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InsideTHE FUQUA SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

SPECIAL SECTIONwww.fuqua.duke.edu/alumni

Health care

As part of a team-building exercise sponsoredby GlaxoSmithKline, students in the Health

Sector Management program’s pre-orientationboot camp assemble prosthetic hands. The

devices will be donated to the Ellen MeadowsProsthetic Hand Foundation.

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82 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu

Administrators at Nazarbayev Uni-versity in Kazakhstan plan to havethe university’s first graduate

school of business program, an executiveM.B.A, up and running this December.The university has been working in collab-oration with Fuqua administrators and faculty members, who are serving as con-sultants on the project.

Richard Castleberry, former head of themanagement unit at American Universityin Kosovo, was hired in June to serve as thebusiness school’s assistantdean for marketing. Hespent the summerworking to define theschool’s brand as well ascontacting representativesof multinational corpora-tions, local industries, andgovernment ministries whomight enroll promising em-ployees in the program. Duringthat time, he worked closely withElizabeth Hogan M.B.A. ’04, Fuqua’s as-sociate dean for global marketing.

Nazarbayev University (NU), foundedthree years ago by the country’s president,Nursultan Nazarbayev, was conceived topromote education and innovation in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The project’sintention is to build a new education modelthat will enable Kazakhstan and the regionto manage its vast natural-resource wealthand be competitive on world markets. NU

developed partnershipswith several top univer-sities from around theworld to get its programsstarted; it is entering itsthird year of offering un-dergraduate programs.

Fuqua administratorshave been working withthe university since 2010,

when they first bidto conduct a mar-ket study to determine the demand for aninternationally recognized business schoolin Kazakhstan. Over the past year, Fuquastaff and faculty members have developedbest-practices recommendations that willguide their NU counterparts.

Starting in December, faculty memberswill travel to Kazakhstan to teach in the ex-

ecutive program, as wellas help the university torecruit and train its full-time faculty.

Working with graduatestudents in a former So-viet-bloc country, Fuquaprofessors “will be meet-ing managers who thinkvery differently than thestudents they encounterhere in our program,” saysRobert Olinger M.B.A.

’10, director of business develop-ment for Kazakhstan at Fuqua.“They will be training new faculty

members, expanding their networkof collaborators. Hopefully from

these meetings, you’ll see some uniqueresearch partnerships, but we can’t pre-

dict what those will be.”Olinger says that Fuqua and NU admin-

istrators hope to have faculty membershired and a new building constructed by thetime the school’s daytime M.B.A. programbegins in 2014. Valerie Hausman, Fuqua’sassociate dean of global executive education,noted the important opportunity Fuqua hasin informing the education model of theninth-largest nation in the world, in geo-graphic size. “Our faculty gain access todata, organizations, and opportunities thatare likely to impact their own research andconsequently the student experience, bothat NU and here at Fuqua.”

NEWSRoundupHAPPENINGS | INNOVATION | RESEARCH

Progress in KazakhstanAstana-based executive program launches.

The Next Dean: The Search Is OnRecommendations due in January.

This past July marked the start of a yearlong search for thenext dean of the Fuqua School of Business. The search com-mittee, chaired by David Robinson, William and Sue Gross

Research Fellow and professor of finance, includes student andalumni representatives, as well as several other Fuqua faculty mem-bers and administrators. The committee is conducting an interna-tional search open to both internal and external candidates. It will

pass its recommendations for three finalists on to Duke PresidentRichard H. Brodhead and Provost Peter Lange in January. BillBoulding, who was appointed to a two-year term as dean in an ab-breviated process in August 2011, will be considered for a secondterm. Boulding is a longtime professor who has taught courses inmanagement, marketing, and strategy, and served in a variety ofadministrative roles, including as deputy dean from 2009 to 2011.

THE FUQUA SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

“Our faculty gainaccess to data, organizations,and opportunitiesthat are likely toimpact their own research and consequently the student experience, bothat NU and here at Fuqua.”

Business Education Hub:Kazakhstan shares borders

with Russia and China.

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SPECIAL SECTION DUKE MAGAZINE September-October 2012 83

When Owen May enrolled at Fuqua in 1981, he struggledat first. Part of the problem, he says, was that he didn’thave much experience in business, having come to busi-

ness school after studying biology at the University of Miami.But another part was social isolation. “I didn’t see a lot of other

people who looked like me,” says May, who is black, noting thatthere were only two otherblack students in hisclass. “My adjustment tothe school took a while. Ican’t find the right words,but it was definitely astressful time.”

David Miller, thenFuqua’s director of M.B.A. admissions and financial aid, saw anopportunity in May’s distress, inviting him to host a weekendworkshop where prospective students from traditionally under-represented minorities could come to learn about Duke, and, morebroadly, about the challenges they would face in business school.

A handful of applicants attended that first year. “I don’t remem-ber if any of those kids actually came” to Duke the following year,says May M.B.A. ’83, now chairman and CEO of MD GlobalPartners, a New York-based investment firm. “But the important

Network Growth Minority Workshop celebrates 30th anniversary.

thing was that we hadstarted to evangelize andget the name of the Dukebusiness school out there.”

In the years that followed,the program has grown,gaining corporate sponsor-ship and coming to includeadditional practical featureslike sample case studies.This fall marks its thirtiethanniversary, and organizersexpect about eighty prospec-tive students to attend.

“One of the things thatdifferentiates Duke’s workshop from those held at other businessschools is the enthusiasm of alumni,” says Laurinda Rainey M.B.A.’08, a senior strategy manager at Walmart who also attended Dukeas an undergraduate. Each year, about sixty alumni, most of whomattended the event as prospective applicants, come back to campusto mingle with students, share their own experiences, make newfriends and business contacts, and add another layer to a supportnetwork that was once lacking.

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In recent years, Allan Lind had noticedan interesting thing about messagesstudents in the Global Executive

M.B.A. program were posting on the pro-gram’s online message boards. The stu-dents—executives and managers atcorporations and nonprofits around theglobe—were using the boards not just toconverse about course materials,but also to pose questions andoffer feedback about real-worldwork issues, which weren’t usu-ally discussed in class.

So Lind, James L. VincentProfessor of leadership at Fuqua,made a change. As part of alarger GEMBA program re-design, he instituted a new finalproject in his capstone course onleadership and development. In-stead of completing a businesssimulation using made-up facts,students would design and tacklean “organizational change proj-ect” of their own choice, withintheir own companies; the find-ings would be presented at anevent modeled on the most interactive offorums: a fifth-grade science fair.

On a Wednesday morning in July, this

year’s GEMBA class gathers in Fuqua’sFaculty Hall for the last day of presenta-tions. In one corner, Cassandra Shepharddescribes the challenges she will face inbuilding a human-resources team whenshe steps into her new role as vice presi-dent for global human resources at Com-passion International later this month.

Across the room, Afzal Khalfay, vice pres-ident for information technology at DPWorld, talks about new ways to incen-

Show and TellRevamped Global Executive M.B.A. program targets real-world challenges.

tivize innovation among the port opera-tor’s employees.

These aren’t slick presentations aimed atimpressing in the board room, but, perLind’s instructions, poster-board showscomplete with colorful charts, graphs, andillustrations, where presenters are candidabout the challenges they face—whether

in the form of government reg-ulations, local ordinances, or,likely as not, internal resistanceto change. Classmates who arenot presenting roam the room,taking in various presentations,pitching in with questions andinsights gained from their ownprofessional experiences.

Sometimes the insights canbe surprising. Melissa Seymour,senior director of corporate qual-ity at Biogen Idec, a Raleigh-based biotech firm, describesgetting advice from a classmatefrom Russia who works in min-ing. “It’s amazing how muchcarries over industry to industry,country to country.”

“It’s like having forty-seven consultantsat your beck and call,” Shepard adds, “whoall have a vested interested in your success.”

“...we had started toevangelize and get

the name of theDuke business

school out there.” Next Generation Thinking: May M.B.A. ’83 relishesthe opportunity to share insights.

Project Fair: Getting down to business

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It was the spring of 2000, and the Re-publican presidential primary racewas heating up. George W. Bush,governor of Texas, had picked up anearly victory in the Iowa caucus, but

Arizona Senator John McCain surprisedobservers with a strong showing in NewHampshire.

With the South Carolina primary notfar off, voters in the state reported receivingtelephone calls during which they wereasked the following question: “If youlearned that John McCain had fathered anillegitimate black child, would you bemore or less likely to vote for him?”

The question was purely hypothetical.John McCain had not in fact fathered anillegitimate black child. It was a classic ex-ample of a push poll, a call made for thepurpose of swaying voter opinion in theguise of an unbiased research survey. Aneducated voter behaving perfectly ration-ally would have answered the question, orlaughed it off, and promptly forgottenabout it. But would the average voter—oreven the average educated voter—be ableto do so?

Gavan Fitzsimons was in-trigued; then an assistant pro-fessor at the University ofPennsylvania’s Wharton Schoolof Business, he was on theverge of publishing a study inthe Journal of Consumer Re-search that would be among thefirst to scientifically explorethat very question. What heand co-author Baba Shiv, now

a professor at Stanford University, foundwas that posing negative informationabout a candidate in the form of a hypo-thetical question—“If you learned thatBob Clark had been convicted of fraud in1988 on a charge stemming from severalillegal donations accepted and subse-quently misrepresented during his success-ful campaign for state treasurer, wouldyour opinion of him increase or de-crease?”—resulted in a dramatic decreasein the number of participants who wouldlater choose to vote for that candidate, atleast in a situation where the two candi-dates were unknown. In fact, participantswho were asked the question responded ina similar way to another group who werepresented a news story about candidateClark that simply asserted the fraud as fact.

This result was not completely unex-pected. The McCain calls were not the firstof their kind; push polling has a long andrich history in political campaign lore, andanecdotal evidence shared by campaignconsultants suggested that an artfully de-signed call could exert considerable sway.

But that didn’t make it anyless confounding. Why werepeople responding so stronglyto hypothetical questions?

In a follow-up study published last yearin Organizational Behavior and HumanDecision Processes, Fitzsimons, R. DavidThomas Professor of marketing and psy-chology at Fuqua, Shiv, and two othercoauthors teased out the effect.

Researchers have long known that ques-tions about intent can have an impact onhuman behavior. These are questionsaimed at determining how likely a personis to do something. For example, a surveymight ask how likely you are to recycle.What researchers have found is that if youare asked how likely you are to recycle, yousubsequently become more likely to do so.One key to understanding this effect is theconcept of accessibility. When you areasked about recycling, your brain accessespositive attitudes and emotions associatedwith the concept; these last beyond thetime required to answer the question. Bythe same token, questions about thingsthat have negative connotations, like cheat-ing, make you less likely to engage in thosebehaviors.

With hypothetical questions, Fitzsimonsand his colleagues found, the same thinghappens in a slightly modified way. Re-spondents probably don’t have any inher-ent feelings one way or the other about

T H E F U Q U A S C H O O L O F B U S I N E S S

If you learned that marketing professor Gavan Fitzsimonswas the winner of a prestigious academic prize, wouldyour opinion of his research increase or decrease?

The power of

push polling

“When the information is stored in yourmemory, it shares some features thatoverlap with this new hypotheticalquestion. That’s when you get thismental contamination.”

By Jacob Dagger

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fictional political candidate Bob Clark,but, the researchers thought, they are likelyto have some abstract notions about cor-rupt politicians. For this study, they con-ducted a series of experiments. In one, theypresented participants with the same storyabout politician Bob Clark. Only thistime, in addition to asking one group ofparticipants the hypothetical questionabout Clark and fraud, the researchersasked another subgroup a second hypo-thetical question that was meant to evokethe opposite feelings: “If you learned thatBob Clark had been offered and turneddown several illegal donations in 1988during his successful campaign for StateTreasurer (despite a low likelihood of beingcaught), would your opinion of him in-crease, decrease, or stay the same?”

What they found was that in the shortterm, when a vote was held immediatelyafter participants answered the hypotheti-cal question, they were responsive to both.Those who were asked the positive ques-tion were more likely to vote for Clark,while those who read the negative questionwere less likely to do so. But in a secondexperiment, Fitzsimons and his colleaguesshowed that the effect was longer lastingfor those asked the negative question. This,they explained, was because the negativequestion was consistent with already-heldknowledge about politicians being corruptin the abstract.

“When the information is stored in yourmemory, it shares some features that over-lap with this new hypothetical question,”Fitzsimons says. “That’s when you get thismental contamination. With the hypo-thetical questions, you’re actually introduc-ing content into the person’s mind. Whatthis shows is you really are changing theway people think about candidates with-out the content being real.”

He and his colleagues also demonstratedthat this was true in areas beyond politics.For one experiment, they looked at jury se-lection, which involves asking potential ju-rors questions about their backgrounds andbiases, a process known as voir dire. Theyfound that hypothetical questions that sug-gested a suspect in a crime might have gangties—something potential jurors were likelyto feel negatively about—made potentialjurors quicker to convict based on a givenlist of evidentiary statements. In a repeat ex-periment, they showed that the potentialjurors were still quicker to convict evenafter a four-day break between hearing thehypothetical question and considering theevidence. They did find that the potentialjurors were able to overcome the bias when

they were informed ahead of time that thequestions were posed by attorneys andshould not be used to make inferencesabout the actual case. In effect, voir dire ismeant to ferret out biased potential jurors,but the process itself creates bias.

There are endless scenarios in which thispower of suggestion might be used to neg-atively influence public opinion of an in-dividual or institution. “Of late, any timeyou hear about Penn State, it’s going to belinked to the child-abuse scandal,” Fitzsi-mons explains. “So now, what if I ask youthe following question: ‘If you found outthat there had been child abuse at OhioState, how would you react?’ Now the factthat in your mind there is a linkage be-tween a Big Ten school and child abuse,that mentally contaminates not only theanswer to the hypothetical question, butalso later judgments about Ohio State.

“These cognitions become commingledin a way that the respondent doesn’t evenrealize that these things areoverlapping and commin-gling. That commingling iswhat’s driving all of this. Youforget that there was thispiece of information in yourmind about the link betweenBig Ten schools and childabuse.”

What is particularly insid-ious about these types ofquestions, Fitzsimons says, isthat they “typically fly belowthe radar.” With a televisionadvertisement, viewers knowthat what they are seeing is anattempt to persuade them to change theirminds, and they have some natural defensemechanisms that they put in place. Whenthey believe that they are simply answeringquestions, it can be easier for that persuasiveinformation to slip in through the cracks.

Now, of course, many are wellaware of the existence ofpush polls. In fact, peopleoften assume that they arebeing push-polled even

when they’re not.This can make it difficult for pollsters

and campaign consultants who are tryingto conduct legitimate market research thatis essential to the campaign’s operations.These pollsters are interested in testing howthe public will respond to various messages,including ones that “might be consideredleading or loaded,” says Mike Donatello,vice president for research quality at theMarketing Research Association. These

could include questions that ask a respon-dent to weigh in on how a candidate’s fram-ing of certain issues—abortion, gun rights,the economy—might affect her vote.

In general, a push poll will start with “afew questions, to get you to let your guarddown,” Donatello says, “just so you knowit’s not a sales call. Then they’ll launch intothe garbage,” hitting you with a couple ofnegative hypotheticals before ending thecall.

“If the person calling is legitimately seek-ing information,” Donatello says, he or shewill ask extensive demographic questions toget a better picture of how your opinionsjibe with other voters’. “They’ll want toknow as much about you as possible so theycan slice and dice this stuff. The candidatewants to know what women think aboutthis issue, what unemployed people think.”

Still, sometimes it’s hard to tell. In No-vember 2007, in advance of the 2008 Re-publican presidential primaries, voters in

New Hampshire and Iowa reported receiv-ing calls that included praise for John McCain’s military service, as well as a seriesof statements deriding Mitt Romney’sMormon faith.

At first, observers suspected McCain’scampaign of placing the calls. But McCain, himself a past victim of pushpolling, pledged his innocence, pointingthe finger instead at the campaign of for-mer New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani,who had ties to one of the polling organi-zations responsible for the calls. Giuliani,it was suggested, was trying to push votersaway from Romney, while at the same timestick McCain with the blame for using adirty trick. But within hours, cynics weresuggesting that the Romney campaign it-self might have actually initiated the callsin an effort to elicit sympathy among vot-ers, or to get out in front of the issue andsee how voters would respond, or perhapsa little bit of both. ■

T H E F U Q U A S C H O O L O F B U S I N E S S

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reach their potential. He sits on the boardof directors of Durham-based Bull CityForward, an organization that promotessocial entrepreneurship, and is an adviserfor Duke’s Program for Entrepreneurs.

In 2010, he took time away from Duketo serve as a senior economist for theWhite House Council of Economic Advis-ers, where he focused on designing policiesthat would help promote innovationamong high-growth startups, but alsoamong more traditional small businesses.

Entrepreneurship is a buzzword thesedays, something that governments of alllevels—federal, state, and local—want toinspire. But Chatterji came by his interestin the field through a series of close en-counters. He was raised in Binghamton, inupstate New York. “Growing up, it was afantastic place to live,” he says, “but whenI got to high school, lots of my friends weremoving away, partly because their parentswere getting transferred or losing theirjobs” as the town lost its industrial base. Ingraduate school at the University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley, he got to see the “excite-ment and dynamism of Silicon Valley.”


Since its 2005 merger with Nextel, cell-phoneservice provider Sprint has struggled at times.In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the

company suffered regular quarterly losses and saw itsstock price languish—all while facing stiff competitionfrom the field’s two giants, Verizon and AT&T.

But Joseph Euteneuer, who signed on as Sprint’schief financial officer in April 2011, sees better timesahead. “The last few months, we’ve seen things loosenup a bit,” he said in July. “It all boils down to one simple thing.You make your goal, and you tell everyone what it is. And if youexecute the goal, you’ll be rewarded.”

Among the goals Euteneuer, a 2011 graduate of the Global Ex-ecutive M.B.A. program, set for himself upon taking the Sprint jobwas raising $7 billion in funding for Sprint’s Network Vision proj-ect, a task that is all but complete. The funding will allow the com-pany to update its hardware and move its service over to theglobally popular LTE mobile communication standard by the endof next year. The massive—and expensive—overhaul is reminis-

Why Limit Yourself?Sprint CFO rolls up sleeves, digs in.

SPECIAL SECTION

FUQUAPeople

cent of a project that Euteneuer undertook in his pre-vious gig as CFO at Qwest Communications, wherehe shepherded an upgrade from the company’s legacytechnology to state-of-the-art fiber-optic cables.

In addressing challenges, he also has drawn on les-sons learned during a six-year stint as CFO of XMSatellite Radio, from 2002 to 2008. “All of these jobsare about rolling up your sleeves, digging into the de-tails, and figuring out how to make value out of what

you have,” he says.One advantage that Sprint does have, in terms of marketing itself

to new customers, is its continued commitment to offering trulyunlimited wireless plans for a flat rate at a time when its competitorshave all moved to a measured service model, either placing limitson data usage or “throttling”—intentionally slowing processingspeeds for heavy data users, and irritating consumers in the process.

In a world where customers want to stream videos, check e-mail,and access an ever expanding number of apps on their smart-phones, Euteneuer, a strategic thinker, sees value in that difference.

Ronnie Chatterji smiles as he recountsthe story. He was teaching a class ofat-risk teenagers about entrepre-

neurship as part of Durham’s Communitiesin Schools program. He started with somefacts about hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.

Jay-Z is more than just a wildly success-ful artist; he’s an entrepreneur who has ex-panded his business to include recordlabels, a restaurant, a clothing line, andpartial ownership of an NBA franchise.What else could Jay-Z do, Chatterji askedthe students, to grow his business?

He could create a branded perfume, onestudent suggested. He could get into real-estate development, said another, perhapsincorporating some low-income housing inhis hometown of Brooklyn. A third sug-gested a potential furniture line with IKEA.

“You start to realize that kids have a greatunderstanding of entrepreneurship, of howbrands work,” Chatterji says.

Since joining Fuqua’s faculty in 2005,Chatterji, an associate professor of strategy,has reached out to entrepreneurs, and po-tential entrepreneurs, of all ages, offeringsupport and advice and helping them to

Innovation Happens at HomeEncouraging growth in policy and practice

FACULTY PROFILE

ALUMNI PROFILE

Startup America: With White House Council, Chatterji promoted president’s initiative in talks around the country.

In Durham, he sees great opportunities.With Bull City Forward, he recently helpedorganize a contest where entrepreneurscompeted for funding for projects dedicatedto improving health in North Carolina.

“Ronnie has a terrific background inboth the macro and micro perspectives,”says Christopher Gergen, a 1993 Dukegraduate, founder of Bull City Forwardand a visiting lecturer in the SanfordSchool’s Hart Leadership Program. “Heunderstands how larger economic develop-ment trends play out: what works andwhat doesn’t work. And he is somebodywho loves to take a set of ideas and look athow they play out in practice.”

Euteneuer: Graduating threemonths after starting at Sprint

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Top international destination for summer interns:

$103,000Median base salary for graduates

Percent of 2008 full-time M.B.A. graduates fromtop programs who changed employers withinthree years of graduating, according to a 2011analysis by Bloomberg Businessweek

$25,000 Median signing bonus

Grads who went to each of CNN/Money’s list ofthe top 15 places M.B.A.s “most want to work”:

Top domestic destination for graduates and interns:

Companies, in terms of total hiring, that are consulting firms

Jobs posted to the Fuqua employer website

Top international destination for graduates:

BUSINESSStatsTHE FUQUA SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

150

44

2,0004 of the top 5

South Korea

Brazil

New York

Employers that recruited on campus last year,including newcomer Nike

1. Google 52. McKinsey & Co. 183. Apple 74. Bain & Co. 95. Boston Consulting Group 126. Amazon.com 37. Goldman Sachs Group 68. Facebook 09. Nike 110. JPMorgan 211. Deloitte 3012. Walt Disney 013. IDEO 014. Blackstone Group 015. Johnson and Johnson 12

FUQUA CAREER MANAGEMENT CENTER

All statistics refer to 2012 Fuqua Daytime M.B.A. graduates, unless otherwise noted.

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