Man on the Move

People who are asked about Richard Staelin, professor of marketing at Fuqua, have to pause and gather their thoughts. There is so much to say-about his research and his activities both inside and outside of Fuqua, about him as a person. Letters of support for Staelin's nomination as the 1995 AMA/Irwin Distinguished Marketing Educator Award (which he won), stress "risk-taker," "versatile" and "tenacious." Yet always mixed in are anecdotes about Staelin's great sense of humor, his generosity and integrity.

Tall and thin, with a white beard and broad smile, Staelin embodies the archetypal laid-back professor. Amid the ranks of dress slacks and wing-tips, Staelin favors shorts and sandals. Every horizontal space in his office, including the floor, is stacked with papers. When he's not teaching a class or buried in research, Staelin is often out running. But even there, his mind is turning over some aspect of marketing research. "When I'm running with friends, I'll often stop, pick up a stick and scratch something in the dirt to get a point across," Staelin says. "I love to play mind games."

Pioneering Research
Staelin came to Fuqua in 1982 from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was an associate dean and "one-half of the marketing faculty" and where he established a national reputation for himself as a top researcher. Within a year of his arrival at Fuqua, Staelin was named Edward and Rose Donnell Professor of Marketing. During the next decade, his reputation grew internationally. Fellow marketing scholars continue to be astounded by the number and variety of Staelin's research contributions as well as by the longevity of his research impact. He has published 44 journal articles, 15 conference proceedings, 11 book chapters, and a book covering each of the major sub-areas of marketing-behavioral, quantitative and managerial.

"Most people can't lay claim to even one area of expertise, but Rick has at least a half-dozen," says Tim McGuire, a former teaching associate of Staelin's and now Dean of the Lundquist College of Business. "He has pioneered whole new areas of investigation, leading to all sorts of further research."

A sampling of Staelin's research over the years illustrates his diverse interests. In the 1960s while pursuing his doctorate, Staelin helped analyze economic development strategies being developed for Pittsburgh's African-American community. One assumption at that time was that blacks would automatically shop at black-owned businesses. Staelin's research showed that while blacks were willing to support shop owners of their same race, they placed a higher priority on quality, convenience and a good price.

During the 1970s, as an associate professor at CMU, Staelin was called as an expert witness in an unfair competition case-and ended up being pitted against his own dean and two of his highly respected fellow professors. The case involved a privately owned car dealership that was suing the national manufacturer because of its direct ownership and operation of another dealership nearby. Staelin and his colleague McGuire were asked to show how the manufacturer might benefit unfairly from such an arrangement. Together, they developed the theory of "dual distribution." Basically, this observes that private retailers are not necessarily motivated to follow the sales strategies the manufacturer prefers. In this example, retailers wanted to charge a higher price and sell fewer cars, while the manufacturer favored a lower price and higher sales volume. Under a dual distribution system, the manufacturer can force the retailer to follow its preferred strategy. Staelin and McGuire's theory eventually spawned a whole new line of investigation into channels of distribution.

Staelin once served as a dissertation adviser to Julie Edell, now a marketing professor at Fuqua. At Fuqua, Edell and Staelin have collaborated on several research projects, most recently developing a set of guidelines by which policy makers can evaluate research. These guidelines are being distributed through the Marketing Research Institute to businesses, lobbyists and government officials. "A lot of special interests use marketing research to justify their beliefs, but many studies are not structured well," Staelin says. "We wanted to develop a checklist policy makers could use to determine how much weight to put in any research findings."

Currently, Staelin is teaming up with Fuqua Professor Bill Boulding to research how business managers make decisions. It is logical to assume that, given the same data, most managers would draw similar conclusions about a course of action. However, Staelin and Boulding have found that managers' prior decisions dramatically affect the way they look at data.

"Two managers with different 'priors' see the same data differently and reach different conclusions," Staelin explains. "It's a double whammy. Managers will look for evidence to confirm their prior views."

One-on-One Teaching
While Staelin is internationally renowned for his research, he is also regarded at Fuqua as a first-rate educator. Staelin teaches in the MBA, Ph.D. and Executive Education programs. One of his greatest strengths is in supervising doctoral students. Staelin has served on the dissertation committee of 34 Ph.D. students, chairing or co-chairing 19 of these committees. Many of his former students now teach at top-ranked business schools and are quick to sing his praises. "What distinguishes Rick is the unbelievable breadth and depth of his knowledge," says Kevin Keller, a former doctoral student at Fuqua and now associate professor at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business. "That is important in supervising doctoral students. Rick will go where you want him to-he doesn't try to narrow you down to his special interest."

Staelin says he prefers working one-on-one with students rather than standing before a classroom. "I'm not real good at following a set agenda," he confesses. "I never know beforehand what points I want to get across. I like to capture the time when a student is open and ready to receive a new idea."

Does the amount of time Staelin devotes to research detract from his teaching? "To me, it's not a question of research versus teaching, it's research and teaching," he says. "Our students are better off being taught by faculty who do research and have that deeper understanding. Academic research gives you a theoretical base to go into a new situation and understand the key to the problem."

Administrative Vision
Staelin's voluminous teaching and research contributions are all the more amazing considering that he has been an administrator for 20 of his 26 years in academia. He served five years as associate dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration at Carnegie Mellon and eight years as associate dean at Fuqua. One of Staelin's primary administrative responsibilities at Fuqua was the development of junior faculty. During his term as associate dean, 17 faculty were promoted under increasingly stringent review procedures.

From 1991 to 1993, Staelin was the executive director of the Marketing Science Institute. His work for the institute included formulating research priorities for the more than 60 member companies, designing research competitions, evaluating and guiding faculty research and helping disseminate new marketing knowledge. Staelin has served on the editorial boards of each of the four leading marketing journals in the nation-the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Behavior and Journal of Consumer Psychology. He is currently editor-in-chief of Marketing Science. Staelin has also made public service contributions both locally and nationally, serving on the boards of various nonprofit organizations in the Pittsburgh and Durham areas.

A little over two years ago, Staelin accepted an entirely new challenge-a leadership role in the development of Fuqua's Global Executive MBA (GEMBA^TM) program. "Rick led the design effort for this unique program," says Senior Associate Dean Wesley A. Magat. "He led the faculty team which developed the virtual classroom architecture and chose specific sites."

Together with Jim Sheegog, assistant dean of Global Programs, he marketed the program both top-down to CEOs and VPs and bottom-up to potential participants. "Rick doesn't want to leave any job before it's done," observes Magat, who says Staelin is now helping to build a new team for GEMBA II and to plan graduation for the first GEMBA class. "Rick was the guy who made GEMBA happen," says Associate Professor Robert F. Nau. "From the beginning, he's been part cheerleader, part marketer and part visionary."

Asked why he takes on so much, Staelin flashes his trademark smile. "You get a challenge and you go for it," he says. "In what other profession can you do exactly what you want to and get paid for it? My wife kids me about taking research papers on vacation, but to me, it's pure pleasure."