"We moved interviewing forward this year in response to recruiters' requests and to align our recruiting calendar with those of other MBA programs."
In a three-pronged effort focusing on technology, summer recruiting activities, and fall interviewing, MBA Career Services is launching new services to support MBA students and recruiters in the job search process.
As part of a
Schoolwide project to create an integrated database architecture,
including company, faculty, student, and alumni information, MBA
Career Services plans to put its services online to make them more
accessible, efficient, and customer-oriented. "In the next few
years," says Kirsten Moss, director of MBA Recruiting Services,
"technology will revolutionize the job search. In addition to
facilitating contact with traditional recruiters, we hope that this
technology will open a broader range of opportunities with smaller,
lesser-known companies that may not participate in our on-campus
recruiting program. Technology will make it easier for students to
reach these 'nontraditional' firms, and vice versa." For example,
where students once had to visit several different campus locations
to piece together the information needed for a particular job search,
they will have an HBS Web site at their disposal this fall that will
consolidate these resources. "Condensing this facet of the job search
into a more efficient process, as well as increasing access to
resources, will greatly empower students," says Moss. "Recruiters
will also be able to tap into the Web to access information about HBS
recruiting and promote their company to students who have expressed
an interest in their field."
Summer Recruiting Rolls Out
Students will remain at HBS this summer for the first time, as the 253 members of the Class of 1997 who entered the School in January continue their academic program. To assist them with their career development and planning, MBA Career Services will host a range of activities, including career fairs, panel discussions, and practice interviews to be conducted at various times throughout the summer. "We developed a summer program to support students in the January cohort as they build the necessary skills, increase their exposure to industries, and develop the relationships they'll need, before the fall recruiting program starts," notes Moss. To take full advantage of this new program, firms that have traditionally recruited at HBS are looking for new ways to meet MBA students. "With the new year-round MBA calendar," Moss points out, "we've worked with companies to create offerings for the summer months. We are delighted that 65 companies will visit HBS this summer to attend a recruiters' conference, participate in industry briefings, and host practice interviews between students and selected companies. These events offer a unique opportunity for companies to target a new group of HBS students, since most members of the January cohort will have their initial dialogue with firms over the summer."
Fall Interviews Introduced
This fall, when the two Class of 1997 cohorts merge into a single group to complete their final year of the MBA Program together, these students will arrive on campus with rŽsumŽs in hand, ready to meet with corporate representatives in October. During November and early December, students will interview with companies around their class schedules. "In the past, companies would launch intensive marketing efforts in the fall, evaluate candidates during the winter, and finalize offers in the spring," says Moss. "We moved interviewing forward this year in response to recruiters' requests and to align our recruiting calendar with those of other MBA programs. The new schedule also provides students with two additional weeks to pursue off-campus opportunities throughout the United States and abroad."
MBA Career Services continues to work with students and companies to enhance recruiting at HBS. "Through these innovations in our career development and recruitment programs," concludes Moss, "we hope to address the students' need for efficiency in gathering information through better access to the wealth of resources at HBS. We'll also be able to offer students more flexibility in their job searches. In addition, companies - both traditional recruiting partners and firms that have not recruited heavily at HBS - will have increased opportunities to meet our students on campus and, through better use of technology, from their offices worldwide."
Illustration by Diane Bigda
Chuck Christenson, the Royal Little Professor of Business Administration and a specialist in management control, has been a member of the HBS faculty for 39 years. Throughout his career, he has been an innovative teacher who integrated diverse disciplines into his courses. Christenson was, for example, among the first to bring the social sciences into the mainstream of practical business studies in the MBA Program. In 1976 he also developed a teaching program that brought HBS methods to the training of public officials at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Among the classes Christenson taught at HBS were Managerial Economics and Control in the MBA Program's required curriculum, Management Control in the Owner/President Management Program, and a doctoral seminar on the Theory of the Development of Complex Systems. He also served stints as faculty chairman of both the MBA and doctoral programs.
Much of Christenson's research has focused on organizations as learning systems, examining the processes by which they adapt to their environments. He has also considered how decision-making, structure, and information systems contribute to corporate adaptability. In this work Christenson has drawn from several disciplines, including sociology, cybernetics, decision theory, and psychology.
Christenson spent one year away from HBS in 1962 when he was asked to come to Washington, D.C., by Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (and former HBS faculty member) Neil E. Harlan (MBA '50). During that leave of absence, he served as Harlan's deputy for management systems at a time when the nation was rapidly developing expensive top-performance weapons systems under exigencies created by the Cold War. Before returning to Soldiers Field, he was honored with the Air Force's Exceptional Civilian Service Award. Christenson also participated in the development of the U.S. Army's first cost-based budgetary control system.
His publications include Strategic Aspects of Competitive Bidding for Corporate Securities and Managerial Economics: Text and Cases (with Richard F. Vancil and Paul W. Marshall). He also contributed the chapter"Capital Budgeting and Long-Range Planning" to the book Progress in Operations Research. Beyond HBS, Christenson has been an active member of professional organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Accounting Association, and the American Economics Association.
Graduating from Cornell University in 1952, Christenson continued his education at HBS, where he earned an MBA with high distinction as a Baker Scholar in 1954 and a DBA in 1961. He was promoted to full professor in 1968 and named the first Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration in 1973. He was appointed to the Royal Little chair in 1980.
In retirement, Christenson plans to complete work on a book he began years ago on organizational theory. In keeping with his previous efforts, he smiles, it will involve a variety of approaches.
During more than thirty years on the HBS faculty, Colyer Crum, the James R. Williston Professor of Investment Management, has established a reputation not only as an expert in finance but as an inspiring teacher and innovative administrator. Early in his career, for example, he revived the Investment Management course, developing new and timely materials that soon attracted approximately five hundred students per year.
As Associate Dean for Executive Education and External Affairs from 1972 to 1977, Crum devised an innovative strategy for executive education that led to the development of a number of successful programs, including the Smaller Company Management Program (now the Owner/ President Management Program) and joint programs with Harvard's Schools of Education, Government, and Public Health. He also managed the startup of the International Senior Managers Programin Vevey, Switzerland, which provided numerous HBS faculty with their first opportunity to do teaching, field research, and course development abroad.
Active in teaching executive education, Crum taught in the Advanced Management Program for seven years. More recently he led efforts to introduce major technological changes in the Program for Management Development (PMD) as faculty chair from 1987 to 1994. Concerned that students and faculty in PMD were ignoring the computer resources available to them, he spearheaded an effort to make information technology an integral part of their administrative and educational experience.
With advisors from Apple Computer and other software vendors, Crum and his colleagues developed a networked client-server computer environment that produced HBS's first interactive digital video cases via CD-ROM, online simulation models, universal e-mail, early versions of groupware, Internet- based group research resources, and Web-like applications that combined textual and numerical databases with multimedia. The results enriched and challenged traditional HBS case learning. In 1993 Business Week rated PMD as one of the ten most innovative programs in the United States even though the program was then in its 66th session.
In the MBA classroom, Crum offered courses in corporate finance, bank lending, financial institution strategy, and investment management. He also taught the required MBA course Business, Government, and the International Economy, making good use of his long-standing interest in international business. In 1981, for example, Crum started working to create the Nomura School of Advanced Management in Tokyo. Many of the one hundred cases developed at that institution became part of the internationalization process of the HBS curriculum.
Crum graduated from Cornell University in 1957 with a degree in chemical engineering. At HBS he was a Baker Scholar and earned his MBA with high distinction in 1960. He began teaching at the School in 1962, received his DBA in 1964, became a full professor in 1971, and was named Williston professor later that year.
In the years ahead, Crum intends to pursue his interest in international business. "I plan to spend time teaching in Japan and Europe and consulting with international companies," he says.
As a member of the HBS faculty for 36 years, Jim McKenney distinguished himself as an expert in management information systems and the use of computer systems for teaching business management. Involved in all the School's educational programs during his career, McKenney offered a wide variety of electives, including Information Systems and Control, Management Information Systems, Foundations of Computer Systems, Management of Natural Resources, and Management of Nonprofit Organizations. He also taught the required MBA courses Production and Operations Management and Control. While chair-man of the Production and Operations Management area from 1968 to 1972, McKenney also served as the School's director of computer services. He introduced the first computer-based management simulation exercise (known as the Business Game) to the curriculum in 1961.
In his most recent book, Waves of Change: Business Evolution through Information Technology, published last year by the HBS Press, McKenney argues that while modern information technology provides the tools that make innovation possible, corporate managers are the ones who actually apply those tools creatively. The volume examines managerial innovation in five companies that became industry leaders because of their innovative use of information technology, including Bank of America, American Airlines, and Frito-Lay.
"All the stories in the book begin with CEOs who have a problem they think information technology can solve," says McKenney. "First, they enlist a technical person - whom I call a 'maestro' - to help find the solution. As the CEOs get up to speed on the technology, they suddenly begin to see the opportunities that computer systems provide by integrating across functions that create new competitive means. Then they start to look at their businesses in dramatically new ways."
McKenney's additional research interests, focusing on managing the implementation and growth of intelligent terminal communications systems, knowledge-based systems, and the design and management of private communications systems, have resulted in several other books. He has also written articles for many publications, including Management Science, Public Administration Review, Annals of the History of Computers, and the Harvard Business Review.
A 1952 graduate of Purdue University, where he received a BS degree in mechanical engineering and an MS in industrial engineering, McKenney earned a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1961. A full professor at HBS since 1968, he was named the John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration in 1989.
In his retirement, McKenney will continue to work on a longitudinal multifirm study of the grocery industry to trace consumer response and the evolution and use of information technology in organizational change. He also hopes to spend more time in Montana, fishing.
Bob Stobaugh distinguished himself by his research in three fields during his thirty years at the School. He has produced over one hundred articles and ten books on corporate governance, energy, and international business.
Stobaugh's current work focuses on how boards of directors can improve their performance. His research was the first to link company performance with stock ownership by dir-ectors. Stobaugh chaired the 1995 National Asso-ciation of Corporate Directors' Blue Ribbon Commission, which recommended changes in the selection and compensation of boards, including setting stock ownership targets for directors. His research has received widespread coverage, including front-page stories in the Wall Street Journal. As a result, some fifty major companies have made significant changes in their corporate governance procedures within the last year. His most recent monograph pinpoints the systematic differences between board activities needed by small companies as opposed to large ones.
Stobaugh also gained considerable renown as director of the HBS Energy Project and coeditor of the 1979 best-selling book Energy Future. This groundbreaking work advocated energy conservation, rather than synthetic fuels, as a solution to the energy crisis. It had a major impact on many readers, including President Jimmy Carter, who looked to Stobaugh for advice while developing the country's energy policy.
While studying international business, Stobaugh led a team of HBS researchers in 1971 who found that investment abroad by American companies benefited the U.S. economy. His congressional testimony helped defeat bills intended to restrict such investment. Stobaugh's other influential studies include the books Technology Crossing Borders and Money in the Multinational Enterprise.
In addition to giving frequent congressional testimony, Stobaugh served on two presidential commissions and has advised prominent government and company officials. During his career he has been a director of nine corporations, and he remains on the boards of two, including Ashland Inc. (formerly Ashland Oil), a company with $12 billion in sales. He is also a past president of the Academy of International Business and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Stobaugh started his education in a two-room schoolhouse in a small Arkansas town, later entering Louisiana State University at age fifteen and earning a BS in chemical engineering. He then spent eighteen years as a manager with three multinational companies, living in the United States, Venezuela, Bahrain, and London. Increasingly interested in exploring the intellectual and analytical aspects of business, Stobaugh left the corporate world to enter the School's DBA Program in 1965. He received his doctorate in 1968 and became a full professor in 1971. He was named the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration in 1983. Stobaugh's teaching activities at HBS covered general management, energy, international business, and production.
He held administrative posts during the 1980s, first chairing the Production and Operations Management area and then the doctoral programs. After leaving the active HBS faculty, Stobaugh plans to continue his research on corporate governance. He is looking forward, he says, to "working with companies to improve board performance - and traveling to escape Boston's winters!"
by Elaine Gottlieb and John Prestage