In Support of Business Leaders as Deans.

Having a business person as Dean brings a number of benefits to the School of Business. Most importantly, it helps the school respond to the changing environment of business education—an environment of increased competition, declining resources, and increased expectations from internal and external constituents. The business-person dean is able to apply lessons from business leadership, in which the dean faced similar challenges, to lead the school in effective new directions. These new directions include a professionalization of staff efforts, especially communications and financial management; new efforts to attract support for the school, using the leverage of the dean's, and therefore the school's, increased credibility in the business community, and a renewed focus on issues of concern to the school's internal and external constituents, including a better balance between research and teaching, and a more relevant and better-communicated research agenda.