FACULTY PROFILE BEREND WIERENGA
“Berend is a marketing visionary, one of the founders of top quality marketing research in Europe.” Prof. Stijn van Osselaer, Chair - Department of Marketing Management
applied research organisation, failed in its attempts at accreditation with KNAW, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences. “We let it go for a few years, and when the late Paul Verhaegen came in as Dean, he said we should get going with a research institute once again.” In 1998, Verhaegen came up with the idea that RSM and the business part of ESE (Erasmus School of Economics) would join forces to make a new research institute – one that would have the weight and depth of research to be recognised by KNAW. In 1999, Wierenga recounts, it was time to demonstrate the worthiness of ERIM in front of a panel at KNAW; a small group, including Verhaegen, Wierenga, Wilfred Mijnhardt (currently Executive Director of ERIM) and members of ESE, made the drive to KNAW in Amsterdam together. Because of the earlier disappointment with ERASM, everyone was a bit tense. “We were like schoolboys who had to do an exam!” says Wierenga.
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RSM OUTLOOK SUMMER 2010
KNAW granted the accreditation. It was a moment of triumph. “Academically we were on the map. Those first years with ERIM were a lot of fun,” he says. “We were pioneering once again, because we were starting from nothing.” The first step was to define criteria for membership in ERIM. From the beginning the focus was on quality; as in the educational programmes created earlier, this proved to be the perfect strategy for quickly transforming the research culture of RSM. Prof. Stijn van Osselaer, Chair of the Department of Marketing Management, says: “In establishing these criteria, Berend institutionalised high standards of quality in ERIM.” There is a voucher system that provides incentive for production of scholarly articles; in any case ERIM members must publish a minimum of one paper a year, three of which must appear in peer review journals over a five year period. “Some colleagues thought ‘I can never meet these standards’ and went away,” says Wierenga. They were soon replaced. “In a few years the whole school was more research-oriented,” he says. “In retrospect I’m surprised it happened so quickly - apparently if you change the rules of the game, suddenly things move!”
Marketing visionary Wierenga has fitted hand-in-glove with the evolution of RSM and ERIM. But it’s important to remember that he’s been just as influential in his field of specialty: as a marketing researcher and professor, and founder of the Department of Marketing Management at RSM, which he chaired for over 15 years. “Berend is a marketing visionary, one of the founders of top quality marketing research in Europe,” says Van Osselaer.