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February 1, 2008

Four Faculty Members Named to Professorships

Four Wisconsin School of Business faculty members were recently awarded professorships for significant contributions to their fields of research by the University Of Wisconsin Board of Regents.

Mason Carpenter was named to the newly created M. Keith Weikel Professorship in Leadership. This chair was created to promote the study and teaching of leadership at the Wisconsin School of Business. Carpenter’s research concerns corporate governance, top management teams, the strategic management of global firms, and global start-ups, and has been published in Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Management, and Human Resource Management.

Larry Hunter was named the Pyle Bascom Professorship in Leadership. Hunter’s research focuses on the effects of firms' employment practices on both individuals and organizations, and how those practices are related to choices in technology, to business strategies, and to managerial decisions, and to the influence of consultants. In recognition of work early in his career, he was named Outstanding Young Scholar by the Labor and Employment Relations Association in 2001, and he has published many articles and book chapters in the field of human resources. This professorship has been funded by Thomas Pyle, past chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Ray-O-Vac Corporation, through an endowment to the UW Foundation.

Kenneth Kavajecz was named to the Wisconsin Alumni Professorship in Investments. His research focuses on the structure of financial markets with an emphasis on liquidity provision. His academic awards include the 2000 Financial Management Association best micro-structure paper and a nomination for the Smith Breeden Prize for the Best Paper in the Journal of Finance in 2005. He has also served as a member of the Economic Advisory Board for the National Association of Securities Dealers. This endowed fund was established in 2006 by an anonymous donor to provide professorship support to a faculty member in the Finance, Investment and Banking Department of the Wisconsin School of Business.

Alex Stajkovic was named the Procter & Gamble Bascom Professorship in Total Quality. Stajkovic’s research on determining the effectiveness of different incentive motivators (money, feedback, social recognition) at work, examining the interaction effect on performance between conscious and subconscious goals and also self-efficacy, and studying the role of core confidence in work performance, work happiness, and strategic leadership decision making has led to nominations for two field-wide research awards by Academy of Management and American Psychological Association. He is one of the most frequently cited scholars in the world among his career-age peers. As a result of the close relationship that has developed between Procter & Gamble and UW-Madison Wisconsin-Madison, engineering and business alumni and Procter & Gamble have established a fund that supports two Bascom Professorships, one in the College of Engineering and the other in the business school.