Category Archives: Faculty Focus

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Marketing Professor’s Research Leads to Surprising Conclusion about Political Conversations

  By Meredith Carroll • November 22, 2024 ,

Middle-of-the-road stances risked alienating allies and opponents alike, research found

How do you navigate political discussions?  

You might expect, as many people do, that expressing “two-sided” or ambivalent positions about controversial political issues could help you bridge divides. In particular, you might expect that expressing ambivalence would make you more likeable to allies and opponents alike.  

A new study coauthored by DePaul Assistant Professor of Marketing Geoff Durso found exactly the opposite. Expressing ambivalence was not only unhelpful when it came to winning over opponents on contentious issues. It also hurt study subjects’ standing among those on the same side of the issue at hand.  

As a marketing professor with a background in psychology, Durso often works at the intersection of consumer behavior and political sentiment.   

Read on for a discussion of why the study’s results surprised him, what might explain the findings, and how insights from marketing and politics can inform each other. 

Or: Watch a video version of the interview on our YouTube channel, part of an ongoing series highlighting Driehaus faculty and what their research can teach us about the world around us.  

On politics as identity 

Driehaus College of Business (DCOB): What were your expectations going into this study? Did it surprise you to find that expressing ambivalence didn’t help — or in some cases even hurt — people’s likeability?  

Geoff Durso (GD): People generally like others who share their position. Then, if you think of people who disagree with you, it seemed reasonable to predict that expressing conflict in your own position might communicate some degree of respect or credence to your opponents’ position at the same time. So when it comes to both groups, you might expect that expressing two-sided opinions would be beneficial to people’s popularity, a sort of middle ground that everyone respected. But we find precisely the opposite pattern.   

My so-called position allies — those who agree with me on an issue — don’t like that I’m conflicted at all. They don’t like that I’m rocking the boat. And to my opponents, expressing conflict doesn’t matter, because I’m against them on the overall position. It doesn’t even register that I feel conflicted, or that my position acknowledges both sides.   

DCOB: How did you go about making sense of those results? Why do you think that was the case?    

GD: The way people think of each other is increasingly polarized. And what’s really interesting about that is that, sometimes, an issue position can become a group identity.   

Say, during the pandemic, I’m pro-mask mandate. But, I express conflict about it. I’m weakening the pro-mask mandate connection among my allies. And when it comes to an anti-mask mandate person, they consider me part of an outgroup “opponent” due to our larger disagreement on mask mandate policies.   

In other words, the nuances in my position don’t even register to opponents. And the same nuance makes my allies feel less connected to me.   

On the connections between marketing and politics 

DCOB: Some folks might be surprised to hear that a marketing professor researches political discourse. What do these two fields have in common?   

GD: I tell my students to think of politics as the marketing of a vote. You might have a dollar and you can give that dollar to any company (or candidate!) based on what products or positions they sell. Likewise, you can also give your vote to a candidate that represents what you want versus the other candidate. Both actions represent consumer behavior. It’s just the currency that varies.   

In other words, a marketplace is not just money, and it’s not just buying things. You can think more generally in terms of choices and decisions between many options in the marketplace. That’s what every marketing campaign has in common, whether it’s toothpaste brands or presidential candidates. The stakes vary, but the underlying marketing processes are similar.     

On where to go from here 

DCOB: Any takeaways from your study results that you think marketers should be paying attention to?   

GD: There’s more and more demand from consumers for brands to make sociopolitical kinds of statements. Our findings suggest that being two-sided about these is going to repel a lot of people. Trying to please everyone with a two-sided sociopolitical statement may simply lead to pleasing no one.   

DCOB: What questions has this research left you with? What do you want to understand better about this issue?   

GD: A truism of psychology is that we judge other people by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions. Expressing ambivalence in our own sociopolitical position may feel personally right (we intend to bridge political divides) but we fail to appreciate how this would be perceived in reality – we may seem inconsistent or waffling, for instance.   

How do you get people to change their expectations around expressing ambivalence? How do you get them to shift away from being focused on their own intentions? Are there ways to generate win-win consensus on divisive sociopolitical issues, and how best to do so? That’s what I’d like to learn a bit more about in my future work. 

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Three-Quarters of American Workers are Vulnerable to This Widespread Form of Mistreatment. Why Isn’t it Talked about More?

  By Meredith Carroll • November 22, 2024 ,

Driehaus researchers shed light on weight-based mistreatment in the workplace

Research can be pathbreaking in any number of ways. It can distill received wisdom — or upend it. It can organize existing knowledge or chart a new course forward.

Or, like a paper recently published by four Driehaus researchers, research can put a name to something at once widely experienced and seldom discussed. Mistreatment in the workplace based on weight is an unfortunately familiar fact for those who experience it. But it’s rarely talked about: not among leadership; not in the media; and not even, thanks to shame and stigma, among those who are harmed by it.

“We wanted to study something that is real,” said Jaclyn Jensen, a professor and the associate dean for student success at Driehaus, and one of the study’s authors. “We wanted to shed light on something important that we think people are overlooking.”

On why weight-based mistreatment has gone unchecked

Jensen and her coauthors — fellow management and entrepreneurship faculty Grace Lemmon and Goran Kuljanin, along with Doctorate in Business Administration student Renee Chu-Jacoby —  published the results of their work in October.

Across two studies, the team found that weight-based mistreatment is as widespread as it is damaging.

In the U.S., for starters, 75% of the workforce counts as “overweight” or “obese.” (That’s according to the Body Mass Index: a widely used measure that is also widely criticized.)

As part of their study, the Driehaus team surveyed 1,008 adults who fell into this category. Among that sample, 758 people — or 75% — had been mistreated at work because of their weight within the past six months.

Together, these numbers sketch the outlines of a pervasive phenomenon, reinforced by widespread cultural stigmas. These stigmas, the researchers speculate, are part of why the problem has gone unchecked for so long.

“In our culture, we believe that if you’re larger, you’re responsible for being larger,” said Lemmon. “Larger bodies are associated with less competency, less warmth, more selfishness.”

“This is a topic that crosses the personal and professional divide,” added Jensen. “We maybe don’t have scripts that tell us whether we should be talking about it at all. Or, if we are, why we’re talking about it. Those guardrails just aren’t there.”

On why weight-based mistreatment can be hard to spot

For those who experience it, weight-based mistreatment is many-faced, many-formed. Jensen, Lemmon, Kuljanin, and Chu-Jacoby worked with a smaller study population to account for the full spectrum of how weight stigma shows up in the workplace.

They surfaced plenty of examples of overt, aggressive mistreatment: name-calling, exclusion, physical harassment. They also found examples of larger-bodied workers being perceived as less competent and less professional: of these workers being denied access to information or roles because of their size.

Just as damaging — and perhaps more surprising to those who haven’t faced it— were seemingly benign comments known as “benevolent mistreatment.”

Benevolent mistreatment might masquerade as concern for a larger-bodied coworker’s well-being. It might manifest as the suggestion to opt for a salad over a sandwich, or the snide remark about too many trips to the candy bowl — all directed at larger-bodied colleagues without being levied at smaller-bodied individuals who make similar choices.

Benevolent mistreatment, the researchers found, was just as damaging as other forms. No matter how overt or covert the behavior targeted at them, study subjects were likely to withdraw from work; to experience rumination and shame; or to neglect selfcare.

“[Benevolent mistreatment is] very much somebody entering your personal space: your personal emotional space; your personal cognitive space,” said Lemmon. “It might not be physical in nature. But it is still somebody trying to get their way into your life and control you. There’s an element of control implicit in benevolent mistreatment that’s not present in the other forms of mistreatment. And I think that’s why people react so strongly.”

On the potential costs to organizations

Weight-based mistreatment at work, the study found, is undeniably detrimental to workers’ mental health.

Equally, allowing weight-based bullying to proceed unchecked can cost organizations.

“It turns out that how people are treated inside organizations affects their behavior,” said Kuljanin. “That’s why I like this line of work. When you mistreat people, you’re clearly not getting the best out of them.”

The team hasn’t yet had the chance to quantify the impact of weight-based mistreatment on organizations. But, given the scale of the problem and existing research in workplace climates, they conjecture that these costs include lost productivity, deteriorating collaboration, and difficulty attracting and retaining talent.

“We’re social creatures,” Kuljanin said. “We talk about each other and gossip all the time. Organizations develop reputations. And so if you’re an organization that has a reputation for this kind of mistreatment, then you’re going to be missing out on a whole bunch of talent.”

On where to go from here

An issue so widespread, the researchers stressed, will necessitate solutions at any number of levels: from organizational culture right through to public policy.

As for what organizations can do? According to the team, existing research suggests that culture changes happen on many fronts. It happens when organizations change their policies. It happens when leaders draw a clear line. And it happens when all workers — but particularly those in positions of power — give one another models of how to act with compassion and empathy.

When workplace culture does shift, though, that change tends to be pervasive. It’s less about a shift in any one kind of behavior, said Jensen, than it is about a shift in the values underlying people’s choices.

“Take trying to diminish sexual harassment,” she said. “The message isn’t just, ‘respect your female colleagues.’ The message is, ‘all your colleagues deserve to be valued.’ So there are ripple effects. Those types of environments see less sexual harassment. But they also see less of other kinds of harassment, too.”

Compassion and empathy, the authors agree, are two such values that might drive change around weight stigma in the workplace.

—

All told, Lemmon, Jensen, and Kuljanin hope that drawing attention to the scope of the problem will be a catalyst for change.

“When you study nastiness in the workplace, you quickly learn that people know it’s going on,” said Jensen. “It’s just that they don’t necessarily want to talk about it. So one of the things that would be good to normalize, for organizations, is this idea: Not talking about it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.”

“If the thrust of our outreach is awareness,” said Lemmon, “we’re happy.

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For Julia Ariel-Rohr, Joining the Faculty of Driehaus is a Homecoming

  By Meredith Carroll • June 24, 2024

By Meredith Carroll

Julia Ariel-Rohr mid-lecture

Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

The first thing that Julia Ariel-Rohr (BUS ’12) wants the Driehaus community to know is how thrilled she is to be back at DePaul.

“I wake up every day feeling so grateful to be here,” she said.

Ariel-Rohr doesn’t just bring extensive experience with financial reporting and auditing to her new role at Driehaus. She also brings her perspective as a DePaul graduate.

Her path began in the accountancy program at Driehaus, where Ariel-Rohr encountered two young, female accountancy professors: Kelly Richmond Pope and Wendy Heltzer.

“They opened my eyes to the fact that someone like me could be a professor,” Ariel-Rohr said. “I felt that sense of belonging at DePaul. When you’re at that age, that’s a hard thing to find.”

After graduation, she secured her first two jobs in the field with the help of DePaul connections. When she decided to apply to PhD programs, it was a DePaul alumnus — her audit partner, Scott Steffens (BUS ’89) — who advocated for her to have flexibility to fly out for interviews during industry’s busy season.

Returning to teach at Driehaus was meaningful for Ariel-Rohr because of her personal connection to DePaul. But the job was also attractive because of how the research being done at Driehaus aligns with her own.

“In the accounting world, I would say probably about 20% of us are behavioral researchers,” said Ariel-Rohr. “One of the things that attracted me to DePaul was that we have such a strong behavioral group.”

When it comes to behavioral auditing research, DePaul consistently places in the top 15 schools nationwide, according to rankings kept by BYU.

As the field faces an impending shortage of Certified Public Accountants, figuring out how to attract and retain talent will be more important than ever, said Ariel-Rohr.

“When you think about preventing fraud, and financial statement misconduct in public companies, it affects all of us who have retirement plans,” she said. “That is going to be a huge issue in the next 10 to 20 years.”

That’s where Ariel-Rohr’s research comes in. Her latest research examines how insights from behavioral research can increase retention and belonging in workplaces.

“The prior literature shows that a sense of belonging [at work] comes from small acts, from day-to-day experiences,” she said. Her research takes these insights a step further by looking at how factors such as a sense of belonging, a culture that encourages authenticity, and values-based mentorship can increase employee retention.

The impacts of such work can be significant, she said — not just for employee retention but also for audit quality.

“In audit, we’re really concerned about low-level staff speaking out if they have a concern about something,” she said. “That sense of belonging and that sense of psychological safety can also influence their ability to speak out, which can have downstream impacts on audit quality.”

“This [research] can improve our students’ lives as they are trying to work in this really intense field,” she concluded. “And it could potentially improve audit quality as well.”

Joining Practicality with Purpose at DePaul

For Ariel-Rohr, her research and teaching are deeply connected.

“It’s one of my goals to recruit people into a major that they might not have otherwise considered a fit for them,” she said. “One thing I love about teaching accounting is that I view this degree as a really good tool for social mobility. If you don’t have a safety net to fall back on, an accounting degree will give that to you.”

The ability to be financially independent was a big part of what drew her to accounting as a student at Driehaus. So, too, was the flexibility offered by a stable, in-demand profession.

“I often tell my students that if they have dreams of traveling and seeing the world, an accounting degree is a great way to do that,” she said. “I left my first job after a few years and went to travel around the world for a few months. Because I knew that as soon as I got back, I’d be able to find a job.”

Before she enrolled at DePaul as an undergraduate, Ariel-Rohr spent a year living outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Now that she’s back at Driehaus, she’s eager to start getting involved with study abroad opportunities.

When Ariel-Rohr reflects on her career, her research, and her teaching, one theme rises above the rest: purpose.

“I know for myself and for a lot of my students, we’re looking for purpose in our jobs,” she said. “Accounting isn’t automatically the first career path students think of when they think about finding purpose in their jobs. But there is definitely a place for it. Every single organization needs an accountant. So if students are into nonprofits, which is what I was passionate about, you can be a nonprofit auditor. If they really like sports: the Cubs has auditors, a CFO, controllers. There’s a place no matter what your interests are.”

As for Ariel-Rohr, she’s found a place, and a purpose, for herself at DePaul.

“Everybody thinks their student population is special,” she reflected. “But I truly believe that being in the city of Chicago with such a diverse group of hardworking students coming from all different backgrounds makes DePaul different.”

“It’s a dream,” she said, “to be back.”

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For James Bort, Research and Experience Go Hand in Hand

  By Meredith Carroll • June 24, 2024

By Jamie Merchant

A photo of James Bort

Photo provided by James Bort

“We always study entrepreneurs, you know? Looking at the employees of a startup is a little different.”

James Bort has a slightly unconventional outlook for a scholar of modern business.

“My dad was a line-level employee in a factory, and he had a very adversarial relationship with work,” he candidly shared in a recent interview. “So, when I started working for people who ran their own companies, that completely changed my view of what the world could be.”

An early exposure to the unique culture of startups — their collegial atmosphere, the give-and-take between employees and leadership — offered Bort a different model for understanding the workplace in the 21st century. That experience piqued an intellectual interest that motivates his research to this day.

Bort’s curiosity eventually led him to the academic study of startups, particularly the startup workforce. However, he points to the value of his on-the-ground experiences as an early-stage employee, entrepreneur, and musician for prompting the questions he asks about the modern workplace. Prior to joining academia, he was a software engineer, information technology manager, and restaurant owner in a career that spanned multiple industries. He even launched his own independent record label during his time in graduate school at Syracuse University.

It’s a research agenda shaped by art, science, and his personal history.

“Research is ultimately me-search,” Bort said, echoing the well-known statement of his graduate advisor, Johan Wicklund. “It’s a journey of self-discovery.”

Over the course of these experiences, the new assistant professor in the Driehaus College of Business became fascinated by the mutual lines of influence that run between startups and their employees: a startup is uniquely open to employee input and guidance, while at the same time it can serve as a springboard into future opportunities as the venture grows and evolves.

“There is this sort of bidirectional influence where you’re drawn to the startup because there’s endless opportunity, but then it influences you, in the sense that your career trajectory can be accelerated in some phenomenal ways.”

Storytelling as an Engine of Entrepreneurship

Having worked on both sides of the equation as a startup employee and an entrepreneur, Bort’s scholarly attention has recently been drawn to the role of narrative: to the power of the stories we tell to shape our perception of the world around us. For aspiring entrepreneurs, these stories can have an outsized impact on their career trajectories — or, as in his own case, on one’s research interests.

Bort’s background as a business owner indelibly informs his research in the field of entrepreneurship. Not only talking the talk, but also walking the walk is crucial, in his view.

“To have had that experience of like: it’s Wednesday, payroll hits tomorrow, and I’m still two grand shy. I have a day to figure this out — that hustle changes you as a human, and it certainly informs your approach to research.”

Our life experiences provide the raw material for the stories we tell ourselves. These, in turn, shape our perceptions of our own possibilities. For example, in a recent article published in The Journal of Business Research, Bort and his co-author, Henrick Totterman, found that “underdog” entrepreneurs — entrepreneurs starting from disadvantaged personal or economic circumstances — often have higher growth aspirations, precisely because of the adversities they have had to overcome.

But this work is not only relevant for specialists in the field. Bort’s students find it fascinating.

“The students love it,” he said. “I have units on neurodiversity and entrepreneurship and how we can flip these things into a strength. And [the students] really react strongly to it, because it’s becoming less stigmatized. It’s OK if you are depressed and going through it, because this is what the human experience is!

“The classic idea of the lone wolf entrepreneur, where everything’s perfect and you just see the success story — that’s not how it is. Really successful people struggle too.” It’s an empowering message for students crafting their own narratives as they set out on their post-college careers.

Bort is still getting to know the students and culture of the university. But he’s quickly getting a sense for what makes DePaul special. Teaching in the part-time MBA program has been particularly rewarding.

“They’re really, naturally curious and motivated. It’s one of the best groups I’ve had. When I did my MBA, it was part time as well, and it was really hard. So I try to construct the course to be like the course I would have wanted to take when I was in my MBA program!”

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Where the Classroom and Careers Meet

  By Meredith Carroll • November 14, 2023 ,

To take a class with Andy Clark (MBA ’87) is to get a “master class” in networking – one that launches you straight into your career.

Senior Instructor Andy Clark.

Director of Sports Business program and Senior Instructor Andy Clark.

Andy Clark is the director of the sports business program at DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business. In 2023, he was one of two faculty selected by graduating seniors in business to win the Lawrence W. Ryan Distinguished Teaching Award at Driehaus.

When he was his students’ age, he didn’t know a career like this existed.

He recalls one moment when it all came together.

It was a basketball game: DePaul vs. Northwestern. It was the early ’80s: the height of Ray Meyer’s tenure as DePaul men’s basketball head coach. The stadium was packed: a sea of blue on one side and purple on the other, Clark recalls.

“DePaul won on a last-second shot,” Clark says. “To be there for that — to be a small part of that — was amazing.”

At the time, Clark was an intern for DePaul Athletics, after graduating from Fordham University. It was a position he’d heard about through a friend from Fordham.

“A hundred bucks a week, a room in McCabe,” he recalls of the arrangement. The flight to Chicago, he says, was his first time on a plane.

The internship gave him a glimpse into what was possible at the nexus of management, marketing and the sports world he loved so much. After his internship, he got hired as the manager of DePaul Athletics ticket sales. Eventually, he decided to earn his MBA from DePaul.

Forty years and an extensive career in sports management and marketing later, Clark has returned to where he started.

“Making relationships and keeping them”

Getting work done, Clark says, is all about “making relationships and keeping them.” This is the central message he hopes to impart to his students.

Gridiron in the Classroom: Referee Tony Michalek helps Clark's class make the right calls.

Gridiron in the Classroom: Referee Tony Michalek helps Clark’s class make the right calls.

Clark has cultivated connections with an impressive roster of guest speakers. There’s an NFL referee and an NHL player agent. There’s an Olympic silver medalist who started a nonprofit to empower girls in swimming. There are DePaul alumni, many of them Clark’s former students, hailing from every corner of the sports world.

Clark has also forged partnerships with Chicago’s top sports organizations. He’s worked especially closely with the Chicago Cubs, where a number of alumni hold posts in senior leadership. Every so often, Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts makes an appearance to speak to Clark’s students.

Clark has two criteria for each guest speaker he invites: Can they keep students — and Clark — engaged? (He “never gets bored” of site visits, he says.) And can they discuss their career in a way that imparts lessons relevant to any field, not just sports business?

“What I like about teaching,” reflects Clark, “is being a connector: connecting experts to our students, so they can learn how their skills apply to the workplace.”

In this regard, taking a class with Andy Clark is like getting a master class in networking. He schools students in crafting thoughtful, well-researched questions for speakers. He teaches them how to dress for site visits (a suit and tie are no longer required). And as part of his final exam, he tasks each student with writing thank-you notes to three guest speakers — by hand.

From classroom to career

In Clark’s courses, students aren’t only learning from the sports business world, they’re also contributing to it by partnering with leading sports organizations to carry out real-world research.

Andy Clark's classes visit where the action all happens.

Andy Clark’s classes visit where the action all happens.

Projects for the Chicago Cubs have included an analysis of their customer service and a study on their rollout of a mobile ordering platform.

“Knowing that the work we were doing was going to be useful right away was highly motivating,” says Kenzie Mocogni (BUS ’19), who worked on the Cubs customer service study. “Working with a real client reminded us that what we are learning in the classroom at DePaul is preparing us for the business world.”

The Cubs aren’t the only team with close ties to Clark and to DePaul.

“It’s been incredibly inspiring to see DePaul students come up with innovative, impactful ideas,” says Tony Rokita, a onetime DePaul student and the former director of alumni relations for the Chicago Bulls, regarding a project that worked on a Bulls community partnership in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood.

For Clark and his students, there’s a direct line between theory and practice and between classroom and career.

“I’m not a teacher by training,” he’s quick to say. “With most of the stuff I do, no one told me I had to do it this way. For me, teaching feels like an evolution of what I was doing before [in the business field].”

As Clark reflects on teaching, he says the best part has been seeing how students’ careers unfold, outside sports as much as within it.

“It’s almost more gratifying,” he says, “when I hear from former students who don’t work in sports that they apply things from my class to their jobs now. That’s what this is all about: helping students apply what they learn.”

Teaching has taught Clark a lot, too.

“Every day,” he says, “is an education in empathy.”

—

On the first day of his Introduction to Sports Management course, Clark has one question for his students. It’s perhaps the best summary of what Clark accomplishes in his courses — and how Driehaus overall approaches preparing students for their careers.

“When do you think your career in sports is going to start?” Clark asks.

Clark’s answer? “If you’re in this class, it already started.”

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Q&A with Hui Lin: Accountancy Professor, School Director and Global Perspectives Advocate

  By Nadia Alfadel Coloma • May 18, 2023
Hui Lin.

Hui Lin.

Professor Hui Lin is the recipient of two DePaul Excellence in Teaching Awards. But her influence on student success extends far beyond the classroom.

Lin is director of the School of Accountancy & MIS, and she was recently named Deloitte Foundation Endowed Professor at DePaul University. Before these roles, Lin spent a good amount of time jet-setting for DePaul as the associate director of regional initiatives, China. For five years she helped recruit students from China and strengthened alumni engagement there. Lin is from China herself, growing up in the coastal city Dalian and moving to the U.S. in high school because her father was a visiting scientist at the University of Virginia.

This June, Lin concludes a three-year tenure as director of the Driehaus Center for International Business, where she managed the business college’s degree programs in Bahrain and paved the way for a new partnership that will bring more accounting students from India to DePaul in the next academic year.

Business Exchange asked Lin to talk about her experiences and what keeps her motivated as a multifaceted leader.

Why do you feel it’s important for students to have international experiences?

I’ve always been an advocate for global perspectives in business education and supporting our students, whether students going outbound or international students coming here. Drawing from my personal journey of being a young immigrant in this country and overcoming cultural and language barriers, I know what that’s like, so I want to support our international students and help them succeed.

The business environment continues to become more complex. At the same time, the world is getting smaller. Nowadays, it’s more likely that you will engage on a global level in your job, for instance with a colleague or client who is located in a different country. It’s become an essential skill in business to have the cultural sensitivity and the global business communication expertise to navigate that. I tell my students, you should always be open to other people’s viewpoints because then you’ll develop a more well-rounded view. That’s what international experiences can give you. They broaden your perspective.

Why is the Deloitte Foundation Endowed Professorship important for DePaul?

The establishment of this professorship is a validation of the quality and success of the accounting education we offer at DePaul. It demonstrates the strong alumni connections we have at Deloitte and their commitment to help our faculty and students succeed. I am honored to hold this prestigious title to represent DePaul at national conferences and events. The professorship also strengthens our relationship with Deloitte, which has provided long-term funding for academic and professional advancement of our students and faculty.

What are some of your priorities as director of the School of Accountancy & MIS?

Given the current shortage of accounting professionals and certified public accountants, my priority is to attract more students to major in accounting, provide up-to-date, high-quality curriculum to prepare them for career success, and contribute to the diverse workforce development in our profession. Collaborating with the Deloitte Foundation Accounting Scholars Program to create pathways for more students has been one successful milestone in the pursuit of these goals.

How can alumni engagement support these priorities?

When alumni stay connected — donating, attending events, mentoring our students, giving time to classroom visits — they can help our students get employed and elevate DePaul’s profile as ambassadors. It’s a two-way street. We want alumni support, but it is equally important for us to provide something back.

What we are providing alumni is a sense of community and the opportunity to broaden their networks. I believe education should not stop when you receive your degree. It should be a continuous experience. Staying engaged with the college can enhance our alumni’s knowledge and career opportunities.

What keeps you motivated in your work?

I have always enjoyed learning and helping others learn. That’s how I see my job, whether in the classroom or in an administrative role. To quote an ancient Chinese proverb, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” It gives me so much joy to do what I love and love what I do. I wholeheartedly believe in DePaul’s mission and the power of education, and that is what motivates me every day to do my best.

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Professor Lauded for Humanitarian Supply Chain Research

  By jlansber • April 23, 2020
Nezih Altay

Professor of Management Nezih Altay

Professor of Management Nezih Altay still remembers the pivotal event 20 years ago that led him to focus his expertise on humanitarian supply chain.

It was Aug. 17, 1999, five days before he was supposed to marry his fiancée, Ozge Guney, in Turkey’s capital of Istanbul. Altay and Ozge had traveled to their home country to celebrate their wedding with family. At 3 a.m., he began to feel the ground shaking. In less than a minute, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit just outside of Istanbul, killing more than 17,000 people.

Altay and his family managed to escape to a nearby park, where they waited for shelter and relief. It took the government three days to assemble an emergency management operations center. “It was a game-changing event,” Altay says. The earthquake, which left thousands of locals without homes, led Altay to learn more about the supply chain of disaster management.

Today, Altay is lauded for being one of the first U.S. academics to recognize the importance of applying supply chain theory and research to disaster relief. He has been named a Fulbright Scholar and will research the logistics of aid delivery in conflict zones for six months next year as the visiting Fulbright-Hanken Distinguished Chair in Business and Economics at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. In 2019, the American Logistics Aid Network, an association that provides supply chain assistance to disaster relief organizations, recognized Altay’s work with its first Research and Academic Contributions Award.

Supply chain management typically refers to the flows of goods and services in private businesses. However, Altay says the only difference between supply chains in the business sector and the humanitarian sector is what he calls the objective function.

“The objective function in the corporate world is to minimize cost,” he explains. “It could be to maximize revenue as well. In humanitarian supply chains, the goal is to minimize human suffering or minimize response time. Usually, you cannot minimize response time and cost at the same time. It’s very hard.”

After returning from Turkey, Altay and his wife attempted to resume their lives as PhD students at Texas A&M University. Bothered by the Turkish government’s lack of response to the earthquake, they raised $15,000 in disaster aid funds and sent it to several nonprofit organizations. Altay also began reading about disaster relief management while completing his dissertation.

“I thought, as a PhD student in operations management, there must be a better way of dealing with these events,” he says. “Because ultimately, disaster operations is a process.”

In humanitarian supply chains, the goal is to minimize human suffering or minimize response time. Usually, you cannot minimize response time and cost at the same time. It’s very hard.”
— Nezih Altay, professor of management

After completing his dissertation, Altay began teaching at the University of Richmond, in Virginia’s capital. To get a better understanding of disaster relief management, he attended workshops organized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and met the former director of emergency management for Virginia, Walter G. Green. Altay and Green eventually co-authored a 2006 paper that assessed the literature in disaster relief and supply chain, which triggered academics’ interest in the topic. Researchers also began to notice the importance of humanitarian supply chains as more catastrophic events, such as Hurricane Katrina, took place. Altay’s paper became one of the most cited in its field.

At DePaul, Altay’s research helped create the graduate course Humanitarian Supply Chains. The course is offered as an elective to DePaul business students and is a core course in the Refugee and Forced Migration Studies master’s program in DePaul’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

While supply chain students may want to work for private organizations, Altay says the humanitarian and business sectors have a lot in common. Given current issues that may influence supply chains, including pandemics, climate change and international political tensions, operations management, like a humanitarian supply chain, no longer follows a predictable pattern.

“We’ve learned new things in humanitarian supply chain research, and now we’re applying those lessons to commercial supply chain research,” Altay says. “So it’s come full circle.”

Altay continues to delve into unique aspects of supply chains and humanitarian issues. He is currently working on an academic paper that examines the relationship between companies’ stock value and reports of those companies’ allegedly engaging in human trafficking. Another research paper he is proud of examines information hubs in the humanitarian community. He presented this paper at a conference organized by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“After I presented my research, a couple of people from the World Food Program (a humanitarian organization that addresses famine and hunger worldwide) came and told me, ‘This is what we’re looking for,’” Altay says. “That’s why I feel that my research has made an impact—people care about it and are using it.”

Learn more about Nezih Altay by viewing this DePaul Distinctions video.

By Jaclyn Lansbery | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

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New Coleman Chair Sees Entrepreneurship as an Agent for Social Change

  By jlansber • October 11, 2019
Maija Renko, Coleman Foundation Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship

Maija Renko, Coleman Foundation Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship

Living in Miami in the 2000s, Maija Renko found herself surrounded by small business activity. She was there as an exchange student from Finland, completing her doctorate of science in international business. “At the time I was interested in the internationalization of technology-based companies, but my experience in Miami immersed me in a culture of start-ups,” says Renko, a professor who teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in management and entrepreneurship.

“The economy there is largely driven by small- and medium-sized businesses,” she says. “That exposure, combined with encouragement from a mentor, inspired me to take a closer look at the entrepreneurial side of business.”

Renko joined DePaul in July as the Coleman Foundation Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship at the Driehaus College of Business. She succeeds longtime chair and founder of DePaul’s entrepreneurship program Harold Welsch, who retired from the university in June.

There are so many issues that entrepreneurs can address not only to make an impact on other people’s lives, but to better their own lives as well.”

An award-winning teacher and scholar on entrepreneurship, Renko joined DePaul from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where she was voted best MBA professor by students and was instrumental in developing a certificate program to help entrepreneurs and nonprofits build effective social enterprises.

“I love the idea that you can start a business for the purpose of creating social change,” says Renko. “There are so many issues that entrepreneurs can address not only to make an impact on other people’s lives, but to better their own lives as well. I see that more and more in communities throughout Chicago—entrepreneurs building businesses for the primary purpose of making a difference in society.”

One population of entrepreneurs Renko has recently turned her attention to are people with disabilities. “Studies show people with disabilities are significantly more likely to be self-employed than those without, yet there is little research on how and why they pursue business ownership, and the needs and barriers they face along the way,” she explains. Earlier this year, Renko and colleagues from UIC received a $2.4 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research to study entrepreneurship among disadvantaged and disabled youth in Chicago.

“For those in younger age groups, the transition from school to working life can be a real challenge,” says Renko. “In this new project we want to develop and test best practices for entrepreneurship training that can help in that transition and beyond.”

It was never her plan to leave Finland for good, but after earning her PhD in entrepreneurship from Florida International University, Renko’s career in academia took off and changed her life’s trajectory.

“Living in the U.S. has opened my eyes to many different social issues and barriers to success that do not exist in Finland,” she says. “This has fueled my passion about the role entrepreneurship can play in bringing about social change. I’m excited to bring my research to DePaul and find out what business interests DePaul students have. Entrepreneurship is a powerful force in today’s society, and the U.S. business community—and Chicago in particular—is an exciting and energizing place to be.”

By Nadia Alfadel Coloma | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

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From Student to Scholar of Work-Life Balance

  By jlansber • April 25, 2019
Grace Lemmon

Associate Professor Grace Lemmon. (Photo by Kathy Hillegonds)

 

I try to make students see how my research is relevant to their own lives. I advise students, if you have a particular vision of what work-life balance should be, that absolutely needs to be part of the conversation when you are interviewing for a job to make sure there’s a good fit.”

It was “a disagreement with American work culture” that led Grace Lemmon (BUS ’06) to choose the intersection of work-life balance and employee engagement as her academic specialty.

“The culture we’ve established in the U.S. is go, go, go, and there’s no time for recovery or adequate stress management,” says Lemmon, an associate professor who teaches courses in management and leadership. “It’s become the default to be overwhelming busy at work, and it’s frustrating that that’s the default.”

Lemmon’s most recent research focuses on low-skill workers, a population often ignored in discussions of work-life balance and engagement. “The big issue is that employers tend to treat low-skill, low-wage workers as if they have a problem if they are disengaged at work. Yet, there’s often nothing about their work that would engender engagement,” she says. “My suggestion is that organizations with low-skill workers not only pay them enough, but also have clear paths for building additional skills on the clock. If organizations truly believe in the up-by-the-bootstraps (American) dream, then they need to provide the kind of support that white-collar workers take for granted.”

Lemmon is clearly passionate about shaping leadership practices through her award-winning scholarship and teaching. But back when the Glenwood, Ill., native was deciding where to go to college, an academic career wasn’t even on her radar.

“I had no idea that those avenues would be open for me,” she recalls. “My family culture was not one where there was a lot of education. It seemed like that was what other people do—wealthy people, in particular—but not me.”

Lemmon applied to only one college—DePaul—after visiting the Lincoln Park Campus to attend a concert. She majored in marketing, but soon realized it wasn’t her calling. She did notice, however, that her professors “were immersed in their classrooms and energized by their jobs,” she says. “It made me curious about academia as a whole.”

A faculty mentor convinced Lemmon that her curiosity could lead to a rewarding career. “I was lucky enough to work as a research assistant for management faculty member Patrick Murphy, and he brought me on to an academic paper,” she explains. “He gave me some data, academic papers to read and a small section to write. He made me co-author of the paper, which opened the door to graduate school—literally. He took me over to UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago), knocked on doors of professors he knew and got them to talk with me. Patrick took me under his wing and championed me in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. It was incredibly touching and meaningful, and completely changed the course of my life.”

Lemmon earned a PhD in business administration from UIC, and in 2012, she jumped at the chance to return to DePaul as a faculty member. She feels a strong connection to the student body because of DePaul’s commitment to educate students who come from less-privileged backgrounds.

Lemmon is now the one taking students under her wing, including future academics enrolled in DePaul’s Doctorate in Business Administration program, for which she serves as an associate director. She also shares her work-life balance research with her undergraduate and graduate students to help them make good career decisions.

“I try to make students see how my research is relevant to their own lives,” she says. “I advise students, if you have a particular vision of what work-life balance should be, that absolutely needs to be part of the conversation when you are interviewing for a job to make sure there’s a good fit.”

By Robin Florzak

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The Future of the MBA

  By jlansber • October 3, 2018

Roots Remain, New Branches Emerge

Keeping the MBA relevant in an ever-changing economy and workplace has always been a central challenge for business schools.

By Erich Dierdorff and Bob Rubin

MBA illustration

Founded in 1912, DePaul’s business college is one of the 10 oldest in the United States. This history reflects DePaul’s deep roots in the establishment of collegiate business education. These roots extend to the DePaul MBA, as well, which is set to celebrate its 70th anniversary. While it might seem that the MBA has always been a part of the business school landscape, it is interesting to note that it was a rather innovative idea at the time DePaul launched its program. In fact, by the 1955–56 academic year, only 3,890 university-based MBAs were awarded in the entire United States.

Today, the MBA is the gold standard of achievement in business education, with more than 100,000 degrees conferred annually. The evidence documenting the benefits of the degree is convincing. Decades of research by the Graduate Management Admission Council and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business demonstrate the value associated with the MBA, including the development of business knowledge and skills, expedited career advancement, enhanced professional networks and increased economic outcomes. These benefits directly derive from the scope of the training provided by the MBA, which spans business acumen and foundational business knowledge.

Source of Value, Target of Criticism

It might be surprising to learn that despite the clear value of the degree, the MBA has been a continual target of criticism from both academics and business leaders in each decade since its inception. The earliest and most influential of these critiques were two commissioned studies published in 1959 by the Carnegie Foundation and the Ford Foundation. The reports lambasted business schools of the 1950s for their lack of focus on curriculum quality, low intellectual standards and overemphasis on vocational training. The report recommended the emergence of a new “managerial science” to provide a strong foundation for MBA education and a curriculum that would be steeped in the behavioral sciences, rather than intuition-based managerial practice.

The reaction of business schools to the Ford and Carnegie reports was to create what has become the modern business school curriculum, with functional coursework in accounting, finance, operations, statistics, economics, marketing and management. To facilitate a managerial science approach, business schools began to hire faculty members with doctoral training who not only could teach in their subject areas, but also would transform the school into centers of research excellence.

This blueprint took root in the 1960s and remains largely intact today. Beyond these early critiques and the resulting curriculum blueprint, the MBA has continued to be a focus of blame for faulty business practices and economic struggles. The degree has even been reviled, with headlines calling for the “End of Business Schools” and “Managers not MBAs,” and urging universities to “Bulldoze Business Schools.” Yet for all these criticisms, the truth is that the MBA has evolved continually to meet the unique demands and challenges of the business environment.

Today, the MBA is the gold standard of achievement in business education, with more than 100,000 degrees conferred annually.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, as the economy began shifting toward more knowledge-based work, the demand for conceptual and interpersonal skills related to service quality, business strategy and leadership began to emerge within MBA curricula. Similarly, events and changing business landscapes shortly after 2000 brought about an increased focus on ethics and globalization that resulted in remaking MBA programs to cover topics such as international business, supply chains and business ethics. Thus, while the “administrative” roots of the MBA have remained consistent throughout the years, the MBA always has been a malleable degree designed to equip business professionals for the contemporary challenges they will face.

Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

The challenges that face higher education are well documented and include shrinking college-age populations, increasing competitiveness in the educational market and the integration of learning technology. We see four additional and emerging challenges for business schools in particular. Addressing these challenges will be essential to ensure the relevance and ongoing benefits of the MBA.

  1. Bridging the “knowing-doing gap” in business education. Organizations are increasingly expecting graduates not only to possess business know-how, but also to immediately convert such knowledge into skilled performance to solve today’s complex business problems. Addressing this challenge means MBA programs must more effectively integrate experiential learning with more traditional lecture and case-based learning techniques. In addition, translating knowledge into proficient execution requires that students receive accurate skill-based feedback to promote self-awareness and development. At DePaul, we integrate substantial skill-based feedback through all stages of the MBA program and utilize external assessment and simulations to accelerate self-awareness and professional development.
  2. Preparing students for the impact of technology and automation on work. A 2017 McKinsey report forecasted that one-third of U.S. workers will need to transition to new occupations by 2030 due to automation of occupational tasks. These workforce changes are also predicted to increase employment demand for managerial roles across nearly every industry sector, as individuals will “spend more time on activities that machines are less capable of, such as managing people, applying expertise and communicating with others … requiring more social and emotional skills, and more advanced cognitive capabilities, such as logical reasoning and creativity.” Addressing this challenge means MBA programs must ensure not only that students have the conceptual skills to extract value from the output of machines, but also have a clear understanding of how such machine power may be misused or socially harmful.
  3. Addressing the growing demand for critical thinking and data analytics expertise. Here, another McKinsey report points to the striking talent gap for managers that are “big data savvy,” that is, those with basic knowledge of statistics who can pose the right questions for analysis, interpret and challenge the results, and apply these insights to decision-making. This challenge requires MBA programs not only to continue traditional coursework that teaches basic quantitative skills (e.g., statistics), but also to offer new training that builds the critical thinking skills needed to understand how to use data-driven insights strategically, as well as to recognize the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the data being collected and analyzed. Through new coursework in business analytics, and a new MS in Business Analytics degree, plus a greater emphasis on data science and digital transformation, DePaul is looking to equip graduate business students with these technical and critical-thinking skills.
  4. Balancing the need for specialization and generalized managerial competencies. The MBA is a degree intended to provide general managerial skills that apply across any business function, organization or industry. Today, many MBA students have less work experience, especially managerial experience, and come to the graduate program with only an undergraduate business degree. The shifts described above have created the need for more specialized expertise in many areas of business. Thus, business schools need to build longer-term commitments to students’ learning by creating stackable degree programs from specialized master’s degrees to doctorates in business administration, as well as short-term certificate and professional education programs to keep up with the pace of change. At DePaul, we’ve made investments in such educational programs and, in keeping with our mission, have increased access to our programs by partnering with professional associations and corporations to offer customized approaches to learning.

The Driehaus College of Business has always evolved to meet the shifting demands of the workplace. Its faculty are nationally recognized as among the most prolific researchers of business education. From leading the integration of ethics into business education and using experiential and simulation-based learning to infusing multiple points of skill-based feedback for professional development and expanding degree offerings to include specialized master’s and doctoral degrees, DePaul remains at the forefront of graduate business education. It is through changes such as these that we see a bright future for business education at DePaul and look forward to the 100th anniversary of the DePaul MBA and beyond.

Professor Erich Dierdorff and Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate & Professional Education Bob Rubin, who both teach within DePaul's Department of Management & Entrepreneurship.

DePaul Professor of Management and Associate Dean of Graduate & Professional Education Robert Rubin (at right) and Professor of Management Erich Dierdorff (at left) are nationally known researchers and authors on graduate business education trends.