Evan H. Offstein

Are We Doing Enough for Today's Graduate Student?.

Following approaches consistent with the qualitative research tradition, attempts to capture the essence of the full‐time graduate student experience. Using the constant comparative method, analyzes several sources of data to arrive at a grounded theoretical model of the graduate student experience. Findings suggest that stress is at the core of the graduate student experience and is amplified by conflicting demands and internal conflict unique to this type of student. Additionally, international graduate students appear to face some tremendous obstacles that span both their personal and professional lives. Also identified are several of the tactics and mechanisms that students adopt to reduce hardship as they proceed through their respective programs. Finally, implications for current administrative practice and future research are discussed.

On the Virtues of Secrecy in Organizations

Many authors have highlighted the detrimental aspects of secrecy, particularly as keeping secrets runs contrary to the values of open, democratic societies and institutions. In this view, secrets help the powerful maintain control over the valuable resource of information. In this essay, the authors explore the more positive view, asking what may be virtuous in keeping secrets in organizations. From the perspective of strategy development and implementation, human resource management, and trust development, there are several virtues of secrecy that emerge. Although there are very real costs to keeping secrets, there are also benefits at the organizational and the interpersonal levels.

Making telework work: leading people and leveraging technology for competitive advantage

Purpose – Teleworking is often indicated as a flexible working arrangement. This paper seeks to highlight that flexibility is just one positive characteristic of telework and to demonstrate both the strategic and practical implications of adopting telework. In addition, it aims to highlight best practices and specific activities that enable telework to achieve its full potential.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on a series of interviews, personal experiences and observations encompassing a wide range of organizations to include profit and non‐profit/government across a variety of industry sectors that include retail, high technology, manufacturing and hospitality and service, the paper provides an overview on how to make telework work effectively and smoothly within profit and non‐profit organizations. Moreover, it confronts the leadership literature to examine how leadership – not technology – is the critical variable in telework success.Findings – In the most successful cases of telework, organizat...

“Your Professor Will Know You as a Person” Evaluating and Rethinking the Relational Boundaries Between Faculty and Students

Over the past 30 years, several management educators have urged faculty to reexamine their relationships with students. To do this, many have proposed novel metaphors to reconceptualize the faculty-to-student relationship. These include embracing students not as pupils to be taught but rather as clients, consumers, and even employees. At the heart of these metaphors, though, is a subtle and not-so-subtle pressure to build more intimate, personal, and close relationships with students. As more and more stories surface in the scholarly and practitioner press about “close relationships” that have devolved into sad and disappointing outcomes for students, faculty, and universities, it is necessary to revisit the core assumption that closer is better. In this essay, we describe the forces driving more personal relationships between faculty and students. Next, we question the assumptions along with the unintended consequences of adopting more intimate relationships with students. Finally, we conclude by challenging management educators to rethink the notion of professional calling along with the notion of pedagogical caring. To be sure, we offer some prescriptions and principles to help management educators navigate the student–faculty relationship—a relationship, we believe, more in flux now than in any other time in the history of higher education.

Firm competitive behavior as a determinant of CEO pay

Purpose – To provide insight, explanation, and empirical evidence into how and why CEOs get paid the amounts that they do.Design/methodology/approach – This paper blends several methodologies. Using qualitative interviews with several high level managers, it develops a coding listing to capture how pharmaceutical firms compete within their industry. The paper then uses a structured content analysis approach to capture the specific and observable competitive moves that pharmaceutical firms launch.Findings – Base pay and bonus of the CEO are greater for firms that launch higher volumes of competitive actions. Furthermore, the variety of competitive moves appears to influence a CEOs base salary.Research limitations/implications – This study has limited external validity since the firms in this sample are all large US pharmaceutical firms. The research implication is that, to date, firm size and past performance were identified as the single greatest predictors of CEO pay. Findings from this study suggest th...

The Impact of the CEO Pay Gap on Firm Competitive Behavior

The authors investigate how pay differences between the CEO and the rest of the members of the top management team influence a firms competitive behavior as reflected in the observable and purposeful competitive moves launched by the firm. Using data from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, the authors found a positive relationship between the CEO pay gap and the volume and complexity dimensions of firm competitive behavior. The authors discuss both theoretical and managerial implications of these findings as they relate to important topics such as competitive strategy, corporate governance, and executive compensation.

Rebuilding reliability: strategy and coaching in a high hazard industry

Purpose – In light of and due to the spike in concern regarding high hazard industries, in general, and nuclear power plants (NPPs) in particular, resulting from the Japanese earthquake and crisis at Fukushima, the purpose of this paper is to offer an innovative organizational development (OD) intervention that may enhance safety and operational performance directed at these critical organizations.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on and integrating key elements of strategy, leadership coaching and development and assessment, the authors describe and detail an intervention designed to bring a troubled NPP to a state of reliability.Findings – It was found that performance improved in a relatively short amount of time from implementing this OD tool.Practical implications – The findings contained herein may apply to any organization aiming to improve on safety and operational performance.Originality/value – The papers findings should appeal to high hazard and high reliability organizations, such as thos...

Too Close for Comfort? Faculty–Student Multiple Relationships and Their Impact on Student Classroom Conduct

Professors are increasingly encouraged to adopt multiple role relationships with their students. Regardless of professor intent, these relationships carry risks. Left unexamined is whether student–faculty social multiple relationships impact student in-class behaviors. Provocatively, our exploratory study provides empirical support suggesting that when undergraduate students perceive that their professors engage in the multiple faculty–student relationships of friendships, drinking (alcohol) relationships, and sexual partnerships, students report they are more likely to engage in uncivil behaviors in the professor’s classroom. Accordingly, our study provides a backdrop against which to think more substantively about the professorial role and the boundaries that accompany it.

Breaking Bad in Business Education Impacts on Student Incivility and Academic Dishonesty

The present study examines instructors’ attempts to increase student satisfaction through what we predict to be destructive communication tactics. Results indicate that business majors reported being more likely to engage in incivility and academic dishonesty in courses taught by professors who attempted to gain student favor through gossiping, self-disclosure, and downward convergence. Furthermore, perceptions of the instructor’s ethical character mediated the relationships between instructor behaviors and student incivility. Given the centrality of the professor in developing future managers and employees, we discuss implications for business and professional education and advocate for a return to a more traditional business professor role.

A cross-cultural analysis of factors influencing choice in volunteering activities

Purpose – This study aims to offer insights into the contextual and situational variables that influence volunteering choices. Design/methodology/approach – An analysis of European and US business students’ volunteering experiences is performed. Cross-cultural and experiential outcomes are compared and contrasted at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Findings – A majority of volunteering decisions are made without thoughtful reflection, based on convenience in an effort to reduce personal hardship, and influenced heavily by institutional and organizational structures. Originality/value – These results call into question the notion that volunteering-related choices are deeply personal, purposeful and/or reflective decisions. Moreover, the findings begin to explain why volunteerism continues to be dogged by labels such as “ineffective”, “inefficient” or “lacking in value” when benchmarked against expectations.