“Leadership happens every moment of every day. You always have an opportunity to influence what other people do and why they do it by being a role model and by acting in a way that convinces people you are the kind of person they want to follow.”
photo courtesy Lam Research
— Professor Kimberly Elsbach Stephen G. Newberry Chair in Leadership
Probing the Perceptions of Leadership Students also benefit from the research that Elsbach brings to class, including several projects related to leadership. She is working on a leadership section for an organizational behavior textbook to be published by Pearson Prentice Hall that integrates readings, new cases and interactive exercises. Turning the Harvard case model on its head, Elsbach is writing the cases by combing media articles and company press releases for quotes from the key players to tell the story in their words. “Instead of me interpreting the situation, I give students the conversations,” she said. “It’s more like being an anthropologist, watching events unfold and developing a transcript of what happened over time and then asking students what went wrong and what went right.” In collaboration with Dean Steven Currall, Elsbach also has written a chapter about understanding threats to the trustworthiness of leaders for an upcoming book, Restoring Trust: Challenges and Prospects (Oxford University Press). Currall and Elsbach contrast two NCAA football coaches involved in high-profile, trust-threatening failures that were followed extensively in the media. They examined the coverage of
Mike Leach of Texas Tech, who was fired last December amid allegations he mistreated an injured player, and former University of Colorado coach Gary Barnett, who in 2004 was disgraced and temporary suspended, but not fired, after a recruiting scandal and his insensitive remarks about a former female placekicker who alleged that she had been raped by a teammate. “It’s the tale of two coaches, what happens and what they did wrong,” said Elsbach, who has an extensive background on the topic as the NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative at UC Davis. “Leach was perceived as brilliant, smart, but unethical and did something he knew was wrong, while Barnett was perceived as simply incompetent. It lets students evaluate why being incompetent seems to be more forgivable than being immoral.” With the chair funding, Elsbach envisions an interdisciplinary conference on leadership that would lead to innovative teaching cases showing how leaders react to multiple, simultaneous management issues. “It would be informative for us across the business school to understand how leadership is affecting the different functional areas, such as accounting, marketing, finance, technology management and entrepreneurship,” she said. “Students love this kind of teaching approach.” Elsbach also is completing a pioneering study about crying in the workplace, which includes interviews with CEOs and top managers. “We found that perceptions of weakness and lack of professionalism, in certain circumstances when people cry, can really be detrimental to their career,” she said. “In terms of leadership fitness, that has a lot of implications. People who are
otherwise qualified as leaders can be knocked out.” Funding from the chair will help Elsbach’s pursuits to uncover the myths of leadership and shape the leaders of tomorrow. “Leadership happens every moment of every day,” she said. “You always have an opportunity to influence what other people do and why they do it by being a role model and by acting in a way that convinces people you are the kind of person they want to follow.”
>> www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/elsbach
Lam Research CEO Gives $1.5 Million to Foster New Business Leaders Underscoring the importance of leadership in MBA education at UC Davis, Stephen G. Newberry and his wife, Shelley, pledged $1 million in January 2009 to endow a faculty chair in leadership and $500,000 to fund a student fellowship (see page 22). A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard Business School, Newberry is president and CEO of Lam Research Corp., a leading semiconductor industry supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services. Newberry says that business schools can help to develop a new breed of leaders at a time when those skills are desperately needed. On many occasions, he has shared his values-based leadership message with UC Davis MBA students. He also serves on the School’s Dean’s Advisory Council, lending his 25 years of experience in the high-tech industry.
U C D av i s G raduat e S chool of M anag e m e nt • 2 1