Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58910
"THERE WAS A HUGE DEMONSTRATION OF PHYSICAL AND MORAL COURAGE AS A RESULT OF THE ATTACKS ON 9/11, WHICH INSPIRED PEOPLE IN SO MANY WAYS. IT RENEWED MY SENSE OF THE IMPORTANCE OF STUDYING COURAGE IN THE WORKPLACE." —Monica Worline, Emory's Goizueta Business School result of technological facilitation. In the 1970s, according to Kim, faculty were more productive when surrounded by other top-notch faculty at an elite university. He notes that this effect weakened in the 1980s and disappeared in the 1990s, as technology changed the way professors could communicate. "As a result," Kim says, "there has been a substantial increase in co- authorship between scholars at elite and other universities." Another result of this trend, according to Kim, is that an increase in campus-to-campus co-authorship reduces the importance of personal interaction with colleagues on site. Thus, he says, "one traditional advantage of elite universities—to act as a focal point attracting the smartest faculty—is at risk." UPCOMING & ONGOING n STEP UP FOR FAMILY BIZ The Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices (STEP) Project for Family Enterprising, based at Babson College in Welles- ley, Massachusetts, has launched the STEP Project in Latin America. The STEP Project is a research partnership that explores how fami- Courage at Work Everyone loves a hero, the one who displays tremendous courage in the face of incredible odds to accom- plish unbelievable feats, says Monica Worline, an assistant professor of organization and management at Emory Univer- sity's Goizueta Business School in Atlanta, Georgia. But in the work- place, she argues, actions don't have to be grand to be courageous. She asserts that employees who display small acts of courage—from refusing to commit an unethical act to admit- ting to a mistake—can be among a company's greatest assets. Worline's study of courage in the workplace began with her doctoral research at the University of Michi- lies grow and create wealth across generations. Recent STEP stud- ies, for example, show that families control between 60 percent and 90 percent of business in nearly every nation. The Latin America STEP Project joins similar efforts in Europe, North America, and the Pacific Rim. n NEW JOURNAL ON CUBA The Center for Cuban Studies at Ohio Northern University has cre- ated the Journal of Cuban Busi- ness Studies. Designed to represent wide-ranging views on Cuba and Cuban-American relations, the bian- nual electronic journal invites articles on economic, political, and social issues in contemporary Cuba. The publication is currently accepting submissions for its first issue, to be published in June 2007. Monica Worline gan. For her dissertation, Worline interviewed 650 people who worked in the tech industry, asking each if they had ever seen an instance of courage in their workplaces. Her dissertation took an unex- pected turn on September 11, 2001. "There was a huge demonstration of physical and moral courage as a result of the attacks on 9/11, which inspired people in so many ways," says Worline. "It renewed my sense of the importance of studying cour- age in the workplace." She and fellow doctoral student Ryan Quinn became especially inter- ested in United Flight 93, the only one of four hijacked flights where passengers organized to fight their attackers. Worline and Quinn studied all information in the public domain regarding the crash, including media coverage, books, data from the flight recorder, the 9/11 Commission Report, documents from the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, and studies from the crash site. Their findings are outlined in the paper, "Capa- bilities for Courage: The Story of United Airlines Flight 93." The authors found that several factors had to be in place to inspire the passengers to act. Passengers needed to be able to gather informa- tion, via cell phone calls, about their situation; they needed to contact loved ones for support; many pas- sengers drew on their religious faiths for strength; they needed to gain permission from other passengers to act; they needed to find weapons, such as food carts and pots of boil- ing water; finally, and perhaps most important, they needed time to achieve the first five objectives. Worline admits that Flight 93 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006 53