Beedie School of Business News

Date: Thursday, July 16th
Location: Segal Graduate School of Business  – 500 Granville St, Vancouver, BC
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How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending June 12, 2009.

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The Faculty of Business Administration, Simon Fraser University was awarded EQUIS accreditation on June 2nd. This takes the number of accredited schools to 117 across 34 countries.

“We are delighted to have earned EQUIS accreditation. We have set high standards for ourselves and are proud of our world-class faculty, our innovative programs and our close ties with the business community. The accreditation process was an opportunity to benchmark our performance in various areas with very good international schools, and learn from the expertise of international colleagues. The learning we’ve done through the accreditation process will help us reinforce our strategic foundation and guide us as we set our course for future growth. As a business school located in Vancouver, Canada, at the gateway to the Pacific Rim, we recognize the value of an EQUIS accreditation in establishing stronger ties with the international business and management education community.”

Dr. Daniel Shapiro, Dean, SFU Faculty of Business Administration

How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending June 12, 2009.

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How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending June 4, 2009.

National News

• Business prof Aidan Vining was quoted in a Canwest News Service story saying the federal finance department has flagged several prominent Crown corporations as entities that could (at least in theory) be sold as part of the government’s asset review—including the CBC and VIA Rail.
  “They’re not the classic privatization candidates, where you sell and walk away—unless, of course, you’re prepared to fully withdraw from the public purpose. . . It’s hard to believe that some of these sales would go forward in a minority Parliament.”
  We saw the story in and on 14 media outlets across Canada.

When:     Wednesday, June 17, 2009 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Facility:     Segal Graduate School of Business
Location:    500 Granville St. Vancouver, BC Room #2300 (Rix Boardroom on the 2nd floor)
Ticket(s):    Guests, $8.00; Associate Members, $5.00; Members, $0.00

Location is Wheelchair Accessible
Light refreshments will be served.

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Have you ever wondered what high school students really think about post secondary education? Ten teams from five high schools in Surrey gathered this Saturday at the SFU Surrey campus to compete in the second annual Wideman Education Foundation (WEF) Project Management competition. The competition featured teams of high school students who produced short videos on why students like them should consider post secondary education. The event was jointly organized by the WEF, the Faculty of Business Administration and the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU.

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How can you improve critical thinking and presentation skills?  Experience emotion, from heart-pounding tension to exhilaration?  And do this all in as little as three hours?  The answer of course, is to participate in a student case competition.

It has been my pleasure over the last six years, to assist many accounting student teams in their preparation.  The actual competition may occur over a few hours or a few days but teams spend many advance hours in training. They say “practice makes perfect” and my teams get lots of practice analyzing past cases covering a variety of accounting and management issues. They identify the issues, consider alternatives, formulate a strategy for action and then do a ‘mock’ presentation for me following the structure required for that particular competition. This often requires the team to do a 15-20 minute oral presentation supported by powerpoint slides.

I am often amazed at the enthusiasm shown by the student participants who may be balancing a heavy course load, part-time job, campus volunteer activities, and even, occasionally, a social life. Yet they willingly commit their time to represent SFU at a case competition.

If I have the opportunity to attend the competition, I am always proud to watch my teams compete. During training, I watch the improvement in a team’s analytical skill and the professionalism of their presentations. Regardless of the final result, on the actual day of competition it is very satisfying to see the team do the very best that it can.

And what’s the benefit to students who volunteer to participate in case competitions?  Well, they’ll have an opportunity to meet students from other universities, see how their skills measure up, and be amazed by their ability to work in a team, under pressure.  The comment I hear most often after a competition has ended is “Wow, I learned a lot, it was a really great experience”.  And that’s what University should be – learning and experiences, not just term papers and exams.

Anne Macdonald, Senior Lecturer
Accounting Team Coach (JDC, ICBC, CASB CA Case Competition)

In 1938, John Dewey, the influential philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer wrote that “All genuine education comes through experience.” Along with many other business educators I take his words very seriously, so much so that I designed a course on Organization Theory that simulates the experience of real organizations for undergraduate business students. The basic structure of the class is as follows. Before they arrive in class on the first day, every student is assigned to one of six organizations. Each organization elects its own leaders, designs its own culture, and competes with other in-class organizations on weekly exercises. Each week the best organizations earn bonus points.

The effects of this course structure on student behavior are remarkable. Triumphs are met with cheers and exchanges of high-fives; defeats produce emotions that range from good-natured annoyance to anger. Sometimes the members of organizations form such strong bonds that they meet outside of the classroom for social activities, such as a trip to a bowling alley or to the student pub. Other times the tension between organization members leads to conflict. Of course, these things can and do happen in the so-called “real world,” and the consequences of success and failure in business organizations are usually greater than a lost bonus point. Hopefully, having experienced these things first in a classroom setting, students will be better prepared to deal with them during their careers.

For those who would like to learn more details about this course, a paper entitled “Putting “Organizations” into an “Organization Theory” course: A Hybrid CAO Model for Teaching Organization Theory,” which details the structure and development of the course, will soon be published in the Journal of Management Education.

- Dr. David R. Hannah, Associate Professor, Management and Organization Studies

A common problem among beginning research students is the inability to state their research question succinctly. The answer to the question of, “What is your research about?” often takes a torturous route through ontological assumptions, alternative epistemologies, tangential literature reviews and arcane research methods rarely actually getting to the point. A strategy to help students in this regard is to impose time restrictions on their response. I have seen this take a number of forms, but a clever one is to ask students to imagine they have just stepped on an elevator with a key figure in their field of study. They want to make a good impression in describing their research but have only a few floors of an elevator ride to do so. At the Segal Graduate School of Business we are fortunate to have an elevator that serves the 5 floors of our building. The ride takes just 20 seconds and is just about the perfect time for a few well crafted sentences describing a research question. So, for the Seminar in Theory Development required of all Business PhD students the imaginary elevator ride becomes reality as we crowd the elevator for the multiple trips up and down the five stories required for students to refine their research questions. Strange looks (from passengers not part of the class) notwithstanding the exercise works pretty well.

Dr. David C. Thomas, Professor of International Management