Beedie School of Business News

Beedie School of Business Professor Ian McCarthy

While politicians and economic leaders continue to speak to the virtues or pitfalls of outsourcing by companies and countries, the resulting benefit or lack thereof, accrue to organizations on a case by case basis – hinging on information, resources and skills – according to new SFU research.

Entitled “Understanding outsourcing contexts through information asymmetry and capability fit”, the research article was authored by Beedie professors Ian McCarthy and Jan Kietzmann, and University of Winnipeg professor Bruno Silvestre.

The article – published as the lead paper in a special issue on outsourcing in the journal Production Planning and Control – comes at a time when outsourcing has emerged as a global economic and political issue. US President Barack Obama spoke to it recently in his second inauguration address, while the Financial Times in a recent headline maintained that the “outsourcing tide is not likely to turn.” Keep reading…

Tags: Barack Obama, Beedie School of Business, Bruno Silvestre, Financial Times, Ian McCarthy, Jan Kietzmann, outsourcing, Production Planning and Control, Research, Simon Fraser University, supply chain

The latest ScienceDirect ranking of business, management and accounting research sees Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business leading the field in social media research.

The ranking lists the 25 Hottest Articles in business, management and accounting, and includes two research articles from Beedie School of Business faculty, both of which focus on the topic of social media.

Ranked in the top three three in the list is the article, “Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media”. The research states that understanding social media is becoming an increasing priority for managers, and was authored by the Beedie team of Jan Kietzmann, Ian McCarthy, Kristopher Hermkens and Bruno Silvestre.

Meanwhile, at number 16 in the rankings is the article, “Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy”. The article was authored by Leyland Pitt, Kirk Plangger and Daniel Shapiro from the Beedie School of Business, and Pierre Berthon from Bentley University’s McCallum Graduate School of Management, and reveals how international marketers can harness social media in today’s evolving marketing landscape. Keep reading…

Tags: 25 Hottest Articles, accounting, Beedie School of Business, Bruno Silvestre, business, Business Insider, Daniel Shapiro, engagement, Ian McCarthy, Jan Kietzmann, Kirk Plangger, Klout, Kristopher Hermkens, Leyland Pitt, management, McCallum Graduate School of Management, Pierre Berthon, Research, ScienceDirect, sfu, social media

A teaching forum hosted by the Beedie School of Business this past fall for faculty demonstrated once again why Beedie is recognized as one of Canada’s leading institutions not only in the realm of academic research but also for teaching and learning.

Held on November 2, 2012, the second annual Teaching and Learning Luncheon offered the school’s faculty members an opportunity to come together in a supportive and collegial environment to engage in learning and dialogue around compelling and forward-thinking approaches to management education.

The event was inspired in part by several professional development workshops attended by SFU educational consultant David Rubeli and Beedie School lecturer Shauna Jones at the Academy of Management’s annual conference held in Boston.

A morning keynote by Beedie Dean Daniel Shapiro underscored the importance of teaching in an international context. Globalization, maintained Shapiro, is an increasingly integral component to management education in terms of programming, content and delivery. Also, according to Shapiro, a major opportunity and challenge for organizations generally and educators specifically is understanding the linguistic implications of a global world. Keep reading…

Tags: Academy of Management, Carolyn Egri, Daniel Shapiro, David Dunne, David Rubeli, Jan Kietzmann, katherine burke, Leyland Pitt, shauna jones, Stephanie Bertels, teaching and learning luncheon

The app was developed in-class by SFU undergrads (from left to right) Charlene Adomako, Randy Tarampi, Justin Lee, Joshua Horacsek and Kyle Krystalowich.

In 2010’s hit film The Social Network, a young Mark Zuckerberg knows he has just launched something special when – out of the blue – a fellow Harvard student asks him to “Facebook me.”

Simon Fraser University’s Justin Lee, a fourth-year accounting student in the Beedie School of Business who helped develop the pioneering new Beedie iPhone app, hasn’t quite experienced his Zuckerberg moment – at least not yet. “People have messaged me and said, ‘Good job,’” Lee says, “but it’s not like you walk around campus and everybody’s using it.”

Lee’s modesty belies the weight of his team’s achievement. Originally conceived in an innovative course combination that involved students from Bus 338, an undergraduate class on business innovation, and CMPT 275, an undergraduate course on Software Engineering, the SFU Beedie mobile app was eventually developed by students who laboured for the better part of a year on the project, developing, refining and beta-testing features. The result: a one-stop communication portal for the Beedie community, merging Facebook, Twitter and other social media with school news, customized transit information, campus maps and a unique Q&A forum for students. “The app integrates it all into one medium,” Lee explains. “It’s got all the services students need.” Keep reading…

Tags: app, Beedie iPhone app, Bus 338, business innovation, communications, Facebook, innovation, iPhone, Jan Kietzmann, Justin Lee, Mark Zuckerberg, SFU Beedie Mobile, SFU Beedie mobile app, social media, Software Engineering, technology, The Social Network, Twitter

For the second year in a row, SFU’s Beedie School of Business is enjoying some serious Klout on social media.

Tweeting since early 2010, Simon Fraser University’s business school (@SFUBeedie) has been rated as the most influential Canadian business school by a prominent social media metric known as Klout. The metric website measures influence by using data from selected media channels, such as Twitter followers and unique mentions and Facebook comments and likes.

With a Klout score of 46, the Beedie School has edged out business schools at the University of Toronto (44), University of Western Ontario (43), and Concordia University (41).

The Beedie School has used Twitter, Facebook, and other social media as a means to stay connected with the Beedie community—including current students, faculty, staff, alumni, industry and community partners, university partners, and employers. It has used Twitter specifically to follow and learn what they are up to, to disseminate school news and research, and to further communicate with its community.

The school’s social media strategy benefits from a number of influential users from the Beedie community. They include dean Daniel Shapiro (@SFUBeedieDean), Canada’s first business school dean to be on Twitter, who shares business and economic research and opinions via the medium.

Another prominent faculty tweeter is Ian McCarthy (@Toffeemen68), Professor and Canada Research Chair in Technology and Operations Management at SFU. McCarthy, who has over 10,200 Twitter followers, was recently named to OnlineMBA’s international list of the “50 Business Professors You Should Follow on Twitter.”

The school’s burgeoning social media environment also benefits from award-winning faculty research.

New marketing research from marketing professor Leyland Pitt, focused on the relationship between luxury wine branding and social media, has been awarded the Outstanding Paper prize for 2012 by the Emerald Literati Network.

The article, entitled “Luxury wine brand visibility in social media:  An exploratory study” and published in International Journal of Wine Business Research, garnered the top billing as part of the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Last fall, the management journal Business Horizons and Elsevier awarded Beedie School researchers Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre with the Best Article Award for 2011 for their paper, “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media.”

This past year, the Beedie School also launched the popular undergraduate class Social Media and Business at the SFU Surrey campus – taught by Assistant Professor Kietzmann and instructor Ashish Gurung.

Related articles:

1. Academic award toasts SFU branding research
2. The School of Social Media
3. Students engage community with social media
4. Beedie prof. selected to prestigious Twitter “must follow” list
5. Social media research wins 2011 Best Article Award
6. Vancouver Canucks give MBA social media project warm reception
7. AACSB BizEd Magazine profiles Beedie Mobile: What’s App-enin’ At B-Schools

Tags: Ashish Gurung, Beedie School of Business, Bruno Silvestre, communications, Daniel Shapiro, Facebook, Ian McCarthy, Jan Kietzmann, Klout, Kristopher Hermkens, Leyland Pitt, Research, sfu, SFU Beedie, SFU Surrey, Simon Fraser University, social media, Surrey, Twitter

Jan Kietzmann in the Beedie School of Business, was a co-applicant with Ted Kirkpatrick (Applied Science), John Bowes (FCAT) and Rob Cameron (Applied Science) for one of SFU’s newest teaching grants. They have been awarded the $10,000 large teaching grant, which will be used to support and develop a project titled “Designing SFU Mobile”. SFU Mobile will be a 15-credit, cohort based, multidisciplinary course to be offered at the Surrey campus in Summer 2012. It will be co-taught by Faculty from Business, Computing Science and Interactive Arts and Technology and will draw students from those majors.

The course design draws from the successful model of SFU’s Semester in Dialogue program but adds new elements. Where the Dialogue program emphasizes dialogue as a field of study and practice in its own right (students enrol in DIAL courses), SFU Mobile will emphasize the skills students have learned in their respective disciplines, demanding that they coordinate their talents with other specialists in service of a larger goal, receiving 400-level credit in their own department. SFU Mobile will also emphasize product development, delivering road maps, concept demonstrations, and business plans.

The distinctly different intent of SFU Mobile, its heterogenous participants, its aim of building on and polishing the disparate disciplinary skills of the participating students, will require developing a distinctly different structure and outcomes than have been used for the Semester in Dialogue. The Teaching and Learning Development Grant is crucial for this process. Critical is the hiring of an inquiry team (different from the teaching team) to help facilitate development of the original learning outcomes, and independently evaluate the success of both the course activities and the stated learning outcomes. During the actual course, the inquiry team will maintain some distance from the instructors. This will allow the inquiry team to maintain a disinterested perspective on the decisions of the instructional team. It will also be important in sustaining the students’ confidence that they can express concerns to the inquiry team without any affect on their relationship to the instructional team and their ultimate grades. After the course is concluded, the instructional and inquiry teams will collaborate to evaluate the course.

About Teaching & Learning Grants
These grants were created to recognize teaching development as scholarly activity and to stimulate the development, implementation, and investigation of innovative teaching and learning at SFU. Learn more about these grants and how you can apply at: http://www.sfu.ca/teachlearn/tlgrants.html

Tags: Jan Kietzmann, SFU Mobile, SFU Semester in Dialogue, Teaching, Teaching and Learning Grant, Teaching Development, Teaching News

A course that was launched less than a year ago at SFU’s Beedie School of Business has provided students with unprecedented focus on analyzing and optimizing the value of social media for organizations and businesses. Through community-building projects, undergrad students applied the social media lessons of the course to new and established not-for-profits and social agencies on a wide range of issues, from life-saving transplants to disability in sport.

The course, Social Media & Business, was taught at SFU’s Surrey campus by assistant professor Jan Kietzmann and instructor Ashish Gurung.

Students used Facebook and the Twitter hashtag #BUS450 to engage with each other and their teachers, and to collaborate on assigned projects and readings. Throughout the semester, Kietzmann and Gurung invited industry thoughts leaders, entrepreneurs and businesses to share their insights and expertise in social media. In the classroom, students were joined by She & He consulting, Translink and Yelp. Via Skype, they also connected with University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist, and representatives from Badgeville and Crowdbooster. Outside the classroom, students visited Vancouver’s Invoke and Hootsuite to learn from two very successful global players in the Social Media space.

As a final project, students were tasked with developing a social media campaign for a community client or campus issue.

Among the highlights:

- The student project entitled “Don’t Be a Douchebag” used Twitter and Facebook to accrue over 100 registrations for the BC Transplant Society, with the aim of providing potentially life-saving transplants for British Columbians. The campaign’s social media messaging was endorsed and retweeted by the likes of musicians Jann Arden and Bif Naked, television personality Chris Gailus, and NHL hockey legends Doug Gilmour and Brendan Morrisson.

- Students with the #SIFEHungerArmy campaign raised over $500 for the Surrey Food Bank, and garnered over 1,000 blog page views to raise awareness of the food bank’s impact and needs in the community.

- A social media campaign addressing disability in winter sport, “Adaptive Sliding Canada”, was embraced by winter sports athletes and fans across Canada and is helping to build momentum for the inclusion of new sports in future Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

- A group of students going by the moniker “Jersey Score” – through fundraising tweet-ups and other social media activities – raised over $1500 for sporting gear and apparel for soccer-playing youth in Manamani, South Africa.

- The students from the project “Chic Campus” engaged via social media with fashion events and fundraisers across the Simon Fraser University campus to highlight the role of fashion in the university context.

- A group of students from the project called “SimonFSays” parlayed user-generated social media content into the capturing of student and community sentiment at Simon Fraser University in the digital sphere.

Social Media & Business, launched last fall, was offered for the second time this past spring, and has quickly emerged as a favourite offering among Simon Fraser University students, especially those who are increasingly compelled by the intersection of social media tactics with overarching business strategy and societal change.

“Our students worked very hard and, among the many difficult deliverables they had, they impressed me the most with their social media campaigns,” said Kietzmann. “They truly engaged communities – local, national and international, and to that end I am very proud of what they accomplished.”

The Beedie School continues to enjoy recognition for taking a leadership role in the promotion of social media for entrepreneurs, managers and organizations.

Last December, Kietzmann won a noteworthy research award from the journal Business Horizons (along with co-authors Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre.) His paper “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media,” won the business journal’s Best Article Award for 2011, in great part for its industry impact and recognition.

And the innovation-focused tweets of SFU MBA professor Ian McCarthy have earned him a spot on OnlineMBA’s international list of “50 Business Professors You Should Follow on Twitter.”

Tags: Adaptive Sliding Canada, Ashish Gurung, BC Transplant Society, Chic Campus, Crowdbooster, Facebook, Hootesuite, invoke, Jan Kietzmann, Jersey Score, LinkedIn, SFU Surrey, SIFE, social media, Surrey Food Bank, TransLink, Twitter, Winter Paralympic Games, Yelp

It has been an extraordinary year for the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University – and the accomplishments of the school at SFU Surrey have helped to drive that success. As 2011 draws to a close, Beedie is celebrating such student accomplishments as SFU Student of the Year, the Surrey Green City Award, and selection to one of Canada’s most prestigious leadership programs for entrepreneurs.

Highlights include:

-Surrey BBA student Jessica Fan has been selected to the Next 36, a prestigious entrepreneurial leadership program that seeks out the country’s most promising and entrepreneurial undergraduates and challenges them to create their own ventures.

-This past fall, the SFU Surrey campus hosted a signature Beedie event: SFU Dragons’ Den. Jim Treliving and Bruce Croxon, members of the popular business television program Dragons’ Den, visited students as part of the special evening devoted to entrepreneurship and innovation. At the conclusion of the event, Treliving enthused on Twitter about SFU’s “fantastic students”, while Croxon’s impression from these young entrepreneurs, also tweeted, was that “Canada is in good hands.”

-Beedie BBA student Lauren Watkin, along with SFU communications student Sonam Swarup and Beedie alumnus Ashish Gurung received Surrey’s Green City award for their creative environmental efforts as members of the SFU Surrey-based Students in Free Enterprise club and their Banner Bags program. To date more than 800 banners no longer used by cities or community organizations have been turned into colourful reusable bags, produced by students in high school sewing classes led by the SIFE students.

-The student-founded venture called “Aspire” took the top prize at SFU’s Opportunity Fest, a Beedie School of Business entrepreneurship competition held at SFU’s Surrey campus in the spring. Judges from the wider business community, including academics and prominent industry leaders, named Aspire’s project as the best among more than 50 student projects at the marketplace-style exhibition. The venture leverages the characteristics of autism as a competitive advantage in the software testing industry, creating a suitable and nurturing work environment for those with ASD.

-Five projects by Beedie students from SFU Surrey — all social ventures aimed at creating positive change, including the aforementioned Aspire — were chosen from 10 finalists to win Ashoka Canada’s prestigious Be a Changemaker Challenge on November 23 at UBC Robson Square. The Beedie students are from instructor Shawn Smith’s Business 492 class in social entrepreneurship and innovation, which teaches the fundamentals of creating socially impactful ventures while coaching students through the process.

-This fall, Beedie Assistant Professor Jan Kietzmann and instructor Ashish Gurung led a unique class in social media for business at SFU Surrey. The class immersed students in cutting-edge social media practices and theory and connected students with industry-leading social media technology firms such as Hootsuite. Appropriately, the class also claimed its own Twitter hashtag (#bus495) – where students could communicate with eachother and the extended social media community about the class.

-Prof. Kietzmann, who carries out teaching and research from the Surrey campus, also won a noteworthy research award from the journal Business Horizons (along with co-authors Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre.) His paper “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media,” won the business journal’s Best Article Award for 2011, in great part for its industry impact and recognition.

-The December issue of BizEd Magazine, the leading voice of business education published by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), has recognized Beedie students for developing the Beedie iPhone app, which they began working on in the SFU Surrey class Foundations of Innovation (also taught by Kietzmann).

-Another Beedie undergraduate at Surrey, Matias Marquez, has won the honour of being SFU’s 2011 Student Entrepreneur of the Year, as selected by an annual competition in November hosted by Students in Free Enterprise. His company, Buyatab.com, is a “software-as-a-service” digital gift card processing technology that becomes embedded onto its customers’ websites.

-In December, as part of a class project, senior Beedie students helped support the United Way by participating in the annual Surrey Market on the Mezzanine which featured the work of local crafters, artisans and students along with a book sale, silent auction and baked goods.

In addition, first-year Beedie BusOne program students hosted an afternoon Christmas Market on the Mezzanine at the Surrey campus. This holiday-themed marketplace featured the exclusive works of BusOne students and included baked goods, candy apples, hot chocolate, bubble tea, photo booths, crafts and more. All proceeds from this holiday-themed market, which this year was an impressive $3,800, went to the United Way.

Tags: AACSB, Ashish Gurung, Ashoka Canada, Banner Bags, BizEd Magazine, Bruce Croxon, Business 495, BusOne, Buyatab.com, Dragon's Den, Jan Kietzmann, Jessica Fang, Jim Treliving, Lauren Watkin, Market on the Mezzanine, Matias Marquiz, Opportunity Fest, SFU Student Entrepreneur of the Year, SFU Surrey, Shawn Smith, SIFE, social innovation, Sonam Swarup, Students in Free Enterprise, The Next 36

The management journal Business Horizons and Elsevier have awarded Beedie School of Business researchers Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre with the Best Article Award for 2011 for their paper, “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media.”

“The article is an excellent exemplar of the best of Business Horizons in that it addresses an important and timely topic while offering practical lessons for managers,” said the journal in a special announcement. “It also reinforces our commitment to be one of the leading publications for social media research and practitioner usage.”

Business Horizons also noted that the paper has been widely cited in industry and academic circles. It appears on a list of articles recommended by the US Department of Health for health care professionals to understand emerging health communication issues, and is listed as a key reading by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) policy paper on social media and its impact on employers and trade unions. The paper is also currently listed among the Top 10 of ScienceDirect’s hottest 25 articles published in its portfolio of business management and accounting journals.

The research, published in the journal’s spring edition, argues that for managers to effectively use and respond to social media they need to understand the different functionalities behind different social media platforms.

The Beedie School authors present a framework and recommendations for how firms should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding and responding to different social media activities — on the premise that different social media arenas correspond with different organizational functions — from employee recruitment to customer service to public relations.

“The social media ecosystem is rapidly evolving, and many managers struggle to understand the implications, both opportunities and threats, posed by this ecosystem, and as a result they are feeling the pressure,” said Ian McCarthy, Beedie School of Business Professor and Canada Research Chair in Technology & Operations Management. “There is an abundance of evidence indicating that it can significantly impact a firm’s reputation, sales and even survival.”

The research concludes that by carefully analyzing the layers of the social media ecosystem, firms can understand how these activities vary in terms of their function and impact — and act accordingly.

“Differences do matter in social media, which is why you need to set your priorities,” said Jan Kietzmann, Assistant Professor at the Beedie School. “That’s why it is important for companies to understand and where necessary develop these social media platforms.”

Tags: awards, Bruno Silvestre, Business Horizons, Facebook, Flickr, Ian McCarthy, Jan Kietzmann, ScienceDirect, social media, Twitter, US Department of Health, YouTube

by Jevta Lukic As Twitter and Facebook increasingly become topics of conversation in many company boardrooms, undergraduate business students at SFU’s Beedie School of Business are also focusing on social networking in a management context. This fall, they will enjoy a unique course offering that explores the intersection of social media and business strategy. Entitled Business 495: Social Media & Business, the course strives to develop students’ understanding of how social media is used by individuals, communities, and organizations to engage with one another and develop innovative business models. Keep reading…

Tags: Ashish Gurung, BBA, Facebook, Jan Kietzmann, management information systems, social media, Twitter