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STUDY BRIEFS n MANAGING DYSFUNCTION No company can expect that all employees will be cooperative "team players." The key is to manage dysfunctional behavior effectively, according to a study by Michael Cole of Texas Christian University's Neeley School of Busi- ness in Fort Worth, Frank Walter of Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in The Netherlands, and Heinke Bruch of the University of St. Gal- len in Switzerland. Companies can try to prevent bad behaviors by communicating strong behavioral norms early on, proactively manag- ing team conflicts, and eliminating negative role models. The paper "The Affective Mechanisms Link- ing Dysfunctional Behavior to Performance in Work Teams" was published in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology. A Challenge to Bennis and O'Toole A recent study challenges some of the charges made in "How Business Schools Lost Their Way," the much-debated 2005 essay published in the Harvard Business Review, in which Warren Bennis and James O'Toole argued that business schools had become too focused on research at students' expense. In response, Peter Golder of New York University's Stern School of Business and Debanjan Mitra of the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business Administration in Gainesville decided to quan- tify the exact impact of academic n RETAIL DISPLAYS AND "SELF-VIEWS" A research team that studied the effects of ceiling height on people's creativity has now looked at the effects of display fixtures in retail environments. Joan Meyers-Levy of the University of Minnesota's Carl- son School of Management in Min- neapolis and Rui "Juliet" Zhu of the University of British Columbia's Sau- der School of Business in Vancouver found that a consumer's "self-view" can affect his or her perception of a retail display. A consumer who is team-oriented may view an object on a wood table as traditional; a consumer who is independent may view an object on a wood table as hip and modern. Retailers may be able to affect shoppers' perceptions of their products by putting up posters or messages that encourage shoppers to adopt an independent or inter- dependent self-view, the researchers suggest. "The Influence of Self-View on Context Effects: How Display research on multiple measures of business school performance. Golder and Mitra looked at data from 57 business schools over 18 years. They found that academic research has a positive impact on how recruiters, applicants, and other academics view business schools. Moreover, they found that 90 percent of that impact occurs within three to six years of the research's release. They also found that when a busi- ness school's research output increases by three single-authored articles per year, its student acceptance rate declines by 1 percent, indicating that it has become more selective. In addition, its graduates' average Fixtures Can Affect Product Evalua- tions" is forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research. n EPM IS UNDERUTILIZED The Cranfield School of Manage- ment in the U.K. has released its Global Enterprise Performance Management Study, sponsored by enterprise software company Oracle. The study surveyed managers at 600 companies in the United King- dom, United States, China, Japan, and Australia. It found that many global enterprises face challenges in three areas of EPM: evoking pas- sion among their senior managers to deliver EPM across the organization; creating an infrastructure for EPM; and establishing measures of success. starting salary increases by more than $750 and its ranking by peer academics moves up by one spot. These findings counter Bennis and O'Toole's opinion that stu- dents are shortchanged by business schools' focus on academic research, says Golder. "Academic research builds reputation in tangible and intangible ways, and we now have evidence to support the case." Golder and Mitra's paper "Does Academic Research Help or Hurt MBA Programs?" was published in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of Marketing. It is avail- able online at www.atypon-link. com/AMA/doi/abs/10.1509/ jmkg.72.5.31. n z BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 55 ANTENNA/GETTY IMAGES