However, this is neither a sustainable business model nor is it desirable from the long run standpoint of Australian society.  It is not desirable because it underinvests in business education and research, both of which are fundamental drivers of a healthy economy.  It also fosters a dependence mentality in the faculties that receive the subsidies.  Dependency crowds out innovation and self reliance – two things that foster quality and the drive for change (See Charts Below).

The model is also not sustainable.  In 2011, 20% of all university degrees awarded to domestic students were in ‘management and commerce’ (slightly over 38,000 degrees).  However, the comparable number for overseas students was 57% of degrees awarded (slightly over 61,000 degrees).  Of the 489,000 students commencing their studies in 2011, 70% were domestic students.  However, of 145,000 overseas students more than 50% were studying business!  Anyone with any knowledge of the operations of our business faculties knows that the system is stretched to the limit with decreasing academic quality brought on by large class sizes, a greater number of casual lecturers, and decreasing intellectual quality, as evidenced by data from both the ERA exercise and data from Thomson Reuters (where Australian academic impact is rated at approximately 20% below world average in terms of citation impact; i.e., quality — see, ERA: Perilous for Economics and Commerce and the graph below from that article).

Michael Chaney, in a speech launching Australia – Educating Globally report revealed a vision where Australia would be educating 700,000 overseas students by 2030.  If 57% of these students studied business (which is the rate for newly enrolled overseas students), this would entail doubling the capacity of our already overstretched business schools (which currently educates 170,000 business students).  What is clear to us is that doubling an already crowded system, staffed by an aging workforce, which is underperforming intellectually by world standards, is a recipe for organizational disaster and intellectual and pedagogical mediocrity.

So what can be done?  In the current political climate grumbling to the government or to each other is unlikely to be successful.  The Vice Chancellor of one of the G-08 universities recently sent us an email asking us to do just this.  Also, asking the universities to change their cross-subsidy business model is fruitless.  If the low cost faculties were to receive a significant increase in their internal funding at the expense of other parts of the university, the universities would tear themselves apart.  Asking business and alumni to make significant donations to universities is also problematic.  Many US universities rely on business school alumni but few alumni in Australia would be prepared to donate to institutions where there is a lack of clarity as to how the funds are used and where the operations are structured around back door cross subsidies that are never revealed to the universities’ public stakeholders.

We suggest an out-of-the-box solution that would be an opportunity for building a national icon, create opportunities for local governments and corporate interests to align, and provide a foundation for building true world class excellence in business and management (as well as potentially in law and economics).    At the same time it would serve to reduce the undue stress being placed on our existing university structure.

We feel that it is necessary for Australia to have a professions only university − within which would sit the management disciplines, economics, accounting and law as separate units.  There are a number of examples of these institutions that are highly successful, and, in many cases, stand as national icons.  Examples include ESSEC (France), Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), WHU and ESMT (Germany), St. Gallen (Switzerland), Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (Austria), NNH and BI-Oslo (Norway), Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden), Bocconi (Italy), and Singapore Management University.

The institution we are proposing would be established as an independent private foundation with all the rights of an Australian university but with a board structure that is representative of the key investors and stakeholders.  Good examples of this structure are INSEAD in France and ESMT in Germany.[1]  Our initial estimate is that this would require approximately $300-$400M over a 10-year period with the funding and in-kind contributions coming from three sources, the Federal Government, the business community, and the New South Wales and Victoria State Governments.  Such an investment is relatively minor, particularly in light of the impact on the ‘efficiency dividend’ being proposed as part of the Gonski Education Reforms. We would envision two campuses, one in Melbourne – the core law and economics faculty, and one in Sydney – the core management faculty and accounting.

We believe that this proposal is a significant win-win for Australian society and the business community.

It is a win for the society because effective and efficient education has significant payoffs.  These arise not just in more effective business practices but greater innovation and a more dynamic society.  In addition, such a structure will make Australia more competitive in drawing in student and academic talent.  Currently, Australia’s positioning vis-a-vis its appeal to students is suffering.  The best students are increasingly being attracted to better-capitalized overseas institutions that are unlikely to tax their business faculties at anywhere near the rate seen in Australia.  Academically, most Australian business schools have a mediocre research reputation and it is increasingly difficult to convince younger scholars to risk a career here.  Given the aging structure of our academic profile such a trend is worrying, as the best students rarely want to be taught by anything but the best faculty.

It is a win for the business community because it ensures an institution dedicated to providing not just world-class education but education for value.  Many business groups have complained over the years about the poor quality of business school education in Australia.  Having a well-trained workforce is critical to Australia’s success.  Having an institution that draws in overseas talent is a key if the society needs skilled immigration to grow.  In addition, a professions only institution would be a magnet for business and academic linkages.  Currently, Australia business schools have very little interaction with the business community and are generally ignored by the big end of town.  Such linkages are critical for not only effective education but also potential sources of real innovation.

In essence, Australian universities are perhaps the country’s last living examples of unrelated diversified cross-subsidizing conglomerates.  What we know about these structures is that they are ripe for disintermediation when the cross-subsidies get out of hand.  We also know that they are less likely to be organizationally innovative.  Hence, if we are going to innovate around management education and scholarship it is more likely that we will be able to do so ‘outside the box’ than ‘inside the box’.  In our view, a dedicated professions only institution has the opportunity for a massive win-win for a remarkably small investment.

Note: This article was co-authored by Grahame R. Dowling.  All data reported is from DIISRTE as given on the Universities Australia website (http://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/).  Graduates are all those receiving any degree from an Australian University.

Larry Zicklin in an opinion piece in the Financial Times believes professors should focus far more on teaching and less on being published … and my commentary:

It is interesting how over my 20 years as an academic I have heard this sort of logic again and again and again. Invariably it is from adjunct faculty with a more ‘professional’ background complaining that they do not understand what it is that academics do and why they do not ‘teach’ more or that their promotions should be based more on teaching. Unfortunately such arguments, while valid to the individuals who make them, are based mainly on faulty logic and a basic misunderstanding of what is going on. For example, whenever I go and work with a company I am amazed at how much time managers waste actually doing nothing but monitoring and interacting with other managers? Why are they not working with customers more? Why are they not out in the field rounding up more business? Isn’t it inefficient to have them in meetings so often invariably doing little more than playing power games against other managers? Of course, this is a naive viewpoint and it is based on my failure to understand what these managers do. Ditto Mr. Zicklin’s view of academics in business schools. Here are some points that matter.

His view of teaching is dominantly one of information dissemination. Having been at the top and bottom of the academic food chain (being both at U. Chicago and now in Australia at what is dominantly a teaching factory) I have seen the differences. The students at Chicago get knowledge at the coal face by people who understand what is both leading edge and sophisticated. Students here get commoditized information delivered by individuals who only know what they read because they are not leading edge scholars. Indeed, where the MOOC Tsunami will hit is on this commoditized end of the business.

Second, his viewpoint is based on the ‘leach on society’ view of academics. I argue that good scholars are some of the most entrepreneurial people in the world. Imagine Mr. Zicklin working in a business in which the failure rate is > 90% (which is the rejection rate of most leading journals). Also, it does not matter where you reside or which university you are at since the rejection is based on blind review. Imagine your typical corporate manager working in an environment in which their work was evaluated blindly and in 9 cases out of 10 rejected as being inadequate. Imagine also those individuals attempting to run projects on little more than scraps of funding (for an average academic on what is known as a 40:40:20 contract the actual cost of the research per professor amounts to only about $50,000 per year). Most companies spend more on business class airfare for managers than this. Most universities spend 20 times this on the basketball coach.

Third, most good academics could easily make more money outside academics than inside academics. When I received my PhD I had an offer from one of the major consultancies. It was three times my academic salary. But I remained an academic because I believed in what I wanted to do. I argue that the difference between managers and academics is that managers give up what they love for money while academics give up money for what they love. If you take away the scholarship aspect of this then the equation skews toward money. So if I am going to sing for my supper then I want to be paid for singing. Unfortunately as soon as that occurs I end up choosing not to be an academic. In reality, we have serious problems getting good brains to commit to getting phds and hence the pool of potential future faculty is actually drying up. If anything the premium needs to be bigger not smaller.

Fourth, Mr. Zicklin’s argument that promotion is all about research and not teaching is just wrong. You cannot get promoted anywhere as a basket case in the classroom. Indeed, nearly every academic I know is quite good to very exceptional in the classroom. It is also the case that where we looked at exactly this we found that our best scholars were our best teachers. So this idea that there are ‘teachers’ and there are ‘researchers’ is just nonsense. The best scholars are on average exceptional at communicating. Mr. Zicklin’s problem is that he is basing his viewpoint on myth and exceptions and not evidence. However, in the end, if your best scholars are you best teachers the institution must make a decision as to the allocation of their time. Unfortunately, good scholars are rare and institutions cannot replace them as easily as they could one trick teaching ponies.

Finally, the fact that academic journals are not read by managers is absolutely meaningless. These journals are not meant for managers. That is why you have HBR, Sloan Mgt Review, McKinsey Quarterly and other outlets. Any good journalist or writer will tell you that you write to the audience. If you want to communicate with managers you do it differently than when you speak to other scientists. As soon as you attempt to write to everyone you actually communicate with no one. I personally am the sort of academic that communicates to broad audiences (like my colleague Pankaj) but I do not expect managers to read my academic articles. Also, in a response to Freek Vermeulen on this same topic (also in the FT), I argued that we as academics influence practice one student at a time by how we do what we do and what we pick to have in our classes and how we communicate in public forums. Many of the examples given above are good examples of others. And there are many many more we can show.

So while Mr. Zicklin’s arguments appear to be logical and reasonable I would argue that you need to be careful about what you wish for. There is more than one tsunami approaching and my view is that the more dangerous one is that there are fewer and fewer potential scholars choosing to be academics because the personal benefits of such a career are being eroded while the financial compensation is not sufficient to offset this. If I had to make the decision today that I made 20+ years ago I would not go into academics. I would chase the money, cash out and then become an adjunct faculty member writing opinion pieces for the FT while living the life of the casual academic.

The reactions to the announcement have been fairly typical in their extremes. On the one hand are articles with pictures of “workers at home” beavering away (and suspiciously well dressed at what are way too clean and tidy desks) and expressing outrage as to how such a decision ignores all the value created by giving people the freedom to work at home or in the neighborhood coffee shop. Invariably these articles include criticisms of the move by other CEOs, like Richard Branson, who consider them out of line with modern workforce practices. The usual evidence touted by HR types, that firms that embrace workplace flexibility have higher satisfaction ratings and lower turnover, is invariably part of the discussion. (See, for example, Jessica Guynn, “Mayer Feels Heat Over Telecommuting Ban”, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 February 2013.)

On the other hand are a smaller number of articles saying that this is really no big deal or is even a beneficial move. Typically these articles point on the importance of face-to-face contact and the serendipitous nature of innovative collaboration. Many point out that few telecommuters working in major corporations spend the majority of their time in the home offices, as most of the individuals supposedly being more efficient at home are contractors to companies rather than full employed with a single company. (See, for example, Margie Warrell, “Back into the Office! 3 Reasons Marissa Mayer Has Made A Smart Move”, Forbes, 27 February 2013.)

What few of these articles discuss is whether there is any real value for a company in having fully employed managers and staff operating in isolation for the majority of their working time. Of course, there are situations where working away from the office is necessary and efficient. There are distractions to be ignored when concentrated time is necessary to complete a project or task and being away from the office increases the costs to others from distracting you. However, the whole point of having individuals working together implies that there are compensating benefits to co-location. So what is the evidence?

First, it turns out that to get the benefit of working effectively with others you need to be quite close to them. For example, studies in laboratories and technology companies show that the probability of interaction drops to virtually zero at a distance of about 30 meters. In essence what this says is that if you are on the other side of a building floor or on another floor, the likelihood that you will interact someone in those locations is nil on any given day. Hence, one conclusion is that if I, as an employee, am unlikely to interact with these people why can I just not interact with them from home?

The answer is that organizations know this and structure interactions to counter this effect. As strange as it may seem, open plan offices and all those distractions telecommuters complain about are actually meant to counter this tyranny of organizational distance problem. While we might argue that email, video chats and other technologies also work to reduce this effect, they do not do so in anywhere near as effective a means. Hence, while it sounds “modern” to argue for workplace flexibility, the reality is that successful modern corporations are not just exploiters of knowledge but explorers and creators of knowledge. Such creation activities cannot and does not arise from individuals operating independently at a distance.

Second, telecommuting is little more than semi-outsourcing and hence the best value from removing employees from the corporate prison will arise with those individuals who are least effective or least necessary to increase the value of those around them. In other words, telecommuters may be very efficient at what they do – indeed, maybe more efficient than a cubicle bound drone. But what telecommuters are not good at doing is making OTHER people more efficient or innovative. Indeed, this is the logic behind outsourcing. If I can remove a “module” from my value chain of activities and contract it to someone who specializes in the tasks that make up that module and then do this in a market based transaction then it certainly makes sense to do so. I just plug the “output”of the outsourced module into my value chain and move on. Outsourcing also is enhanced when there is a clear measurable output and all I am concerned about is making sure that the output meets the quality, time and price specifications.

However, what I want to keep in-house are the synergistic interactions amongst employees that cannot be transacted in the market. Some of these relate to corporate culture and innovation but the underlying driver is that a group working together in proximity makes the parts better at doing the things that matter to the corporation in a way that cannot be achieved by aggregating up independent actors. Unfortunately, these effects are less predictable and harder to manage and, hence, the outputs cannot really be measured easily. This is why it is why managing the “inputs” are so important.

These points together highlight why being in proximity to your co-workers matters, particularly in knowledge intensive activities. The burden of proof of the value of an employee in this world is not that you are more efficient, but that your proximity to others makes them more efficient.

I close this by relating a recent interaction that I had with someone at an Australian university a few months ago when I visited to give a presentation. I noticed how few people were in their offices during second day of my visit. I said this to one of the senior administrators, to which their reaction was that most people find it easier to work at home. My reaction was why would you want to work at an institution where you believe that interacting with your colleagues was so negative to what you wanted to achieve that you actively avoided them?

View a video on this with  ABC Business Lateline.

If these strategies are important to performance, then it is necessary that the final and performance vectors relating them to individual actions by employees are critical.  Yet one hears anecdotal evidence that few employees really understand their firm’s strategy.  My colleagues Grahame Dowling and Pat Auger decided to investigate this more formally.  In particular, we were not only concerned about whether or not individuals recognized their own companies strategy when placed in comparison with competitors but whether there was a difference between the corporate strategy and the firm’s environmental sustainability strategy.  We were also interested in seeing if there were any systematic differences in which employees knew the strategy better.

In this investigation, we looked at employees in 20 major corporations in 5 industries in Australia.  All of these companies have clear competitors (they are basically oligopolies locally) and large market shares.  All of these companies have articulated and public strategies (which we confirmed with executives) and all have an environmental sustainability and social responsibility strategy and publish reports annually outlining the good that they do.  Individuals in the study were presented with six strategy statements and had to indicate which fit their firm plus their 3 major competitors.[1]  In addition, they repeated this exercise for the firms in an industry in which they did not compete (e.g., banking employees might see mining companies).  This exercise was done for both corporate strategy and environmental sustainability strategy.

What we found was rather depressing.  As individuals saw six different strategy statements they had a 16.67% chance of getting it right just by sheer luck.   As the table below reveals, this is approximately what is found when the individual is attempting to distinguish amongst different strategies from a random industry.

Yet overall, we find that only 29% – 30% of employees could correctly match their company to its publicly espoused strategy.  Or put more damagingly, 70% of employees could not identify their employers publicly presented corporate strategy when compared to its three major competitors.  When we look at the environmental strategy of the firm this is even worse, with individuals doing no better than random.

At one level this is a serious indictment on the importance of publicly stated strategies and their value as points of guidance for employees.  This is reinforced by the fact that the 20 companies examined all performed well, were leaders locally and/or globally, and had won many awards for things like environmental and social performance.  So what we are seeing is that even for the best firm’s the “vision thing” may not matter all that much.

In addition, it is quite depressing when one looks at whether or not employees know what the company is doing strategically.  As we noted, all of the companies studied had an environmental sustainability strategy and all of them published annual reports on this.  All of firms also had a stakeholder engagement strategy that they presented publicly on their websites.  Yet most employees had no clue either that these existed or what they were (as seen in the table below).

However, at another level we see some interesting differences (which we just summarize for simplicity) and opportunities for improvement.

• First, employees who can better distinguish other firm’s strategies are better at knowing their own firm’s strategy.  In other words, some employees do a better job at understanding the differences between their firm and competitors.  If you can identify your competitor’s strategies more readily you also seem to know your own.  These individuals are also better at being able to explain their company strategy in words to others.
• Second, middle managers are better at understanding the strategy than lower level staff or even senior executives.  This may be all that is necessary.  Lower level staff may simply need to understand their tasks and not why those tasks matter.  It may be delusional to believe that staff or line workers need to be cognizant about higher-level strategic issues to be effective (although this goes counter to those believing strongly in the value of “engagement”).
• Third, training matters.  Firms with more direct training of the strategies seem to do have employees who are better able to recognize what the firm views as its goals.  What seems to matter most is documentation.  What is potentially disheartening however is that no doubt most of these companies would argue that they are doing significant amounts of training on exactly these issues.
• Fourth, rewards matter.  This may appear to be a blinding glimpse of the obvious but when we queried individuals as to what determines their pay and what determines how well they do on their performance appraisal, items such as “meeting the organization’s sustainability goals” and “meeting the company’s social responsibility goals” come out dead last.  Hence it is no wonder that employees spend no time worrying about whether or not they know the company’s sustainability strategy.
• Fifth, some companies seem to be better at doing this than others.  While we choose not to identify the companies involved in this study it is clear that some firms possess employees who are better at articulating and recognizing their company’s strategies when compared to competitors in the same industry.  However, it is important to remember that (a) this does not necessarily seem to be related to performance per se and (b) even those that do better don’t do terribly well.

What are the implications of this?  Our initial reason for studying this issue was to ask the question of whether or not employees knew their firms sustainability strategy?  The answer is basically that they do not.  However, many of our colleagues felt that employees would not even know their firms corporate strategies.  Hence it was important to see if the lack of an understanding of the firm’s sustainability strategy was just part of a larger issue.  While it seems to be to some extent, the reality is that employees at all levels are more cognizant of the firm’s corporate strategy than its environmental strategy.  Indeed, most employees do no better than random in just recognizing their organization’s strategy when presented to them while they do much better than random (but still not great) in recognizing their corporate strategy.  This may imply that most firm’s environmental strategies are so loaded with general motherhood statements that there is not much that distinguishes them from the “feel good” reports of their competitors.  It may also be the case that managers view these activities and reports are more for external consumption and that they do not matter materially to what they as employees are doing.  Whatever the reason, it is clear that such reporting is not materially reaching the workforce.

April 2, 1942: Spring has finally arrived as life returns once more to the hectic pace that I am accustomed to. The winter was long and the snowfall heavy, all of which have combined to help bring about a healthy wheat crop this spring. The heavy work had started some three weeks ago as my eldest son, David, and myself began breaking up the frozen earth around the shoots of wheat to quicken the thaw and stimulate their growth. My son had already marked the fields for the sowing of the millet, which will commence in May, while Ni has begun plowing up the field with the oxen. I have spent most of the day checking the sweet potato store. Some have rotted, but many are in fine condition and should provide us with a more than adequate crop this October.
April 5, 1942: Both Ni and David are still working on the plowing and harrowing of the millet field. I have finished choosing the sweet potato seeds from the store and already have planted them in the wet sand. My brother, Dennis, came and aided me with the preparation of the vegetable garden, while his son went to help Ni and David. Tomorrow we must begin work on his fields.
May 3, 1942: We have finished the plowing of both my own and my brother’s fields and the time has arrived for the sowing of the millet. The manure has mixed well with the soil and the weather has been with us so far. I had more than enough seed for myself so I sold what remained to Ni for use in his mother’s fields. I may have been too lenient in giving it to him for two months wages. It was worth at least three and would have probably brought four on the open market. I have transferred the sweet potatoes to the vegetable garden and planted small patches of cabbage, maize, and other vegetables.
May 4, 1942:  My wife told me today that I am to be the father of another child. At another time or place I may have celebrated, but the fields are like concubines, always demanding more attention than one man has to give. Yet the news makes me happy and the work in the fields becomes easier as I think of  my new son.
May 12, 1942:  We finished sowing both fields yesterday, so I spent most of the day tending the wheat crop, which is shaping up fine. My son worked on the vegetable garden and checked on the condition of the millet field.
June 6 1942: We have begun the harvesting of the wheat crop. My brother’s crop is larger so we went to help him today. We worked long and hard but only managed to clear half of the field. I don’t think there is any thing more gratifying than working with one’s son and brother.
June 14, 1942: My son and I went to help Dennis with the plowing of his fields for the sweet potatoes. I brought my wife to help with the threshing of the wheat. I knew I was in for trouble. Within two minutes both of them were fighting like two addicts over one opium pipe. We finally had to let my wife do the threshing while Dennis’ prepared the sweet potatoes for planting. Even then they found reason to bicker when meeting.
June 25, 1942: Dennis’ field had been plowed and planted while mine was only half complete due to Ni’ s breaking of the plow. Both Dennis and me had beaten him and docked him one and a half months wages each. We had been unable to buy a plow but were promised one by late July, which was too late for my needs.
Dennis went to Master Yeh who consented to loan us a plow for two and a half silver dollars a month. Since the new plow plus the money paid to Yeh was more than we had docked Ni we decided to dock him an additional one and a half months apiece.
July 16, 1942: News reached the village that the Japanese were closing on the district capital, which was only some seventy-five li away. The traffic on the road to the capital has become thicker as civilians flee the Japanese. I discussed the situation with Dennis and we decided that there was little we could do since our livelihood was the land. We had to stay. We did decide that we should try and hoard as much surplus foodstuffs as possible in case the Japanese should reach as far as our village and damage the crops or land, or steal what we had on hand.
August 17, 1942: We have begun harvesting the millet. Since my crop ripened early, Dennis and his son aided us, so that by the end of the day a large portion of the crop had been harvested and my wife had begun cutting the stalks and threshing the grain. Dennis decided to leave his wife behind for the sake of peace, so the work proceeded with little trouble. I have always enjoyed Dennis’ company and working with him is almost like not working at all. Dennis brought out a point today that I had never even considered, even though it is highly possible. What if my w1fe does not give me another son? Can I force her to give me one? No. Can I do anyth1ng to assure that it will be a son? No. Then what can I do? wait.
August 29, 1942: We finished the harvesting of the millet two days ago and have begun prepar1ng the fields for the wheat. We dismissed Ni as our laborer after he broke the wheelbarrow.  We gave him a good thrashing and withheld the wages that he had made dur1ng the year. News reached us that the Japanese had reached the capital but that they had been unable to occupy it due to strong res1stence. Regina Yeh, Master Yeh’s daughter, reached the village from the capital last night. A strange quietness has descended over the village even though the number of troops and civilians flowing through 1s 1ncreas1ng daily.
September 13, 1942: Master Yeh has resigned his leadership of the v1llage to Jim Hua and has turned over the management of the temple to Ted Ho. The only reason I can see for this is so as not to put suspicion on himself when the Japanese reach the village. He has also gone to his tenants to extract what rent he can so as to build up his surplus of foodstuffs. Many of the peasants complain that their rent is not due, but what can
they really do, after all, it is his land. The Army, too, seems to want its share. Supposedly between the Army and Yeh many peasants have lost all of the millet that they had harvested. The army took only a quarter of my wheat and millet crop since more than half of it had been hidden. Yet what they did take could seriously hamper us this winter.
October 1, 1942: Dennis told me that Master Yeh has ask him to hold some silver for him for a period of time and that he would like to know if I would do the same. I asked why he didn’t come and ask me himself, and Dennis told me that he though it would be better if he had brought the message. Better for Yeh he means. I told Dennis to tell him I would think it over. What can I expect to get out of holding old Yeh’s money? Nothing. When the Japanese leave he will demand his money and that will be that. Yet he has done Dennis favors and he did lend me the plow when I needed it. I suppose there is no real harm in doing it. He is only looking out for his best interests, but don’t we all really.
October 3, 1942:  We have begun harvesting the sweet potato crop.  The winter wheat has already been sown and the rest is up to nature. I have hired Henry Chou to stay in the fields with my son and protect the crop.  Army officers have reportedly been scouting the area for conscriptees. Ni and Debbie Hua’s son have already been sent to the front. I fear it will not be long before the come for David.  Yeh may be grateful enough of Dennis and me to stop the conscription of our sons if we hold his money. We will see just how much Yeh values his money.
October 4, 1942: Dennis and I approached Yeh with our proposition. We will hold his money if he stops the conscription of our sons. He told us that under the circumstances it would be hard to do. We offered him an additional bushel of wheat and five bushels of millet. He said he would try. I guess the circumstances changed.
October 5, 1942: The Army officers responsible for the conscription of youths left the village today. Yeh brought his money and I buried it behind the house. We had already fallen behind with the work and w the weather was turning colder.
October 25, 1942: The work in the fields is just about complete. The Army has taken more than its share of our sweet potato crop since they were able to get here before we could hide the bulk of it. Yet it does not mean that much to me now. The fact that David is here, at least for the time being, and that the new child has almost arrived, supplies me with more than food could possibly. Although it was imminent for a long time, the fall of the district capital struck fear in the hearts of many of the villagers. Hua and Ho, the two that took over from Yeh, tried to resign but stayed because of pressure put on by Yeh. Once the sun lowered, life in the village became nonexistent except for travel through it on the road.
November 13, 1942: Tom Kuo, my cousin, arrived from a village about fifteen li to the south of the district capital that was threatened to be overrun by the Japanese. Since Kuo, a fairly poor peasant, had pro-communist leanings in the past, he though to be in his best interests to leave before the Japanese arrived, rather than take a chance on one of his enemies turning him in. My wife complained that with the Army taking everything we could not possibly support Kuo and our family too. But Kuo had brought a fair amount of foodstuffs  with him, so that dispensed with the problem of supporting him. After Kuo had settled himself and his stores were safely hidden with ours, he told us of what he had seen before reaching the village. He told us that any suspected communist was shot on the spot. Men that could work were sent to work as forced-labor for the Japanese. Very few people’s food stores managed to keep hidden from the Japanese, who tore everything up looking for food and valuables. Had he not left, he probably would be dead by now.
November 14, 1942: A son was born to me this morning, Yet I am very sad.  Kuo’s words stuck like thorns in my side. Had I saved David from the army to be shot in his own home or sent into forced-labor? I can hear my new son crying. Has he been born to die? Have we all?
December 1, 1942: The road has become heavily congested with troops retreating westward. The slowness of the trek gives it a semblance of order, yet there is none. Each man is on his own. Looting in the area has gone up as the troops scrounge for food as they flee. My son gave several wounded soldiers food and water. My wife wanted me to reprimand him, but I did not. They were not beggars, they were soldiers. Had it not been for my deal with Yeh, David might have been on the other end of the deal. I felt he was right. I saw a wounded soldier that looked like Ni standing by a well, but by the time I reached the well he had gone. As more and more soldiers pass through the village and into the setting sun, a deadly quietness slowly descends
on the village. I sat for a long time. No more soldiers came. The darkness crept in around me. I got up and walked home.
December 4, 1942: The road has been dead for four days now. No one comes, no one goes. The silence pervades everthing. Even the sounds of war have gone. What need is there for them. The Chinese leave, and the Japanese fill the vacuum. But what was taking them so long? Tom Kuo and my son departed today to join up with the Eighth Route Army. The decision was not mine, though I support it. At least they will have some control over living and dying. Fighting to stay alive seems better than dying without a fight.
December 5, 1942: The Japanese moved into the village today and began confiscating damn near every thing in sight. Susan Ni’s other son and Henry Chou were send to the rear as forced labor with another group of peasants. Fred Fei, partially out of spite, and to save his own skin told the Japanese commander that Dennis and me had money hidden. They tore Dennis’s house apart and beat him viciously when he denied the existence of the money. They probably would have beaten him to death had not one of the soldiers uncovered his hidden stores. Although not as great a prize as silver, it would do. However as punishment the sent his son to a forced-labor camp and made him watch while they raped his wife. By the time they reached my house their anger had calmed a great bit due to the loot they had accumulated on the way. They couldn’t let me get away unscathed, since there was a possibility that the money did indeed exist. After beating me and my wife up a bit, they settled for what was left of my winter stores.
December 6, 1942: The growing concentration of Japanese troops in the area made it difficult to reach Dennis’s house, but after being stopped and searched twice I made it. Dennis and his wife were in bad shape.
His beating was far worse than my own. From what I could tell they had broken his arm and nose, along with bruising him severely. His wife just sat staring at us like we didn’t exist.  Her face was heavily bruised and I had no idea what to do to comfort her.  I did what I could and left. I slipped into Yeh’s house to see what could be done for Dennis and his wife, but Yeh threatened to have me thrown out until I threatened to turn all of the money over to the Japanese. He told me what to do and  warned me never to come back  while the Japanese where in the village.
December 20, 1942:  I finally reached Dennis’s house with food. All my earlier attempts had been foiled by the Japanese, who seem  to be everywhere. However, now most of them had left except  for a small garrison of about fifty soldiers left to guard the crossroads outside the village. Dennis’s wife and I had to rebreak his leg before we could set it. I did what Yeh instructed me to do, and took my leave.
January 20, 1943: The Japanese garrison stationed here has almost become a part of the daily routine. Things have returned to as close to normal as can be expected given the circumstances. There are sporadic
rapes and lootings, and an occasional beating, but nothing on the scale of what occurred during the first month. Due to the earlier looting of food, many of the older people have already died of starvation and many of the children are close to death. Luckily my young son is still living. However, our stores are running low. Had David, Kuo, and Dennis’s son remained they would have been gone by now. I have rationed every meal trying to assure enough will remain for planting. I allow Dennis and my wife additional food due to their
circumstances, but his wife and I must live on a minimal amount of food.
February 12, 1943: I look to the East. Bitter winds from the North beat on the sides of the house. The door bursts open and I rush to close it as the snow crowds in. My new son cries. It is a happy sound. A sad sound. Will he get the chance to cry again. The days grow longer while daylight seems so long
and night an eternal darkness. As I look to the East the minutes of the day pass as though centuries through my mind.  My new son cries as the door bursts open yet again. I rush to close it.
March 1, 1943: Life in the village has become more active as those who can prepare for the comlng of Spring. As the weather warms the village takes on the semblence of times gone by. Mary Hao siezed a peasants land for the failure of payment of a year old debt. A peasant asks for money from Yeh so he can buy grain to plant, while another walks behind him. Yeh’s distillery opens for another year of operation. Yet every thing is not like before. Every action, every movement is under the scrutiny of a Japanese carbine.
March 21, 1943:  In the distance snow capped mountains dominate the horizon, while in the plain buds appear on many of the trees. Patches of snow can be seen on the fields, but the dominant feature is the small shoots of wheat sticking out of the frozen earth. The sun rises above the mountains. My young son cries. I leave to check the fields. Life must go on, even in Hell.

There are a number of other videos from the conference that may be of interest to scholars, students and others.  Below is a few of the other videos.

Keynote Address by Simon Zadek on “A Public Fiduciary”.  View Video [Approximately 45 minutes]

Plenary Executive Panel with Robert Eccles (HBS) on “CSR Measurement and Reporting”.  Participants: Jeremy Grist (Climate Change & Sustainability Services, Ernst&Young, South Africa), Renata Casaro (Corporate Vice President of Investor Relation, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, Germany) Paul Druckman (CEO, International Integrated Reporting Council, UK), Karenina Schröder (Berlin Civil Society Center, Germany), Susanne Stormer (Novo Nordisk, Denmark).  View Video [Approximately 90 minutes].

Plenary Executive Panel led by Michael Skapinger (FT).  Participants: Björn Stigson (Former President of the  World Business Council for SustainableDevelopment, WBCSD), Alan Aicken (Vice-President Supplier CSR Management, Huawei Technologies Co., Shenzhen, China), Gerhard Prätorius  (Head of CSR and Sustainability, Volkswagen Group, Germany), Simon Zadek (Founder of AccountAbility, UK).  View Video [Approximately 90 minutes].

Keynote Address by, and Lifetime Achievement Award to, Archie Carroll (with an introduction by Sandra Waddock).  View Video  [Approximately 90 minutes].

Plenary Panel on “Innovating for Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities Post Rio+20″.  Participants:Michael Skapinker (FT), Robert Eccles (HBS, USA), Katrin Muff (Dean, Lausanne Business School, Switzerland), Gerhard Prätorius (Head of CSR and Sustainability, Volkswagen Group, Germany),  Christian Seelos (Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, USA), Maurizio Zollo (Bocconi University, Italy).  View Video [Approximately 90 minutes].

Plenary Panel on ”Building a New Institutional Infrastructure for CSR”. Participants: Sandra Waddock (Boston College, USA), Edward Freeman (University of Virgina, USA), Dirk Matten (York University, Canada), Dima Jamali (American University of Beirut, Lebanon), Johanna Mair (Stanford University and Hertie School of Governance, USA/Germany), Sartini Wardiwiyono (University of Ahmad Dahlan, Indonesia).  View Video [Approximately 90 minutes].

There are also a series of shorter structured interviews with academic, business and societal leaders from prior conferences at: http://www.csr-hu-berlin.org/past-csr-conferences/2010-4th-csr-conference/retrospect/interviews/

Please feel free to use these videos or share them.  If you use them please just acknowledge the source.

MOOCs are potentially a revolution in teaching and learning.   Although distance learning has existed approximately a century and on-line learning for slightly more than a decade, the convergence of two phenomena imply that on-line courses will soon come to dominate university education.

First, technology has finally caught up with the ideal.  Having been involved in early on-line programs there were two factors that kept the beast from rising.  The first was the lack of a ubiquitous open technological platform.  Early attempts were almost always proprietary and highly limiting in terms of functionality.  Today’s technologies are modular and can be adapted to specific needs quickly and cheaply.  Building a MOOC is like building a shed.

Second, individuals have learned how to learn without direct instruction.  Indeed, the comfort level of generations that have grown up with technology and technology-based learning, simply find it natural to learn in a way that is different from what we normally associate with university learning.  Indeed, the Graduate Management Admissions Council surveys now find that on-line MBA courses dominate all other modes of delivery in terms of satisfaction.

In addition to the above there are just some basic economic issues that arise and make MOOCs a potentially dominant model.  First, they allow younger people to learn in a way they are comfortable learning.  If you live you life staring at your phone rather than paying attention to where you are walking then you are potentially open to the MOOC model.  Second, MOOCs reduce the major cost of learning – time.  The largest cost to students is not tuition but time: time travelling to school, time away from being gainfully employed, time away from home and family. MOOCs reduce the total cost of education by being flexible in terms of a personally valuable, and non-replaceable, asset.  The more valuable an individual’s time, the more valuable is a MOOC. Third, MOOCs free the student from the current mix of instructors.  Why should I not have the opportunity to be instructed in game theory by a leading scholar from Stanford or MIT?  Should I be constrained by the limitations of my local university?  MOOCs allow people access to the best brains and the best instructors, globally.

The Australian Business School Context

Australian business schools are the financial engines of nearly every Australian university.  Without their large volume of international students (more than 50% of all overseas students in Australia study business, while the comparable number in the US is slightly over 20%) and the full fees that that entails most Australian universities would find it difficult to operate many other key faculties.  In addition, business schools are relatively cheap to operate, as the teaching of most business courses does not require a great deal of technical training (which is why upwards of 50% of the student contact hours at many institutions will be with adjuncts and casuals).

This is potentially open MOOC territory, which is no doubt why they are perceived to be such a threat.  Business programs are replete with commoditised offerings with very large courses supplemented by armies of casual tutors.  However, this ‘threat’ creates two real opportunities.

First, Australian institutions are well positioned for the “massive” side of MOOC operations simply because most of our business faculties are massive (the median Australian business school has around 7,000 students in mostly 3 year programs; the largest of the US state schools would have about 3,000 students in their mainly 4 year programs).  I have always found it particularly interesting that despite this fact, few institutions have actively moved to virtualise what is effectively large-scale standardised instruction.  We continue to hold onto the belief that instruction requires ‘live’ instructors students can reach out and touch, while students view this as increasingly irrelevant.

Second, even if these courses were not virtualised by Australian institutions, others will virtualize them and make them available locally.  In the Australian case this is a real threat because there is no real need to ‘locally’ adapt the content given that 50%+ of Australian business school students are not locals to begin with.  Purchasing ‘imported’ MOOC content or creating it locally would allow Australian business faculties to downsize their human capital significantly.

I can immediately see the reactions of many to this last statement; i.e., I am advocating ‘downsizing’.  But it is necessary statement and one that is key to the value of MOOCs, particularly for Australian business schools.  As revealed by almost any measure, the quality of the scholarship emanating from Australian business schools is poor.  The average median Google Scholar citation per year of a business school academic is less than 2.  Based on Thomas-Reuters data, Australia is between 20% and 30% below world norms in terms of the impact of what is published.  While Australia boasts thousands of faculty in its business schools, the number possessing significant scholarly impact (i.e., citations) is less than 1% of the total.   The reality is that the vast majority of the human capital at our business schools is employed only to teach very basic commoditised content and is, unjustifiably, being forced to meet scholarly standards that are inappropriate for the logic of their employment.

For lack of a better way of characterising this, Australia is suffering from very significant intellectual diseconomies of scale when it comes to business scholarship.  A solution to this problem lies in the logic of the MOOCs: work to leverage the brightest minds and get them out to the largest number of people as quickly and as easily as possible.  Hence, what we should think about is more intellectual bang for the buck.  We have the scholars (that 1% I mentioned earlier) who can hold their own with leading scholars globally and would no doubt be in demand for their expertise.  What we should be doing is investing in releasing the power of those minds to students both locally and globally.  This would not only increase the efficiency of our universities but also increase the impact of our scholarship, as we would no longer be constrained by the volume driving hiring needs.

Ultimately, I believe this is the only reasonable course for a very simple reason: If Australian business schools do not embrace MOOCs it will simply be a matter of time before our competitors move into the space locally and at scale.  The marginal cost of Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech or Duke moving into our virtual space is nil and they will be impossible to dislodge once entrenched.  They bring to bear not just intellectual capital that we will be unable to match, but also the knowledge and scale against which second or third movers will simply not be able to compete.  Either we move or we will be marginalized.

In this project we have been systematically examining the social preference structures of large samples of citizens in Australia, the UK, the USA and Germany.  Our report[1] on Australia garnered significant press, particularly because it showed a dramatic decline in interest in environment related issues between 2007 and 2011.  However, this was not the original intent of the project, which was focused much more on examining the social, economic and political preferences of societies and those at the extremes in particular.

In delving deeper into this data one can see a very interesting set of differences between individuals.  Here we are focusing on those people with very low environment related preferences and those with quite significant environment related preferences.  These groups are important because, in many ways, these are the individuals who define the social debate on this topic.[2]  Hence, it is important to understand who they are in Australian society.

For simplicity in this article we concentrate only on the extremes (the general population being somewhere in between).  The “anti-environmentalists” are those that rate environmental issues as last across the dimensions of social, political and economic issues that we examined.  The “pro-environmentalists” are those that rate environmental issues as their top priority.  Table 1 gives a picture of how they compare in our national sample of 1,508 Australians of voting age.

Table 1: Pro- and Anti-Environmentalists in the Australian Population

We see immediately some interesting differences and similarities.  First, the two groups are approximately the same in terms of representation in the population.  The pro-environmentalists are, on average, older, moderately less wealthy, more educated, more likely to give to charities and significantly more likely to give to pro-environment groups.  What is interesting, however, is that their strong pro-environmental stance does not lead to overwhelming support for pro-environment civil society organisations.  Seventy-five percent of those with very strong pro-environmental preferences do not give anything at all to pro-environmental organisations.

Table 2 outlines the voting likelihood of pro- and anti-environmentalists.  This data is from the last Federal election.  To keep the interpretation simple we have shown these as the odds that someone would vote for one party over another given they were in the pro- or anti-environmental category.

Table 2: Pro- and Anti-Environmentalists in the Australian Population

Again, the results are interesting.  Being a radical pro-environmentalist implies that you are very unlikely to vote for a Liberal-National candidate and much more so for a Labor or a Green candidate.  However, it is not a natural assumption that a Green candidate would win out over a Labor candidate.  In addition, anti-environmentalists are nearly as likely to support a Labor candidate as they are to support a Liberal candidate.  Hence, while pro-environmental preferences are likely to imply a Liberal-National candidate is unlikely to be supported an anti-environmental preference is less informative except in implying that a Green candidate will not be supported.

Perhaps the most interest aspects of what we find in our results is the degree to which these individuals will trade-off their pro- or anti-environmental preferences against other issues of social, political and economic importance.  The table below shows the preference scores across 16 categories of issues.[3] One should interpret the scores on a 0-100 scale and as representing the percentage likelihood that the issue is salient to the individual.[4]

Table 3: The Social Preferences of Pro- and Anti-Environmentalists

Let’s first examine where there are no real differences – global security, global social and economic well-being, societal social and economic well-being, food & health, minority rights, rights to basic services, equality of opportunities, and animal welfare.  Indeed, what this starts implying is that in 10 of the 16 general social, political and economic categories of issues anti- and pro-environmentalists in Australia are not all that different.  Also, in the one case where a big difference arises – commercial rights – the general concern for this category of issues is small for everyone.  Hence all that is being seen is that pro-environmentalists are simply even less concerned with commercial issues.

The three areas where we see big differences are in the areas of crime and public safety (where pro-environmentalists show significantly less concern) and in individual economic well-being and civil and personal liberties. Most telling is that pro-environmentalists are willing to sacrifice civil and personal liberties significantly to achieve environmental outcomes. On the other side of the ledger, anti-environmentalists are much more likely to give up on environmental concerns to for improvement in factors that influence individual economic well-being, such as the daily cost of living.

What all of this implies is that our picture of the extremes of the environmental sustainability discussion is not quite so simple as it might otherwise seem.  The lunatics on the left are not so much different from the lunatics on the right. But there are differences.  These differences are most likely representative of very fundamental philosophical positions on two dimensions.  Firstly, to what degree are YOU willing to give up something YOU care about for an environmental outcome?  Second, to what extent do YOU believe that we need to constrain the rights of OTHER INDIVIDUALS to an environmental outcome whether or not they themselves want to be constrained in their choices?