Kudos

A student-produced documentary on the Fort Worth jazz scene in the 1960s earned five recent RTVF graduates a bronze Telly Award. The film was produced by Paul Garza, Rose Maginot, Eugenia Redondo and Ryan Flanagan, and directed by Chelsea Nollner. More at www.tellyawards.com.

The TCU Drumline, under the direction of Brian West, won the prestigious PASIC (Percussive Arts Society International Convention) Marching Percussion Festival College Drumline Competition in November, which is equivalent to winning the "national championship" in the field of college marching percussion programs.

The Princeton Review named the Neeley School of Business as one of the top schools in the nation in the 2007 edition of the Best 282 Business Schools. Neeley ranked No. 9 in Best Campus Facilities.

Also, the Neeley School of Business is tops in Texas for the second straight year. That's according to The Wall Street Journal Guide to Top Business Schools. Neeley was ranked No. 11 out of 51 regional schools — ahead of the business schools at Texas, Rice, SMU and Texas A&M. The ranking is based on a survey of corporate MBA recruiters that assesses 21 attributes of a program, including its "personal ethics and integrity" and "analytical and problem-solving skills."

Harriet Cohen, TCU assistant professor of social work, is one of 12 geriatric social work professionals nationally to be named a 2006 Hartford Faculty Scholar. The distinction provides Cohen with benefits and guidance aimed to foster her professional development and $100,000 in funding over the next two years, which she will use to conduct research and attend professional conferences.

Research Notes

Flat sales

Differences in sales management practices between developed and undeveloped countries are narrowing, indicating that global account management, rather than country-based or region-based account management, is becoming crucial to the success of many companies.

A recent study by marketing professors David Cravens and George S. Low, along with Nigel F. Piercy of the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, supports author Thomas Friedman's assertion that globalization is flattening the economy. Although there were some variations between certain countries, the researchers found no major differences between developed and undeveloped nations. The study, which appears in the journal Organizational Dynamics, examined information provided by more than 1,000 field sales managers in Austria, Bahrain, Greece, India, Israel, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.

Directive leadership

The popular empowering style of leadership doesn't work well for new ventures, where decisions need to be made quickly, according to research by Keith Hmieleski, management assistant professor.
"Fast-moving environments demand fast decisions," said Hmieleski, who conducted the study with Michael D. Ensley of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. "Empowering management misses critical windows of opportunity."

The researchers surveyed 168 managers at 66 firms from the Inc. 500 list of America's fastest-growing startups and surveyed 417 top managers at 154 U.S. firms. Their findings, set to appear in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, suggest that directive leadership is the better style for a start-up venture.

A directive leader is one who can rapidly clarify what work needs to be done in the moment and by whom. Empowering leaders, who give employees room to think and behave independently, are often perceived as superior to directive leaders. But that style of leadership was shown to falter for new ventures.

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