UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Richard Roll Wins Graham and Dodd Best Perspectives Award

by Scott Fletcher

Richard W. Roll, the Joel Fried Chair in Applied Finance, was named winner of the Graham and Dodd Best Perspectives Award, recognizing timely, thought-provoking opinion, for his article, "The Possible Misdiagnosis of a Crisis." The article appeared in the March/April 2011 issue of the Financial Analysts Journal, a publication of the CFA Institute. The FAJ Advisory Council and Editorial Board selected the winners.

The award, created in 1960, honors the contributions of legendary investors Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd to the investment analysis field. This is the fourth time Professor Roll has won a Graham and Dodd Award. In addition to his work at UCLA Anderson, Professor Roll is principal of the consulting firm, Compensation Valuation, Inc.

In the article, Professor Roll uses basic principles of finance to challenge prevailing explanations for the 2007-08 financial crisis, "including excessive leverage, subprime mortgages, exotic derivatives, reckless risk taking, and easy money that spawned a housing bubble." He offers an alternative diagnosis for the crisis and prescribes a treatment protocol of less government spending, lower taxes and greater reliance on the private sector to stimulate the U.S. and global economies. Professor Roll describes this as "economic liberalization," meaning an increase in the fraction of GDP spent by the private sector relative to the fraction spent by the public sector.

(This article originally appeared on the UCLA Anderson web site.)

 

Jim Stengel Discusses His Path To Ideals

UCLA Anderson Adjunct Professor of Marketing Jim Stengel delivered a stirring TED talk a few weeks back. In the talk, he posed the question "can we reframe business around ideals." He also detailed how his relationship with his physician brother led him down the path in search of the value of ideals in business and in marketing.

We had the opportunity to write about Stengel and his new book "Grow - How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies" at the end of last year. More recently, we had the pleasure of posing questions to Stengel on camera and the result is the video that follows.

 

In the video, Stengel delineates many of the concepts found in "Grow," including how ideal-based companies make their ideals explicit, how as global marketing officer for Procter & Gamble he implemented an ideals-based approach to marketing Pampers tripled that brand's size, why he left P&G and some of his favorite ideals-based companies.

Watch the video: it might be the most productive five and a half minutes you have all day.

Find/Buy "Grow - How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies" here.

UCLA Anderson's Professor Chris Tang To Receive the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award

Chris Tang is UCLA Anderson's Edward W. Carter Chair in Business Administration. During his time at Anderson, Tang has served the community in numerous ways: as a respected researcher, as instructor and mentor to his students and in administration as a senior associate dean. (Click here for his full bio.)

Tang has been recognized by the UCLA Anderson community numerious times for teaching excellence. Now, this excellence has been recognized by the entire university. Yesterday, Dean Judy Olian and Faculty Chairman Charles Corbett announced "that our colleague, Professor Chris Tang, was selected to receive the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award for 2011-2012."

Each year UCLA selects six faculty members from across campus; it is considered the highest attainment of academic and professional excellence at UCLA.

We asked Professor Tang for his reaction and, after careful consideration, he provided the following:

The UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award gives me a humble feeling because I am not sure I deserve a special award for doing something that I have loved doing throughout my life. This award will not change the way I teach, but it gives me a feeling of gratitude for being a member of UCLA.  

As a pre-eminent public university, UCLA encourages self-improvement but not cut-throat competition. Also, UCLA cultivates intrinsic values but not self-interest. I believe the academic environment at UCLA has motivated me to develop and share teaching materials and pedagogies with others. As I taught many talented and committed students, I also learned from many great individuals within the UCLA community. 

The UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award is a reflection of the greatness of UCLA as a whole, but not an individual faculty member like me. 

The UCLA Anderson Blog offers sincere congratulations to Professor Chris Tang as UCLA recognizes him for teaching excellence.

 

USN&WR: "Warm Winter May Have Cooked Economic Data"

The UCLA Anderson Forecast prognosticates about the economy, but leaves predicting the weather to the meteorologists. But what impact does the weather have on forecasting the economy?

UCLA Anderson Forecast Senior Economist David Shulman had an op-ed run yesterday on the U.S. News & World Report website regarding the current state of the national economy. In the piece, titled "Warm Winter May Have Cooked Economic Data" Shulman examines how the unseasonably warm winter experienced by most in the United States has skewed some of the economic data coming to light.

He writes:

Make no mistake, the economy is getting better, but we shouldn't be misled by the seasonally adjusted data the government reports. Why? Normally economic activity is constrained in the winter months by cold weather, which limits outdoor work and at times prevent people from getting to work—think construction and office closings. The government's statisticians adjust the data to reflect this very real phenomenon.

However, the National Oceanics and Atmospheric Administration just reported that we experienced the fourth warmest winter in history. Compared to last year, this winter has been absolutely balmy with the national average temperatures six degrees and five degrees warmer than last January and February,  respectively. All of a sudden the seasonal adjustment factors which are looking for winter weakness don't work the way they are supposed to as the unusually warm weather makes it look like the economy is going into over-drive.

He concludes:

As a result I suspect we will get a somewhat more sober picture of the economy with the March and April data. My guess is that we will get some "payback" in the form of a slower growing labor market and somewhat weaker consumption. The consumer side of the economy will still be growing, but it won't look as strong as it does now. Indeed, by May, with home heating costs no longer offsetting higher gasoline prices, we might once again hear talk of another slowdown.

Please read all of David Shulman's USN&WR piece here.

And tell us what you think in the comments below.

Miguel Unzueta's Paper Reveals Diversity Is In the Eye of the Beholder; Gets Attention From Science Daily

For many institutions both private and public, diversity is a noble goal and a point of evidence. UCLA Anderson is no different, Linda Baldwin (once the school's director of admissions) is the assistant dean, Diversity Initiatives; her mission (as described on our website) includes "UCLA Anderson's emphasis on ethnic and cultural diversity goes hand in hand with the global perspective that permeates the school's curricula, organizations and activities. Enhancing the diversity of UCLA Anderson's faculty, staff and student body is set forth as a specific objective in the school's Strategic Plan."

But what exactly is diversity and is its definition malleable? 

UCLA Anderson Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations Miguel Unzueta says, "We find that people's perspectives on diversity are very subjective. They define (diversity) is ways that are convenient to them."

Unzueta's findings regarding the issue are found in his paper "Diversity Is What You Want It to Be: How Social-Dominance Motives Affect Construals of Diversity," co-written with Geoffrey Ho, a Ph.D. student at UCLA Anderson and Eric Knowles, an assistant professor at UC Irvine. The paper recently received attention from Science Daily, who wrote:

Unzueta, the study's lead author, notes that "diversity" historically meant inclusiveness toward historically disadvantaged groups. Now, however, the term is commonly used to refer to people who are different in any way (even personality traits and food preferences) -- and that, Dr. Unzueta argues, may be making the concept useless. Dr. Unzueta saw this play out first hand at the universities he was part of and the organizations he studied. "It seemed like everyone was very comfortable talking about diversity, but not really race and gender," says Unzueta, "The problem is, we could all be talking about diversity and we could all mean different things. It's a very abstract, euphemistic catch-all."

Unzueta told The UCLA Anderson Blog that those who benefit from social inequality, such as those with a high social dominance orientation (SDO), find ways of finding diversity in companies other than racial diversity as a means of labeling such a company "diverse." 

"Diversity is a buzzword," Unzueta says. "'The term 'diversity' has been broadened and marginalized."

Please read the paper here.

Read the Science Daily story about Prof. Unzueta's paper here.

UCLA Anderson Team Wins 1st Place at Haas Education Leadership Case Competition

Got an email from Russ Altenburg ('12) last night, alerting me that a team of UCLA Anderson students took first place at the Haas Education Leadership Case Competition. Russ shared with me a draft of an article written for The Exhange, with an offer to run the piece on The UCLA Anderson Blog.

Check it out:

(Amy Braun '13, Aviva Altmann '13, Russ Altenburg '12 and Stuti Goswamy '13 - photo courtesy Russ Altenburg)

A UCLA Anderson team comprised of Russ Altenburg, Aviva Altmann (’13), Amy Braun (’13), and Stuti Goswamy (’13) was awarded first place at the 5th Annual Haas Education Leadership Case Competition held February 17-18 in Berkeley, CA.  Ten business school teams participated, including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Haas, and USC.

“The purpose of the annual case competition is to bring attention to critical, real-time issues in education, and to provide an opportunity for talented and dedicated graduate students to create potential solutions to these issues,” said Altmann.  This year’s case focused on the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), which recently received a $45m federally funded School Improvement Grant to close the achievement gap between different ethnic subgroups.  With the nation’s largest disparity between average and lowest performing students, SFUSD was awarded the grant to specifically improve ten schools with the widest achievement gaps. 

(The UCLA Anderson team poses with officials from the San Francisco Unified School District.)

What a (TED) Week; Anderson-TED Partnership Kickoff Culminates With First-Ever "TED Talks" from Faculty/Students

The partnership to share ideas between UCLA Anderson and TED concluded Thursday night with series of TED-inspired talks by Anderson students and faculty. Stuti Goswamy ('13) passionately defended The Dream Act; Guy Holzman ('13) described loopholes and inequity in the corporate tax code and Stephen Lehtonen ('12) extolled the virtues of inspiring passion in high school students. From the faculty, Professor Shlomo Benartzi discussed his efforts to get folks to save for retirement through his Save More Tomorrow program; Bhagwan Chowdhry described his plan to empower the unempowered through Financial Access at Birth; and Rakesh Sarin explained -- as only an engineer could -- his equation for happiness.

The evening culminated with a joint toast between those assembled in the standing-room-only tent on Alumni Plaza, those at TED in Long Beach and the teams gathered in Long Beach at the concurrent TEDActive event.

The event profoundly touched the entire Anderson community, as evidenced by the tweets above from Emily Taylor ('08), an assistant director in the Parker Career Management Center and Chris Loo (12), the ASA president. Throughout the week, students, faculty, staff and alumni gathered in a transformed Il Tramezzino cafe and the converted student lounge to watch a live stream of TED talks from Long Beach. This, by the way, was the first time the esteemed conference partnered with an institution of higher learning.