Meeting of the Governing Board of the IESE Alumni Assoicatiion

A Global Gathering

On November 23, the Governing Board of IESE’s Alumni Association met at the Barcelona campus for its annual meeting. The meeting brings together presidents and representatives of all the Regional Chapters throughout the world. The meeting was also broadcast via videoconference to the Madrid campus to facilitate participation.

José Martínez-Rovira, president of the Alumni Association, presented the annual report, which provides an overview of the group’s activities and financial report for 2003-2004. The report was approved by everyone present.

The Board meeting provided an excellent opportunity for participants to offer a number of suggestions and proposals for the Association. All of these will be studied by the Executive Commitee with the idea of implementing them in the future.

Many suggestions related to educational opportunities for Members and the use of new technologies. Increasingly more Members - which number more than 10,000 graduates currently - have access to educational sessions through the Association’s website.

Also presented were a number of initiatiatives designed to facilitate networking and communication among Members, as well as to reinforce support to their professional careers.

Another focus of the meeting was the growing international character of IESE, and the Association’s support of this transformation. It was noted that four new Regional Chapters have been recently established in Italy, Japan, Brazil and Poland. Moreover, 31 Alumni activities were organized outside of Spain by the Association last year.

Maria Puig, director of the Alumni Association, provided a summary of the activities and projects being planned for this year. IESE’s Dean Jordi Canals, meanwhile, gave a talk on the current economic and social context of Europe, and also addressed various IESE projects.

During the event, the Research Excellence Awards were presented to IESE faculty members, and tribute was paid to 64 Senior Members who have been a part of the Association for 25 years.

Third Edition of the Research Excellence Awards

IESE Cites Top Researchers
At the annual meeting of the Governing Board of the Alumni Association held on November 23, the annual Research Excellence Awards winners were presented. The award distinguishes IESE faculty members who have made significant contributions to their respective areas of management expertise.
Members of the jury for this year’s awards were José Martínez-Rovira, president of the Association; Antonio González-Adalid, vice-president of the Association; Rafael Villaseca, member of the Executive Commmittee of the Association; Pankaj Ghemawat, professor at Harvard Business School; Tom Malone, professor at MIT Sloan School of Management; Dean Jordi Canals of IESE; and IESE Prof. Joan Enric Ricart.
“Members of the jury based their evaluations on contributions made over the last few years in terms of academic publications in the international arena and consistency in their management research tracks, as well as the relevance of their work to the business world,” said Martínez-Rovira.

Prof. Manel Baucells

Ph.D. in Management (UCLA), MBA (IESE), Industrial Engineer
(Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya).
Prof. Baucell’s work focuses on decision-making analysis. One of his main areas of research has been the economic and legal aspects of the “hold-up” problem in co-owner situations. Another area of interest is sequence type negotiation models and the search for external options in negotiation. A third area of interest is the study of preference aggregation and its implications in decision-making processes within groups, when there are multiple criteria. Most recently Prof. Baucells has studied the behavior of decision-makers, using “Prospect Theory,” the dominant descriptive theory in the study of decision-making in uncertain conditions. His work has contributed significantly to the area of stochastic dominance, and he has suggested evidence to help support empirical studies that have been carried out in this field.

Prof. Pablo Fernández

Ph.D. in Business Economics (Finance) and Master of Arts in Business Economics (Harvard University), MBA (IESE) , Industrial Engineer (University of Navarra), holder of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Chair of Corporate Finance
After making significant contributions to the area of derivatives valuation, Prof. Fernández has centered his research on company valuation. In this area, his work has had an important impact on both the academic and the business worlds. Prof. Fernández’s research covers diverse areas of company valuation, with special emphasis on understanding the different methods of evaluation, its characteristics and challenges, as well as the financial players involved: analysts, fund managers, executives leading mergers and acquisitions, arbitration courts, and ordinary courts. Prof. Fernández has particularly focused on explaining the common mistakes made in company valuation.

Prof. Steven Poelmans

Ph.D. in Management (IESE), Master in Marketing Administration. (Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, University of Gent), Master in Psychology (University of Lovaine), Degree in Psychology (Catholic University of Louvaine).
Prof. Poelmans researches the well-being of employees and business leaders in an effort to understand the underlying beliefs and mechanisms of healthy and unhealthy employment practices. He has studied stress linked with three sources: work, family and work compatibility and the lack of personal self-control. Prof. Poelmans’ work has also probed specific employment policies designed to help to reduce stress in the workplace. Prof. Poelmans has participated in numerous international studies published in leading academic journals focused on work-related stress. These studies have often centered on the effects of the restructuring processes undertaken by companies as the result of growing competition. He has also spearheaded a number of projects in the area of work-family life compatibility, as one of the founders and academic director of IESE’s International Center on Work and Family. He was also the founding member and organizer of an academic track on this topic for the European Academy of Management, and has published two books on the subject.