically for the field of financial investing, he chose to endow this chair. “I loved the business so much that I thought this would fill a niche that needed to be filled,” he says.

Beyond achieving professional success, Shields has also been a dedicated community volunteer. “I believe it’s important for people to do volunteer work,” he says. “It takes a lot of good volunteers to run a community.”

In Westover Hills, the Fort Worth suburb where he and his wife Ruby make their home, he’s served as mayor for 15 years. His other volunteer positions are too numerous to mention, ranging from education to health care, serving as president, board member, or simply a servant. For his efforts, he received the Hercules Award for outstanding volunteerism in Tarrant County.

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At A&M, he’s been on a handful of advisory boards. He’s also endowed a dozen scholarships across campus including a recent one at Mays. He’s a servant in his church, where he is a trustee of the priests’ pension funds and serves on several other committees. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. “I seem to have spent a life time doing volunteer work,” he says. And at 89 years old, he says he has no intention of slowing down. “If I stop, I’ll be six feet under.”

Shields graduated with a degree in engineering and a U.S. Army Reserve commission in the field artillery. He spent four years serving during World War II, including a stint as a gunnery instructor. He served in the European theater with Patton’s Third Army as a major and S3 of a field artillery battalion, and was awarded the Bronze Star medal. He became the battalion commander after combat and was responsible for transitioning troops home.

He remained in the U.S. Army Reserves for many years and was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

After the war, Shields launched his career in business when he participated in a six-month training program at Merrill Lynch’s office in New York. When they asked him where he’d like to go after the program, his answer was confident: “Send me back to Texas.”

“I believe it’s important for people to do volunteer work.

It takes a lot of good volunteers to run a community.”

Partners

After 11 years in the Dallas office as a financial consultant, he was transferred to Fort Worth to over see that office and retired 26 years later as a senior resident vice president.

Soon after retiring, he went back to work, this time for NASDAQ as a corporate consultant. He also joined the Gearhart Industries board of directors as chairman of the Special Litigation Committee. Shields continues to be an industry arbitrator for FINRA Dispute Resolution, which handles securities litigation.

He has also worked as an expert witness in this forum. Shields is currently an independent director of the LKCM Fund Group which consists of nine mutual funds.

More than his professional success and leadership roles, Shields is proud of his family: his wife, Ruby; their four children, three daughters-in-law, and six grandchildren—all of whom live in Texas.

Shields’ attachment to A&M continues to grow, as one of his sons and daughters-in-law are former students and one grandson is a current student. Another grandson recently left A&M to become a U.S. Army Ranger, serving a tour in Afghanistan.

Shields says he was delighted to hear of the matching funds available through the Mays gift, as it would double the impact of his own contribution. “Obviously we want to find a top person to fill the position,” he says, noting that will be easier to do thanks to the size of the endowment. No matter whom they find to fill the chair, the individual will have some big shoes to fill to wear the name of Earle Shields Professor.

Shields has volunteered in some capacity with the following organizations: Day Care Association of Fort Worth and Tarrant County Child Study Center Moncrief Radiation Center Exchange Club of Fort Worth United Way of Fort Worth and Tarrant County State Bar of Texas Grievance Committee 7A Fort Worth Crime Commission Catholic Partnership Campaign St. Joseph’s Hospital Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Community Foundation of North Texas The Women’s Center YMCA Holy Family Catholic Church Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth St. Joseph Healthcare Trust Catholic Schools Trust Catholic Foundation of North Texas Sisters of St. Mary of Namur, Western Province, Finance and Investment Committee

Paying it forward Shields scholarship holder committed to helping others

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s a basketball player in high school, Jonathan Montgomery ’11 learned the importance of teamwork for success.

Without someone to pass the ball or block the opposition, that winning layup wouldn’t be possible.

Now at Mays, the 6’3” finance student from The Woodlands still plays basketball (he’s on two intramural teams), and he still values the importance of teamwork. As the recipient of a scholarship funded by Earle Shields, Montgomery says donors make his success possible—and in return, he’s paying it forward by reaching out to the next class of Aggies. Last year he became involved with a peermentoring group called PREP (that stands for Progressively Reaching Excellence and Professionalism), which pairs freshmen business students with sophomores who help them navigate their first year at Mays. This year he is one of the directors of the program.

Montgomery says he appreciates Mr. Shield’s generosity as it has enabled him to do and learn and experience more than he might have been able to otherwise. Like the Aggies on Wall Street trip he went on last year, where he got a taste for what a career in finance might be like. He has recently declared finance as his major, and is considering a career in investing or consulting, following in the footsteps of the man who funded his scholarship. However, that’s not all he wants.

Montgomery’s other passions include cooking, hospitality, and amusement parks. He’s been playing around with ideas for a roller-coaster-themed restaurant, which he describes as a melding of Cedar Point and Hard Rock Café. When his entrepreneurial visions someday take shape and meet with success, it’s not hard to guess what he will do with the proceeds: he’ll invest it in the dreams and the education of another Mays student.

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Partners

Ice cream and education, together at last Blue Bell Creameries and Paul Kruse ’77 endow chair

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aul Kruse ’77 says he’d go to work every day even if they didn’t pay him.

This sounds like extreme dedication to his business, but once you hear about what Kruse does for a living, you’ll volunteer for his job, too: he is the CEO and president of Blue Bell Creameries, maker of the iconic Texas brand, Blue Bell Ice Cream.

Wearing a business suit and a colorful necktie decorated with jellybeans, Kruse shared ice cream trivia (did you know that Blue Bell invented the flavor cookies and cream?) as well as scenes from his life. A native of Brenham, Texas, Kruse grew up around the Blue Bell headquarters. Since 1919, his grandfather, father, and uncle have served consecutively as presidents of the company, but Kruse says that it was never his intention to follow in their footsteps. He majored in accounting at A&M and went on to study law at Baylor. Kruse operated a private law practice in Brenham for several years before he was elected to serve on the board of directors at Blue Bell in 1983.

In 1991, Kruse was named vice president, and eventually CEO and president in 2004.

He commented that if he can stay on as president for another 10 years, Blue Bell will have been under Kruse leadership for a full century. Though his entry into the business was reluctant (he turned down the role of general counsel several times before accepting in 1986), he now says, “there’s nothing else I want to do,” waxing eloquent on the joys of making such a beloved product. “It’s a really fun business,” he says.

“Ice cream makes people smile.”

Kruse is making people smile at Mays as well, by matching funds from Lowry ’57 and Peggy Mays to establish the Blue Bell Creameries Chair in Business. The gift is supported in part by Kruse himself, and also by the creamery. The total amount of the gift is $1 million.

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As his tie would suggest, Paul Kruse ’77 understands that a blend of business savvy and passion is the recipe for sweet success.

“This kind of giving is something that I feel is important,” said Kruse. “A core group of our team, including the CFO and controller, are Mays graduates. The college has had a direct impact on our business and we want to recognize that.” Kruse says that he hopes the gift will allow Mays to continue to grow and thrive.

“Attracting good students and attracting good faculty go hand in hand,” he said.

“This chair will help the faculty end of the equation.” In addition to the funding the Blue Bell Chair professor will receive, Kruse says free ice cream will sweeten the recruiting effort.

Blue Bell Creameries has a long history in Texas and with Texas A&M. The creamery opened in 1907 in Brenham, 40 miles from the A&M campus. Kruse’s grandfather, E.F. Kruse, took over operations of the creamery

in 1919, and his sons, Ed ’49 (Paul’s father) and Howard ’52 both majored in dairy science at A&M before joining the company in leadership positions.

Blue Bell and individual members of the Kruse family have spread their support far and wide at A&M, giving generously to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Corps of Cadets, Bush Library, Association of Former Students, 12th Man Foundation, College of Veterinary Medicine, Singing Cadets, Century Council, Cushing Library, and scholarship funds. This gift to Mays represents the largest single gift from Blue Bell, and is among the largest from one of the Kruses.

“I believe in supporting an entity that is making a difference and Mays is certainly doing that,” said Kruse.

Partners

PricewaterhouseCoopers joins with Mays to provide scholarships Accounting firm honors longtime partner with gift

Partners in education

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ontinuing a tradition of support for Mays, global accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers has recently announced a new gift of $150,000 for scholarships in the accounting department.

The gift is given in honor of longtime PwC partner Billy M. Atkinson, Jr. ’72.

This gift is one of several recent contributions made by PwC, as they have joined with their Aggie partners to create accounting scholarships. The total impact of these gifts (including matches) will create a new endowment of $275,000. Partners and their spouses that have recently made major gifts to this fund are Lisa and Ray Garcia ’90; Susan (Ernst) ’86 and John McNamara ’86; Donnelle and Billy M. Atkinson, Jr.; Kevin and Susan Roach; and Merita ’86 and Stephen Parker ’88.

“We are very pleased with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ commitment to accounting education at Mays,” said Dean Strawser. “It’s meaningful when a firm with their reputation for excellence makes an investment in our students. It’s even more meaningful, since their gift honors Billy Atkinson, a leader in the accounting profession and a wonderful role model for our current students.”

Atkinson, who has been with PwC for 37 years, says he was honored and humbled

by this gift in his name. He spent many years as the firm’s lead recruiter at A&M, a position now held by fellow PwC partner Stephen Parker. “Billy is one of the key people that hired me. He has made a lasting impression on Aggies that have graduated in the past 20 plus years,” said Parker. “He’s one of the finest people I’ve ever met. He’s been an incredible mentor to me and to so many others. He deserves to be recognized.

This is one way we can perpetuate his dedication to providing opportunities to Aggies.”

Atkinson has been very active at A&M, serving on the accounting advisory board since 1982, the president’s advisory council since 1997, and the Fellows advisory board at its inception in the 1980s. He has also been a leader in his profession, as he was appointed or elected to leadership of local, state, and national accountancy boards and organizations. Atkinson plans to retire in 2011 after nearly four decades with PwC. Parker, also a partner at PwC’s Houston office, says that his firm is fortunate to have such a strong relationship with Mays, as they recruit heavily there. “It’s a great school for us to invest our resources in because we can count on getting great candidates to join our team,” he said. “Mays has outstanding graduates that are equipped with the right tools to be successful in a firm like ours.”

ays faculty and staff strive to provide the best education possible to our students, but we can’t do it on our own. That’s the reason our partners are vital to enriching the business education at Texas A&M. Each year, hundreds of guest speakers present in classes and business organization meetings, exposing our students to the most current information from the world of business. Want to know who’s been here? You can see the list of speakers at mays.tamu.edu/execs.

Along with their contributions, those that give financially to Mays are also important partners in our work. Financial gifts enable us to give students an experience that is truly top-notch: a chance to study under world-renowned faculty in the best facilities.

Without these partners in education, Mays could not deliver the high quality that it is known for.

A 2009 giving report will be available in this spring’s Benefactor, which will be mailed to anyone who gave in that calendar year. If you did not give in 2009 but would like a copy, please contact Pam Wiley, Mays director of communications, at psw@ tamu.edu. The publication will also be hosted on our website.

Interested in giving to Mays?

Visit mays.tamu.edu/giving for more information.

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Partners

Recognizing outstanding alumni

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t isn’t easy to examine the more than 45,000

Mays former students and choose a handful each year to receive the title of outstanding alumni. In 2009, three

Outstanding Alumni 2009 Stephen Solcher ’83 spent eight years at Arthur Andersen & Co. rising through the management in accounting ranks until he joined BMC Software as an assistant treasurer. Solcher has continued to grow in the BMC position for the past 19 years, and today he is the senior vice president and CFO. He is passionately involved with organizations such as Teach for America and Cristo Rey Jesuit College Prep School in Houston, whose missions are to bring high quality education to low-income students that are often underserved.

Robert Starnes ’72 is committed to a wide array of charitable

activities and organizations, from education to the environment to opportunities for veterans and children. After a 10-year career in the Army and an assistant professorship of military science at A&M, Starnes launched his own venture: The Ontra Companies, Inc., in Austin. During the past 25 years, Ontra has morphed into a large holding firm focused on real estate and healthcare.

Starnes remains involved with the advisory council of Mays’ Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship.

David Williams ’79 serves as chairman, president and CEO of Noble

Corporation, the second largest offshore drilling contractor in the world. He has been with Noble Corporation since 2006 and assumed his current role in early 2008. He also serves as a board member of the American Petroleum Institute and the International Association of Drilling Contractors, as well as Spindletop International, a charitable organization managed by energy professionals.

leaders in academia and three leaders in business were recognized for their efforts and the honors that they’ve brought to their alma mater. Whether the dean of a business school

Outstanding Doctoral Alumni 2009 Eli Jones ’82 is the dean of the E. J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University, where he has secured $60 million to fund a new business education complex. Jones has received numerous teaching excellence awards on the university, national, and international levels. In recognition of a decade of service mentoring minority doctoral students at institutions across the U.S., he was honored with the KPMG PhD Project Marketing Doctoral Students Association Award in 2008.

or the vice president of a major corporation, each of the 2009 recipients has dedicated himself to the Aggie ethic of selfless service and has attained professional and personal success as a result.

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ChungMing Lau ’91 is a professor in the Department of Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lau was the chairman of the department from 1995-2007. His research on strategic reform within Asian companies appears in leading academic journals, and he served as the editor and senior editor of Asia Pacific Journal of Management from 2001 to 2007.

Highly regarded in his field, he is among the top 50 most-cited authors on the Social Science Citation Index for the 2000-2004 period. He is the founding president and current treasurer of the Asia Academy of Management, which seeks to identify the Asian model of management responsible for the area’s tremendous economic growth.

Jerry Strawser ’83 is an award-winning educator, researcher, and

administrator. Since 2001, he has been leading Mays to a new level of excellence. He has helped raise more than $75 million in commitments for faculty, student, and program support, including support for named chairs, professorships, faculty fellowships, and graduate student fellowships. During his tenure as dean, Mays has received national recognition among the top ten public institutions based on the quality of the undergraduate programs, MBA programs, and faculty scholarship.

Partners

Chair naming honors three men

Benefactor, professor, and namesake recognized

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lready possessing a lengthy list of titles and honors, Luis Gomez-Mejia has a new one to add to his vita: the management professor, past president and founder of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management, member of the Academy of Management’s Hall of Fame, and research fellow of the Ministry of Education of Spain, has been appointed the inaugural holder of the Benton Cocanougher Chair in Business.

The dedication ceremony for the chair was held in October, and honored Gomez-Mejia as well as the chair’s namesake, Benton Cocanougher, and Lowry Mays Lowry Mays ‘57 (center) described his friend Benton Cocanougher (right), former dean of Mays Business School, as ’57, who funded the chair with his a “great teacher and an incredible leader on this campus.” Mays recently funded a chair honoring Cocanougher. wife, Peggy. his performance. “I will try to keep your position of interim dean of the George Bush The Cocanougher Chair is the good name up,” he promised.

School of Government and Public Service first to be filled of the six such positions As an educator for more than three and prior to that, he was interim chancellor funded by the Mayses with their recent gift decades, Gomez-Mejia has honed his of the Texas A&M University System. of $7.5 million. With matches, the total classroom skills at a number of American It was during Cocanougher’s tenure as impact of the gift will be $12 million and universities as well as two universities in dean that the college’s endowment increased will also provide three eminent scholar Spain. With more than 100 publication from $10 million to $70 million; the college chairs. credits to his name, Gomez-Mejia’s research transitioned from a teaching orientation The Mayses chose to honor Cocanougher ranges from management in high technology to a multiple mission research institution; for his long-time commitment to business firms to socio-emotional concerns within various programs began appearing in top education and to Texas A&M University. family firms. His current research focuses on 25 national public school rankings; and Mays spoke warmly of Cocanougher, saying executive compensation and how financial the Wehner Building was built. His career that Cocanougher has been a very close incentives may be used to motivate people experiences include service in the military, friend of the Mays family for many years. at work. His research appears in top-tier roles in major corporations, and many Cocanougher was dean of the business publications; his books are used in business academic accolades. school when Mays originally endowed it classrooms nationwide. Gomez-Mejia is Gomez-Mejia joined A&M in fall with a gift of $15 million in 1997. Mays an academic of renown, whose addition to 2009 from Arizona State University. He said he is impressed with the leadership the faculty at Mays will help attract the is highly regarded globally as an expert in Cocanougher continues to provide to A&M. very best students, as well as increase the his field. At the dedication ceremony, he “He’s a great teacher and an incredible reputation of the school as it continues to acknowledged that the honor of being the leader on this campus,” said Mays, who make a name for itself as one of the top first to hold the prestigious chair, named compared Cocanougher to the 12th Man for business schools in the nation. his willingness to serve A&M wherever there for and created by two such important men, came with a certain amount of pressure for is a need. Cocanougher recently filled the maysbusiness.tamu.edu

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Ideas@Mays

Arrr! Shiver me timbers!

Digital piracy: a boon to business?

New study shows that software stealing can benefit corporations, despite loss of sales

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he numbers are staggering: worldwide in 2008, digital piracy cost software companies an estimated $53 billion. In China and Vietnam, the piracy rates are above 80 percent. In Georgia—the country, not the state—the rate is higher than 90 percent.

Despite those large numbers, software companies could actually benefit from unlicensed use of their products, says research from Sanjay Jain, Macy’s Foundation Professor of Marketing. In fact, society as a whole may benefit.

The first thing to understand about these numbers is that they are somewhat deceptive. “The retail price determines how much is lost, but that’s actually not correct. It assumes that you’d be able to sell these products to people at that retail price,” he said. The reality is many who pirate software would not purchase the software, whether from lack of economic ability or desire. Therefore, the projected loss in sales attributed to piracy represents a

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dollar amount the company would not have achieved even had there been no piracy.

Moreover, Jain says that the gains created by “the network effect” offset any losses experienced by a corporation. The network effect principle says that the more people have a technology, the more valuable that technology is, as it becomes the industry standard. So, for example, if everyone you know uses Microsoft Office, you’re more likely to buy Microsoft Office because of its familiarity and the ease of sharing files between your computer and others’. In this instance, piracy can flood the market with a particular product, affecting its popularity and driving out competition from other sources. However, the potential benefit of this effect is reduced when the software in question already occupies a monopoly in the market, Jain noted.

Piracy also enables companies to charge more for their products, as the most price sensitive consumers (those that are likely to pirate) are removed from the equation.

“People who pirate are different from people who don’t pirate in terms of their willingness to pay…What happens is that you don’t have to decrease your prices to go after them,” says Jain. “If the market is competitive, that can reduce price competition.”

Being able to charge higher prices for their software means companies can invest more in research and development.

Jain posits, therefore, that piracy boosts innovation. In that way piracy can benefit society, as it stimulates new technology.

While Jain stated that he does not condone piracy and encourages others to purchase software, he says it makes sense that some organizations are arguing for weaker intellectual property policing in order to spur innovation and growth. “Piracy is not necessarily all bad. It can hurt you, but there are also positives. In fact, that’s the reason some firms may not want to be very active in completely eliminating piracy,” he said.

Contact Jain at sjain@tamu.edu.

Ideas@Mays

Predicting the unpredictable to tap the unconventional Mays professors and doctoral students impact oil production through creation of a more efficient supply chain

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s the world population rapidly depletes the supply of crude oil in places like Saudi Arabia, scientists and energy investors turn an ever-hopeful eye toward “unconventional oil,” such as heavy crude oils, tar sands, and oil shale. The evidence is obvious: these alternatives can produce a significant amount of energy and be harvested in the U.S., thus decreasing American energy dependency. However, innovative ways of mining and refining these resources are still too costly to be viable.

That may not be the case much longer, though, thanks to ongoing research from Mays faculty members. Antonio Arreola-Risa and William Stein from the Department of Information and Operations Management, as well as doctoral students Jeremy Brann and Jaime Luna-Coronado, have teamed with the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company to examine

hard-to-predict disruptions to a product’s supply chain. These stochastic variables, such as natural disasters, machine failure on the assembly line, and worker strikes, must be accounted for to determine the best supply chain model. Predicting these unpredictable elements is getting easier, as researchers build complex formulas to mitigate risks through strategic diversification.

The current research has focused on a specific technology, Shell’s heat delivery systems, but the model can be modified to accommodate different technologies, say the researchers. The findings will help Shell, and eventually other companies, keep costs low by minimizing disruptions to the supply chain to maximize output.

This research may have a deep impact on the economy, as Arreola-Risa says that it could allow Shell to produce energy from unconventional oil much more efficiently

than in the past. As the cost of traditional fuel sources increases, there may soon come a time when capturing unconventional oil becomes a viable option for Shell.

This new technology will benefit the United States, as it helps move the oil-addicted country toward energy independence. It will also be a boon to the Texas economy, as it has the potential to create thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of revenue in the state of Texas where Shell is headquartered.

“The courses of action suggested by the model could be very helpful during the supplier engagement process and contract design,” says Arreola-Risa. “The main objective of this development is to offer a general framework for the strategic design of supply chains in the presence of [unpredictable] supply disruptions.”

Contact Arreola-Risa at tarreola@tamu.edu.

maysbusiness.tamu.edu

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Ideas@Mays

The long-term benefits of a little luxury Study helps marketers engage under-indulgent shoppers

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s that new BMW a needless expense or a smart investment? For a hyperopic shopper (one who is more than usually adverse to luxury spending), it’s an important question: The way a marketer frames a luxury item is the key to making a sale to a hyperopic shopper, says new research from Kelly Haws, assistant professor of marketing at Mays. Hyperopic shoppers are more interested in long-term goals than instant gratification, so to reach this demographic, a retailer must make luxury products more appealing by trumpeting the value of higher-cost items.

The value touted may be long-term cost savings, such as a high-end appliance that will be more reliable over the years than the cheaper competition, or it may be less tangible, like generosity. A marketer could make the pitch that buying their higher priced item to share with others makes the shopper seem less like a miser and more like a benefactor, thus appealing to the shopper’s long-term aspiration to be altruistic.

This research is especially pertinent in light of today’s economic turmoil, as 38

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luxury marketers have struggled along with other retailers to stay profitable amid lessening demand. Haws says marketers of any product that can be viewed as indulgent or pleasurable should evaluate their pitch to emphasize long-term value, reminding shoppers to not merely spend well, but live well.

Hyperopic shoppers are “excessively farsighted” when it comes to their financial goals. That means they consistently sacrifice short-term pleasure or profit for perceived long-term benefits. It’s a complicated label, as Haws says a person can be hyperopic about one area of budgeting but not another.

Her example: a collector, who’s willing to spend hundreds on a sought-after item, but who refuses to take a vacation because he doesn’t think he can afford it.

Another finding from Haws’ research is that luxury is in the eye of the purseholder. To some consumers, name-brand cereal is considered a wanton expense, while others view fine jewelry in that category.

Understanding hyperopia and perceptions about luxury can help marketers reach tough customers.

The economy is shifting buyer perceptions about luxury, as smaller items (such as gourmet coffee) seem more luxurious when cutbacks on spending are being made in other areas. An effective message from marketers Haws says she’s seeing is, “You can’t afford everything, but buying this small item can enhance your life.”

It’s important to recognize hyperopia is different from simply being a tightwad, as hyperopics are aware that a change in their spending habits could be beneficial or would help them to enjoy life more. Haws notes that others’ research on the topic has shown that tightwads outnumber spendthrifts three-to-two in the U.S. While the exact percentage of hyperopic shoppers is unknown, Haws believes that its safe to infer from the tightwad and spendthrift study that it is a fairly significant segment of the population.

Haws conducted this research with Cait Poynor, assistant professor of marketing at Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. Contact Haws at khaws@mays.tamu.edu.

“A good teacher is like a candle—it consumes itself to light the way for others.” ~Author Unknown For more information about Dr. Conant’s life or the scholarship that has been started in his name, go to mays.tamu.edu/conant.

Dr. Jeffrey S. Conant April 5, 1955 - June 30, 2009

4113 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-4113

Same same but different, story pg. 28 mays.tamu.edu/singaporeblog