Beedie School of Business News

Familiar faces to SFU’s Beedie School of Business, both nationally and internationally, were the recipients of the 2010 SFU Outstanding Alumni Awards. Jim Chu and Alan Rugman were recently honoured during an awards dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver earlier this month.

The recipients have made their marks in the categories of Public Service and Academic Achievement:

Public Service

Jim Chu, who completed Bachelor of Business Administration in 1986 at Simon Fraser University, is the chief constable of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD). Canada’s Governor General invested the 32-year VPD veteran with the Order of Merit for the Police Forces in 2007. Vancouver’s first non-white chief constable, Chu leads a team of 1,700 sworn and civilian employees in one of the most challenging and diverse cities to police in Canada. Through extraordinary leadership and consensus building, Chu has skillfully advocated for social and legislative change, and has built widespread support in varied communities, including those serving the marginalized. Chu grew up in East Vancouver.

Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aQBM_n5LEI&feature=relmfu

Academic Achievement

Alan Rugman, PhD ’75, is a professor of international business at the University of Reading based in Henley, Oxfordshire, England. A leader in his field and an inspiring educator, Rugman has significantly influenced public policy through his research and produced theories taught to students worldwide. Rugman has published more than 250 articles and 14 books on international trade and policy. He played a critical role in the formation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and spent nearly a decade advising two Canadian prime ministers on free trade, foreign investment, and international competitiveness. Rugman resides in the United Kingdom. Rugman is a longtime collaborator with faculty at the Beedie School of Business on academic research concerned with international business.

Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vH7AaONhJI

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Photos of both individuals, as well as other Outstanding Alumni winners, are available for download via the SFU Flickr website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfupamr/sets/72157625516997582/

Learn more about the awards, recipients and past winners at:  http://www.sfu.ca/alumni/our_alumni/outstanding/index.html

Mike Brydon and Peter Tingling are decision theory specialists at Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Business, and they have a question they like to ask when giving presentations to senior management groups, especially to human resources managers. “How many here have taken golf lessons to improve their game?” A lot of hands go up. Then they ask: “How many have had instruction to improve their decision making?” No one raises a hand because, as Brydon and Tingling have discovered, all managers, but especially those in HR, consider themselves to be expert decision makers already.

To read the complete article published in the Feb. 18, 2011 edition of the Globe and Mail, click here.

The following is an excerpt from Ian McCarthy’s blog entitled It Depends:

A few years back I wrote a paper with colleagues (Pierre Berthon, Leyland Pitt and Stephen Kates) on the phenomenon of creative consumers. These are individuals, or communities of individuals, who adapt or modify a proprietary product offering. They tinker and experiment with almost any product, ranging from automobiles to cell phones.

Traditionally, companies have disliked consumers messing with their products. They have got annoyed when the product is modified and used in a way in which it was not necessarily designed e.g., networking several Sony PlayStation 3 consoles to make a super computer. They can also get irritated when consumers alter their products and use them in regions of the world where they are not yet available, e.g., when iPhones were first released in the US they were hacked to work in Canada where they were not yet released. And firms get really angry when consumers modify products, such as the Xbox, to use pirated content. Consequently, many companies have tended to view creative consumers as threats to their business revenues and damaging to the reputation of their product brands.

To read more about Creative Consumers, visit Ian McCarthy’s blog It Depends.

Richmond, BC – Three Simon Fraser University students – Joseph Choi, Alex Venetis and Steffi Chua – have organized a book drive named “The BIG Book Drive” to collect books for the Salvation Army. Started by SFU Beedie School of Business project management students, the team aims to collect 2,000 books over the next five weeks with two separate book drives happening in both Richmond and Burnaby. The first book drive will take place on Saturday, February 26th inside Lansdowne Mall in Richmond, BC, while the second book drive will take place on March 19-20th at Salvation Army’s Divisional Headquarters in Burnaby, BC. All books collected will be donated to the Salvation Army and will benefit the organization’s family support services and their other literacy-related programs.

“We are collecting books on Saturday, February 26th from Richmond residents in Lansdowne Mall,” says Joseph Choi, one of the BIG Book Drive coordinators. “This is a chance for the Richmond community to donate their unused books and aid us in helping the Salvation Army.” The BIG Book Drive will have a booth at Lansdowne Mall in front of Toys R Us from 9:30am – 4:00pm on February 26th, next to the Richmond Scouts’ Kub Kar Rally event.

Choi, a Richmond resident, emphasizes that the BIG Book Drive welcomes all sorts of books from children’s books and magazines to textbooks (with the exception of adult-oriented materials and newspapers).

“We want to donate books to an organization that already has programs in-place to increase literacy amongst low-income families and children, so we chose the Salvation Army,” says Alex Venetis. “People have lots of books lying around at home that can be redirected towards these communities.”

Salvation Army will distribute the books collected during The BIG Book Drive to its family support services and Christmas services program. Books that cannot be redirected towards these programs will be recycled into new resources.

What started out as a small class project has now evolved into a well-organized community book drive. The BIG Book Drive is being sponsored by Black Bond Books, Richmond Scouts, Literacy BC and Lansdowne Shopping Centre. These organizations have been more than generous in donating their services and resources towards making this event happen.

According to Literacy BC, 40% of adults in British Columbia do not have the literacy skills needed to fully participate and succeed in today’s world. This presents over one million people who are under-equipped to cope with society’s increasing informational demands. Having low literacy rates increases poverty and crime which hinders economic productivity; it indirectly affects our personal health and well-being overall.

“We are privileged to be able to attend a university like SFU,” says Steffi Chua. “There are many children, teenagers, and young adults who don’t have access to books that can improve their literacy skills. The books we have lying around at home can make a difference in someone’s life.”

Event Information:

February 26: The BIG Book Drive booth will be located in front of Toys R Us inside Lansdowne Mall located on No. 3 Road at Alderbridge Way in Richmond, BC from 9:30am to 4:00pm.

March 19-20: The second BIG Book Drive will take place at Salvation Army’s Divisional Headquarters located at 3833 Henning Dr. in Burnaby, BC from 10:00am to 6:00pm on both days.

For more information, please contact:

Joseph Choi
Phone: 778-991-7654
Email: thebigbookdrive@gmail.com
www.thebigbookdrive.com

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities have the potential to enhance customer value in many ways, The Conference Board said in a report co-authored by SFU Beedie marketing professor John Peloza.

Investing in CSR to Enhance Customer Value, the most recent installment in The Conference Board Director Notes series, includes a review of 163 articles about the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and financial performance. It finds that this relationship is impacted by many mediating variables, and that the metrics used to measure CSR vary widely.

To read the entire article, click here.

On February 4, 2011 the General Practice Services Committee (GPSC) will launch its new Leadership and Management Development Program (LMDP) for physician and non‐physician leaders of stakeholder groups involved in the GPSC’s primary care initiatives.

Developed in partnership with and delivered by the Learning Strategies Group (a division of SFU Business), the program is designed to enhance participants’ ability to collaborate with colleagues and community stakeholders in building healthy communities and excellence in primary health care.

For the first two cohorts, physicians engaged in, or planning to engage in, leadership roles within the Divisions of Family Practice will receive priority admission. In subsequent cohorts, it is envisioned that general practitioners will be joined by leaders from specialty care, health authorities, the Ministry of Health Services, as well as partners from non-governmental organizations.

Sessions will be held approximately every 2 months from February 4 to November 26, 2011 at Segal Graduate School of Business in Vancouver and will be delivered in five 2-day modules held on Fridays and Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

This program is the latest of the more than 15 GPSC initiatives designed to improve job satisfaction for family physicians and primary health care for patients.

For further information on the program, contact Andy Basi at abasi@bcma.bc.ca.

The GPSC is a partnership between the British Columbia Ministry of Health Services and the British Columbia Medical Association.

Click here to read more about this and other BCMA news.

Contacts:

Ryan & Keith Beedie: Contact Mat Wilcox, 604.828.7007; mwilcox@wilcoxgroup.com

Andrew Petter, SFU President, 604.808.6530; petter@sfu.ca

Daniel Shapiro, Dean of SFU Business, 778.782.4183; daniel_shapiro@sfu.ca

Derek Moscato, Director, Marketing and Communications, SFU Business, 604.671.4567; derek_moscato@sfu.ca

Don MacLachlan, PAMR, 604.763.3929; donmac@sfu.ca

Contact:

Maxim Doroshenko, 604.565.3319; maxim_doroshenko@sfu.ca

Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035; cthorbes@sfu.ca