Western Business School - 100th Anniversary

WESTERN: BUSINESS SCHOOL
By Charles Davies

[This article was copied from an issue of the Toronto Board of Trade Journal held in the Business Library at the University of Western Ontario. The original article should be consulted since this copy may contain some errors. The text and/or the images are being made available to researchers for scholarly purposes. They should not be used for commercial gain without the permission of the author or publisher.]
Source: The Journal (known earlier as the Toronto Board of Trade Journal and later as the Metropolitan TorontoBusiness Journal), Vol.68, No.4, April 1978.,p28. The article was part of a special report on "Universities and Business" that described the 'wind of change' that was altering the anti-business atmosphere that existed on many campuses

Western University business school dean J.J. (Jack) Wettlaufer is proud of links forged with the business community.

The University of Western Ontario is celebrating its 100th anniversary. It's a time for flag waving on the London, Ontario, campus, for pleasurable formalities like granting a doctor of laws degree to governor-general Jules Leger and for honoring a man who graduated 72 years ago, 95-year-old author Ray Palmer Baker of Albany, New York. Reflecting on the university's beginnings in 1878, the London Free Press editorialized: "Western and London have come a long way since then. They have grown up together, complimenting each other."
The same thing could be said of the relationship between Western's School of Business and the business community. As Dean J.J. (Jack) Wettlaufer points out in 101 different ways, his school and business have grown together and complimented one another during the school's 50-year history, forging links that go far beyond the simple idea of returning funding support with ever growing crops of graduates.

Students and faculty gather on campus to celebrate 100th anniversary of University of Western Ontario

If the school provides capable managers, as it basically strives to do, then those managers have an impact on business and the economy. And the dynamic relationships in the economy that they help to create rebound through the corridors of the business school, making faculty undergo a constant reevaluation.
"I cannot remember a period in our history when the faculty have been more actively involved in the reexamination of all the programs offered here," Wettlaufer wrote in a recent edition of the school's magazine.
"We are presently engaged in a serious debate regarding the economic, social and political environment of business. The debate centers not on whether we should have a course but what should be taught and how it should be taught."
Not wholly because it seeks to be relevant, Western's Business School has found itself immensely popular with applicants at a time when university enrollments generally are starting to drop and government funding is being restricted. John Kennedy, chairman of the school's Research and Publications Committee, was one of 78 MBA graduates in 1961 but this year he says the total will be more like 225. In this same period, he adds, the faculty has risen from 15 to 70 to handle the load. In its golden anniversary year, the school will have more applicants than ever for its MBA, undergraduate, doctoral and continuing education programs.
Graduating students can take heart that, despite high unemployment, the corporate and government hiring representatives crowding the school's placement facilities will have jobs for practically all of them. Such is the school's reputation. Nevertheless, from the school's point of view, it's a case of manager manage thyself as the faculty works to provide a quality education for greater numbers with fewer readily available dollars.
For Wettlaufer, a lot of the pressure to adapt and change will soon be lifting' In June, he will retire as Dean after a 15-year tenure, a longer stint than any other current Canadian business school head. He plans a one-year sabbatical to study worker participation on boards of directors in Europe before returning to Western to teach his specialty, labor relations.
In Toronto recently for an Associates Research Day, an occasion when faculty members brief corporate supporters on the research work in progress, he emphasized the importance of a business education in the context of a viable business sector. "At this particular stage in Canada's development, the thing we really need is initiative," he said. "Society recognizes that the engine of change has essentially been the private sector but, if they smother it or starve it, that engine won't perform."
A burly dynamo of a man, he knows where he stands. But having established the importance of the private sector and the fact that 80 per cent of Western's graduates end up there, he also says the school is moving in new directions. In the next five years, there will be improved training for managers of educational institutions and civil servants. "I think we will try to be more helpful in the business government area," he says. "Each misunderstands the role of the other in the total of society."
The school has already begun a Senior University Administrators Course (SUAC) under the sponsorship of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the Canadian Association of University Business Officers, Funding support comes from the, Kellogg Foundation and the Richard and Jean Ivey Fund. A "Business and Government" course has started as well,
accompanied by new courses in the economic environments of business, industrial relations and marketing and public policy.

These and other changes are largely due to shifting conditions in the world outside but they also reflect changes in the student body at the business school. The age and experience difference between undergraduates and MBA students has shriveled, Wettlaufer says. And, like Kennedy, he notes the academic backgrounds and work experience of all incoming students is broader than ever before.
Wettlaufer credits Western with placing more importance on the business school than would be the case in most other Canadian universities but that doesn't mean monetary pressures are completely alleviated. "As we look ahead, universities are going to be in a bind over finances," he says. "There's tremendous pressure on enrollments in the business school and declines in other faculties. Since budgets are for manpower in the faculty (the number of teachers as opposed to the number of students) it's difficult to make adjustments."
There's also the need to do research and, in addition to the demands it makes On faculty in time and effort, it costs a great deal of money.
In terms of overall government funding, there isn't too much the school can do. But on the research front, one has to look no farther than the Associates Research Day exercise to see how the school has developed a natural connection with the business world in order to cover some of its costs.
These days, held each year in Toronto and Montreal, update the Western Associate Companies that fund research under a five-year scheme called the Plan for Excellence. The Plan, supported by 130 companies including heavyweights like IBM Canada Ltd. and Bell Canada, provides roughly $2 million over a five-year cycle for case study research, publications, MBA scholarships and Ph.D. scholarships. Now slightly over a year into its second cycle, the plan has backed more than 90 working papers in the research area alone, covering such diverse topics as profitability in advertising intensive firms and the effects of lengthy strikes.
A sampling of the briefs delivered at the Toronto Associates Day indicates the wide variety of work going on. Associate company representatives were able to hear of recent studies in manufacturing capacity management, the administrative side of research and development and a framework for changes in the Canadian securities market.
Wettlaufer says the school plans to develop a program of research chairs to give faculty the funds and freedom from teaching burdens to do more exhaustive research. Yet he knows it is a delicate business, particularly when you are asking the private sector to supply funds. "The difficulty is matching up what corporations see as useful with an individual faculty member's interest and needs," he says. "You can't be an ivory tower professor."
The links to the business community do not end here, however. In the past several years, Western students have done consulting studies for approximately 400 companies. The school's "Small Business Consulting Program" is now a fixture, providing first and second year students with work in "real" business situations. This has led to the establishment of a "Business Management Assistance Program" for native people in the Northwest Territories co-ordinated by Western's faculty with funding support from Canadian Arctic Gas Study, Gulf Oil Canada Ltd., Imperial Oil Ltd. and Shell Canada Ltd.
Other initiatives include a program that will take place this May to develop management with a consortium of public and private Brazilian companies. The school also cooperates with the Center for International Business Studies funded by the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce.
Ties to business are also present through the summer refresher programs that many executives take but there are contacts on a more casual level. Western Business Clubs, regular gatherings of graduates, are already established in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver and plans are underway for clubs in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton and London.
This brings you to the most pervasive tie the school has with business: graduates who have taken their places in the private sector across Canada and around the world. BA graduates have been coming in a growing stream since the early 1940s while MBAs and Management Training Course graduates have been coming since the late 1940s. Graduates with PhDs have emerged since the doctoral program began in 1960.
Of the long list of graduates, many have made a significant mark. Former Board of Trade president and Simpsons Ltd. president E.G. (Ted) Burton was a graduate of the Management Training Program in 1966. John Stoik, president of Gulf Oil Canada, completed the same program in 1963. David Nichol, Loblaws Ltd.'s president, received his BA from the school in 1962. The list goes on and on.
Off the top of his head, Wettlaufer notes that senior bankers like Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce chairman Russell Harrison are Management Training graduates while others like Canadian Tire Corp. president Dean Muncaster have Western BAs. He also says he cannot think of a single Canadian business school that does not have a Western graduate on its faculty. In fact, the business school deans at the universities of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Queens were all trained at Western. "Our influence," he says, "has been pervasive."

Western Professors Findings
Business Has Pivotal Role in Society

Western professor Alexander Mikalachki received P.S. Ross Award for research paper on attitudes toward business.

Business people were hardly surprised by writer Douglas Glynn's 1976 Journal article "Youth and the Image of Business" which revealed nearly one half of a survey group of 1,200 Canadians thought business takes advantage of consumers. Nor were they much shocked by a Quest Magazine survey a year later showing only three per cent of a sample group who were willing to put any faith in business executives.
But if the business community has become increasingly aware that it has an image problem, it is not quite sure how or why it develops and what it can do about it. There are some clues however and that is what Alexander and Dorothy Mikalachki's recently completed research study "Youth's Attitudes Towards Business" was all about.
Mikalachki, a professor at the University of Western Ontario's School of Business, and his wife worked from the assumption that "no one seems to know when the seed was planted or how long it took to germinate."
With funding from Imasco Ltd. through the school's Plan for Excellence, the Mikalachkis and a research team interviewed 560 students in primary and secondary schools ranging from kindergarten age through Grade 13. Their questions, although constantly re-adapted and honed as they went along, focused on the attitudes students have about business, the age at which positive or negative attitudes first develop and, importantly, the origin of these attitudes.
As Professor Mikalachki told the school's Associates Research Day in Toronto, the broad findings were a bit surprising in view of the negative impressions previous researchers have gained. "Overall, the positive attitudes towards business outweighed negative ones three to one," he said.
He told the seminar the questionnaire results showed that the generally "benign" attitudes of young schoolchildren often give way to neutral feelings in the late primary grades and then become negative in many cases through high school.
As the study put it: "By grades seven and eight, students have become more aware of the larger world they live in, complete with all its problems. There is an incipient awareness of a cause and effect relationship regarding problems and issues; however they do not focus on any one group or institution as being part of the problem."
"It is in high school students become more knowledgeable and eloquent about issues large and small. Part of their knowledge comes from what they are learning in school and part comes from their own personal experiences."
The study singled out family experiences and the student's own personal experiences as the two most important factors in the formation of attitudes. In addition to these "direct" influences though, it mentioned the "indirect" effect of school and the media where a student is "reacting to what a teacher, or books or whatever have to say about issues."
The study also revealed great misconceptions about business, ranging from the impression in lower grades that business people are just well dressed people who push paper around in isolation to the feeling in higher grades that businessmen are excessively greedy and that corporate profits are much greater than they really are.
For business people interested in changing negative opinions, the study cautions that "once an attitude is formed, it is most difficult to change . . . Through the process of selective perception, the individual only takes in the information which reinforces the existing attitude." This means a media campaign to alter public perception about a company or industry could well produce negative rather than positive benefits. The other consequences could be that many listeners or readers will be indifferent while others will already have been converted.
"If the mass media are used, a campaign should deal with specific information to alter a belief, rather than with general statements," the study says.
The Mikalachki's study also argues that teachers and journalists should be thoroughly trained in economics and finance so that they can do a professional job of imparting an objective view of business to students and people in general.
"The centrality of business to our economic survival requires that it be no longer subjected to cheap shots and dilettante reporting," Mikalachki said.
But by coming down as it did in favor of personal experience as the most important determinant of attitudes towards business, the study in effect threw out a challenge to business employers. "Where work is organized to provide opportunities for achievement, advancement, participation and responsibility, the results are high productivity and positive attitudes towards the organization," it said. No matter bow well run or well-meaning any business is, that is a difficult target to hit.
The stakes though, are too high to permit extreme hostility towards business. By the very fact that people largely see business as a source of employment, and hence a way to satisfy a great many of their needs, the study argues business has a pivotal role in society. If that role is undermined, it suggests, we all suffer.