School of Business Administration Beliefs and Values

Beliefs

The faculty of the School of Business Administration believe that:

• There must be psychological ownership of the School's responsibilities by all faculty and staff, implying full participation and teamwork.
• A vision for the School's future reflecting commitment to quality must be articulated by the faculty.
• Processes must be designed to meet requirements of service quality and operational performance.
  • Definition: Processes are the describable activities of the School's personnel, acting individually and in teams, which are recognized by the School as contributing to the achievement of its goals.
• There must be constancy of purpose. This includes continuing improvement of the quality of the School's processes and services.
• There must be administrative leadership and commitment.
• Contributions of the School's personnel to TQM are valuable and must be recognized.
• The School should endeavor to exceed customer expectations.
  • Definition: Customers are the potential, present, and past end-users of the services offered directly or indirectly by the School. Students and the business community, for example, are end-users, as are faculty, employers, and others who build on the acquired education of the students. To avoid a profit-intended connotation, liberty has been taken to substitute the word "stakeholders" for "customers" throughout MAP. The intended definition is the same for both words.
• Proaction should provide major impetus for change.
• The School should be the best it can be within its resource constraints.
• Diversity should be respected and promoted in all aspects of the School's functioning.

Values

The values of the School of Business Administration are characterized by the following attributes:

• Proven quality and effectiveness at all organization levels
  • Definition: Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a process or service that bear on its ability to exceed stated or implied needs. (Adapted from American Society for Quality Control.)
• Assessment and benchmarking to determine where and how improvements have been and can be made
• Respect for the individual
• Commitment to the practice and teaching of ethical behavior
• Research, creativity, and innovation
• Cooperation and collaboration; mutually beneficial competition
• A multidisciplinary approach to issues
• Adaptability of administration, faculty, and staff to change (We can't teach adaptability to change if we can't adapt to change ourselves)
• Openness to suggestions and recommendations, but with Director ultimately responsible for decisions
• A team spirit among all personnel of the School