International Business School Briefing: MBA News Roundup

The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business has appointed a new dean, effective from February 2016.

Jay Hartzell has been on the faculty at the McCombs School of Business since joining from NYU Stern in 2001 and chaired its finance department between 2011 and 2014, during which time he was responsible for the launch of a one-year specialized master’s program in finance.

“The McCombs School is in a great position to advance even further among the elite institutions. We will continue to find new ways to expand and capitalize on our many strengths, including top faculty, outstanding students, talented staff, great industry partners, and a passionate alumni base,” said Hartzell, who is himself an alumnus of UT Austin, having completed his PhD in finance at the university in 1998. You can see where this year’s MBA graduates of the McCombs School of Business have gone on to work in this recent synopsis of its latest employment report.

Hartzell will be taking over from Laura Starks, who stepped in as interim dean following the departure of Tom Gilligan earlier in 2015.

Singapore’s NUS Business School has been celebrating the value of Santa Claus and Christmas as a business case study this month. In the video below, 12 business lessons from the season of giving and goodwill are offered up by the school:

Alongside this video, faculty members at NUS Business School have been offering their insights into the strengths and weaknesses of Santa Claus and his annual operation of providing the world’s children with toys.

Marketing professor, Leonard Lee praised Santa’s knowledge of his key market demographic in the Sunday edition of The Straits Times. “He knows when you're sleeping and when you're awake, so he's got some pretty comprehensive consumer knowledge!” said Lee before pointing out that the internationally-recognized image of Santa Claus is itself a successful marketing ploy of the Coca-Cola company.   

However, management professor Amy Ou, was a little less effusive in her praise for the jolly bearded one. Ou, whose recent research at NUS Business School has looked at humility as a leadership quality, questioned whether Santa’s ‘better watch out, better not cry’ approach (as rendered in the song, Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, in which Santa also adjudges children to be naughty or nice) is one that has a place in modern business. “Such a punish-and-reward style of management might have been okay 10 or 20 years ago, but it doesn't go down well with today's Little Helpers, especially those from the millennial generation,” she reasoned. Perhaps, then, Santa might want to consider updating his leadership style and business expertise with an MBA? Luckily, the question of what Santa might stand to gain by taking an MBA is one TopMBA.com has already asked.