Comprehensive Exams

FYI I passed my comps! Now I am abd (all but dissertation).

Teaching in a New World

Anthropologist Michael Welsh visited Saint Louis University today to discuss teaching in the new world of technology. Welsh, an anthropology professor at Kansas State University utilizes blogs, chat rooms, viral video and online networking to foster exploration in his classes. Welsh is an eloquent speaker that excites his audience by showing funny and catchy you tube videos that push home his point. WE NEED TO GET STUDENTS ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS! Welsh stresses that students should not be asking "what is on the test?", but instead asking "what do I need to success in the future?"

Check out more on Welsh at http://ksuanth.weebly.com/wesch.html

Leadership Development

Last week I attended an amazing leadership development program called Leadership Through People Skills. I a graduate student I really didn't think there was going to be must I could really learn from a bunch of consultants turning theory into practice but wow was I wrong. I learned a great deal about profiling peers, direct reports and bosses behavioral tendencies and them using different techniques to get them to work more effectively with me. All the of the information is based on Psychological Associates Dimensional Model of Management.

It was also an extraordinary networking opportunity because there were employees from all over the nation. My group alone was east coast, west coast and Midwest. I also could not believe that we could all get such great constructive feedback from team members after only working three days together. But again I was wrong. Participants were extremely open to participating and giving it all.

I would recommend this program to any employee looking to enhance their performance as a leader or just as peer.

Check it out at www. q4solutions.com

Critical Issues for Corporate Board Rooms

This AOM session was conducted by some of the successful business authors and consultants of today including Jay Conger (Claremount McKenna College), Dan Dalton(Indiana University), Edward Lawler (USC) , Richard Leblanc (York University) and Michael Useem (Wharton).

The major issues included: 1). The separation of CEO and Chairman (usually they are the same person), 2). Selection of Directors, and 3). The evaluation of Directors.

1). There were conflicting views concerning the separation of CEO and Chairman. View A argued that the Chairman should be an outsider because they will be less conflicted and have an unbiased perspective when it comes to making decisions and setting compensation. This should be a genuine outsider not the former CEO or connected member of the community. Then the outside Chairman and current CEO should work closely to make decisions and guide the board of directors. View B argued that this separation will lead to a disconnect in thought and ideas. The outside Chairman would not be able to obtain a sufficient amount of information to adequately guide the board. Dan Dalton discussed this view and stated that there needs to be a unified front.

2). All agreed that there should be a list of all of the needed competencies for a board. That list of competencies should then be matched to the current directors. Competencies lacking directors representation should illustrate selection criteria for new directors. I thought this sounded all good and great until I talked with the current CEO of a international retail organization who told me that they did just that. According to best practices this should have produced the best and most effective board. However, it did not. The board is less effective because ever issue is argued upon. There future plans involved maintaining some diversity while reducing the total size of the board. This goes to show that best practices don’t always work in the real world.

AOM Conference

While in Chicago I attended several symposiums, paper sessions and discussions concerning research and practice in organizations. Some of the sessions are not worth talking about because they were too uninteresting to even sit through (although I did).
Moral Self and Spiritual Attributes:

This session was extremely interesting because it focused on two major topics in today’s business world. First, the authors discussed ethical leadership and values orientated workers. With all of the current scandals taking place throughout our nation I found this extremely relevant. Denise Daniels from Seattle Pacific University presented empirical research examining why some people seem to find ethical tension in many situations while others don’t. She modified the criteria from Richard Niebuhr’s “Christ and Culture” to examine how people viewed God in the real world. Her results illustrated that moral identity moderates the relationship between moral self and ethical sensitivity. So, if you view that the world is good and you experience good around you will be less sensitive to ethical issues than if you view the world as good but experience lots of ethical issues.

James Westerman of Appalachian State investigated if the type of God you believe in impacts the workplace. You could have a view that God is engaging and supporting or God is judging. The results illustrated that if you view God as engaging and supporting than you were more conscientious with your work and performed better than if you viewed God as judging. Further results illustrated that if you viewed God as benevolent you would have a low external locus of control and a view of an authoritarian God elicited the most unethical behavior among all views of God. I thought this was really interesting because we as Americans are always trying to be so politically correct and separate work from religion. This research empirically illustrates that we can’t separate the two and more importantly our views of God affects our work and our employees work.

Surprises around every corner!

I had a great day interning today. The boss started me on a great project reviving and developing an additional product that they want to add to their tool box. One of the PhDs met with me to introduce the project. I had not met this PhD yet and it was great. Were we so engaged in idea generation and discussion that we caught ourselves in this meeting for 2 hours. Plus the surprise was that this man started working here sense I was born and when he laughed his mouth and sound reminded me of my grandma (God bless you soul). It was wonderful because he laughed a lot during our discussion and each time I was reminded of her. I think it is so surprising because I can’t even describe my grandmother’s laugh or smile or teeth but there I was seeing it in him. It immediately made me like everything he said.

So go forth and look for surprises in people and maybe you’ll surprise yourself in the processes.

Peter Senge Speaks Out

The concepts of organizational learning and the “Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge was originally brought to many of our student’s attention when Dr. Edward Sabin first started integrating Senge’s popular psychology into the classroom. On earth day, Peter Senge himself visited the Saint Louis University campus to discuss the integration of organizational learning and environmental sustainability. Senge as well as other guest speakers presented numerous examples of the collaboration between student innovation, educators and businesses to produce tangible environmental solutions across the world. Educators, CEOs and students from the St. Louis area were in attendance to discuss new perspective and build new collaborations. This half day conference was just one example of science in action right here on our SLU campus.