Teaching and research an equal focus

AUTHOR: Lachlan Colquhoun   DATE: 23.11.06   ISSUE 2, 2006
When asked how he expected to balance his time at AGSM, new faculty member Dr. Salih Zeki Ozdemir says it will be “100 per cent teaching, and 100 per cent research.”

“You can’t do any teaching if you are not doing research,” he says.

“And just doing research doesn’t make any sense if you either don’t publish it and teach the results to somebody else.”

Dr. Ozdemir joined AGSM in August after completing his PhD this year at the University of Chicago GSB, where his area of research was on the US venture capital industry. At AGSM he will be teaching in the full-time MBA program in the core strategy course, and is planning to offer elective courses on growth strategies.

“Every day I am here I think that its been the right decision for me,” he says.

"I looked at the social assets and liabilities the firms formed in their social setting,” Dr. Ozdemir says.

Illustration: Gregory Baldwin

“I was aware of the stature of AGSM in the Asia-Pacific before I came and that fitted in nicely with my intentions, and my arrival has been made very much easier by the help I’ve received from my new colleagues.”

Although he is newly arrived in Australia, Dr. Ozdemir is already looking at ways he can translate his research interests to the local context. One of his areas of interest is to look at industrial conglomerates and, together with Professor Peter Murmann, he has begun to research agribusiness company Wesfarmers with a view to writing a case study for his teaching purposes.

“The old fashioned conglomerate has not been very popular, because the accepted wisdom is that diversification is bad if it is unrelated and you should always diversify in a related setting or grow organically,” he says. “So I am taking a new look and trying to see if, in the case of Wesfarmers, it is sustainable and whether they can continue by diversification and acquisition and if it is meaningful for them to do that.

Dr. Ozdemir’s study of the venture capital industry focussed on relationships between firms in the industry and the companies in which they invested.
Photo: Dr. Salih Zeki Ozdemir

“There are ‘anomalies’ which don’t fit the traditional conglomerate criteria – GE is one in the US and Wesfarmers is another - and we don’t have all the answers yet so I think that makes it an ideal case for discussion.”

At the University of Chicago, Dr. Ozdemir’s study of the venture capital industry focussed on relationships between firms in the industry and the companies in which they invested.

He looked at the “social exchange setting” the venture capital firms operated in and studied how their interactions influenced factors such as how often they participated in investment syndicates.He is also starting a project to understand the sort of influence they could wield on their investments over time, and whether it continues when the companies progress through the initial public offering (IPO) stage.

Dr Ozdemir is starting a project to understand the sort of influence venture capital firms could wield on their investments over time.

“I looked at all venture capital investments in the US from 1975 to 2004 and developed an argument I called a social balance sheet where I looked at the social assets and liabilities the firms formed in their social setting,” Dr. Ozdemir says.

“I found that those firms which had a high level of social liabilities unfulfilled in the industry were much more likely to start and lead investment syndicates to clear their obligations to other firms, and they were much less likely to be invited to other firms’ syndicates until they did so.

“And this has some secondary effects because if you do not pay back and if you are not invited into syndicates in the venture capital industry you don’t have the network and if you are not inside it you will slowly orbit out of the industry.”