Robert G. Hansen
On the Research Imperative
I firmly believe that great research and great teaching go hand in hand and that the long-term health of the Tuck learning environment requires a faculty of great researchers. Why is a research-based faculty so important to great teaching? Many studies have been done to identify the key attributes of effective teachers. The most important attribute is being knowledgeable and current in their field of study. Other essential attributes are enthusiasm and commitment to high standards that motivate student accomplishment.
The best way to ensure excellent, substantive teaching is, therefore, to have professors who are authorities on the subject matter—who thoroughly understand all aspects of complex subjects from the basic facts to the most advanced theoretical explanations—and who are committed to student learning and impact on the practice of management. We can all think of examples of great researchers who are not great teachers and vice versa, but they tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule and not a proper basis on which to build a world-class faculty. To understand this requires some knowledge of the nature of academic research and an appreciation of how that research affects the learning environment.
What Is Academic Research in Business?
Research at Tuck is guided by the principle of theory for practice. Our research addresses topics and issues that are important to business and, broadly speaking, to society. Our professors seek to have impact on how those issues are discussed, addressed, and resolved by other academics and by businesspeople and policy makers. Most important, we seek to get the answers right. The process of research is foremost a search for the truth: attaining the absolute best understanding of the question at hand.
Academic business research is sometimes thought of as trivial, armchair theorizing about topics that are not important, using scientific methods valued only for their theoretical elegance, and done by individuals who know little of the real world. If this were true, one would have to question the wisdom of putting such researchers at the front of the MBA classroom. But this view of academic business research is way off the mark.
Tuck's faculty work on issues that are of critical importance in the business world, they are extremely knowledgeable on the facts of the underlying business situation, and they use methods that are necessary for understanding the complexity of real situations and large, complex databases. In fact, our faculty are among the top authorities on the issues they research. They know the key facts, they know the alternative theories and explanations of the facts, and often most important, they have examined comprehensive databases to get the most thorough understanding of what the facts and data really say. They are not armchair theorists—they talk to businesspeople to gain a practical understanding of the issues, and they frequently consult to companies in their areas of expertise.
For example, Professor Scott Neslin studies the impact of promotions on sales of consumer products. Marketing tactics have shifted in recent years to more being spent on promotions and less on advertising, yet the effects of promotions on sales are unclear. The importance of this issue is highlighted by the Marketing Science Institute, an organization comprised of marketing professionals and marketing professors, ranking "profitability of marketing tactics" as the most important issue. Do promotions lead to greater market share in the long run, or do they only cause consumers to shift temporarily from another brand and "stockpile" commodities at home? Scott's initial paper started the conversation on this subject and showed that consumer stockpiling was a significant effect of temporary promotions. This led other researchers to study new data extremely carefully to discern new subtleties of the issues. There is now a large literature on the effects of sales promotions, with Scott's contributions foremost, and this research is affecting the way companies operate. Scott has presented his research at numerous practitioner conferences, and one of his models has been commercialized by a consulting company.
Research starts with an idea, with an unsolved problem or a puzzle. At this stage, relevance comes into play because professors know that publication and the impact of any research will be more likely if the topic is important. With an idea at hand, the researcher must bring analysis to bear. Depending on the situation, the analysis might be empirical, which calls for data and statistical techniques, or the analysis might require theoretical modeling. In today's information-rich world, datasets are often huge, with records spanning thousands of households, thousands of financial securities, millions of transactions. Large, complete databases are essential to getting it right because bias can be introduced by omitting datapoints—looking at incomplete databases often means looking only at the most obvious and most easily collected data, which may not be typical of all observations. The statistical techniques for getting the data to speak are continuously being refined, with the latest techniques generally being developed by and known primarily among academics.
Research is meant to be communicated, and professors want the world to hear about their results. To state it simply, they strive for impact. As research nears completion, the results are communicated to other researchers in the field through distribution of working papers, faculty workshops, and academic conferences. In these forums, results are put to the test by having a group of scholars listen and critique. The research always emerges somewhat changed and strengthened. I would characterize this process by saying that at any time on any important topic a conversation is going on between researchers that deepens understanding.
When research reaches culmination, an article presenting it is submitted to a journal for publication, and the final stage of peer review begins. The paper will be sent to reviewers who assess the paper for its contribution—is it important, does it increase our understanding, is it right—and make a recommendation as to its publication. Top journals eventually print only the best of the submitted papers. Overall, there can be no process more demanding of getting it right on important issues than the academic peer-reviewed research and publication process.
How Research Affects the Learning Environment
While many view presentation skills as the key to effective teaching, I believe the what is more important than the how. Substance goes well beyond the selection of the material, such as cases, articles, books, and problems. Substantive teaching forces the students to go deeply into an issue, to get at the essential aspects of a problem, and to see how the problem relates to other topics and can be further understood by comparing to other situations. Substantive teaching shows the students that initial analyses are sometimes misleading, that what appears to be right may in fact be wrong. Deep and thorough analysis is absolutely key, and that is what academic business research is all about.
A teacher must be able to identify issues, explain them in intuitive yet rigorous ways, and then quickly and correctly respond to questions. Given the excellent nature of Tuck students, to be effective in the classroom, a professor has to be able to respond clearly and completely to their questions and issues they may raise. Our students are forever stretching an analysis, to see if it applies elsewhere and to see if there is another way to understand the issue. To deal with the students' probing and to develop their talent further takes a professor who is even more keen and able to respond on the spot.
Deep understanding of the field and the needed quickness and keenness of mind is best developed through the research process, a process that is unrelenting in screening out individuals who are incapable of dealing with the demands for understanding and intellect. Being able to develop ideas and defend them to a jury of one's peers necessarily points to an ability to deal deeply and accurately with complex issues. If professors cannot get their ideas and conclusions through that review process, we should probably question whether we want them in the classroom.
Our faculty bring the same ethos that drives their research—getting it right on important issues—to the classroom. They approach problems in a systematic, structured way, eliminating the clutter of unimportant issues to get to the essence of the problem. They dispense with shallow, incomplete analysis and continue to probe for the truth. They show how intuition informed by theory can point us in the best direction, but at the same time they show how uninformed intuition can lead to mistakes. They rely on data, but do not get easily misled by faulty interpretations of the data. They employ complex techniques when required, but then backtrack to see if the results derived can be explained in an intuitive fashion. They use anecdotes to illustrate principles and theory but are wary of using anecdotes as the foundation of a general principle.
This ethos is exactly what we want to instill in our students. As managers, they will face enormously complex situations and have to make decisions on the basis of limited information. "Getting it right" for them will mean making decisions that ultimately lead to enhanced performance for their organizations as opposed to chasing the next management fad.
An essential component of an effective learning environment is the enthusiasm that a professor brings to the subject matter and the process of learning. Tuck faculty love their subject—be it economics, finance, or strategy—and they think that the ideas they work on are the most important ideas around. Selecting faculty on the basis of their ability to research successfully means to a great extent selecting faculty who love their subject, love to learn more about it, and love to communicate that learning.
Consider some of the subjects that are a key part of an MBA core curriculum but often considered rather mundane to learn and to teach—statistics and microeconomics. At Tuck, these discipline-based courses are among the most highly rated of any of our core courses. Why is that? Professor Kusum Ailawadi brings her knowledge of how statistics can inform marketing decisions to the statistics course and gets the students to love hypothesis testing. I bring my love of applying economics to understanding the world and try to get the students not only to understand "Nash Equilibrium" but to enjoy applying the idea in everyday life.
Our faculty want their ideas to make a difference, not just to their peers but to the practice of management. Teaching is really a core part of research, in that it is a way to communicate research and ideas to an audience who can use the information. That is what drives professors to continually update syllabi for existing courses and design new ones. I can give many examples of how faculty research leads to new electives on important topics where the faculty are foremost authorities. And faculty research affects existing courses as well.
Professor Ken French's elective course on Investments provides a prime example of how research affects both course design and teaching. In his research, Ken studies the perennial questions around risk and return. He works at an aggregate level (how much should we expect stocks overall to return in excess of risk-free securities) as well as at the individual security level (what determines the expected return on one stock versus another). Ken is more immersed in these questions, on both a theoretical basis and in terms of really understanding the data (returns on thousands of individual stocks and other securities tracked for over 75 years), than probably any other individual. His research is truly pathbreaking, and he is one of the most-cited finance professors in the world. Because they took his course, 130 second-year students were exposed to the world's best thinking on risk and return. The design of his course (from the selection of topics to the final exam) is based on Ken's in-depth knowledge of research on asset pricing and investments. Further, anyone who has taken the course or talked to Ken knows the enthusiasm and desire to get it right that he brings to everything he does. I cannot imagine a better Investments course anywhere. What students learn in that course gives them the ability to understand current investments issues, and even more important, to deal with the inevitable changes the future will bring.
Tuck has made great strides in recruiting and developing a faculty of thought leaders who teach in the MBA program. A second-year Tuck student recently remarked favorably, although understatedly, on the lineup of professors and courses she had in the fall term: Professor Scott Neslin for Database Marketing, Professor Ken French for Investments, Professor Eric Johnson for Supply Chain Management and Information Technology, and Professor Margaret Peteraf for Industry and Competitive Analysis. What a lineup indeed—four professors recognized as world-class authorities on the research that is guiding scholarly and management thinking in marketing, finance, operations, and strategy, and who are dedicated to teaching our students because they want to have impact.
Robert Hansen is the Norman W. Martin 1925 Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean at the Tuck School of Business.
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