Thriving in crisis

trevor.kenney — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 22:14:36 +0000

How well do you perform in a crisis? Everyone’s response to stress is different, and therefore, outcomes in crisis situations are often different too, depending on who’s making the decisions and what their temperaments might be.

Imagine for a moment that the crisis you’re facing is corporate – that you’re a top executive in a large foreign company, and business has taken an unexpected turn. How will you handle it? How will your team handle it? There are many people involved, many factors at play, and the choices that get made will have lingering effects on the bottom line. How well, in fact, do companies navigate uncharted territory? And if mistakes are made, how well do they learn from them?

Dr. YJ Bao studies how foreign businesses function during tough times.

These are questions that Dr. YJ Bao has been asking for the last 16 years. Bao is an associate professor in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Faculty of Management. He earned his PhD in public policy and MPA from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Southern California in Los Angeles, and bachelor degree of law from Fudan ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in Shanghai.

Bao’s interest in the cognitive side of management – how managers think, react, and make decisions, lead him to conduct research in the areas of TMT decision making, corporate entrepreneurship, rare event learning, tacit knowledge transfer, and trust and justice factors in team performance. Most recently, Bao and his colleagues have turned their research toward the area of crisis management – decision making under extreme conditions – with a specialization in Chinese corporations.

“We chose to study Chinese businesses mostly to differentiate our work,” says Bao. “I was born in China and studied there, and still have good access to companies across the country. The samples we gather are unique and the findings are unique also, so our research offers something of value in a comparative sense.”

Bao began to get interested in extreme cases after observing many companies in the midst of crisis. In fact, based on what he’s seen, Bao says that operating under crisis conditions is actually the norm for companies of all sizes – far more so than the picture perfect scenario of smooth day-to-day business.

“That’s the romantic, fairytale notion of how business works,” says Bao of the phenomenon. “The truth is all business interactions have some element of surprise that need to be handled. Companies have to improvise. They have to make decisions on the spot. It happens every day – that’s the reality of crisis. The problem with most businesses is that they treat crisis as an abnormal state, when it’s actually the opposite. When business people adjust their emotional response to crisis you start to see interesting and creative solutions happening.”

Bao’s findings in the field of crisis management have been published in a variety of academic journals, including the Journal of Management, World Business and International Business Review. He’s published six books on the subject, and also writes weekly columns for four Chinese newspapers and Chinese on-line media. Dr. Bao's new book, Strategy in Peripheral Visioning, will be published by December 2016.

“Every company wants to perform,” says Bao. “But successful business performance is based on a pattern of relating – how people interact in any given situation. In crisis, the variables for relating are heightened, so it’s a very intense example of learning and the outcomes based on the variables highlight were improvements can be made.”

Kanewischer recognized as 2016 Calgary Campus Instructor of the Year

trevor.kenney — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 16:05:53 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Calgary Campus is excited to announce the recipient of the 2016 Instructor of the Year - Blake Kanewischer (BMgt ’06).

Kanewischer has been an instructor on the Calgary Campus since 2011, teaching Information Systems Management, but that’s not where his U of L story begins. In 2001, Kanewischer, a working, mature student, attended the Calgary Campus and earned his bachelor of management in 2006.

Blake Kanewischer has been an instructor on the Calgary Campus since 2011, teaching Information Systems Management.

“I attended the U of L Calgary Campus because I could work and attend school. The instructors were good, Lorne Williams, Kelly Williams-Whitt, YJ Bao, Terry Prociuk, and so many more knocked it out of the park when it came to teaching.”

In addition to his BMgt degree, Kanewischer also holds a computer science diploma from Medicine Hat College, an applied technology degree from NAIT, a general studies degree from Athabasca ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and an MBA from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary. He has many certifications as well, including: Project Management Professional, Information Systems Professional and Information Technology Certified Professional, to name a few.

His entry into becoming an instructor would come in the final semester of his MBA program where Kanewischer thought he’d be a great mentor on the Calgary Campus.

“I went down to Lorne Williams’s office, the Calgary Campus director at the time, and said, I’m here, I can be a mentor. However, Lorne saw more in me and asked if I had ever thought about teaching. So, I sent in my resume and that following Monday and I was asked to teach in the fall. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I survived, and I learned a thing or two along the way. Before I knew it, Lorne asked if I could come back to teach again in January.”

Williams had taught Kanewischer in three of his classes and saw his capabilities.

“Blake distinguished himself in his undergrad program,” says Williams, now the assistant dean, northern campuses. “In the first classroom we shared, he submitted a paper that drew the attention of faculty members on the main campus and academic colleagues from the United States. There was obviously a lot of potential there.”

Now, beginning his fifth year with the Calgary Campus as a sessional instructor, Kanewischer is flipping the classroom.

“I worked for 17 years as a systems analyst for the City of Calgary and the private sector. Now I can take that experience and add value to the classroom and add real life to the textbook,” he says. “I know what it’s like to be a mature student and working. By the start of class at 6 p.m., most students have already worked a long day. Who wants to listen to me talk for three hours? I don’t! That’s why I experiment in my teaching by pre-recording lectures, having blogs and emphasizing collaborative learning.”

Collaborative learning is key in Kanewischer’s classroom.

“In information systems, students can’t see that there’s this big iceberg chunk under the water. We only see the little bit of the iceberg that’s above the water. My job is to help show what’s beneath the surface. But the info systems industry changes so constantly that even students bring new things to the table that I can learn from. They learn from each other, they learn from me, we learn together.”

UNews - YJ Bao

Thriving in crisis

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Kanewischer recognized as 2016 Calgary Campus Instructor of the Year

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