Explore the faculty research, thought leadership, and groundbreaking philosophies that established Michigan Ross as one of the world’s top business schools.
The late 1990s ushered in a revolutionary view across the social sciences centered around the power and importance of studying strengths, better understanding how people thrive, and how systems seize opportunities for creating excellence. Michigan Ross led the way in advancing this fundamental research shift in the field of management and organizations, with many scholars publishing seminal research in the field. In 2002, three faculty members, Jane Dutton, Bob Quinn, and Kim Cameron, founded the Center for Positive Organizations to encourage rigor in this growing field of research and to serve as a home for a large network of scholars interested in pursuing this line of inquiry. As the field has grown over the years, Positive Organizational Scholarship has influenced how management is taught and practiced. CPO at Michigan Ross is a leader in helping teachers and students tap into this body of evidence and learn about this research through innovative courses and developmental learning programs. Those tools include the "Reciprocity Ring", a dynamic group exercise that applies the “pay-it-forward” principle while creating high-quality connections, and the "Reflected Best Self Exercise", which helps you see who you are at your best to engage you to live and work from that powerful place daily.
In 2002, Professor C.K. Prahalad of the Michigan Ross Business School and professor Stuart L. Hart of the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School published the iconic article "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" in Strategy+Business. The article suggested that "low-income markets present a prodigious opportunity for the world's wealthiest companies - to seek their fortunes and bring prosperity to the aspiring poor." Prahalad published a book with the same title five years before he passed in 2010. The article and book, with additional research and publications by Prahalad, Hart, Michigan Ross Professor Ted London, and others spawned a new business strategy for human development that has transformed into a social movement around the world known as Base of the Pyramid. The movement now includes transnationals, non-profits, social entrepreneurs, grassroots development organizations, international aid agencies, and many consulting firms dedicated to BoP strategy and implementation.
"Co-creation as a revolutionary paradigm was introduced by Professors C. K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy in a series of articles published between 2000 and 2004 and an award-winning book, The Future of Competition. Their work provided a new frame of reference for jointly creating value through networked environments of increasingly digitalized experiences, going beyond goods and services, and called for a process of co-creation -- the practice of developing offerings, experiences, and unique value through ongoing interactions with customers, employees, managers, financiers, suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders. Through their work, they envisioned an individual and experience-centric view of interactive value creation and innovation.
Starting in 2005, the explosion of digital and social media, the convergence of technologies and industries, embedded intelligence, and information technology-enabled services enabled enterprises to build platforms for large-scale, ongoing interactions among the firm, its customers, and its extended network. Ramaswamy's work argued that success lies in connecting with people's experiences to generate insights and change the nature and quality of interactions. He also called for co-creation from the inside out of enterprises and their networks, as much as co-creation from the outside in, and for leaders to co-create transformative pathways.
In 2014, Ramaswamy published "The Co-Creation Paradigm", which combined the core ideas of co-creation with a call to see, think, and act differently in an interconnected world of possibilities and complex challenges to co-create a better future as individuals."
”Bifurcation of the Owner and Operator Analysis" was published by Professor Lynda Oswald in 1994. Her research was cited and quoted extensively by the U.S. Supreme Court in its unanimous decision in United States v. Bestfoods (1998) in clarifying parent corporations' direct and indirect liability for their subsidiaries’ actions in the context of CERCLA liability and hazardous waste cleanup. The liability of a parent corporation for the acts of the subsidiary is a complex issue that permeates all areas of corporate law and business relationships, and is not confined to the environmental context found in Bestfoods. Oswald’s research has since informed the decisions of over 55 additional courts -- federal trial and appellate courts as well as state appellate and supreme courts -- in business law contexts as varied as environmental liability, whistle-blowing under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Racketeering-Influenced Corrupt Practices Act (RICO), employment discrimination, medical malpractice, negligence, bankruptcy, and real estate transactions.
In 2018, Professor Tom Lyon led a team of scholars who published a groundbreaking article about corporate political responsibility titled “CSR Needs CPR” in the California Management Review. The article argued that corporate social responsibility was an insufficient measure of corporate contribution to society and that stakeholders who care about CSR should also pay attention to corporate political responsibility. In 2019, Elizabeth Doty, adjunct faculty at Presidio Graduate School, contacted the Erb Institute at the University of Michigan and suggested turning the article into an industry roundtable dedicated to working with a select group of influential business leaders and their companies to bring to life the core precept of the article – the need to better align companies’ political spending and lobbying with their commitments to values, purpose, sustainability, and stakeholders. Thus, the Erb Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce was founded in 2020. Lyon and Doty have developed the taskforce into a nationally recognized forum with the goal of making CPR a new norm for business. The taskforce operates under Chatham House Rule and has 20 members from some of the most recognized brands in the United States who share best practices and address CPR challenges. In 2023, the taskforce released the non-partisan Erb Principles for Corporate Political Responsibility, with five major companies as inaugural signatories. Looking ahead, the taskforce will continue building its integrated framework and engage more companies in applying the Erb Principles. Lyon continues his work in this space with his recently published volume Corporate Political Responsibility.
Professor Kenneth Lieberthal was a pioneer in the practice of business school professors contributing their knowledge in public service to society. Lieberthal served as the senior director for Asia for the U.S. National Security Council during the years 1998-2000.
During that same time, Lieberthal was also special assistant to President Clinton for National Security Affairs. His core academic research findings included a seminal analysis of China's bureaucratic system, which featured a nuanced and careful delineation of the fragmented nature of China's political system in the late 20th century.
Lieberthal's research was able to explain why China, during that era, had weak policy implementation at times because of the fragmentation in its bureaucratic system. He was known for introducing U.S. policymakers to a nuanced and careful understanding of the Chinese governmental system and how it functions.
In 1985, Professor M.P. Narayanan published a paper on managers' proclivity to focus on the short- rather than the long-term. His paper is a rigorous and theoretical explanation that requires the manager to have private information. Narayanan shows that the manager's proclivity to focus on the short-term is more evident in a less experienced manager but is attenuated if the business's riskiness and the contract's length increase. While singling out the importance of the short- and long-term conflict as the basis for the myopic behavior of firms may be a challenge, this phenomenon is ever-present.
In 1991, Dean Joe White and Associate Dean Paul Danos introduced the groundbreaking Multidisciplinary Action Projects course to the MBA curriculum. The initial full-time, seven-week project established a team of MBA students to work on a real-world business challenge for a sponsor company. After a pilot run, the course became part of the MBA core curriculum in 1993. In the coming years, MAP would be added to other MBA programs and eventually to most of the school’s degree programs.
Since its inception, many other schools have incorporated project-based opportunities into their degree programs. However, Michigan Ross remains the leader in the space, and MAP has stood as a beacon of innovation and impact within the realm of graduate studies. What has truly set the MAP program apart is its unwavering commitment to bridging the gap between theory and practice. Instead of confining students to lecture halls, the program enables students to venture into the field, partnering with corporations, nonprofits, and startups to address genuine business challenges and exposing students to the intricacies of various industries while cultivating their ability to think critically, adapt swiftly, and communicate effectively.
Over the years, more than 3,200 MAP projects have been completed by Michigan Ross students. Today, more than 1,000 students participate annually in a MAP project as a required component of their degree program. The organizations they work with range from Fortune 100 multinational corporations to start-ups and non-profits, developing impactful products and addressing some of society's biggest challenges.