Ideas From Michigan Ross Faculty That Impacted Industries

Pioneering figures from Michigan Ross have been the minds behind some of the biggest advances in numerous industries, from management to entrepreneurship and even healthcare. From researching low-quality mortgage loans during the Great Financial Crisis to testing front-line improvement theory in K-12 schools, our faculty have long influenced conversations around improving not just working conditions and industry practices but also life as a whole.

Throughout our centennial year, we have highlighted the exceptional work of Ross faculty, past and present. We invite you to read about their groundbreaking philosophies and transformative ideas, which have changed the way work is done in fields ranging from law to sustainable business.

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Big Ideas That Revolutionized Industries

Here are a few of our faculty’s powerful ideas, which have made a significant impact on the business world and society as a whole.

Economic Stabilization, Inflation Controls, and Exchange Rate Regimes

1960

Professor Paul W. McCracken was part of the Michigan Ross faculty from 1948-1986. He was a prominent economist and adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents and advocated for an active government role in economic stabilization. McCracken advocated for government policies to moderate business cycles, control inflation, and address unemployment to assist the disadvantaged. As a result, McCracken played a central role in addressing the rising inflation of the late 1960s and early 1970s during his tenure as an economic adviser to President Richard Nixon.

McCracken criticized the government for not taking sufficient measures to combat inflation, and he supported a policy of gradualism, which aimed to slow inflation by reducing economic growth slightly without causing a recession. He proposed a combination of budget surpluses and tighter monetary policies to control inflation without severely disrupting the economy. 

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The American Customer Satisfaction Index

1990

In the 1990s, a research team at Michigan Ross, led by Emeritus Professor Claes Fornell, created the American Customer Satisfaction Index. This groundbreaking project included Professors Eugene Anderson and Michael Johnson, as well as Research Scientist Jaesumg Cha and Barbara Everitt, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau. 

ACSI represents a paradigm shift in measuring market performance, offering a more complete view of firms, industries, and economies. For the past three decades, ACSI has catalyzed a wealth of peer-reviewed research in marketing and business. ACSI-related research has played an outsized role in establishing customer satisfaction as an essential metric within firms' management information systems, priority setting, and key performance indicators.

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Sustainable Enterprise

1995

Michigan Business School Professor and Erb Institute Faculty Director Tom Gladwin pioneered the field of business sustainability with his concept of a "science of sustainable enterprise." It was one of the first scholarly frameworks to combine the social, environmental, economic, and organizational aspects of competitive companies that are managed to explicitly create value for society.

Throughout his career and his long-time partnership with the Prince of Wales's Business & the Environment Programme, Gladwin influenced hundreds of CEOs and other top corporate leaders to think deeply about and act on the threats and opportunities of sustainable business. 

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Value of Information in Capacitated Supply Chains

1999

The paper "Value of Information in Capacitated Supply Chains" by Professor Roman Kapuscinski and his co-authors was published in Management Science in 1999. This paper contributed significantly to the understanding of how information sharing impacts the performance of supply chains. Specifically, this paper turned on its head the notion that information would be most valuable in settings where capacity is tight, when the uncertainty of demand is huge, and when the costs of unsatisfying demand are very high.

Subsequent literature in operations management has heavily referenced this pioneering work, leading to the development of practical strategies for improving supply chain efficiency through information sharing. Further studies have explored different facets of information sharing in diverse supply chain settings and considered more complex forms of information, extending the paper's impact in many directions within operations. 

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