Mark Pruett, associate professor of management in the George Dean Johnson, Jr. College of Business and Economics, presented a paper at the annual meeting of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) in San Francisco, held January 10-13, 2013.  The paper is the latest in a series of studies of entrepreneurship education, and is titled, “Do they think the same? A six-country study of faculty perceptions of student beliefs and attitudes about entrepreneurship.”

Pruett wrote the study with co-author Harun Şeşen, a management professor at the Turkish Military Academy, who recently spent a six-month sabbatical at USC Upstate working with Pruett on research. They compared faculty and student responses regarding curricula, university setting, students’ career intentions and entrepreneurial disposition, and motives and barriers for start-up businesses.  They found that that the misalignments are widespread and significant across the various countries we studied.  That is, faculty do not always accurately perceive student aspirations and beliefs.  This may pose a challenge not only for entrepreneurship education, but for education across a university.  The authors also conclude that a student’s level of risk-aversion and fear of failure play a significant role in student career intentions and aspirations.

Dave Albrecht, professor of accounting at the George Dean Johnson, Jr. College of Business and Economics at the University of South Carolina Upstate, was named one of the top 100 most influential people in accounting in a special report released Sept. 7 by Accounting Today, a trade magazine servicing the public accounting profession.

This is the second year in a row that Albrecht has been named to this prestigious national list, and he is the only professor named on the list.  Other notables on the top 100 list include the heads of the Big Four CPA firms, and the chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Financial Accounting Standards Board and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

Of the top 100 on the list, 26 write about their profession via blog. Four of those 26 were named to the top 100 list specifically for their blogs. Albrecht is one of those four, and his blog, The Summa, is regularly named to lists of top accounting and business blogs.

“Through his blog, The Summa, Albrecht has an impact on issues like IFRS (international financial reporting standards) and accounting education – but he’s also influencing and promoting the profession’s adoption of social media as a whole,” explains the magazine’s editor. Albrecht has used his blog since 2008 to comment on the accounting and auditing industries as well as the complex world of regulation. He also tweets using the name @profalbrecht. In 2011, he was named the #5 Most Social Media Savvy Professor in America by OnlineCollege.net.

Albrecht joined the USC Upstate faculty in 2012 where he teaches financial and cost/managerial accounting.  He regularly presents at national and regional conferences on topics such as teaching and learning, social media usage in education and business and contemporary theoretical issues in financial accounting and auditing.  He also publishes in all these areas.

His innovative teaching practices include the use of simulation games, flipping the classroom and social media usage.  He is active in the American Accounting Association and AECM, the international e-mail listserv for accounting professors. Albrecht received his Ph.D. in accounting from Virginia Tech.

For more information, contact Dave Albrecht at dalbrecht@uscupstate.edu or call (864) 503-5589.

Tim Ellis (Engineering Technology Management Program coordinator), Frank Rudisill (interim dean of the George Dean Johnson, Jr. College of Business and Economics), and Jim O’Connor (assistant professor of management at the George Dean Johnson, Jr. College of Business and Economics), worked with BMW Manufacturing to present the second annual Academic Outreach Camp in June 2012. The camp was a two week course in Lean and Six Sigma for 22 rising high school seniors from Spartanburg and Greenville counties. Visit the camp’s website for more information, and see the photo album here.

Nicholas Roberts, assistant professor of business at the University of South Carolina Upstate, announces the publication of the following articles:

Roberts, N., Galluch, P., Dinger, M., and Grover, V. (2012) “Absorptive Capacity and Information Systems Research: Review, Synthesis, and Directions for Future Research,” MIS Quarterly, 36(2), 625-648.

Roberts, N., and Grover, V. (2012) “Leveraging IT Infrastructure to Facilitate Competitive Activity via Customer Agility: An Empirical Investigation,” Journal of Management Information Systems, 28(4), 231-269.

Roberts, N., and Grover, V. (2012) “Investigating Firm’s Customer Agility and Firm Performance: The Importance of Aligning Sense and Respond Capabilities,” Journal of Business Research, 65(5), 579-585.

Polites, G., Roberts, N., and Thatcher, J. (2012) “Conceptualizing and Testing Models Using Multidimensional Constructs: A Review and Guidelines for their Use,” European Journal of Information Systems, 21(1), 22-48.

Wright, R., Campbell, D., Thatcher, J., and Roberts, N. (2012) “Operationalizing Multidimensional Constructs in Structural Equation Modeling: Recommendations for IS Research,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 30(1), 367-412.

Mellott, M., Thatcher, J., Roberts, N., and Carter, M. (2012) “An Examination of the Role of Military Medical Chief Information Officer,” Military Medicine, 177(7), 850-855.

Mellott, M., Thatcher, J., and Roberts, N. (2012) “Control Mechanisms and Electronic Medical Record Compliance in a Combat Environment: An Empirical Investigation,” in the Proceedings of the Eighth Annual SC Upstate Research Symposium, Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Word, B., Rook, S., and Lancaster, L. “An Assessment Note on the Utilization of the Major Field Test in Business,” B>Quest, 2011.

Stuart, E. “Marketing place: The case of a city and a university business school,” Advances in Business Research, 2011.

Solomon, M., and Stuart, E. “Marketing: Real People, Real Choices,” 7th Edition, Prentice Hall, 2011.

Rudisill, F., O’Connor, J., and Ellis, T. worked with BMW manufacturing to develop and present a two week course in lean six sigma to 29 rising high school seniors from Spartanburg and Greenville counties. Web site: https://www.uscupstate.edu/bmwcamp/, photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uscupstate/sets/72157626838061175/, video: https://vimeo.com/25537122. 2011.

Iarossi, J., Miller, J., O’Connor, J., and Keil, M. “Addressing the Sustainability Challenge: Insight from Institutional Theory & Organizational Learning,” Presented at the First International Conference on Engaged Management Scholarship, Cleveland, OH, June 2011. (Received the Best Scholarship Award, Best Practitioner Paper)

Paige, R. “Venture: Can you make a living selling handmade crafts online?,” NPR, National Public Radio, Broadcast interview focused on on-line handcraft marketing and is read and listened to live around the globe at: https://www.wbez.org/story/venture-can-you-make-livingselling-handmade-crafts-online-91158, August 29, 2011.

Caldwell, S. D., and Liu, Y. “Further investigating the influence of personality in employee response to organisational change: the moderating role of change related factors,” Human Resource Management Journal, 21(1), 74-89, 2011.

Caldwell, S. D. “Bi-directional relationships between employee fit and organizational change,” Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 401-419, 2011.

Caldwell, S. D., and Lingle, E. W. “A case for strategic approach to employee healthcare,” Journal of Business Issues, 1, 2011.

Mark Pruett (Business) had a chapter published in December 2011 in the Handbook of Research on Teaching Ethics in Business and Management Education. Titled “The Social Responsibility of Business Schools,” the chapter takes stockholder and stakeholder perspectives on ethical decision-making and explores their implications for how academia itself operates.

Chapter abstract: Business schools teach stockholder and stakeholder perspectives for ethical decision-making, but what are the implications of those perspectives for the management of business schools themselves?  From the stockholder perspective, faculty are agents in an organization financed by two types of principals—private donors and governments—with goals based on education’s social and economic benefits.  The essay addresses the stockholder perspective’s issues of open and free competition, deception and fraud, and the role of required or desirable objectives.  Some business school competition is open and free yet some is not. Deception and fraud do not appear significant.  Objectives not specified by the principal may be required or desirable in pursuing educational objectives. Next, the stakeholder perspective suggests further parallels between business and academia. Three market failures—externalities, moral hazards, and monopoly power—are readily found in academia.  Decisions do not incorporate all costs, there are numerous moral hazards, and monopoly power may arise.

Wankel, Charles and Agata Stachowicz-Stanusch. “Handbook of Research on Teaching Ethics in Business and Management Education.” IGI Global, 2012. 0-750. Web. 31 Jan. 2012. doi:10.4018/978-1-61350-510-6