Stanford Report, July 12, 2006

In Print and On the Air

LAWRENCE WEIN, the Paul E. Holden Professor of Management Science at the Graduate School of Business, has made a name for himself by applying math principles to doomsday scenarios, the San Francisco Chronicle reported July 2. Wein, who is often nicknamed “Dr. Doom,” “has ciphered the risks of [America’s] ‘woefully inadequate’ inspection of container ships, assessed the effectiveness of border-control fingerprint checks to spot terrorists and performed what may be the first math analyses of hypothetical botulism, anthrax and smallpox contaminations. ... ‘I believe my work demonstrates that numbers really matter, and we need to pay attention to what they tell us,’ said Wein, a critic of the federal government’s homeland security failures in key areas, particularly at the ports. ... Some of Wein’s calculations have translated into real reform. In 2004, he presented to the White House his findings that the system of collecting only two fingerprints from incoming foreign visitors ran a high risk of missing terrorists because so many prints were of bad quality. His solution was simple: Take prints of all 10 digits. The government has adopted it. And his 2003 research into the most effective response to an anthrax attack prompted pilot programs that are now testing his finding that the best way to widely distribute antibiotics would be by mail carriers, who already go door to door.”

ROBERT SUTTON, a professor of management science and engineering, has developed a philosophy, presented in an upcoming book, on bosses who are jerks: “They’re a drain on society. They shouldn’t be hired in the first place, he says, and if they won’t change their ways, they should be fired,” according to an Associated Press story published July 5 in the Washington Post. The book was born of a Harvard Business Review column by Sutton in which he defined a bad boss as “somebody who makes you constantly feel demeaned and lessened.” Despite this, analysts say awful bosses suffer little from bad publicity. “Certainly, the behavior of nasty bosses is way more public than it used to be,” says JEFFREY PFEFFER, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Business School. “But does it have consequences? I just don’t see it.” Pfeffer, who teaches a course on corporate power, says he’s always trying to convince his students that their “just world” hypothesis—in order to get ahead, you have to behave well—is extremely naïve. “People don’t understand the extent to which people simply want to associate with the rich, powerful and famous,” he says.