But Benjamin Cole, Ph.D., says the feud between the dueling inventors, which became intertwined with the evolution of criminal executions in the United States, can teach us a lot about the value of competition in business.

Cole, the William J. Loschert Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and an associate professor of strategy and statistics at the Gabelli School of Business, recently published a paper on the topic after five years of extensive archival research. “A Model of Competitive Impression Management: Edison versus Westinghouse in the War of the Currents,” ran in the prestigious journal Administrative Science Quarterly in January. The journal, which publishes only a small fraction of papers submitted to it, is routinely used in doctoral-level business classes.

He said that the paper, which he co-authored with David Chandler, assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School, shows how even a brilliant scientist like Edison could allow himself to be overcome with the desire to destroy his competitor’s reputation.

“When I began this paper, I never thought that my conclusion would be, ‘Wow, George Westinghouse is a really incredible human being, we should make a movie about him, and, ‘Boy, Edison was a real jerk,’” he said laughing.

A Gruesome and Disturbing History

Although we take for granted the safety measures in place today that allow us to seamlessly harness the power of electricity, in the late 19th century, the public’s trust of the technology was still in flux.

Cole, whose research also includes Blockchain technology, said he became interested in the topic when a colleague at the 2014 Academy of Management’s annual conference told him he’d discovered a collection of data that detailed every single execution in the United States, along with the technology that was used.

The electric chair, he came to learn, was invented as a more reliable, and thus, it was thought, more humane alternative to hanging. New York state was a pioneer in the area, with Governor David B. Hill establishing a three-member commission in 1886 to explore the issue. Edison was one of the people whose opinion was solicited, and his response was to suggest the state use Westinghouse’s alternating current to do the deed.

“Edison saw this as an opportunity. He said, ‘If I legitimize alternating current for executions and equate it with death and danger, then I can actually delegitimize it for use it there, because people will be scared to have it in their homes,” Cole explained.

Edison did succeed at showing how AC power could be used to kill, through a series of gruesome public demonstrations in Manhattan, in which dogs, calves, and horses were electrocuted. On August 6, 1890, the State of New York used an AC-powered electric chair to execute a convicted murderer named William Kemmler, making him the first person in the country to be executed this way.

Edison went so far as to pay to distribute the findings of the animal executions to every single business person or politician in the United States from a town of a population 5,000 or larger, but he ultimately failed to connect AC power with death in the public’s mind. Today, AC is used to transport electricity around the globe.

Worse yet, Cole said his negative campaign inadvertently pushed Westinghouse to innovate as well.

“Westinghouse recognized Edison’s tactics for what they were, so he decided to kind of pivot,” Cole said.

In addition to taking steps to assure the public that AC power could be delivered safely, Cole said Westinghouse also showed how it could be scaled up, most dramatically when he was picked—over Edison—to demonstrate that he could illuminate the entire World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He thus proved that long distance was not an obstacle to AC power.

“Westinghouse said, ‘I think people are willing to accept some risk if we can deliver on the cost front. Because if we can make it so that power is available to everyone, and you could put a generator on Niagara Falls and feed power to almost the entire state of New York, that type of system would be very, very, powerful.”

What ultimately doomed Edison’s quest to discredit AC power and promote DC, is that while DC power is less likely to inadvertently electrocute a person, it can only travel for a mile, whereas AC power travels much further on its own. DC power is still widely used today; it’s what flows through our electronic devices. But AC is what power plants generate and send to our houses and businesses.

Lessons for Today’s Business

Why would this be relevant today? Cole noted that Uber and Lyft recently illustrated how companies still actively work to undermine each other, by secretly ordering and canceling thousands of rides to increase each other’s operating costs and frustrate their customers. Firms regularly steal from and spy on each other, fund fake research to mislead political actors and customers, and bribe the media for desirable portrayals, he said, demonstrating the belief that success comes not just from being the best in the market, but also being perceived as better relative to competitors. Although this belief has some merit, Cole said there is a danger in relying on it. Edison’s example shows how a business that spends an inordinate amount of time besmirching its competition will neglect to innovate, he said, and suffer in the long term as a result.

Ultimately, though, competition matters.

“Competition actually drives innovation and we benefit as a result of that,” he said.

Such was the advice of Anthony Carter, FCRH ’76, former chief diversity officer at Johnson & Johnson, who made an impassioned case on Oct. 19 that the Gabelli School of Business is the best place for business students looking for a diverse and open environment.

Cura Personalis is in our DNA

His lunchtime speech, to prospective and current MBA students at the Lincoln Center campus, was part of the college’s second annual Diversity and Inclusion Summit. Mixing in personal anecdotes about his 40 years in business, as well as his time as an undergraduate at Rose Hill, Carter made an explicit connection between Fordham’s commitment to cura personalis and the importance of fostering a space where people of all genders, races, and sexual orientation can thrive.

This is particularly true given the current political climate, where homophobia, racism, gender inequity, and disregard for veterans and people with disabilities are very much real, he said.

This makes it very easy to focus on all the things that are wrong today, he said, but what we’re not quick to embrace is “the reality of what’s right about us.”

Being able to bring your whole authentic self to institutions is liberating, he said, and indeed, it’s at the heart of all pedagogy.

It’s also important when striving to better understand others, he said. As an example, he asked audience members what their first impression might be of a black man in the subway wearing a suit. Answers included “going to work,” “businessman,” “job interview,” and “banker.”

Carter noted that other people might peg him with more nefarious plans, like “scammer.” And they’re able to make this sort of assumption, he said, because they haven’t learned that man’s story.

“Your story is the reflection of your diversity, and I’m not talking about what you look like. The diversity of background, religion, geography, sexual orientation; you name it, I don’t know that by looking at you,” he said.

“But I know we represent the gorgeous mosaic of untold stories, and in these untold stories, we have the opportunity to really penetrate our souls. Our stories are also relevant to how business grows, because if you’re real marketers, you’re studying your customer base, and your customer base is diverse.”

A Place Where All Feel Welcome

Bliss Griffin, a second year MBA student; the inaugural fellow for diversity, equity, and inclusion; and president of the black and Hispanic MBA association at Gabelli, also addressed the students. After 10 years of acting, she said, she was attracted to business school. She didn’t feel like she fit in with “a lot of blue suits” at other schools, but the Gabelli School’s subway ads that touted the slogan “Privilege with Purpose” spoke to her.

And indeed, she said that once she enrolled, professors such as Sertan Kabadayi, Ph.D., professor of marketing, and Ben Cole, Ph.D., holder of the William J. Loschert Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship, have encouraged her to speak up. Griffin said Gabelli School Dean Donna Rapaccioli was likewise receptive when she approached her with a concern related to diversity and inclusion.

“I thought ‘You’re not going to fit in, this is a nuisance, people don’t want to hear this.’ And what she said was, ‘Can you come into my office? We’re doing this. We have these outside consultants who are helping us. Can you help us out on this?’”

“All of the things that I identify as dimensions of diversity in which I am a minority in this space are the reasons people were looking for me, and seeking my advice and my input,” she said.

“Give this institution an opportunity to rise to the occasion for you in the way that it absolutely rose for me, because those things about you that make you nervous are your value, and we want it in the room with you. We want to learn and grow from the insight that you have from being a minority in this space.”

Befitting the campus’s proximity to a world renowned performing arts center, the evening’s festivities kicked off with a cabaret performance by Eric Yves Garcia, FCLC ’00, which brought together alumni from Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC), the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS), Gabelli School of Business (GABELLI) graduate division, the Graduate School of Education (GSE), and the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS).

For Garcia, a graduate of Fordham’s theater program, playing cabaret standards on the piano in Pope Auditorium for an audience was a homecoming in the truest sense of the word, as he recalled sneaking into the space on many a late night to practice. When an acting career didn’t pan out upon graduation, Garcia said his musical talents enabled him to become successful professional cabaret performer.

He said that performing works such as A Streetcar Named Desire and A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a Fordham student likewise influenced him today.

“Those plays are all old, but our professors impressed upon us that we had to invest in them vitality, and they weren’t museum pieces. You had to bring truth to them as best you could and work very hard to invest the words in them with meaning,” he said.

“I think that’s also true with the great American songbook. They’re not museum pieces, they’re about real-life things.”

On the plaza level, Robert R. Grimes, S.J., dean of FCLC, marveled at the transformation that the campus has undergone in the last several years, which he attributed in part to the generosity of FCLC alumni. The college’s annual reunion gift, which totaled $4,925,510 in this five-year reunion cycle, was presented by Patricia Dugan-Perlmuth, FCLC ’79.

Twelve floors up, Britanny Miller, GSE ’16, was rekindling the love she felt while working toward a master’s in education. A native of the Bronx who is now a school psychologist in New Rochelle, she said the University has a way of making New York City seem smaller than it is, because she frequently meets people who have connections to it.

“I’m not this person that’s very courageous to speak out or introduce myself to new people, but something about the Fordham community really empowers me to do so,” she said.

“I was a little wary of coming back because I didn’t know anyone who was coming, but I sat down at a table and the conversations just unfolded and flourished. You can just talk about anything when you’re here.”

At the PCS reunion, newly appointed Dean Anthony Davidson, Ph.D., also alluded to Fordham’s place in the city.

“It’s very refreshing and encouraging for me when I meet people, and they say ‘Oh, I went to Fordham,’” he said. “It’s always followed by, ‘What can I do to help?’”

In fact, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, noted that earlier that day, a PCS yellow ribbon graduate spotted him at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., as he was traveling back to New York.

“There I was in in Washington . . . and I had the great fortune and grace to run into one of you. [The graduate]  spoke with love and with great conviction not just about Fordham meant to him, but what Fordham did for him,” said Father McShane.

“I would be willing to bet if I ran into one of you on the No. 1 train, you’d start up a conversation just like the one I had with him, and I’d be, as I am tonight, filled with great gratitude and great grace of knowing you, working for you, and serving you.”

At the GSS cocktail hour, Dean Debra McPhee, Ph.D., welcomed 70 alumni, the oldest of whom was Patricia Young, GSS ’62. The gathering got off to a slow start, a fact that Father McShane attributed to the likelihood that GSS alumni were so dedicated to their jobs that they were likely still working at 6:30 p.m. Jonathan Roque, GABELLI ‘11, a 2017 graduate of the GSS/GABELLI joint Nonprofit Leadership program, said he was heartened by his exhortation that students remember to care for themselves as well as their clients. He plans to use his degree to help his local church.

At the Gabelli School of Business’ graduate gathering, Tricia Schwerdtman, GABELLI ’16, said coming to Fordham was one of the best choices she’s ever made. A Sarah Lawrence College undergraduate who majored in poetry, she worked as a graduate assistant for Benjamin Cole, Ph.D., associate professor of management systems, served as president of the management consulting club, and now works at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a management consultant for financial effectiveness in health care.

Working toward her degree strengthened her relationship with her father, too, she said. She recalled he’d made her dinner (macaroni and cheese) once when she was 7 years old, and pretty much never made meals beyond that. But that changed when she became the leader of a Fordham team participating in a case competition sponsored by the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG).

“I came home from the ACG cup prep at three in the morning. He’d waited up, made me dinner, and said ‘You know, you got this. Eat and go to sleep,’” she said.

“He’s really successful, so it was great to see that he’s proud of me and recognizes what I’m doing.”

 [doptg id=”88″] ]]> 70127 https://now.fordham.edu/university-news/summer-reading-some-faculty-recommendations/ Thu, 16 Jun 2016 16:33:55 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=48502 With summer upon us, it’s the time to kick back and pick up a book—not one you have to read for class, but one you choose for yourself. Inside Fordham asked faculty and staff members to recommend summer books for Fordham students, with an eye toward incoming freshmen, that entertain and enrich curious minds being Jesuit-educated in New York City.

Jon Friedrich, PhD, professor of chemistry
I’m reading Lab Girl (Knopf, 2016) by Hope Jahren, a geochemist and geobiologist at the University of Hawaii. Jahren reflects on the joys, frustrations, and wonders of becoming and being a scientist, and her explorations of plants and their ecosystems are truly thought provoking. I would recommend it to any aspiring scientist.

Linda LoSchiavo, director of Fordham University Libraries
In his novel Time and Again (Simon & Schuster, 1970) Jack Finney employs time travel to move his main character to New York in the 1880s. While it is both a sci-fi and a mystery novel, Finney’s detailed description of the city, accompanied by period photographs and illustrations, is a history lesson in itself. He shows us the fragility, pain, strength, and wonder of New York.

Brian Johnson, PhD, assistant professor of philosophy
My recommendation is Plato’s Apology, which is Plato’s version of the speech given by Socrates as he defended himself in 399 B.C. The book includes the key ideas we want out of a college education—the examined life—and fits with Fordham’s focus on classical texts.

Mark Naison, PhD, professor of history and African and African American studies
Between The World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is a short book in the form of a black journalist’s letter to his son. It is perhaps the best window we have into the mindset of black parents trying to raise children in a world that still poses dangers and challenges most of their white counterparts won’t face. The book eloquently exposes why black people still feel vulnerable in a “post-racial society.”

Benjamin Cole, PhD, associate professor of business
I recommend Global Dexterity (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), by Andy Molinsky. Most books on cultural differences focus on little things like whether to bow or shake hands when meeting people. But to work successfully in highly diverse cultural groups, you must understand how people from other cultures may diverge from your own. For example, does your culture require talking up your accomplishments to show competency? In the United States, yes; in Japan, absolutely not. The book shows how to be “true to yourself” yet not “sell out” when working with persons from other cultures.

Orit Avishai, PhD, associate professor of sociology and anthropology
I recommend Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science (Penguin, 2015), by Alice Dreger. It surveys recent scientific controversies gone nasty, replete with warring activists, censorship, and outrageous personal accusations meant to undermine legitimate research (including that by Dreger herself). The book will help prepare students for their twin responsibilities of accumulating knowledge and figuring out how to use it to make the world better.

Mary Bly, PhD, professor of English
Julia Claiborne Johnson’s debut novel, Be Frank with Me (William Morrow, 2016), is the story of young woman, Alice, whose boss sends her to Hollywood to be an assistant to an eccentric, brilliant writer, Mimi. Alice is tasked with doing everything she can to help Mimi produce a second bestseller, including caring for her quirky 9-year-old son Frank. It is a fascinating, witty, beautifully written first novel and wonderful inspiration for aspiring novelists.

Frank Boyle, PhD, associate professor of English
I just finished reading The Seven Good Years. a memoir by the Israeli author, Etgar Keret. It is unlike any memoir I’ve ever read because it is written in the style of Keret’s often stunning short stories that are never much longer than three or four pages. If you don’t know Keret’s work, the short story collection to begin with is certainly The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God.  Deceptively simple and fantastically quirky, Keret’s stories send the mind reeling through the relentless contradictions that add up to make us human. 

(Book covers courtesy Knopf, Penguin, and William Morrow publishers.) 

You can learn a thing or two about management from martial arts.
Benjamin Cole, Ph.D., assistant professor of management systems in the Fordham Schools of Business, spent nine years in Japan, and the time he spent training at a martial arts dojo there proved to be ideal for examining the importance of successful communication within organizations.

“Lessons from a Martial Arts Dojo: A Prolonged Process Model of High-Context Communication,” which Cole presented at the Academy of Management conference in August, was recently accepted for publication in a special issue on “West Meets East” in the prestigious Academy of Management Journal.

The paper was also named a finalist for two international research awards at the August conference—the Gustavson Best Qualitative Paper Award and the Douglas Nigh Award for the Best Interdisciplinary Paper authored by Junior Scholar(s), both sponsored by the International Management Division of the Academy of Management, the world’s largest association for researchers on organizations and management.

Cole says that Western business managers would do well to appreciate, as the Japanese and Chinese do, that the context in which you say something is often as important as the content of what you say.

Paying close attention to context at the dojo where Cole trained was particularly instructive, he said, because it showed the paramount importance of “shared understandings” as a prerequisite for successful communication.

While training at the dojo, Cole came to know a fellow Westerner, Ringo, who, like him, had spent many years practicing martial arts in Japan. Whenever Ringo showed up for class, he preferred to practice a more aggressive and dangerous style of martial arts, which ran contrary to the teachings of dojo’s grandmaster and which was not generally practiced there.
Rather than admonish Ringo directly, however, the grandmaster changed his instruction whenever Ringo was present for a class (which was approximately every other week). On those weeks, the dojo switched to teaching distancing and evasion practices that involved no laying of hands on others.

Ringo’s mistake was ignoring the shared understanding among practitioners that, whenever a student misses a class, he or she follows up with classmates on what was practiced the week before. Had Ringo done this, he would have likely figured out that the grandmaster was attempting to subtly communicate to him that his more aggressive style of practice was unacceptable.

“In Asian cultures, there’s a real emphasis placed on the recipient of the information figuring things out for him- or herself,” Cole said. “The communicator will speak around and around the subject, so it falls on other individuals to understand what the communicator is saying.”

The fact that people from different cultures place different degrees of emphasis on context is widely known. For example, a guest at a dinner in Beijing is expected to refuse a host’s first offer to sit facing the door, the seat reserved for the guest of honor. Were a guest to do the same thing at a dinner in Nashville, however, it could be considered rude.

Cole says that, regardless of whether one is from Japan, Germany, the United States, or elsewhere, individuals can actively control how much they pay attention to context.

“The challenge comes with reading people and understanding there are complexities in what’s in the shared understanding and what’s not. You may be reading into every interaction you’re having, but sometimes the word choices that are being made are meant to communicate to other people,” he said.

“It’s very hard to learn, but once you become attuned to it, you can actually become a better leader, because you’re concerned with putting out small fires before they become large blazes.”

Shared understandings are valuable in countless situations, said Cole. He has also examined their role in the nuclear energy industry, which must be profitable while working with an extremely thin margin of error, and thus requires employees who have an extreme level of mindfulness. Another place in which context is extremely important is a surgical ward.

In the case of the nuclear industry, Cole and his coauthors looked at the effects of outsourcing, based on data gathered from approximately 85 percent of all plants in the United States. Bringing in outsiders had a negative effect on both plant productivity and employee safety.

“When you bring in these outsiders, there’s still this border, because they come from another organization. And that border impedes mindfulness because it prevents the sharing of information between people who should be getting along,” he said.

“Our paper shows that both in terms of reliability of performance and in terms of employee safety, when you introduce these strangers to the organization, you increase the probability of failure.”

By paying closer attention to the context in which others are communicating information, Cole hopes people will miss fewer signs of trouble in a company.

“It’s about becoming mindful about how people understand information, and you can become a much better manager as a result,” he said.

“Lessons from a Martial Arts Dojo: A Prolonged Process Model of High-Context Communication,” which Cole presented at the Academy of Management conference in August, was recently accepted for publication in a special issue on “West Meets East” in the prestigious Academy of Management Journal.

The paper was also named a finalist for two international research awards at the August conference—the Gustavson Best Qualitative Paper Award and the Douglas Nigh Award for the Best Interdisciplinary Paper authored by Junior Scholar(s), both sponsored by the International Management Division of the Academy of Management, the world’s largest association for researchers on organizations and management.

Cole says that Western business managers would do well to appreciate, as the Japanese and Chinese do, that the context in which you say something is often as important as the content of what you say.

Paying close attention to context at the dojo where Cole trained was particularly instructive, he said, because it showed the paramount importance of “shared understandings” as a prerequisite for successful communication.

While training at the dojo, Cole came to know a fellow Westerner, Ringo, who, like him, had spent many years practicing martial arts in Japan. Whenever Ringo showed up for class, he preferred to practice a more aggressive and dangerous style of martial arts, which ran contrary to the teachings of dojo’s grandmaster and which was not generally practiced there.
Rather than admonish Ringo directly, however, the grandmaster changed his instruction whenever Ringo was present for a class (which was approximately every other week). On those weeks, the dojo switched to teaching distancing and evasion practices that involved no laying of hands on others.

Ringo’s mistake was ignoring the shared understanding among practitioners that, whenever a student misses a class, he or she follows up with classmates on what was practiced the week before. Had Ringo done this, he would have likely figured out that the grandmaster was attempting to subtly communicate to him that his more aggressive style of practice was unacceptable.

“In Asian cultures, there’s a real emphasis placed on the recipient of the information figuring things out for him- or herself,” Cole said. “The communicator will speak around and around the subject, so it falls on other individuals to understand what the communicator is saying.”

The fact that people from different cultures place different degrees of emphasis on context is widely known. For example, a guest at a dinner in Beijing is expected to refuse a host’s first offer to sit facing the door, the seat reserved for the guest of honor. Were a guest to do the same thing at a dinner in Nashville, however, it could be considered rude.

Cole says that, regardless of whether one is from Japan, Germany, the United States, or elsewhere, individuals can actively control how much they pay attention to context.

“The challenge comes with reading people and understanding there are complexities in what’s in the shared understanding and what’s not. You may be reading into every interaction you’re having, but sometimes the word choices that are being made are meant to communicate to other people,” he said.

“It’s very hard to learn, but once you become attuned to it, you can actually become a better leader, because you’re concerned with putting out small fires before they become large blazes.”

Shared understandings are valuable in countless situations, said Cole. He has also examined their role in the nuclear energy industry, which must be profitable while working with an extremely thin margin of error, and thus requires employees who have an extreme level of mindfulness. Another place in which context is extremely important is a surgical ward.

In the case of the nuclear industry, Cole and his coauthors looked at the effects of outsourcing, based on data gathered from approximately 85 percent of all plants in the United States. Bringing in outsiders had a negative effect on both plant productivity and employee safety.

“When you bring in these outsiders, there’s still this border, because they come from another organization. And that border impedes mindfulness because it prevents the sharing of information between people who should be getting along,” he said.

“Our paper shows that both in terms of reliability of performance and in terms of employee safety, when you introduce these strangers to the organization, you increase the probability of failure.”

By paying closer attention to the context in which others are communicating information, Cole hopes people will miss fewer signs of trouble in a company.

“It’s about becoming mindful about how people understand information, and you can become a much better manager as a result,” he said.