Ian McCarthy gave a seminar at LUISS Guido Carli University on being a business school professor. He discussed the challenges of balancing research, teaching, and service requirements while pursuing tenure. McCarthy emphasized the importance of having a clear "why" behind one's work to stay motivated. He advised professors to take small steps towards goals, manage their time well, and prioritize health to have long, productive careers. McCarthy also shared his experience using social media to enhance his research and reputation.

1. BEING A BUSINESS
SCHOOL PROFESSOR
Seminar at LUISS Guido Carli University
24h April 2018
Ian P. McCarthy
Email: ian_mccarthy@sfu.ca
Twitter: @Toffemen68
Blog: http://itdependsblog.blogspot.com/

2. CHALLENGES IN ACADEMIC CAREERS
• The answer to all of the this is: it depends!
– The extent to which you are driven by and must balance “why”
versus “what”
– What your “why” is? What your school’s “why”?
Getting a job
Getting tenure
Getting promoted
Being happy (successful and fulfilled)
Being healthy

3. EXERCISE
• Ten years from now the
Economist magazine is writing
an article about how great you
are a professor you are and
your journey from doing a
PhD/post doc at LUISS.
– What does the article say
you have become?
– What makes you successful
and great?
The Super
Business
Professor

4. ARE YOU DRIVEN BY “WHAT” OR BY “WHY”?
Academics driven by “what” Academics driven by “why”
● What do you do? We publish
research in top tier journals in our
field.
● How do you do this? We read
research in top tier journals in the
field to identify problems and
projects to work on. We network and
form collaborations with scholars
who publish in top tier journals in
the field so as to design and deliver
publishable studies.
● Why do you this? To get tenure,
promotion, salary increases and
better positions at better
universities.
● Why do you this? To inspire and
enable a better world through
scholarship in our field.
● How do you do this? Engage with
those who experience and know the
issues. Work with them to jointly
define the problem, build the theory,
design the research, and disseminate
and adopt the findings.
● What do you do? Produce relevant,
truthful and insightful knowledge
that positively impacts the world
Source: http://itdependsblog.blogspot.ca
Twitter: @toffemen68

5. MANAGE YOUR HALO

6. IT TAKES TIME TO BE SUPERMAN OR SUPERWOMAN
• Have “why” driven goals, but understand the institutional game.
– Have a personal mission statement: “Through research and
teaching I aim to ……….”
• Take small steps and achieve small successes.
• Figure out what matters for where you are, and where you want to
be.
– Figure out “why” you want to be there.
• Figure out what doesn’t matter.

7. HEROES AND MENTORS
• Heroes inspire you.
– They are linked to your “why”
– You may not know them
• Mentors advise you.
– You know them.
– They are wise and realistic about the
game.
– Seek one or more out. Take them for
lunch or coffee 3 or 4 times a year.
Have an agenda. Make sure you are
getting value from the advise.

8. LOOK AFTER YOUR HEALTH
• How can being a professor be bad for your health?
– Writing is lonely.
– Writing is hard on the mind body.
– It takes a long time to produce things.
– Tenure is stressful
• You will be less productive and creative when fatigued
– Take breaks. Stretch. Move. Engage. Rest and replenish your
mind and body.

9. MY COUNTDOWN TIMER

10. How much does it cost ($/€)
to write a paper in a top tier
journal?

11. GEORGE COSTANZA – DO THE OPPOSITE

12. THE FLIP-FLOP METHOD
• Goal: instead of trying to respond to a challenge,
consider what you would do to be terrible at it and
fail.
• Why do this?
– It can reveal that aspects of the current
organizational context and practices that may
actually be great at stifling the challenge.
– Simply doing the opposite of these stifling
practices can then be basis to achieve the
challenge.

13. THE FLIP-FLOP METHOD - EXAMPLE
• Challenge: How to be a successful and happy
business professor?
• Inverted Challenge: How to be an unsuccessful
and unhappy business professor?
• It is interesting, and often shocking, to realize how
much of what we actually do serves the inverted
challenge.

14. HOW TO BE AN UNSUCCESSFUL AND UNHAPPY
BUSINESS PROFESSOR?
• Try to be so different and novel so that no one understands or cares
about your research.
• Be the prima donna lone star and don’t work with others.
• Don’t plan and block time for different activities.
– Don’t seek and be distracted by others (i.e., avoid feedback).
– Don’t interact with the people, organizations and communities
that are the basis of your research.
• Don’t care about the impact of your research..
• Expect results and success after 20 weeks or after 20 years.
• Stick to one very narrow area of your field for ever.

15. HOW TO BE AN UNSUCCESSFUL AND UNHAPPY
BUSINESS PROFESSOR?
• Listen as if you are always correct.
• Silence is ignorance.
• Don’t care about teaching and students.
• Don’t care about service and collegiality.
• Say “yes” to every project and opportunity.
• Frame yourself differently to fit with and attain different
opportunities.
• Don’t practice what you research and teach.
– For example, don’t study, understand and improve how you
work.

16. TEACHING AND STUDENTS MATTER

17. WRITING IS A PROCESS
Inventing
InventingDrafting
Drafting
Revising
Revising
• Inventing = free writing, brain storming, thinking, problem solving
• Drafting = forward momentum, rhetorical situation
• Revising = structure, diction, sentences, grammar, occasion, audience
Unproductive writing Productive writing

18. WRITING: SPACE AND TIME
• Where and when do you write best?
• Why this space and time?
• A space and a time help provide a
routine, which help make writing
become a habit.
• Don't just plan to write—write
• Turn spell checker off when drafting
• No tweeting, emails, internet, for
forty minute chunks
• Stretch between chunks, then stop
and reward myself after four chunks.

19. JOHN STEINBECK (PARIS REVIEW, 1973)
• Abandon the idea that you are ever going to
finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write
just one page for each day, it helps. Then
when it gets finished, you are always
surprised.
• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and
throw the whole thing on paper. Never
correct or rewrite until the whole thing is
down. Rewrite in process is usually found to
be an excuse for not going on. It also
interferes with flow and rhythm which can
only come from a kind of unconscious
association with the material.

20. WHAT WILL CHANGE FOR YOU?
• I started my first faculty position in 1996, since then we have:
– Journal Citation Reports (impact factors) 1997
– Google launched in 1998
– LinkedIn launched in 2003
– Google Scholar launched in 2004
– Facebook launched in 2004
– Twitter launched in 2006
– The ABS Journal Quality Guide begins in 2007
– ResearchGate launched in 2008
– Mendley was released in 2008
– Altmetrics began in 2010
• Most of these now influence how my work (what I do, how I
disseminate what I do, and how I’m measured).

21. MY APPROACH TO SOCIAL MEDIA
• What, when and why I started.
• Why I persist and my approach.
• Progress
• Lessons and some cautions

22. THE WHAT AND WHEN
• Opened a Twitter account - April 2009
• @toffeemen68
• First started Tweeting - November 2010
• Started a Blogger account - February 2011
• http://itdepends4.blogspot.com
• Opened a Slideshare account - August 2011
• http://www.slideshare.net/IanMcCarthy

23. WHY I STARTED
• Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy,
I.P., Silvestre, B.S., (2011) Social media?
Get serious! Understanding the
functional building blocks of social media.
Business Horizons 54, 241-251.
(download paper here) IDENTITY
The extent to
which users
reveal
themselves
RELATIONSHIPS
The extent to
which users can
connect to each
other
CONVERSATIONS
The extent to
which users
communicate
with each other
SHARING
The extent to
which users
exchange,
distribute and
receive content
REPUTATION
The extent to
which users
know the
standing of
others
PRESENCE
The extent to
which users can
know if others
are accessible
GROUPS
The extent to
which users form
communities.

25. WHY I STARTED
• To learn about social media
• Share my research with
scholars, policy makers and the
public
• Help people to know me -
identity
• Enhance my reputation
• I was experimenting
Conversations Reputation
Relationships
Presence
Groups
SharingSharing
Reputation
Identity

26. WHY I PERSIST AND MY APPROACH
• Scanning and following
information about events and
trends that are central to my
research interests.
• Professional stalking
• Conversations with scholars,
policy makers and practioners.
• Develop relationships with
scholars, policy makers and
practioners.
Presence
Identity
Groups
Conversations
Relationships
Conversations
Relationships

27. WHY I PERSIST AND MY APPROACH
• Altmetrics: how we measure scholarship is
becoming more diverse
• Develop different writing and communication
skills
• Make me think about the “so what?” question
• Get feedback on existing research and ideas for
future research
• Being open - engagement with the public –
they fund me

28. PROGRESS
• Twitter (since Nov 2010)
• 10,900 tweets and 25,500 followers
• My “good” tweets will:
– reach between 10,000 - 80,000 tweeters
– 1,000 – 3,000 people will see it
– 200 – 600 will engage with it
• 371,000 visits to my Blog – It Depends! (since Feb
2011)
• 105,000 views and 11,300 downloads of my
presentations and papers posted on SlideShare

29. PROGRESS
• Several new research relationships
• Research grants, papers, special issues, and
invited talks.
• Appear on several “who to follow” lists
• Newspapers, magazines, radio and TV.
• Awards and impact

30. LESSONS
• Have a strategy.
– Why are you doing it?
– Limit the scope of who you follow and
what you broadcast.
– Select and balance the functional
building blocks of social media
– Interesting and experimental
– Have lists
“Do or do not… there is no try.”
Yoda
http://www.onetwobrick.net/

31. CAUTIONS
• It takes a lot of time to get going
• Then it takes more time
• Consider if your direct peers really care
• Remember to be guided by goals
• Be careful what you Blog and Tweet – libel
laws apply!!
• Not a substitute for good scholarship
• Finally, social media is a force to be
reckoned with. It has a dark side.
http://gremlindog.com/tag/darth-vader/

32. FINAL THOUGHTS
• When I follow my own advice, my work life is more
productive, better, happier and less painful, than when I
don’t.
– But I don’t always follow it.
– Why?
– You know why.

33. Dr. Ian McCarthy
Email: ian_mccarthy@sfu.ca
Twitter: @Toffemen68
Blog: http://itdependsblog.blogspot.com/
Professor, Technology and
Operations Management
Beedie School of Business
Simon Fraser University