Stanford’s Rajan Named Dean Of Chicago Booth

The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business

TAKES OVER A SCHOOL THAT HAS CONSIDERABLE MOMENTUM BEGUN UNDER SNYDER

Rajan will be leading a school that has been on something of a tear ever since Snyder led the place. Booth is ranked as having the third best full-time MBA program in the U.S. by Poets&Quants, just ahead of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, both in a tie for fourth.

Booth, smartly leveraging an unprecedented $300 million naming gift from alumnus David Booth in 2008, has bested the Wharton School in six out of seven P&Q annual rankings since 2010. No less crucial, in the past year, Booth beat Wharton in four of the five rankings that make up Poets&Quants’ composite list. U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, and The Economist this year all ranked Booth ahead of Wharton. Only The Financial Times had Wharton over Booth.

Owing to the 2008 gift from investment manager David Booth, the school has formidable resources. Though its actual endowment is little more than $735 million, the $300 million gift is not part of the school’s endowment. If it were included, the Booth endowment could be double its actual size, putting it behind only the Harvard Business School which boasts an endowment of $3.3 billion (see America’s Wealthiest Business Schools).

Booth has deployed these resources to recruit and retain a stellar roster of faculty stars but also to attract cohorts of exceptional students that are among the best and most diverse in the world. The newest class entered last fall boasts an average GMAT score of 727, the 14th consecutive year in which Booth has increased its average GMAT score for an incoming class. Women make up 42% of the latest cohort, one of the highest percentages of women at a leading business school. All this had made the school among the most popular choices of prestige applicants in the world.

‘WE SOUGHT THE MOST OUTSTANDING CANDIDATE’

Madhav’s primary area of research interest is the economics-based analysis of management accounting issues, especially as they relate to the choice of internal control and performance systems in firms. In 2004, he received the Notable Contribution to Management Accounting Literature award for his work with Stan Baiman on “The Role of Information and Opportunism in the Choice of Buyer-Supplier Relationships.” Madhav has served as editor of The Accounting Review, as well as Associate Editor for both the Accounting and Operations areas for Management Science. He has twice been a plenary speaker at the AAA Management Accounting Conference.

Madhav has taught courses in accounting in undergraduate, MBA, and executive MBA programs, as well as an elective class in financial reporting at Stanford Law School. In 2000, Madhav won the David W. Hauck Award, the highest undergraduate teaching award at Wharton. At Stanford, Madhav has taught in the flagship Stanford Executive Program since 2002. He is director of the Infosys Global Leadership Progam and co-directs Finance and Accounting for the Nonfinancial Executive. He has made invited presentations to the Labor Seminar of the National Football League Management Council and taught in the National Basketball Players Association Program.

University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Daniel Diermeier announced the change in leadership. “We sought the most outstanding candidate whose values, ambition and abilities fully comport with the distinctiveness of Chicago Booth as one of methodological rigor in its research and education, and through that commitment one of high impact on the world,” Zimmer and Diermeier said in a statement. “We are confident that Madhav will be an outstanding leader for Chicago Booth in the coming years.”

BOOTH BEGAN INVITING CANDIDATES TO APPLY FOR THE DEANSHIP IN EARLY NOVEMBER

The school began inviting candidates to apply for the position in early November. The job specs included “leadership experience in a complex, knwoledge-based organization where ideas are challenged and debated freely. He/she will have demonstrated the ability to build and manage a high performance organization and to work effectively across multiple constituencies.”

Reid Hastie, a professor of behavioral science at Booth for the past 16 years, chaired the faculty search committee which advised the president and provost on the appointment.

DON’T MISS: MEET CHICAGO BOOTH’S CLASS OF 2018 or CHICAGO BOOTH: WHERE FUN COMES TO LIVE?

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