Gautschi, the Joseph Keating, SJ, Professor of Marketing and dean emeritus of the Gabelli School of Business, co-edited a new book with Al Erisman, PhD, executive in residence at Seattle Pacific University’s School of Business and Economics.

The Purpose of Business is a snapshot of the university’s Fordham Consortium, a series of conferences held from 2009 to 2013. The consortium brought together business leaders, academics, military officers, government representatives, artists, and clergy. Its purpose was to examine business from a variety of unconventional angles. Conferences took place around the world, providing the “perspectives from different walks of life.”

As such, the chapters of the book reflect the focus of the various conferences, which included Business and Global Politics, Business and the Arts, Business and the Media, Business and the Brain, as well as Business and Religion—to name a few.

The book’s ethical and cultural dimensions reflect industry soul-searching in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, said Gautschi.

“As is typical in a crisis like that, people started pointing fingers,” he said. “I thought we can’t pick up this question about business ethics every five or six years—we need to get down the primitives, as the book’s title suggests.”

In the book, Gautschi writes that for business to be recognized as a respectable social institution, representatives from all facets of society need to be engaged in understanding its purpose. But in a culture that encourages specialization, a broad-based examination of business gets discouraged, both inside and outside of the business world.

Many of the conferences took the executives outside of their comfort zone—asking them to interpret a scene from Shakespeare or improvise jazz, and then relate it back to business.

Another conference in 2011 in Istanbul on business and geopolitics included an examination of how Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity view business. At that conference, Patrick Ryan, SJ, the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, delivered a lecture that brought Hellenistic gods into the mix, particularly Hermes, “the god of the market and also the trickster god.” Father Ryan contributes a chapter to Gautschi’s book, “God and the Market: Four Settings in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

“They were asking philosophical questions that are often not asked in business,” Father Ryan said of the conference. “I focused on when business history began, on loans, and on usury, which eventually became the focus of a McGinley Lecture.”

Together with Jonathan Story, PhD, Gautschi also contributes a chapter titled, “The Business School: Serving Mammon or the University.” Story is the Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

Like Father Ryan, Gautschi also drew on the conferences for further research, even creating a new course. The Business and Energy session held at Fordham’s Westchester Campus spurred a seminar titled “Innovation in Business and Energy.”

Gautschi said the diversity of views was entirely intentional and are captured in the book.

“We have not been interested in producing consensus. Rather we have been interested in evoking different perspectives and, possibly, conflicting views so that they may be considered, studied, and disseminated over time.”

On Sept. 23, David Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) took to the podium and introduced William Dudley, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A bank of TV cameras lined the back of the room as a dozen journalists tapped away on their laptops.

Although this was not a typical morning for Gautschi, neither was the Fed CEO’s visit an isolated incident: The star wattage of guest speakers at GBA has brightened considerably, including visits by Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, FCRH ’78, LAW ’81, and Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke, LAW ’71, who sat on a panel last March.

On Oct. 15, former New York City Department of Education chief Joel Klein sat down for a discussion with Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, as part of the Business in the City symposium that Gautschi launched last spring. Former Reagan budget director David Stockman discussed his recent book, The Great Deformation, at the Wall Street Council lecture on Oct. 22.

The high-profile visitors are just one part of a larger paradigm shift that Gautschi was looking to create when he came to Fordham in 2010 from the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N.Y., where he served as dean and professor of marketing and business economics.

While GBA has been well served by a dean with an academic as well as practical understanding of marketing, marketing was not his first love—math was. In fact, Gautschi said he took a fortuitous, if somewhat unorthodox, route toward an understanding of marketing.

Born into an Air Force family, Gautschi said the place he most identified as home was the state of Maine, where he spent his high school years and met his wife. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, he pursued an M.B.A., though he still hedged his bets with math by focusing on quantitative methods, which eventually led to studying modeling and applied economics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his doctorate. Throughout, Gautschi never took a course on marketing. Yet, his first job after Berkeley was teaching marketing at Cornell.

Gautschi seems well aware of the irony inherent in learning by teaching. But it illustrates his underlying rationale that adaptability is key to both teaching business courses and running a business. He described his eventual shift from academia to business, and back again, as analogous to the balance struck by business schools—maintaining one foot in the academy and another in the private sector.

Gautschi’s career took root in France, where he developed three successful businesses while teaching at INSEAD. For one business he used computer modeling to develop a decision-support system for clients—pre-Excel tools intended to help them with pricing, forecasting, and advertising. He offered clients a simulation intended to show them how the product performed in the real world, and the clients raved about the simulation, preferring it to the product Gautschi was actually trying to sell.

It was, he said, his first real lesson in business and marketing, and he responded accordingly: he made the simulation the product.

“The way the model worked was that it allowed people to see the whole picture of their business and to quasi-respond,” he said. “But models are inherently wrong because they’re abstractions of reality.”

Here Gautschi shifts from businessman to academic.

“The best leaders need to be good abstract thinkers because the business environment is constantly in flux,” he said.

It is for this reason that Gautschi says business school professors need to avoid being “too prescriptive.” He noted that many faculty in business schools haven’t been in business and can therefore provide students the objective perspective of someone who is not emotionally attached to the subject—a perspective they’ll need in the future.

“We have to remember that we’re preparing students to go out and participate in a future that we’re not participating in,” he said. “They’ll experience things we’ve never faced and they’ll have to figure it out.”

Gautschi believes there are two roles that a business school must play: the practical and the theoretical. He stressed that GBA is a graduate school, not simply a professional school.

“I don’t think that universities have ever come to grips with studying business as a part of the academy,” he said. “Yet you don’t go to an art historian to instruct someone how to paint.”

He said that running a business is different from studying the phenomenon of business. Preparing students “to go out there and do it puts business schools squarely in the realm of a professional school,” but a graduate school provides a broader education alongside practical application.

“Do we exist to churn out people to make a lot of money and get wealthy? Or is there something broader that’s aligned with the purpose of the university? The purpose of the university is to contribute constructive and productive citizens to society,” he said.

In addition to providing perspective through a broad-based curriculum, Gautschi has pursued an overhaul of the student body and faculty that mimics the globalization of the business world. At the moment 720 of GBA’s approximately 1,765 students come from abroad, representing 43 different countries.

The cohort of international students, and indeed GBA’s international faculty, gives American students a basis on which to understand globalization.

“After graduation they’ll be interacting with each other whether they want to or not,” he said. “It would be irresponsible as a business school not to reflect what’s going on in the business world.”

Video:
Dean Gautschi discussing going global at GBA

The U.S. News and World Report‘s 2014 Best Graduate School Rankings are out and Fordham’s Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) maintained its top 25 ranking in Finance and Marketing and continues to improve overall.

U.S. News 2014 GBA Rankings are:

Finance: #15
• Consistently in top 20-25 over last 4 years

Marketing: # 21
• Consistently in top 25 in last 4 years

Overall: #79 in 2014
• top quartile of 448 AACSB-accredited programs surveyed
• up 18 places from 2 years ago
, from #97 in 2012 to #79 in 2014.

The latest survey appears in the March 12, 2013 issue. Rankings for professional schools are based on two types of data: expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research, and students.

The year’s positive rankings, plus a first-ever entry into the Businessweek rankings, bode well for the school, which has also seen a 40 percent increase in applications from last year.

David Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of GBA, said that the improved rankings and increased applications are the result of an ongoing strategic redirection of the MBA program which continues to shift its student population from part-timers, toward a more fulltime student body.

“We actually had to make the MBA program smaller to make it more selective, plus we rolled out several new MS programs that provide career pathways for students,” said Gautschi.

“The MBA continues to go through a curriculum review, so that we can make it very exclusive and very good,” he said.

To view the full rankings click here.

In a December 11 webinar address to the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) community, David Gautschi, Ph.D., dean, gave a frank assessment of the school’s standing and its plans for the future.

“This is not your father’s GBA,” Gautschi said of the school, which was traditionally geared toward the part-time MBA student. “That is no longer what we are doing.”

While the MBA remains a core to the curriculum, efforts are underway to redesign the program and eventually “bring it back up and put it in lights.”

The new normal for all business schools in the New York region is that part-time MBA enrollment is dropping. Meanwhile, Master of Science offerings continue to grow at the school.

“We are adapting to the realities of the market as we are encountering them and attempting to anticipate how the market will evolve,” he said.

The dean did not shy away from using blunt business language in laying out plans for the academic institution. Indeed he embraced it, saying business doesn’t operate at an academic pace.

“Businesses change fast, we need to change fast,” he said.

The webinar, which was postponed due to Hurricane Sandy, is part of an ongoing effort by the school to use technology to reach its ever-expanding community. Fifty percent of the GBA student body comes from abroad.

“We’re in the early stages of using social media to engage our far flung community,” said Guatschi, adding that response has been positive. “The early returns are good.”

The webinar can be heard here in its entirety:

Hasan is the acting dean and the Carey L. Wellington Professor of Finance and the director of the International Center for Financial Research of the Lally School of Management and Technology of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He specializes in financial institutions, corporate finance, entrepreneurial finance and capital markets.

“Iftekhar Hasan’s appointment as the Corrigan Chair is a significant addition to Fordham’s intellectual capital,” said Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., provost of the University. “Dr. Hasan is both a prolific and highly regarded scholar whose expertise is sought after by governments, financial institutions and universities worldwide. By this appointment, Fordham and its Schools of Business signal a commitment to the highest levels of research and teaching in business and finance.”

David Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Business, said that Hasan’s addition to the faculty strengthens two areas of strategic priority for the school:  advancing understanding of the role of business in the global political economy, and advancing understanding of a business school in an international financial center.

“Dr. Hasan is known not only for his innovative and prolific research, but also for his work in advising many international institutions—both private and governmental, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the Central Bank of Finland, and a number of other central banks and regulatory authorities,” he said.

“In addition, Dr. Hasan is known for his generosity in mentoring young scholars in Finance, having founded and continued to lead the “Rising Stars” conference for emerging researchers,” Gautschi said.

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., dean of the Gabelli School of Business said she was delighted to welcome Hasan to the Fordham Schools of Business faculty.

“Dr. Hasan has an outstanding and very diverse research record. In addition, he is a gifted teacher and builder of relationships between students, the academy and the public and private sector who has a deep respect for Fordham’s Jesuit mission,” she said.

Hasan said he was interested in Fordham because of the University’s dedication to Jesuit education principles and the formidable team that Rapaccioli, Gautschi and Freedman represented.

“You have two deans in a school who are highly successful in their own academic endeavors, and at the same time, they have taken the role of an educator and an administrator for the enhancement for the schools reputation as well as the contribution to the society at large,” he said. “Fordham business schools have successfully created a nucleus of a number of very talented senior and junior faculty members and it would be a privilege to join this distinguished group and work together with these colleagues.”

When it comes to research, Hasan said he plans to explore how the recent consolidation and changes in the ownership structure of stock exchanges around the globe affect the liquidity of the market as well as the information content of stocks. He is also interested in understanding the underpinnings of financial contracts that multi-national banks rely on to lend money across products, firms, industry, and locations nationally and globally. Being based in New York City also provides plenty of opportunities for alliances and collaborations on cutting edge research and innovative teaching with the private entities.

“New York has been and will continue to be the financial center of the world for the years to come, and providing timely, relevant research that has direct applicability for industry partners, which in this case are banks and exchanges, will keep New York City relevant,” he said.

The Corrigan Chair in International Business and Finance was established by a gift from E. Gerald Corrigan, Ph.D., (GSAS ’65, ’71). Corrigan, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and is managing director of Goldman Sachs. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

In commenting on Hasan’s appointment, Corrigan said that “Dr. Hasan’s presence at Fordham here in New York City represents a highly valued addition to the city’s academic and business leadership.”

Home page image: E. Gerald Corrigan, Ph.D. (GSAS ’65, ’71) at February 2010 Flaum Leadership Lecture.

David Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of GBA, told attendees that the school will emphasize the potential of business to improve society.

“Business is a human endeavor that should be viewed as noble,” Gautschi said. “It is central to modern society. It deserves to be centrally located in a university.

“It is complicated; it is controversial. Yes, you will see people make bad decisions and ethical transgressions from time to time,” he continued. “But that proves that this is something that is central and significant to what we’re all trying to do as participants on this planet.”

Gautschi presented four areas on which the school will focus. They are:

• establishing relationships in six regions around the world to better understand the connections between business and geopolitics;
• exploring what it means for New York City to be a money center;
• exploring what it means for New York City to be a media center; and
• advancing the societal value of business.

“What is it that we should be doing for people in business to prepare them to be successful, so they can identify opportunities and protect themselves from threats in an otherwise hostile environment?” Gautschi asked. “Skills? Yes. But also a perspective,” he said.

Mita Menezes, a current GBA student, and Daniel Socci, a May graduate from the school, spoke about their experiences.

Menezes, who is pursuing a dual M.B.A. and M.S. in information systems and desires a career in digital marketing and social media, noted that she counts as classmates natives of India, China, Venezuela, Denmark, Nigeria and Taiwan.

“What I love about GBA is that we don’t take anything for granted. We are hardworking, intelligent, entrepreneurial and competitive, but collegial,” she said.

She cited the Alumni Student Career Alliance, which will launch in the fall, as one of the school’s new initiatives.

“We will launch an exciting series of recruiting events, industry panels and networking sessions, and we are so delighted that dozens of recent GBA alumni have signed up to donate their time and expertise. This really is a momentous night for Fordham,” Menezes said.

Socci, a former Marine who served in Afghanistan before making the transition to finance, recalled hearing Gen. David Petraeus define luck as the intersection of preparation and opportunity.

At Fordham, Socci said, he gained preparation through rigor, excellence and ethical decision-making in every class. Opportunity was presented via the school’s Yellow Ribbon Program, which helps veterans pay for tuition.

“While the government has scaled back some benefits, our president doubled down his steadfastness and dedication, and sought no fanfare for it,” he said. “We veterans certainly appreciate it.”

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Joseph M. McShane, S.J., greets Daniel Socci, GBA ’11, after Socci’s speech. Photo by Bruce Gilbert

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, mentioned that in the early 20th century, the Society of Jesus in the United States wrestled with the question of whether it should embrace business education.

“This was the question that shook all Jesuit educational enterprises in North America, and shook them quite seriously. There were faculties that were divided over the question,” he said.

“Since in those days, most of the faculties were composed entirely of Jesuits, you had dining rooms that were divided—men who would not sit together at tables.”

Father McShane said that the Jesuits ultimately opted to embrace business education because they believed the world was an arena of grace where the human family was improved and advanced.

“They came to the realization that they were called to business education, because that’s where leaders were going to be tested throughout their lives. That’s where the real world was to be found, and that’s where men and women would be saved and the world would be built up,” he said.

“The Jesuit stamp on business education puts great emphasis on excellence, upon rigor, a rootedness in humanism and an utter insistence on ethical discourse and ethical decision-making. This is what the Graduate School of Business Administration is all about,” he said.

Father McShane predicted that GBA will never truly be what it strives to be, because it will always exist at the cutting edge of business and the crossroads of life, business and ethics.

“To be true to its vision, it must always be on a journey—moving forward, looking beyond what it has. That’s what we want the Graduate School of Business Administration to be—always in motion, engaging the world, seeing the world as a place of grace and a place where ethical leaders will always count on us,” he said.

In its annual ranking of MBA programs, the magazine, which is published in London by the Callender Media Group, ranked the Graduate School of Business Administration in its tier one category for both its MBA and EMBA.

The big change from last year was that Fordham’s Executive MBA program was included in Tier I in the global category, something that Francis Petit, Ed.D. Associate Dean for Executive MBA Programs said reflected especially well on the school.

The MBA program, which had been unranked previously, was included in the North American regional category, putting it in the company of universities such as Columbia, Duke, Harvard and Stanford.

“This is, of course, positive news for our program and it continues the momentum we are building,” he said. “What is nice to see is that last year Fordhams’ EMBA program was ranked tier one within the North America region, and now we have made it to tier one within the global rankings.”

Both Petit and David Gautschi, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration, were interviewed in a Q&A article for the magazine, “Take a Swing at This: The World’s Jazziest Institution, The Fordham MBA.”

In it, Dean Gautschi emphasized four themes the college has embraced as part of its commitment to its Jesuit heritage:

—Advancing understanding of business in the global economy.

—Advancing the understanding of business in a money center such as New York City.

—Advancing understanding of business in a media center; an element with a technological spin.

—An explicit drive to increase the societal understanding of business.

“These elements align together and all are anchored on the fourth and follow certain practice guidelines that in so doing reveal our Jesuit stripes,” Dean Gautschi said.

He also touted the creation of the Fordham Consortium, a gathering of 45 people from different walks of life, who come together to form discernment and to discuss ‘what is the purpose of business’, regardless of one’s global position.

“This organization is neatly reflected in the vision and construction of the MBA program where we are keen to bring different ideas and people together, not to drive unilateral thought but, to cover a range of different contexts. We need to understand these differences and celebrate them,” he said.

Fordham’s EMBA program is designed for business professionals and managers on the fast track toward challenging managerial and global assignments. The program focuses on building each student’s personal portfolio in management development with tools that can be implemented immediately in the workplace.

At 8 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 9, Gautschi will facilitate “CFO Thinktank: Shaping the Future of Business,” at the University Club in Midtown Manhattan.

He will present data that suggests the economy in an extended period of uncertainty, and that this is reflected in confusion surrounding business schools’ curricula and emphases.

In the discussion, which will be held in partnership with the CFO Alliance, he will address:

• how CFOs should plan in an era of economic uncertainty and increasing confusion;

• how CFOs can manage through the next crisis and prepare for market changes;

• what CFOs can do to prepare the next generation of financial talent for an evolving business climate.

Tickets are $30 for non-members and basic CFO Alliance members and free to CFO Alliance all-inclusive members and first-time attendees. To register, visit www.AchieveNext.com/events.

—Patrick Verel

The five-year project, initiated by Fordham’s Schools of Business, will examine the role and responsibility of business in the evolving global society and stimulate critical, creative and constructive dialogue about business in the 21st century.

“We are not interested in producing consensus—rather we are interested in evoking different perspectives and possibly conflicting views,” said David Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration.

“We are particularly interested in addressing the interactions of market systems, technological progress, state policy decisions and institutions that combine to define the contexts in which business is conducted,” he explained.

Gautschi and Jonathan Story, Ph.D., professor emeritus of international political economy at the INSEAD graduate business school, kicked off the two-day event with presentations on global assessment and the purpose of the business school today.

The author of several books, Story reflected on the causes of financial crashes, the boom and bust cycle of financial markets and the diffusion of power in the global system.

“The Western shaping-power of the global system is being weakened,” he said.

Longer-term trends include the rise of China, Russia and India and the growing global dependence on the Middle East. Among the needs and challenges that lie ahead, Story said, are a “kinder global system for Africa and Latin America” and “the meshing of religions and cultures.”

Story, who earned his doctorate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has worked in Brussels and Washington, and routinely writes analyses for the international press on international political and economic developments.

The day’s agenda continued with Gautschi and Story’s presentation on the role of business schools, based on a position paper they wrote, titled “The Business School: Serving Mammon or the University.”

Beginning with an overview of the evolution of business schools, Gautschi explained that there is evidence that business needs have changed in a way that calls the value of many activities in a typical business school into question.

“Business and management are fraught with complexity, and we choose to view business and management as fundamentally noble,” he said. “Yet encouraging business conduct uncritically would risk imposing significant costs on society, as illustrated by the consequences of the Great Recession and the global financial crisis.”

The following day featured small study groups where participants could share ideas and develop responses to position papers and presentations. The consortium includes scholars, media correspondents, political advisers, corporate executives and religious leaders from several countries, including Turkey, Argentina, Switzerland, South America and South Africa.

The consortium will schedule meetings three times each year in different locations around the world. The next conference, titled “Islam and the Market,” will be held in Istanbul in April 2011. The third event is tentatively scheduled for late 2011 on the west coast of the United States.

At 8 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 9, Gautschi will facilitate “CFO Thinktank: Shaping the Future of Business,” at the University Club in Midtown Manhattan.

He will present data that suggests the economy in an extended period of uncertainty, and that this is reflected in confusion surrounding business schools’ curricula and emphases.

In the discussion, which will be held in partnership with the CFO Alliance, he will address:
• how CFOs should plan in an era of economic uncertainty and increasing confusion;
• how CFOs can manage through the next crisis and prepare for market changes;
• what CFOs can do to prepare the next generation of financial talent for an evolving business climate.

Tickets are $30 for non-members and basic CFO Alliance members and free to CFO Alliance all-inclusive members and first-time attendees. To register, visit www.AchieveNext.com/events.