Spring 2010: Graduate Business Programs

As professionals adapt to a growing global business world, business schools must also adapt to train leaders who can effectively manage rapidly changing market conditions while making ethical business decisions.

In this issue of the Baylor Business Review, we focus on graduate business education. Along with our undergraduate degree program, Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business offers 14 graduate degrees (including specialized and joint degrees); two integrated graduate degree programs; and one PhD degree in Information Systems, our newest offering and the first doctoral degree awarded by the School.

These degree offerings align with our mission, which states “…produce business leaders with recognized integrity, superior theoretical knowledge and practical skills of modern global business developed through an experiential learning environment.”

You will read about graduate business alumni and how their degrees have served them within their careers, and you will learn how our Accounting program supports career development through promoting internships for graduate students, transforming them into professionals.

Aside from our full-time MBA program on campus, our Executive MBA (EMBA) program is offered in Dallas and Austin with Baylor professors traveling to teach courses at both locations. Accessible education for working professionals is key, and the Hankamer School of Business is doing its part in supporting this effort.

Our focus on ethics remains the foundation of business education at Hankamer. University students from across the nation travel to our campus to compete in the National MBA Case Competition in Ethical Leadership, which is part of our annual Dale P. Jones Business Ethics Forum.

Baylor’s graduate business programs continue to provide a relevant, integrated and inter-disciplinary curriculum in shaping superior business leaders.

Terry S. Maness
Dean, Hankamer School of Business

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2010

by Eric Krell

To get a picture of what graduate business education of the future will resemble, it helps to look back 2,500 years or so.

That’s when Greek philosopher Heraclitus proclaimed that “character is destiny.” This ancient wisdom describes the way in which business schools currently strive to differentiate their cultural offering to prospective students…in the midst of a global financial crisis that has forced university leadership to rethink the fundamental nature of graduate business education.

This hard look in the mirror is hardly a new phenomenon. Business schools have wrestled with striking a balance between theory and application as well as the nature of the research they produce since 1881, when The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the United States’ first university business school, was founded. Today, the lingering financial crisis and heated debates about what, if any, role business schools and MBAs played in triggering it, have intensified this ongoing self-reflection.

“All of us involved in business education need to ask what our role has been in fostering a culture that allows executives to walk off with millions of dollars while their firms lay in tatters and society is left with the bill,” Harvard Business School professors Jay Lorsch and Rakesh Khurana wrote in BusinessWeek in November 2008 as the financial crisis lay waste to Wall Street firms, global economies and millions of personal balance sheets.

While the self-assessment continues (and, indeed, appears unlikely to abate any time soon), a clearer picture has emerged of the 21st century business school.

Graduate business education is becoming more agile in responding to breaking business issues with relevant classroom instruction. The overall education “product” is growing more integrated, linking together a wider range of disciplines and insights (including international perspectives) to better prepare students to manage an increasingly complex and global business environment. Finally, as Lorsch, Khurana, other professors, business school administrators, MBA students and companies advocate, more business schools will delve into the realm of ethics and values in a more meaningful manner.

This emphasis on values extends to how business schools position themselves in the marketplace, notes Tim Westerbeck, managing director and principal of LipmanHearne, a firm that serves nonprofit institutions, including universities and their graduate business schools.

“Trying to differentiate based on a specific type of program or a ‘product attribute,’ is difficult at a time when there are so many similarities in these [educational] products,” he explains. “The one thing that each school owns that is completely unique is its own set of values. I see business schools trying to reach the market based on their unique values, their cultural norms and other less tangible attributes.”

The Crisis Will Provide Lessons

The recession continues to enact tangible impacts on many business schools. Almost 50 percent of all Executive MBA (EMBA) programs and part-time MBA programs suffered decreases in applications in 2009, according to BusinessWeek.

“Clearly, what’s happening in the economy has had an impact on business school enrollment,” notes Linda A. Livingstone, professor of Management and dean of Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management. In most cases, declining enrollment has been limited to executive and part-time MBA programs.

These developments represent typical recessionary effects. During tough economic times, companies often reduce or eliminate EMBA reimbursements. Additionally, the high unemployment accompanying the current downturn has forced managers who remain on the job to take on greater workloads; they have less time to invest in outside development opportunities.

Yet, enrollment in full-time MBA programs remains healthy for the most part, which also tends to occur during economic downturns. “Top schools are still filling their classes,” Westerbeck reports.

A more long-lasting impact of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis involves the questions the bruising recession raised about the nature of business school education.

Assessment Will Be Continuous

One Harvard Business School alumnus raised a ruckus last spring when he wrote a column in The Times of London reprimanding his fellow alumni along with Columbia and Wharton MBAs for creating the conditions that sparked the financial crisis.

“There was a lot of blame placed on business schools for the financial crisis,” Livingstone notes. “Some of it may have been justified, but not all of it. This tends to occur during an economic downturn: people want to place blame somewhere. I think this discussion has forced business schools to become even more introspective about what we do.”

That introspection took place in the past, of course. These debates flared up every 10 to 15 years or so when an economic downturn, a string of corporate scandals or even a controversial paper appeared (as occurred several years ago when Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer co-authored a research paper with data suggesting that earning an MBA degree does not correlate with career success).

The discussions, while familiar in many respects, sound less likely to fade this time around.

“Self-assessment is extremely important, and I don’t expect that to dissipate,” notes Gary Carini, associate dean of graduate programs at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. “Business schools are asking big questions: What will the curriculum look like in five years? How relevant are we? How risk-averse are we? Are we willing to make the changes that we may need to make, given the current economic environment?”

In other words, business schools are asking the same strategic questions that companies led by business school graduates now confront. “And frankly,” Livingstone says, “we need to be able to look at ourselves and ask: What can we do better? How can we help bring our region, the country, and the global economy out of this? …As long as the assessment, evaluation and criticism are fair, I think we all need to be open to it.”

Agility Will Be a Core Competency

The need comes not only from internal discussions but also from external demand. Laura Beck, managing director of global public relations (PR) firm Porter Novelli’s Austin, Texas, office, has worked with marketing and operational executives at hundreds of companies during her past decade running a PR office.

“It is difficult to believe, but the PR and marketing-related case studies that we hear are still used in graduate business classes are more than 20 years old: Tylenol, from 1982, as an example of crisis management executed the right way; and the Exxon Valdez debacle, from 1989, as crisis management done wrong,” Beck says. “The more real-world, current, actionable experience – whether through ‘living’ case studies, internships or field research – that MBA programs can provide, the better. Given the pace of change and the magnitude of complexity at work in the world today, MBA programs should ensure that their graduates are equipped with the street smarts employers need to thrive in this turbo-charged environment.”

A 2009 BusinessWeek study found that its highest ranked EMBA, part-time MBA and executive education programs are those that adapted the quickest to the changes brought on by the financial crisis.

The ability to adapt classroom curriculum and discussions to help students understand and learn from breaking business developments requires a unique culture: administrators need to make this approach a priority and professors need to collaborate with each other on how (and why) new content can and should complement existing curriculum.

“This is one of the areas where we believe our culture at Baylor offers an advantage,” Carini notes. “Our MBA faculty members are physically situated right next to each other, we eat lunch together, and we meet at least three out of four weeks every month – because we want to. If the finance professor comes in and says, ‘I think I really need to start emphasizing X due to what’s happening on Wall Street, and I’d like some support from economics and strategy,’ we all trust his or her expertise and figure out how to support that in other classes.”

Linda Carlson, publisher of American Airlines’ Web site (www.aa.com) and a member of the Hankamer School of Business advisory board, agrees. “Business schools must be nimble, current, global and technology-driven – like the students they hope to attract,” she says. “They need to offer real-world experiences and a real-world focus, such as equipping graduate business students with the ability to formulate and write strategic business plans.”

Integration Will Define the Offering

As Carini and others note, adapting classroom learning and research to reflect rapidly changing business conditions requires a culture of trust and collaboration – the result of which is an educational offering with greater integration across business disciplines.

“In an effort to prepare graduates to manage people and to lead organizations, business schools increasingly emphasize the integration of disciplines so that courses overlap and students learn how to make decisions using all areas of the core business courses,” notes Laurie Wilson, director of graduate business degree programs at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. “Even before the financial crisis, business schools recognized the need for MBA students to develop communication and leadership skills in addition to the traditional MBA quantitative skills.”

The drive for integration stems from the growing complexity and interconnectedness of business – two qualities that financial crisis so painfully demonstrated; think of credit default swaps (complexity), or consider how Iceland suffered from the refinancing mania in Nevada, Florida, California and other parts of the U.S. (interconnectedness).

“This big push [for more integrated learning] was fundamentally in recognition that the world of global business has grown infinitely more complex and that neither problems nor opportunities fit into convenient little boxes,” Westerbeck says. “Modern business executives don’t have accounting problems or finance problems or supply chain problems. They have complex, multi-dimensional programs and opportunities.”

Just ask them.

“Consider manufacturing customers’ needs for support in a geography remote to their suppliers’ main operations,” notes Blake Moret, vice president and general manager of customer support and maintenance for Rockwell Automation. “How will they get replacement parts? Who can they call for technical support? And how will they train their new workers? An MBA grad is most useful if he or she can appreciate the multiple paths to a successful solution. The manager who can define fundamental needs, identify the broadest set of alternative actions that can meet these needs, and consistently put solid implementation plans in place will win.”

Grooming future executives who can address these sorts of multifaceted challenges, Moret and others say, requires MBA graduates with a highly diverse educational experience, one that includes international perspective.

“Smart business schools realize that the current and future economy is global,” says American Airlines’ Carlson. “There will be an increased focus on India, China, Asia, and Europe, and the U.S. needs to prepare its young professionals to meet these challenges.”

Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business and other business schools have been offering integrated programs and joint degrees, such as Healthcare MBAs or master’s degrees in Engineering/MBA, since well before the financial crisis, and this trend should continue.

“Different fields are talking to each other more often to make sense of increasingly complex business challenges,” Carini notes. “As a result, business schools need to ask how we can use our resources more effectively while preparing our graduates with a deeper blend of knowledge. More integrated educational offerings between, for example, finance and law or between healthcare and business could help generate a new wave of entrepreneurship that our country needs right now.”

Values Will Grow More Valuable

The importance of ethical education represents another capability, and one that a surprising number of business schools appear to have taken to heart only recently.

While Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and early-2000-era corporate scandals delivered a wakeup call to MBA programs without sufficient ethics content, the highly questionable risk-management-related decision-making that sparked a far worse economic downturn of 2008-2009 suggests that not enough business schools received the message.

In a May 2009 piece that appeared on National Public Radio, Harvard’s Khurana suggested that the fundamental mode of business education needs to be revisited. He asserted that MBA graduates need to enter (or reenter) the business world with a different mindset – one that says, “I will create value rather than extract value,” rather than, “I’ll get back to society after I make a lot of money.”

The growing adoption of sustainability initiatives and corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs by companies of all sizes may reflect the growing importance of ethical behavior within organizations. “Some business schools recognized the CSR trend before the financial crisis,” Wilson notes. “A new generation of students is looking for an education to help them make a difference in the world.”

And a new generation of business leaders is beginning to define “sustainability” in terms that extend well beyond environmental stewardship. At its essence, the term “sustainability” is a value, asserts LRN founder, chairman and CEO Dov Seidman, one that says, “I will behave as if I will always be here and be held accountable for what took place on my watch.”

For years, Seidman, the author of HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything … in Business (and in Life) (Wiley, 2007), and his firm have helped client companies build organizational cultures around the idea that the most principled businesses also are the most profitable and sustainable businesses. Seidman describes values as “very efficient” because a “handful of values can inspire an infinite amount of sustainable behaviors that would take a thousand pages of regulations to accomplish.”

A growing number of current and incoming MBA students show a commitment to creating value in a company through their values. “We’re hearing more students say, ‘I’m not exclusively interested in money. I want to do something that I’m really passionate about and to find a situation where I can make a difference,'” says Carini, who points to Baylor students’ recent involvement in the Prison Entrepreneurship Program as an illustration.

The program helps transform entrepreneurially-minded prisoners from tax consumers into tax payers with legitimate businesses upon their release. Business school students donate their guidance on business plans. When Carini brought up the idea of getting involved in the program to MBA students, he hoped to muster five volunteers. Twenty-seven students signed up. And other volunteer programs have generated similar responses.

“Schools such as Baylor have always been noted for their ethics program and their focus on ethics,” Carlson notes. “As a result, Baylor tends to attract the socially-conscious type of student. Graduates with this focus are just that much more competitive to the companies who will employ them. So, in a way, it is a new calling card – graduates need to have this focus to be successful within the companies who employ them.”

As business schools seek to differentiate themselves in a complex, interconnected global economy, their new calling card is their culture. And the business school programs that are destined to thrive and sustain their success, understand that character is the centerpiece of their culture.

Entrepreneurship and the Economy

Recessions may feel like the worst of times, but they also represent the best of times – at least to the entrepreneurs who leverage downturns to launch businesses that later rise to the upper reaches of the Fortune 500 list.

This may sound like fiction, yet it’s an interesting fact, according to a 2009 survey. It also explains why more business schools of the future will seek to develop their entrepreneurship offerings.

“Universities that have an emphasis in entrepreneurship™should see a growing interest in this area,” says Linda A. Livingstone, professor of Management and dean of Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management. “This is an extremely important area right now. Real people with entrepreneurial capabilities – whether they reside in larger companies, smaller companies or start-ups – are making a difference in turning the economy around. Some of the great companies of all time have been started in downturns.”

Livingstone is right, according to a June 2009 study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. More than half of the companies on the 2009 Fortune 500 list were launched during a recession or bear market, along with nearly half of the firms on the 2008 Inc. list of America’s fastest-growing companies.

“History has demonstrated this time and again: new firms create new jobs and fuel our economy,” notes Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation. Policies that support entrepreneurship support recovery.”

Baylor’s new research park, Immersion Into International Interdisciplinary Innovation (i5) program and other components of its entrepreneurship offerings, demonstrate the Hankamer School of Business’ commitment to entrepreneurship. This commitment began in 1977, with the introduction of the first entrepreneurship course as part of the MBA curriculum. In 1979, graduate and undergraduate entrepreneurship majors were added, and two years later an endowed Center for Entrepreneurship was established.

“In addition to values – which cover ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability – and healthcare, entrepreneurship remains a strength and focus of our MBA program,” says Gary Carini, associate dean of graduate programs at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. “Many of our students are interested in entrepreneurial endeavors, and we will continue to provide opportunities for students to pursue their passion.”

That’s good news for Hankamer students and perhaps even better news for the economy.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2010

by Kristin Todd Stires

Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business offers a variety of graduate degrees. Whether it’s an MBA degree, joint or specialized degree, candidates are sure to find a degree program that incorporates a balance of theory and application, which will further their education and bolster them as business professionals. We caught up with these alumni to see how their graduate degrees have served them within their careers.

Adrian Gorena

Carmelita Chadwick

Keith Hembre

Lesley Freeberg

 

Hankamer School of Business Graduate Degree Offerings

• Master of Business Administration (MBA) • Master of Science in Information Systems (MSIS) • Master of Accountancy (MAcc) • Master of Taxation (MTax) • Master of Science in Economics (MSEco) • Master of Science or Master of Arts in International Economics (MSIEco/MAIEco)

Specialized degrees

• MBA Healthcare Administration Specialization • MBA Entrepreneurship Specialization

Joint degrees

• MBA/Juris Doctor (MBA/JD) • MBA/Master of Science in Information Systems (MBA/MSIS) • MBA/Master of Engineering (MBA/ME) • MBA/Master of Science in Computer Science (MBA/MSCS) • Juris Doctor/Master of Taxation (JD/MTax) • MBA/Master of Healthcare Administration (MBA/MHA) at Fort Sam Houston (military personnel only)

Executive MBA programs • Austin – Evening program at Freescale campus • Dallas – Weekend program at Cooper Aerobics Center

Integrated degree programs

• BBA/MTax (taxation) • BBA/MAcc (accountancy)

Doctoral degree

• Doctor of Philosophy in Information Systems (PhD-IS)

www.baylor.edu/business/grad

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2010

by Barbara Elmore

Say we have two companies-T. Rex and Gazelle Inc. Once powerful, T. Rex now is merely unwieldy, using old practices that hinder its response to current market realities and top-down management reluctant to change.

Gazelle Inc. is lean and fleet, quick to switch direction if necessary-after first taking a quick consensus of other gazelles on the team and posting a video on YouTube.

The former is business old school, the latter 2010 reality. Don’t get too snuggly with 2010’s new ways, however, because they may be passé by 2011. And by the way, professors still teaching T. Rex theory to MBA students belong in a museum, not the classroom.

So says Gary Carini, associate dean of graduate programs at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. And so imply MBA skeptics who question the degree’s relevance, given past performance.

The criticisms leveled at the MBA describe its recipients as out-of-touch “managers by accident.” They blame them for many of the problems of the last 30 years-and the last 18 months-and list these weaknesses:

• Little or no work ethic and a sense of entitlement displayed by newly hired MBAs who do not appear to appreciate the challenges of their work.
• A lack of performance, with company leaders asking, “Why aren’t we doing better with MBAs in the driver’s seat?”
• Ethical breaches, with everyone asking, “Isn’t business school supposed to be training these CEOs?” The questioners look to business schools to provide answers.

The response of business school leaders is that the MBA remains relevant only if those in the classroom are asking, “Why are we doing what we are doing? Why is it important? Why should it continue?”

At Baylor, that’s been happening for more than a decade.

Although charges of MBA irrelevance are not new, the financial crisis that began in mid-2008 invited a new wave of scrutiny-both in the “real world” and inside classrooms.

“In this financial crisis, we realized that no one person, no one discipline, can answer to the reasons,” Carini said. “When it really hit in July 2008, those discussions were happening right away in our classes.”

New dialogue between students and professors revolved around causes and expectations for 12 months, 24 months, five years and 10 years out, he said. A large part of the conversation included webcasts, podcasts and YouTube videos, which became part of the discussion because instant communication shows business strategy as it unfolds.

Baylor is constantly re-evaluating and changing, using a many-pronged approach to ensure a relevant MBA, Carini said. Strategy formulation plays a large role, and new research explores the nuances of current and future economic realities.

“There is so much new information coming out that has to do with strategy formulation and how do we do it well,” Carini said. “Strategy is always about anticipation. We are dissecting anticipation given the context we are in now.”

David A. Wilson, president and CEO of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC ), noted that responsive business schools show an entrepreneurial flair for meeting market needs. They do so with programs like the Executive MBA, or weekend and part-time evening programs, as well as specialty degrees that prepare students for the demands of a local, regional, national or international market.

At Baylor, “responsive” means:

• MBA students examine business news regularly in the Wall Street Journal. “Our ear is to what is happening on a current basis,” Carini said. “That frames the class.” Students discuss what a company’s vision is now, and what it should do next. If a company’s creditworthiness is ailing, they examine what that does to the creditor. Students talk about income statements and balance sheets, all the while integrating global standards. “We make sure we are out there and not in a cocoon or a vacuum,” Carini said.

• Professors lead MBA candidates to think about their value not only to their future employers, but to society too, so that employers see “a whole person who is intelligent and ready for future challenges,” Carini said.

• In the Executive MBA program, Baylor offers a new facet that ensures every graduate leaves with a first draft of his or her business plan in hand.

Wilson said the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT ), the premier assessment tool for graduate business and management education programs, continues to draw takers.

“My conclusion is that the market, in general, will continue to be strong through 2010,” Wilson said. “I do not suggest that there will be no pockets of weakness. Rather, overall the market remains strong. And based on our research, employers still find value for money in the MBAs they hire.”

But changes must be ongoing for the MBA to remain attractive to the best future leaders. “If business schools do not meet the needs of employers, they will cease to attract good students,” Wilson said.

Employers decide where to recruit based on the quality of employees they have already hired. And when the economy slows down, Wilson said, companies make “hard calls” about where they will recruit, and they drop ineffective schools.

“Schools know that and prospective students watch for it in recruiting information,” Wilson said.

Wilson said a decline in starting salaries in 2010 would not surprise him.

“It is also likely that instead of four or five offers, graduating MBAs will have to work to get two or three,” Wilson added. “But schools are also businesses. They do monitor the market to glean any substantive changes in the structure of the MBA employment market itself or inputs sought by employers.”

Carini said he sees exciting changes ahead for business schools.

“I tell students that the ideas we had in 1980 and 1990 were founded in a much different world,” Carini said. “We have to look at why things happen, what we are seeing in industry, who competes with whom. How do we need to teach, train, and present models to students that will equip them to have value today and tomorrow?”

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2010

Counting on a Transformation

by Becca Broaddus

In this economy, going into an interview without experience is like going into an interview wearing pajamas. Good luck.

An internship lends necessary credibility to an applicant. Employers need to know whether the applicant is as capable as his or her well-crafted resume claims. Baylor’s Graduate Accounting program offers two degrees: a Master of Accountancy (MAcc) and a Master of Taxation (MTax). Both tracks offer a five year program, which combines the master’s degree with a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and waives 12 undergraduate elective hours.

The program encourages and gives students the tools necessary to intern during their junior year.

“In today’s market, most permanent entry-level job offers in accounting are a result of a successful internship, so it’s imperative that we do all we can to help our students obtain an internship,” said Charles Davis, department chair of Accounting and Business Law.

These graduate accounting students, now seniors, have already secured jobs after graduation through their internships. Each experience is unique, but each one of them gained important insight into their future careers.

Copperas Cove student Bruce Moss completed a 10-week tax internship at Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms. Big Four firms are considered the biggest and most prestigious public accounting firms. They include Ernst & Young, Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“The Baylor recruiting program does a really good job at exposing students to firms and setting up all of the social functions we have with the corporations,” Moss said.

The department believes in the importance of internships so much that they brought in Anthony Herrera to be the director of internships and career development last January. Herrera said his job is to help prepare students for life after Baylor with counseling to improve leadership, social, presentation and resume-building skills. He organizes Career Days, lunches with corporations called “Lunch and Learn,” and firm presentations to acquaint students with their career options, in addition to organizing internship and job recruiting.

“Herrera’s experiences in both the audit and tax worlds and his professional recruiting experience make him an invaluable resource to our students,” Davis said.

In addition to professors, students also recommend interning as an important learning experience because it augments class work and gives them a ‘test drive’ for their futures.

“It gives you real-world experience you can’t get out of a lecture hall,” Moss said. If one internship is good, two are even better. Singapore student Wei Wong interned at ConocoPhillips and Ernst & Young in 2008 and 2009, respectively, eventually accepting a job at ConocoPhillips, which will begin August 2010.

“One of the greatest decisions I’ve made was doing two internships,” Wong said. “Most people don’t have time to do two.”

Wong was able to compare the two and decide which job was a better fit for him. Picking from two internships is a luxury most students don’t get in accounting.

While most Baylor accounting students begin their careers in public accounting, Wong decided to begin his career in corporate accounting.

“I enjoyed the time at Ernst & Young, but I didn’t enjoy the work as much as I did at ConocoPhillips,” Wong said.

Kathleen Simpson also completed two internships – at Ernst & Young and the FBI. But she already knew what career path she would take before stepping foot into either internship. Simpson, a Georgetown native, has known since the sixth grade that she wanted to be an FBI agent.

“My major was driven by my career choice,” Simpson said. “Most students’ majors determine their career.”

She interned this summer at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., after a rigorous application process including multiple interviews, a polygraph test and a background check.

“I chose Baylor primarily because of the recognition, but also because of the integrity and ethics built into the program,” Simpson said. “It’s a desirable trait for all jobs, but especially for a job that requires a background check.”

Before applying to be an FBI agent, applicants must have experience in their field of study, so Simpson will work at Ernst & Young after receiving her diploma. She plans on applying to be an agent after gaining work experience at Ernst & Young.

Mansfield student David Hall also wants to join the FBI. At his internship last spring, he worked on litigation support, business evaluation and fraud investigations at KPMG in the Forensics department.

“The internship helped solidify that I wanted to do this,” Hall said.

Hall said all his Baylor classes helped him at his internship. He used knowledge from business classes including finance, tax, business law, and, of course, accounting. He said fraud adds diversity to the work that other firms don’t have.

“I like the pace and the change of the work ™ you don’t usually get that in audit or tax,” Hall said.

All four of the students highly recommend internships to their peers. Each of them received job offers through their internships.

“Before you decide what you’re going to do for the rest of your life, make sure you’re going to enjoy it,” Simpson said.

Moss said interning is valuable because “it gets you out of your comfort zone.” It’s an important step, especially for people in their early 20s, he said.

When asked what advice he would pass on to future graduates, Wong encouraged studying and living abroad. He lived abroad for 16 years, and said it helped him network and have a broader understanding of the world.

“Today’s business is so global – you have to understand how to effectively conduct business with people who don’t have the same mindset as you,” Wong said. “It helped me build relationships.”

Internships translated into full-time jobs after graduation not only for these students but for most students in Baylor’s Graduate Accounting program.

“A high percentage of internships translate into full-time opportunities,” Herrera said. “It prepares you for real life experience.”

Ultimately, internships give students the opportunity to get a glimpse of their future before graduation, and understand potential career responsibilities.

“Interning was a nice illustration of what to expect,” Moss said. “I’m ready for my future career.”

www.baylor.edu/business/accounting

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2010

(But they’re handy when you’re confused)

by Marjorie Scardino

The economic crisis of the past couple of years has confused us all. It’s had profound effects on not only those who’ve participated in stock markets, but also on workers and families and communities who’ve been dependent on companies for their well-being. It’s caused business leaders to take stock of what they should have been doing and how they should have been doing it. And it’s made most all of us who are interested stop and think about the rules of business today and whether they’re responsible or even workable for society as a whole.

The principles of free markets, first laid down by Adam Smith in 1776 when no one else really connected the idea of competition to progress and innovation, have been interpreted in our time as a license for a focus on self-interest, no matter what impact it has on others. But simple common sense tells us that’s wrong. Smith thought that the “honest shopkeeper” would exercise his self-interest to the good of the whole community because his interest would be on thrift and honesty and good products. But he knew that there had to be a governor on that self-interest when times were flush and the money or the way he made it was easy, but not in society’s long-term interest.

Somehow, we’ve been without that governor – that interest in moving all of civilization along. We’ve thought the definition of responsibility included not much more than good risk management, sensible cost control, and no secrets.

Those are reasonable rules, and they might, if we apply them slavishly, help us avoid another downturn. But responsible leadership requires a lot more than just preventing a meltdown. It requires us to move companies along so that society can move along. To do that, following rules slavishly is generally a mistake.

In spite of that, I offer just five rules based on my experience that I think might help us regain our hold on responsibility:

Pursue a purpose

Companies that thrive and succeed in the long run are those that have a social purpose broader than making returns for shareholders. Profits are essential, but they should sustain a company, not define it. A company with a goal that benefits society gives everyone in it a way to be involved in something larger than themselves – and that’s what makes most of us get out of bed every morning and stretch during each day further than we thought we could.

One of the long-running U.S. success stories, the General Electric Co., has over the past half-century always had a series of slogans than encapsulated that purpose – “Progress is our most important product” or “We bring good things to life” or, currently, “Imagination at work.” GE’s chairman and chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, has said that “‘Imagination at work’ is more than a slogan or a tagline. It is a reason for being.” That kind of purposeful work is what makes a company great.

Take a long-term perspective

There’s no substitution for thinking ahead – not letting short-term setbacks distract you, planning for the medium-term, but all the while thinking into the distance. That’s the time scale that governs your investments, and that should help you keep your nerve when times get tough.

My company publishes a newspaper, the Financial Times. In common with all newspapers, it ached and bled in the early days of this century when the dot-com bust triggered a big drop in financial and technology advertising, the paper’s staples in the late 1990s. So we decided to change it for the long term – to make it into a broader, more digital business information business more reliant on its readers than its advertisers. As a result, it’s lasted when many newspapers have failed, and it has proved much more resilient in the latest recession.

Turn the box upside down, even if things fall out the bottom

If you’re in charge of an organization for a long time, it’s easy to start thinking that everything is brilliant – all strategies right, all operations top-notch and your leadership prescient. But if you start believing any of that, you’ll be sorry. Change is a constant.

Innovation was at the heart of Adam Smith’s free market concept, and it’s still the crucial act in a company. It doesn’t just require new ideas; it also requires speed, and quite a bit of recklessness. Sometimes you have to abandon something successful, to reach for the next success.

In 2005, Apple, Inc. decided to discontinue its iPod mini, at that point the best-selling portable music player in the world, in favor of the even-smaller iPod nano. The company saw that competitors were catching up, and only change could pull them ahead. That brave move fired Apple’s rise as the market leader, and oiled their creative machine, giving them innovation momentum in the minds of the market that is still roaring.

Err on the side of generosity

This is the single best business rule I’ve ever found, and I didn’t find it in a business book or a business school: If you’re not sure what decision to take – should you be tough or lenient, harsh or forgiving, believe a person’s story, give someone another chance, excuse an error – take the generous choice. You’ll be wrong sometimes – maybe even a lot of the time – but the cost of being wrong on the side of generosity rather than small-mindedness is much less all around.

This is a versatile rule, too. It works if your decisions are about people, and it works if your decisions are about thinking big rather than thinking small. Being open and large-minded is, in any case, a lot more exciting and stimulating.

Don’t be afraid to fail

The Japanese company Sony fell flat on its face with an electric rice-cooker in the 1940s – the rice always turned out undercooked or overcooked, and the Japanese market is serious about its rice. But the company learned from that mistake and bounced back to become a global powerhouse in consumer electronics ranging from radios to the iconic Walkman. (And they’ve shied away from kitchen appliances.)

Radio Corporation of America, or RCA, was devastated by the stock market crash of 1929, but its leaders turned their attention to the new-fangled but promising technology of television, formally introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, and their year of lost fortunes turned into decades of success.

I probably learned my biggest business lesson through a personal failure, too. In the 1970s in Savannah, Georgia, my husband and I started a small weekly newspaper. It was rollicking fun as a newspaper – and a miserable business disaster. My husband, the editor, won a Pulitzer Prize for its editorials.

But I, the publisher, didn’t manage to win enough advertisers to keep the paper going. After seven years, we had to close it. But along the way, we played a part in our local community and employed a loyal group of people who saw the newspaper as a calling larger than themselves. And we learned a lesson that has given us more courage than we might otherwise have had: we learned that failure doesn’t kill you; it makes you stronger.

 

Marjorie Scardino, a 1969 graduate of Baylor, is the chief executive officer of Pearson PLC, the London-based global education and media company whose companies include Pearson Education – educational materials and services around the world; the Financial Times newspaper, data and online businesses; and Penguin books. Before becoming Pearson CEO in 1997, she was chief executive of The Economist Group and, prior to 1985, a partner in a Savannah, Georgia, law firm. She is a member of several charitable and advisory boards, including The MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, The Carter Center in Atlanta, Oxfam in Britain, and The Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2010