Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/373915
28 September/October 2014 BizEd E ight years ago, Tatiana Andre- eva went from being a business consultant and part-time teacher at SPbU to becoming a full-time professor. Once she joined the uni- versity full-time, the school asked her to give up consulting to focus on conducting research and teach- ing her courses in organizational behavior, knowledge management, and cross-cultural management. Her appointment was part of a program to attract practitio- ners with research-based doctoral degrees back to academia, as the school adopted a more research- focused strategy. But Andreeva soon found that her students most appre- ciated that she could bring her prac- tical experiences into her lectures. This has led to a tension that she still struggles to resolve. "On the one hand, I know I must pub- lish research. But on the other, my students think research is too theo- retical. They want me to tell them about real-life business," she says. "My challenge is finding ways to balance the two." She now brings guest speakers into her classroom to keep her courses' connection to real-business fresh, but that comes with its own concerns. "The best guest speakers come from my personal network, because I can explain to them what I need and even help them plan their presentation slides. But that resource is not eternal—I can- not invite the same people over and over again." Andreeva seeks out other guest speakers through her school's career services office, but admits that she often is not in a position to ask executives she does not know personally to align their presentations with course objectives. Andreeva would like to work with corporations more often in her research, but in Russia, that, too, is a challenge. "Many of my international colleagues do this, but Russian businesses are suspi- cious of business research or view it as irrelevant. Even our own corporate partners are not willing to engage in our research proj- ects," says Andreeva. She recalls one project in which a company agreed to allow faculty to interview employees for a study. It was a her- culean task to negotiate the deal. "Once, when I was consulting for a Russian company, I found its employees were unmotivated because they had no clue of the company's strategy. When I asked managers why they didn't share their strategy with employees, they told me that if they shared too much, their competitors would find out their plans," Andreeva says. "That mindset goes back to the Soviet era, but it's still an issue in Russian organizations today." Her school has since lifted its restrictions on consulting, but Andreeva now doesn't have the time to take on extra work because of her academic responsibilities. She is delighted when her stu- dents tell her that something they learned in her class helped them solve problems on the job. She also appreciates the opportunities she has to engage her curiosity, such as her current research project on col- laboration and knowledge sharing among secondary school teachers. "Teachers can be lone wolves, especially in Russia. If we want to improve the quality of educa- tion, we must improve collabora- tion among teachers," Andreeva says. "I am passionate about this project, because of its potential to contribute not only to management theory, but also to the wider com- munity. Sharing among secondary school teachers is not a common subject of management research. If there is a challenging question like this with no clear answer, I love that I can help answer it." The Consultant-Turned-Professor Tatiana Andreeva is an associate professor in organizational behavior and human resource management at the Graduate School of Management at St. Petersburg University (SPbU) in Russia. "My students think research is too theoretical. They want me to tell them about real-life business. My challenge is finding ways to balance the two."