Journal of Marketing Education

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Social Styles of Students and Professors: Do Students’ Social Styles Influence Their Preferences for Professors? Regina P. Schlee Journal of Marketing Education 2005; 27; 130 DOI: 10.1177/0273475305276624 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jmd.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/2/130

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AUGUST 2005 JOURNAL OF MARKETING EDUCATION

Social Styles of Students and Professors: Do Students’ Social Styles Influence Their Preferences for Professors? Regina P. Schlee

This article uses Merrill and Reid’s classification of social styles as drivers, analyticals, expressives, and amiables to examine differences between the personalities of different business majors and student choices of favorite professors. Significant differences were found in the social styles of different business majors. Furthermore, one’s major interacted with his or her gender to have a significant effect on the student’s social style. Students relied on cues both inside and outside the classroom to determine a professor’s social style. They were fairly accurate in guessing a professor’s level of assertiveness and responsiveness and, to a lesser extent, a professor’s specific social style. Students’ social styles and specific majors had a significant effect in preferences for specific faculty chosen as “favorites.” Recommendations are included on how marketing professors can develop a classroom persona to minimize personality conflicts in courses containing a mix of business majors.

Keywords: social styles; professor personality; student personality; instructional effectiveness; business student preferences

The marketing education literature includes a substantial

body of work that can be used to improve instructional performance. Several landmark studies on the characteristics of effective professors have been published in the Journal of Marketing Education or the Marketing Education Review (Conant, Kelley, and Smart 2003; Conant, Smart, and Kelley 1988; Kelley, Conant, and Smart 1991; Desai, Damewood, and James 2001; Paswan and Young 2002). These studies have demonstrated that there is consistency and stability in research findings on the characteristics of what makes a good professor. Effective professors were viewed as those who have good communication skills; demonstrate caring, empathy, and enthusiasm in the classroom; develop rapport with students; use real-life examples; are well organized; and are

amenable to student input. As these studies have been read by a large number of marketing educators, one would expect that the teaching evaluations of marketing professors would have improved over time as most faculty now know what it takes to be an effective educator. Unfortunately, there are also several studies that have documented no improvement in teaching effectiveness by more experienced professors (Clayson 1999) and no improvement in course evaluations over time (Marsh and Hovecar 1991). Clayson (1999) concludes that the reason that student evaluations of teaching effectiveness do not improve over time is that the professor’s personality changes very little over time. He states that “the research that does exist has estimated that between 50% and 80% of the total variance in evaluations may be linked to variables linked to personality” (p. 74). Several other studies have also suggested that the professor’s personality interacts with the personality of students and has a significant impact on students’ attitude toward the professor and the course (Ambady and Rosenthal 1993; Cahn 1987; Murray, Rushton, and Paunonen 1990; Williams and Ceci 1997), but the specific way that this interaction influences student preferences for specific professors has not been articulated. The present research uses the typology of social styles developed by Merrill and Reid (1981) to analyze how the personality characteristics of students can influence how these students respond to different professors. As personality conflicts can interfere with students’ appreciation for a professor’s efforts, it is important to explore how such conflicts emerge. Personality differences between the different business majors are also explored as marketing professors are often presented with a different mix of business students in core curriculum classes such as principles of marketing. JOURNAL OF MARKETING EDUCATION Regina P. Schlee is an associate professor of marketing at Seattle Pacific University. Her research is focused on marketing education, consumer behavior, and international marketing. Journal of Marketing Education, Vol. 27 No. 2, August 2005 130-142 DOI: 10.1177/0273475305276624 © 2005 Sage Publications

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JOURNAL OF MARKETING EDUCATION

LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS Literature Review

There is substantial evidence that the personality of the professor interacts with the personality of different students to influence student satisfaction with a course. Cahn (1987) pointed to the importance of students’personality in influencing the perceived evaluation of the professor. According to Cahn, it is difficult for students to evaluate the content of the course, but they can easily evaluate whether they liked their professor. This position received substantial support in a study by Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) where students were asked to evaluate professors based on 30 seconds of videotaped lectures that were played without sound. It is interesting to note that the evaluations given by students based on these 30-second content-free presentations were highly correlated with the evaluations these professors received after the completion of the class. Thus, Ambady and Rosenthal conclude that students decide very quickly if they will like a professor, and their overall attitude toward the professor is not affected significantly by the content of the class. An experimental study by Williams and Ceci (1997) using 472 undergraduate students enrolled in a developmental psychology class at Cornell University also points to the importance of the professor’s personality in influencing several measures of teaching effectiveness. Williams and Ceci worked with two demographically similar groups enrolled in the same course during fall and spring semesters of the same year. The course was taught by a professor who had been teaching the course for almost 20 years. The professor used the same lecture notes, syllabus, assignments, and tests both semesters. The lectures were rehearsed to ensure consistency in the material presented. Two independent raters were also used to determine the overlap between the lectures in the fall and spring semesters and verified there was 100% overlap in the material that was covered. In fact, every idea that was mentioned in the fall was also mentioned in the spring. The only difference between the two courses was the professor’s personality. In the spring semester, the professor used more “pitch variability” and gestures while lecturing and adopted the “enthusiastic style” that had been recommended in a teaching skills workshop. The students identified the professor’s teaching style as significantly more enthusiastic in the spring semester (fall mean rating on enthusiasm was 2.14 on a 1 to 5 scale where 1 = low and 5 = high, and the spring mean rating on the same scale was 4.21). Student perceptions of teaching effectiveness during the two semesters were also significantly different. In the fall semester, the mean rating for the question, “How much did you learn in this course?” was 2.93 on the same 1-to-5 scale, while in the spring it was 4.05. In fact, there was a substantial “lift” in teaching evaluations in all aspects of the course, even in student evaluations of fairness of tests and evaluations of the textbook. Surpris-

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ingly, based on student performance on tests, learning did not actually increase in the spring, though students felt they had learned significantly more. Thus, the effect of professor personality on student perceptions of teaching effectiveness represents an interesting dimension that should be explored further. Insights on how students’ personality and professors’ personality can interact to influence student satisfaction with the course can also be drawn from the theoretical framework of person-environment fit. Studies of person-environment fit have demonstrated that an individual’s personality influences levels of satisfaction and responses in four different environmental levels: person-vocation, person-job, personorganization, and person-group fit (Judge and Ferris 1992; Kristof 1996). Thus, the professor’s ability to “connect” with his or her students would depend on the extent that the values and personality of the professor fit with those of the group (the students). Using the person-environment theoretical framework, Westerman, Nowicki, and Plante (2002) examined the effect of student-instructor values and personality congruence on student satisfaction and performance and found that values congruence was a significant predictor of satisfaction, while personality congruence was a significant predictor of a student’s performance. Measures of the effect of personality on teaching effectiveness are complicated by the fact that there are a multitude of measurements that can be applied to personality. Many organizational behavior researchers use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which uses four dimensions to determine personality type: (1) an attentional dimension that measures preferences for external stimuli (extroverted) or internal stimuli (introverted), (2) a perceiving dimension that focuses on how information is processed (sensing vs. intuition), (3) a judging dimension that focuses on decision making (thinking vs. feeling), and (4) a judging-perceiving dimension that classifies people based on their preference for controlling the external environment (judging) or understanding events (perceiving). Educational researchers often use the Gregore Style Indicator, which classifies people based on their learning styles. The Gregore Style Indicator places people into one of four grids based on learning preferences for sequential or random processing (first dimension) and concrete or random data (second dimension). In their study of professor-student fit, Westerman, Nowicki, and Plante (2002) used the NEO Five-Factor Inventory Form S. Another type of personality classification is based on one’s style of social interaction rather than one’s learning style. One of the most popular measurements of styles of social interaction was developed by Merrill and Reid (1981). The primary advantage of Merrill and Reid’s social styles over other measures of personality is that the classification into categories is based on observable behavior (Gaboury 2001). A person’s personality may be assessed by observation, without access to in depth personal interviews or detailed answers to a questionnaire. Thus,


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Merrill and Reid’s social styles are well suited to research that is focused on analyzing the social aspects of students’ and professors’ personality. Merrill and Reid (1981) use the dimensions of assertiveness and responsiveness to classify people into social styles. Assertiveness refers to the degree that we try to influence the decisions of others. Assertive people state their opinions with assurance and force. In contrast, less assertive people are “unassuming,” “contented,” and “quiet.” The trait of responsiveness indicates how much emotion, “feelings toward others,” a person displays. Someone high on responsiveness exhibits feelings of joy, anger, love, hurt, and so forth. Someone low on responsiveness is usually described as “cautious,” intellectual,” and “serious.” Although the amount of responsiveness exhibited by different people varies by social situation, most people have relatively consistent levels of responsiveness in most situations. But according to Merrill and Reid, people observing the actions of others can determine one’s level of assertiveness more accurately than responsiveness. Based on the dimensions of assertiveness and responsiveness, Merrill and Reid (1981) classified people into four quadrants. Those high on assertiveness and high on responsiveness were classified as expressives, those high on assertiveness and low on responsiveness were classified as drivers, those low an assertiveness and high on responsiveness are amiables, and those low on assertiveness and low on responsiveness are analyticals. Merrill and Reid developed a list of adjectives that describe each of these social styles. Expressives are excitable, ambitious, stimulating, enthusiastic, undisciplined, dramatic, egotistical, and friendly. Drivers are pushy, strong willed, severe, independent, tough, practical, dominating, decisive, harsh, and efficient. Amiables are supportive, respectful, pliable, willing, dependent, dependable, unsure, and agreeable. Analyticals are orderly, industrious, indecisive, persistent, serious, picky, exacting, and critical. Merrill and Reid’s research also includes information as to how these personality characteristics are made apparent through people’s manner of speaking, gestures, as well as other behaviors such as the manner with which they dress and the way they organize their desk. Merrill and Reid’s (1981) typology has been used extensively in sales training (Lill 1996; Weitz, Castleberry, and Tanner 1998). Sales persons are taught to recognize behavioral and verbal traits associated with each of the four social styles. Once the client’s social style has been identified, the salesperson is supposed to adjust his or her approach. When dealing with a driver, a sales person should be “direct” and “businesslike.” Expressives are similar to drivers in terms of wanting to make decisions quickly, but they are also concerned about the social aspects of any relationship. Analyticals and amiables make decisions slowly. Analyticals require many facts before making a decision, while amiables require an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust.

In Personal Styles and Effective Performance (1981), Merrill and Reid provide broad interpersonal applications of the four social styles. They examine several “style clashes” and recommend possible accommodations. The strongest clashes occur between people who differ both on assertiveness and responsiveness: drivers and amiables, and analytical and expressives. Drivers have difficulty dealing with the slow pace and desire for emotional bonding exhibited by amiables. Amiables, on the other hand, have difficulty with the “autocratic” style of drivers. The other conflict involves analyticals who are serious minded, slow paced, and focused on the task at hand, and expressives who are enthusiastic, work fast, and are less concerned with accuracy. The way of dealing with these conflicts is “to develop a sensitivity to, and tolerance for, the behavioral preferences of other individuals—whatever their styles” (Merrill and Reid 1981, p. 79). According to Merrill and Reid (1981), one of the keys to success in the workplace, as well as in the marketplace, is the ability to be flexible or versatile in dealing with the social styles of others. It is significantly more difficult, however, to adapt one’s social style in the classroom, as professors most often have to deal simultaneously with many students with different personality types. Furthermore, as students are not equivalent to customers, many professors believe they should emphasize pedagogical objectives over student/customer satisfaction goals (Franz 1998). Research Questions

As the classification of social styles has not previously been applied to the college classroom setting, the purpose of this study is exploratory. The primary objective that guided the development of specific research questions was the desire to understand the makeup of business student personalities and to examine if a student’s personality interacted with a professor’s personality to influence the student’s liking for that professor. Research Question 1: Are different business majors characterized by different social styles? Several studies have examined the personality characteristics of business majors and have found substantial differences in the personality of students majoring in different business disciplines. McPherson (1999), using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, found that most marketing students were extroverted and were classified as ESFJ (extroverted, sensing, feeling, judging) and ESTJ (extroverted, sensing, thinking, judging). In contrast, most accounting majors in the study were introverted and were classified as ISTJ (introverted, sensing, thinking, judging) and ISFJ (introverted, sensing, feeling, judging). Similarly, a study by Noel, Michaels, and Levas (2003), using Cattell’s 16 Personality Factor Scale, found that the personalities of marketing, management information systems (MIS), and accounting majors closely followed popular stereotypes of each of these business majors. For example, marketing students were “easygoing, creative, enthusiastic, persistent, ven-


JOURNAL OF MARKETING EDUCATION turesome, imaginative.” In contrast, accounting majors were “reserved, prone to use concrete and focused thinking . . ., restrained, persistent, timid, practical, and tense in their personal interactions.” Based on the results of these studies, it is expected that this study will also document significant differences in the social styles of different business majors, with marketing and management students being more responsive and assertive, while accounting, finance, and economics majors will be less responsive and possibly less assertive. Research Question 2: Are there significant differences in the social styles of male and female business students? Social scientists have conducted numerous studies during the years comparing the personality characteristics and attitudes of males and females. Even though the roles of men and women have changed substantially during the past 50 years, research indicates that significant differences remain between men and women, with women focusing more on “relational ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving” (Cross and Madson 1997). The majority of studies in this area indicate continuing differences between males and females, especially in their communication styles (Canary, Emmers-Sommer, and Faulkner 1997; Fagot and Leinbach 1997). Thus, it is expected that male and female business students will have different social styles, with female students being higher in responsiveness than males and more likely to be expressives or amiables. Research Question 3: What is the social style of business professors? The work demands of business professors are different than those of business practitioners; thus, we would expect that the social styles of professors would not necessarily correspond with those of different business majors. Most business professors regardless of area of specialization have to be involved in scholarly research. According to Merrill and Reid (1981), people involved in analytical work that requires extensive periods of individual work and attention to detail tend to be analyticals. But while the research requirements of the professor’s job are consistent with the analytical social style, there is a great deal of variability between the work performed by professors who teach in research universities compared to those who teach in teaching-oriented universities. In teaching-oriented universities such as the one where this study was conducted, one would expect to find a higher proportion of professors who score higher on responsiveness than professors in research-oriented institutions. However, as the number of faculty in this study is small (19 business faculty), these results cannot be generalized to the population of business faculty. Research Question 4: What cues do students use to identify a professor’s social style? Though Merrill and Reid (1981) and the Wilson Learning Corporation in Communication Styles (1999) provide descriptions of each social style, students needed to translate these to a professor’s behavior in the classroom. An in-class focus group with marketing research students and in-depth interviews with other business major students were used to understand how students interpreted social styles in the classroom setting. Research Question 5: How accurately do students identify the social styles of their professors? One of the fundamental principles of Merrill and Reid’s analysis (1981) is that one’s

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social style is best determined through a combination of selftests and feedback from others. Merrill and Reid assert that many of us have an ideal self-image that is somewhat different than the way we act in public. In fact, early psychological research in this area showed a stronger relationship between student evaluations and peer-based measures of a professor’s personality than with the professor’s own assessment of his or her personality (Murray 1975). In addition, as individuals can play different roles in different situations, a professor’s classroom persona could be somewhat different than the professor’s underlying personality. Thus, the students’ assessment of a professor’s personality is an important contributor to understanding the classroom persona of each professor. Research Question 6: Is there a relationship between a student’s own social style and the professors’ he or she tends to like? Merrill and Reid (1981) assert that people tend to like or dislike others based on the interaction between their own social style with that of others. In contrast to the popular myth that opposites attract, Merrill and Reid assert that people like others who are similar to them. The most marked conflicts are between individuals who differ both in expressiveness and assertiveness: between expressives and analyticals, drivers and amiables. It is, therefore, expected that students who are analyticals would not like professors who are expressive, while students who are expressive would not like professors who are analytical. The same would be true for drivers and amiables. Personality differences between students and professors may account for at least some the variability in student evaluations within and between classes. Research Question 7: Does the student’s major influence his or her choice of professors as “favorites”? As the different business majors have been found to have distinct personalities and interests, one would expect significant differences in the professors different majors choose as “favorites.” It also makes sense to believe that liking a specific professor influences a student’s choice of majors. However, students are not expected to have uniformly positive feelings toward all the professors who teach in a specific area. Thus, one’s major will most likely not be a perfect predictor of the professors he or she chooses as “favorites.”

METHOD Sampling and Data Collection

This study was conducted on a sample of 403 junior and senior undergraduate students enrolled in 14 upper-division business courses at a private Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)–accredited university. Although participation was voluntary, more than 99% of the students in each of the classes where the survey was handed out chose to complete the survey. The social styles survey was also given to these 19 professors to provide a comparison between the social style ascribed to them by the students as opposed to each professor’s own assessment of their style. Sixteen of the 19 professors completed the social styles survey.


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The sample consists of 53.6% males and 46.4% females. Many different business disciplines are represented in the sample: 21.4% marketing majors, 18.1% management, 13.7% finance, 10.6% accounting, 7.2% MIS, 2.8% economics, and 26.1% other majors. Qualitative research was also conducted to understand student perceptions of professor social styles. Twenty-one business students were interviewed as an in-class focus group, as well as in private interviews, to “flesh out” student perceptions of professor social styles. Measurement

Students were asked to complete a questionnaire that included a proprietary scale used to measure social styles that was developed by the Wilson Learning Corporation. Special permission to use this scale for the purpose of this study was obtained from the Wilson Learning Corporation. Additional information on the scale of social styles developed by the Wilson Learning Corporation can be found in Communication Styles (1999). This scale of social styles, or communication styles, as referred to by the Wilson Learning Corporation, has been completed by 7 million people worldwide. Wilson Learning’s list of clients includes many Fortune 500 companies such as Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Texas Instruments, U.S. Cellular, and many others. Assertiveness and responsiveness ratings are determined by adding individual scores in pairs of adjectives representing bipolar opposites. The adjectives used by the Wilson Learning Corporation represent the dimensions developed by Merrill and Reid to describe assertiveness and responsiveness traits. Respondents circle a value on a 4-point scale depending on whether they are closer to one or the other end of each pair of bipolar adjectives. Mean scores in assertiveness and responsiveness range from 1 to 4. An individual’s assertiveness score is placed into 1 of 4 categories ranging from A (low) to D (high). A person’s responsiveness score is also placed into 1 of 4 categories ranging from 1 (low) to 4 (high). Drivers are high in assertiveness (grids C and D) and low in responsiveness (1 and 2). Expressives are high in assertiveness (C and D) and high in responsiveness (3 and 4). Analyticals are low in assertiveness (A and B) and low in responsiveness (1 and 2), while amiables are low in assertiveness (A and B) and high in responsiveness (3 and 4). The reliability of the social styles scale was tested using Cronbach’s alpha. The alpha coefficient measuring the internal consistency of the 15 statements measuring assertiveness was .8332, and for the 15 statements measuring responsiveness, it was .8241; thus, both scales exhibited a high level of internal consistency reliability. Reliability was also examined by splitting the sample in two sections and comparing the results in the first 201 surveys with those of the remaining 202 surveys. No significant differences were found between the two sections of the sample.

The students in the sample were first asked to complete the social styles survey and were able to measure their own social style. After this part of the survey was complete, a short lecture on social styles was used to provide additional information on the characteristics of each type. The second section of the survey included detailed information on how to identify the social style of others based on the discussion provided by Merrill and Reid (1981). The third part of the survey asked students to identify the social style of 19 full-time tenured or tenure-track professors teaching undergraduate business classes who would be familiar to many of the students. Following the classification of professors, students were asked to select up to three “favorite” professors. The social styles survey was also given to these 19 professors to provide a comparison between the social style ascribed to them by the students as opposed to each professor’s own assessment of his or her style. Sixteen of the 19 professors completed the social styles survey. Professor social styles were discussed in depth with 21 business students who provided invaluable insights as to how specific professors exhibited their social styles in the classroom and how other students reacted to those professors. An examination of the syllabi of individual professors also offered additional insights as to how their social styles were reflected in the classroom. RESULTS The COMPUTE function of SPSS was used to calculate average assertiveness ratings for students and professors. Respondents were then classified into the four social types using the scoring grid prepared by the Wilson Learning Corporation. The first set of analyses were meant to examine students’ social styles and to evaluate whether social style was significantly different for each of the business disciplines (Research Question 1). For the entire sample, the most common social style was that of expressive (47.3%), followed by amiable (26.3%), analytical (13.2%), and driver (13%). In each of these categories, most students tended to congregate in only 4 of the 16 cells (A1 through D4) that were used to classify respondents into social styles. Most expressives were in cell C3 (87.4%), amiables in cell B3 (98.1%), drivers in C2 (96.2%), and analyticals in B2 (96.2%). This finding is not surprising and simply indicates that most students fall in a moderate position within each social style and that very few are extreme types. Overall, however, most students were found as being a little higher in responsiveness than in assertiveness (2.79 vs. 2.62 mean rating, t = –6.258, p = .000). Research Question 1: Are Different Business Majors Characterized by Different Social Style?

A cross-tabulation of social styles by major revealed some interesting variations in the distribution of social styles (Table



TABLE 3 SOCIAL STYLES OF MALE AND FEMALE STUDENTS

TABLE 1 SOCIAL STYLE BY MAJOR Percentage Driver Expressive Analytical Accounting Economics Finance MIS Management Marketing Other Total

24.4 18.2 13.2 17.9 12.9 8.4 9.0 12.7

36.6 27.3 43.4 42.9 52.9 56.6 47.0 47.7

Percentage Amiable

Total

14.6 27.3 24.5 28.6 25.7 25.3 34.0 26.7

41 11 53 28 70 83 100 386

24.4 27.3 18.9 10.7 8.6 9.6 10.0 13.0

2

NOTE: χ = 25.987, p = .100.MIS = management information systems.

Percentage

a

Driver Expressive Analytical

Quantitative 18.1 b People oriented 10.5 Total 13.6

39.0 54.9 48.4

Amiable

Total

21.0 25.5 23.6

105 153 258

21.9 9.2 14.3

Driver Expressive Analytical Males Females Total

17.3 8.8 13.4

46.2 48.6 47.3

15.9 9.4 12.9

Amiable

Total

20.7 33.1 26.5

208 181 389

2

NOTE: χ = 14.160, p = .003.

TABLE 4 SOCIAL STYLES OF MALE AND FEMALE STUDENTS CONTROLLING BY TYPE OF MAJOR Driver Expressive Analytical Amiable

TABLE 2 SOCIAL STYLES OF “PEOPLE-ORIENTED” MAJORS COMPARED TO “QUANTITATIVELY ORIENTED” MAJORS

Type of Major

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NOTE: Excluded majors include management information systems and other majors. χ2 = 13.154, p = .004. a. Quantitative majors include accounting, economics, and finance. b. People-oriented majors include management and marketing.

1). Though the expressive social style was the most common in most majors, there were substantial differences among different majors. Expressives made up only 27.3% of economics majors, 36.6% of accounting majors, 42.9% of MIS majors, and 43.4% of finance majors, but they made up 52.9% of management majors and 56.6% of marketing majors. In contrast, 24.4% of accounting majors were drivers, compared with only 8.4% of marketing majors. A comparison between the more “people-oriented” majors of marketing and management and the “quantitative majors” of accounting, finance, and economics presents a more striking contrast in student social styles (Table 2). Drivers made up 18.1% of the quantitative majors but only 10.5% of the people-oriented majors. Analyticals made up 21.9% of the quantitative majors but only 9.2% of the people-oriented majors. In contrast, the majority of students in the people-oriented majors were expressive (54.9%) compared with only 39% of students in the quantitative majors who fell in this social style category. Research Question 2: Are There Significant Differences in the Social Styles of Male and Female Business Students?

Social style was also significantly related to students’ gender. As was expected, female students were less likely to be

Males a Quantitative majors b People-oriented majors Total Females Quantitative majors People-oriented majors Total

23.1 11.8 17.0

33.8 57.9 46.8

26.2 11.8 18.4

16.9 18.4 17.7

10.0 9.6 9.7

47.5 52.1 50.4

15.0 5.5 8.8

27.5 32.9 31.0

2

2

NOTE: χ for males = 10.863, p = .012; χ for females = 2.99, p = .392. a. Quantitative majors include accounting, economics, and finance. b. People-oriented majors include management and marketing.

drivers than males (8.9% vs. 17.4%) and much more likely to be amiables (32.8% vs. 20.8%). The cross-tabulation of social style by gender is shown in Table 3. Controlling for the effects of gender, however, yielded some unanticipated results on the relationship between major and social style. Among females, there were no significant differences between the social styles of different majors, but among the males, the differences were striking. Males in accounting, economics, and finance were significantly different in their social style than males in marketing and management. Equally surprising is that males in the quantitative majors were substantially different in their social style than females in those majors. Only 33.8% of males in accounting, economics, and finance were expressives, compared to 47.5% of the females in the same majors. Table 4 presents how the social styles of males and females differed in each of these majors. Females appear to be higher in responsiveness (expressives or amiables) than males, while males are represented in much higher proportions among the drivers and analyticals. Research Question 3: What Is the Social Style of Business Professors?

Of the 19 tenured or tenure-track faculty teaching undergraduate classes, 16 completed the social styles questionnaire. Of those who completed the survey, 11 were men and 5 were women. As with the students, the most common social type was that of expressive (five faculty), followed by analyti-


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cal (four faculty), driver (four faculty), and amiable (three faculty). Among the women, two were drivers, two expressive, and one amiable. However, this sample of faculty is too small to make an assessment of the distribution of social styles among business faculty. Furthermore, as this research was conducted at a teaching-oriented university, the distribution of social styles among business faculty in researchoriented institutions may be substantially different. Research Question 4: What Cues Students Use to Identify a Professor’s Social Style?

The 21 students who provided qualitative information on professor social styles provided surprisingly uniform descriptions of professor archetypes by social style. As some of the discussions took place in a marketing research course, students appeared to concur on the characteristics differentiating professors by social style. It is interesting to note, however, that some of the characterizations described professor behavior outside the classroom when a student would come and ask for assistance or special accommodations. Students perceived professors as being amiable if they were mild mannered and caring. Amiable professors were willing to be flexible and to accommodate students. One of the students reported that a specific professor had offered to come in on a Saturday to proctor the student’s makeup exam. Other students reported amiable professors as those willing to provide extra help in their office or to loan books to students. Amiable professors’ primary distinguishing characteristic was “caring.” Amiable professors are seen as wanting students to succeed and providing all necessary assistance to students. While amiable professors showed care for students, drivers were more concerned with rigor. These professors believed that strict accountability was necessary for future success in the workplace. The marketing research students tended to have more negative perceptions of professors who were drivers. These students believed that driver professors saw college as a testing ground to separate those who would make responsible employees from those who were unreliable. Drivers did not change the syllabus and did not accommodate special requests by the class or by specific students. It is noteworthy that the marketing research students felt that if a driver was an excellent instructor, they would accept the driver personality in the classroom. On the other hand, if a driver was not a good instructor, students were not willing to cut him or her “any slack.” Professors who were perceived to be analytical were characterized by a systematic approach to solving problems, high levels of structure in the organization of the class, and few displays of emotion. Analytical professors present the material in a very organized fashion by outlining lecture objectives and providing a rigid structure for requirements. The students pointed out that two of the accounting professors on the list provide 65 different objectives for a core accounting class.

The syllabi of these professors provide a “blueprint” of what students can expect every single class meeting. Faculty who are analytical do not rely on aspects of their personality (such as humor and empathy) to impress the students. Instead, students perceived analyticals to be similar to engineers—detail oriented, “no-nonsense” individuals who are mostly concerned with “getting the work done.” Finally, professors who were expressive were seen as exuberant, gesturing with their hands and enjoying the attention they received in front of the classroom. These professors sought to enlighten and entertain students. Students also agreed with Merrill and Reid’s (1981) characterization of expressives as having a messy desk. The students who had visited the expressive professors in their offices pointed out that most had messier desks than other faculty. In the classroom, expressives were seen as sometimes drifting off the subject matter to cover an area of interest. Thus, expressives did not always stay on a prespecified list of objectives and tended to introduce other material they thought would be interesting or entertaining to students. At the same time, expressives also wanted students to like them. Thus, expressives were seen as willing to accommodate student requests but not to the same extent as amiables. Research Question 5: How Accurately Do Students Identify the Social Styles of Their Professors?

Table 5 presents each faculty’s social style, the percentage of students who judged him or her to be of a specific social style as well as the percentage of students who were able to evaluate a faculty’s responsiveness and assertiveness accurately. These data indicate a great deal of variability in the social styles attributed to each professor. Students appear to concur on the social style of only four professors (more than 50% of students judging that a professor holds a specific social style). However, most students appear to be able to guess correctly a professor’s assertiveness or responsiveness. The majority of students were able to judge a professor’s assertiveness correctly for 12 out of the 16 professors who completed the social styles questionnaire, and they were able to judge a professor’s responsiveness correctly for 9 out of the 16 professors. There is only one faculty person, Faculty Ffemale, whom students seemed to be unable to judge correctly either in terms of responsiveness or assertiveness. But as students also rely on interactions outside the classroom to determine a professor’s social style, it is not surprising that perceptions of faculty social styles were not uniform. All students do not have the same experience in a class. For example, a student who is doing well in the class and never requires any help outside the classroom may perceive a professor as being expressive, but a student who is not doing well and is denied assistance may view the same professor as a driver. Similarly, if a professor seems to be analytical when he or she lectures but goes to great lengths to assist and accommodate students, he or she will be viewed as being amiable by



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TABLE 5 PROFESSOR SOCIAL STYLES AND STUDENT PERCEPTIONS Professor ID and Gender

Professor’s Own Rating

A-male B-female C-male D-male E-male F-female G-female H-male I-male J-female K-male L-male M-male N-male O-male P-male Q-male R-male S-female

Driver Expressive Analytical Analytical Amiable Driver Amiable Analytical N/A Expressive N/A N/A Amiable Expressive Expressive Analytical Driver Expressive Driver

% of Students Rating as Driver 31.6 3.6 10.9 6.9 4.9 22.4 30.3 28.2 36.1 17.2 4.6 15.6 10.9 17.3 32.3 10.8 32.3 42.2 26.9

% of Students Rating as Expressive

% of Students % of Students Rating as Rating as Number % Right on Analytical Amiable Rating Responsiveness

49.4 55.0 10.9 10.0 51.4 22.4 9.1 16.8 20.8 32.1 33.8 18.9 17.7 42.1 35.5 11.3 21.5 17.8 17.2

8.9 8.2 69.1 35.4 2.8 10.3 49.2 29.9 20.8 15.7 21.5 36.7 62.3 16.5 12.9 43.8 17.2 40.0 38.7

10.1 33.2 9.1 47.7 40.8 44.8 11.4 23.1 22.2 35.1 40.0 28.9 9.1 24.1 19.4 34.0 29.0 0.0 17.2

79 280 55 130 142 116 132 117 72 134 65 90 220 133 62 194 93 45 93

40.5 a 88.2 a 80.0 42.3 a 92.2 32.7 20.5 a 58.1 N/A a 67.2 N/A N/A 26.9 a 66.2 a 54.9 a 54.6 49.5 17.8 a 65.6

% Right on Assertiveness b

81.0 b 58.6 b 78.2 b 83.1 43.6 44.8 b 60.6 b 53.0 N/A 49.3 N/A N/A b 71.4 b 59.4 b 67.8 b 77.8 53.8b b 60.0 43.9

a. More than 50% of the students correctly identified the professor’s level of responsiveness. b. More than 50% of the students correctly identified the professor’s level of assertiveness.

those receiving the assistance. But in spite of such differences in pinpointing a professor’s exact social style, most students are able to correctly gauge a professor’s level of assertiveness or responsiveness. This finding supports claims that students can perceive a professor’s underlying personality and that the professor’s personality can interact with the student’s own personality to affect a student’s overall liking of the professor. Research Question 6: Is There a Relationship between a Student’s Own Social Style and the Professors’ He or She Tends to Like?

Students were asked to identify their three favorite professors among the 19. This question focused solely on the extent to which students had a strong preference for some of the faculty and is not synonymous with choosing professors who received “good teaching evaluations.” Students were not asked to select the best teachers, simply the ones they liked the most. There was significant variation in the percentage of students selecting a professor as one of their favorites, but this information is affected by the level of familiarity with different professors. Four of the 19 professors were chosen as one of the favorites by fewer than 10 students in the sample, 3 were chosen by 10 to 19 students, 4 professors were chosen by 20 to 29 students, 2 were chosen by 30 to 49 students, and 6 professors were chosen by 50 or more students as one of their favorites. As each student had not taken classes from each of the 19 professors whose names were included in the questionnaire, the percentage of students selecting a professor as their favorite is not as important to this analysis as the effect of a

student’s social style on preferences for a given professor. However, the number of cases that were used to analyze the relationship between student and professor social style prevented some of the relationships found in the analysis from reaching statistical significance. Thus, the sample size for performing this analysis was only adequate in the case of 8 out of the 19 professors. All 8 of these professors had 30 or more students who selected them as one of their favorites. A cross-tabulation of students’ social style with the social style of their favorite professors revealed significant differences (at the .05 level of significance) in four of the eight professors (Table 6). In all the cases where there were significant differences, the social style of students who selected that particular professor as “favorite” was similar to that of the professor either in social style or in one of the components of social style, assertiveness, or responsiveness. Professor Amale, driver, was significantly more likely to be selected as favorite by students who scored high on assertiveness: drivers and expressives. Professor B-female, expressive, was significantly more likely to be selected as favorite by students who were high on responsiveness: expressives and amiables. Professors D and H, both male and analytical, were significantly more likely to be selected as favorites by students who were also analytical. Thus, there appears to be substantial support for the suggestion that students’ personality affects their likes and dislikes among their professors. All other things being equal, some students will prefer professors who have similar personality characteristics. Students who are high in responsiveness or assertiveness prefer professors who are high in the


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AUGUST 2005 TABLE 6 DIFFERENCES IN CHOICE OF FAVORITE PROFESSORSa BY STUDENT SOCIAL STYLE

Professor

Social Style

A-male B-female D-male E-male F-female H-male M-male P-male Q-male

Driver Expressive Analytical Amiable Driver Analytical Amiable Analytical Driver

Preferred by Drivers (%)

Preferred by Expressives (%)

13.8 20.7 20.7 34.5 13.8 17.2 41.4 27.6 17.2

16.9 47.5 18.6 30.5 19.5 14.4 25.4 22.0 14.4

Preferred by Analyticals (%)

Preferred by Amiables (%)

3.1 25.0 37.5 36.4 12.1 40.6 21.2 15.2 21.2

2

4.2 50.0 13.9 37.0 12.3 22.2 27.4 21.9 27.4

Significance .020* .006* .047* .800 .514 .012* .293 .698 .553

a. These professors are those who had been selected as “favorites” by a minimum of 30 students. *p < .05.

TABLE 7 DIFFERENCES IN CHOICE OF FAVORITE PROFESSORSa BY STUDENT MAJOR

Professor

Major Area

A-male B-female D-male E-male F-female H-male M-male P-male Q-male

People oriented People oriented Quantitative Quantitative Quantitative People oriented Quantitative Quantitative People oriented

Preferred by Quantitative Business Majors (%) 18.6 24.7 30.9 36.1 16.5 16.5 33.0 32.0 20.6

Preferred by People-Oriented Majors (%) 9.6 48.2 13.3 30.1 21.7 24.1 27.7 13.3 16.9

2

Significance .068 .002* .007* .246 .243 .139 .273 .004* .328

a. These professors are those who had been selected as “favorites” by a minimum of 30 students. *p < .05.

same characteristics, and students who are low in responsiveness or assertiveness prefer professors who are low in these characteristics. Research Question 7: Does the Student’s Major Influence His or Her Choice of Professors as “Favorites”?

When preference for specific professors was examined for quantitative and people-oriented business majors, there were significant differences in the preferences for three out of the eight professors used in this analysis (Table 7). It should be noted that preferences for two of the professors, B-female and D-male, were also significantly different by student social style. This finding is not unexpected, as there is a significant interaction between students’ choice of major and their social style. Professor B-female, who teaches in a people-oriented major, was selected as “favorite” by 24.7% of quantitative majors but by 48.2% of people-oriented majors (Table 7). In contrast, Professors D-male and P-male, both of whom teach in the quantitative area, were selected as favorite by a signifi-

cantly higher proportion of business students in quantitative business disciplines than business students in peopleoriented business disciplines. DISCUSSION This study has documented significant differences in the social styles of students in the different business majors. Students in marketing and management appear to be substantially higher in responsiveness than students in accounting, economics, and finance. Although the expressive social style is the most common social style among all business students, more than half of the students in marketing and management were classified into this category. It is probably for this reason that many studies in the marketing education literature have pointed out the importance of caring and empathy in the classroom. Most marketing students greatly appreciate the ability to connect with their professor on an emotional level. They appreciate the concern that a professor demonstrates and look forward to being entertained in the classroom by



someone who is enthusiastic and outgoing. In contrast, majors in the quantitative business disciplines of accounting, economics, and finance were significantly less likely to be expressives and more likely to be drivers and analyticals. These students prefer professors who teach concrete concepts and information on the “nuts and bolts” of the trade. Thus, in core business classes such as principles of marketing, marketing professors have to deal with many students who not only are less interested in the discipline of marketing but whose personality and preferences are significantly different than that of marketing students. Students were able to guess correctly a professor’s level of assertiveness and/or responsiveness, but were frequently unable to identify a professor’s actual social style as measured by professors’ own surveys. However, as social style is determined by examining both one’s own self-rating and the rating accorded by others, it is possible that students’ characterizations of specific professors are accurate assessments of the professors’ real social styles. It is noteworthy that in the case of three of the four professors for whom the students’ social style appeared to have an effect on whether they were chosen as “favorites,” there was a great deal of agreement among students about either their responsiveness or assertiveness. Thus, one can assume that the more visible a professor’s personality is to students, the more likely the students are to react to the professor’s personality. Students who are low in responsiveness or assertiveness may react more negatively to a professor who clearly demonstrates high responsiveness or assertiveness in the classroom than to a professor whose personality cannot be easily discerned. It is also possible that students’ image of different professors can vary depending on the personal interactions they have had with each professor. For example, a student who talked to the professor after class or in the professor’s office may have a different perception of the professor’s social style than a student who has had no private interactions with that professor. And as students tend to share perceptions of their experiences with professors with other students, a student who rants or raves about a professor may influence others. In fact, the qualitative interviews with students revealed that in a campus where student evaluations of professors are not published, students frequently inquire about the personality of different professors so that they can know what to expect once they enroll in a specific class. This study indicates that the mix of business majors in core business classes such as principles of marketing can have a significant impact on how a professor gets judged. Even the level of caring and compassion professors showed in the classroom appeared to result in different reactions among students. Most marketing students were amiable and expressive and indicated they greatly appreciate a professor who appears to care for students and who is willing to accommodate them. In contrast, students who were analytical or drivers tended to have mixed feelings toward such accommodations. As

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Merrill and Reid (1981) noted, caring and accommodation by people (in this case professors) who are high in responsiveness can be seen by those (students) who are low in responsiveness as “acquiescing” and as being weak. Though social style is one of the several factors that influence student perceptions of their faculty, it should not be ignored. Faculty who want to maximize the proportion of students who like them may want to consider their own social style and that of their students. Showing a certain amount of responsiveness in the classroom is generally a safe bet, as there are more business students who are relatively high in responsiveness than those who are low in responsiveness. All other things being equal, faculty with a classroom persona that is high in responsiveness are probably more likely to be received positively by marketing students. It is for this reason that a large number of studies in the marketing education literature have demonstrated that enthusiasm and caring in the classroom are viewed as positive traits. However, in core classes that may include a large number of male students from quantitative business majors (drivers and analyticals), marketing professors may employ a more structured, formally organized teaching style than in marketing concentration classes. Including a detailed list of objectives in the syllabus and providing detailed instructions on readings and assignments most likely can satisfy students who are drivers or analyticals without alienating students who are expressives or amiables. Furthermore, once a detailed schedule is elaborated in the syllabus, it is important to stay on schedule. Departures from the stated schedule may be viewed as acceptable by expressives and amiables, but they are strongly disliked by drivers and analyticals. One professor in this study, Professor E-Male, stood out because he was able to achieve a high level of liking among students from all social styles. An examination of this professor’s lecturing style, syllabi, class assignment handouts, as well as documents outlining his philosophy of teaching, can be used as an example of how marketing professors can make the classroom environment hospitable to all students. Most of the students in the sample became familiar with Professor E in a core curriculum class with the same mix of business majors and student social styles as principles of marketing classes. But while this professor is classified as an amiable based on the survey he completed, he is well liked even by students who would normally dislike dealing with an amiable. Professor E realizes that students have different personalities, values, and attitudes. His classes are structured in a way that all students are made comfortable and can focus on the learning process. Not surprisingly, in a written statement about his teaching philosophy, Professor E wrote that he aims to establish “trust and hospitality in the classroom.” According to Merrill and Reid’s research (1981), Professor E as an amiable would be expected to experience the greatest personality conflicts with drivers. Drivers are goaloriented individuals who operate at a fast pace. As amiables


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prefer to attend to personal relationships and make decisions slowly, they are generally regarded by drivers as indecisive and weak. But drivers among Professor E’s students are satisfied by the extent to which everything in the class is made clear to students from the beginning and that there are no deviations from the schedule. Professor E has absolute criteria for exams and assignments. With regard to tests, he states in his syllabus, “Make-up exams will not be given. It is impossible to make an equivalent exam without placing the student at an advantage or disadvantage.” Drivers appreciate the decisiveness of this professor in every aspect of his course. Thus, although Professor E’s social style would normally focus on personal relationships and try to be sensitive to the individual demands of students, his faithful adherence to the standards set in his syllabus satisfies students who are drivers. To satisfy the analytical students in his classes, Professor E provides a detailed outline of the teaching objectives for each class lecture. In total, his syllabus for a core business class lists 65 objectives to be covered throughout the quarter. Professor E outlines what will be covered in each instructional hour both in the syllabus and at the beginning of each lecture. Equally important, he stays on schedule. Professor E also provides a great deal of detail as to the requirements and evaluation of each assignment and provides the grading rubric through which each student’s work will be evaluated. For the final report, Professor E even provides detailed information on the mechanics of the final report: margins, spacing, headings and subheadings, citations, references, charts, where to staple the report, and how to submit it (not in a binder). Based on the research of Merrill and Reid (1981), this professor’s commitment to providing the detailed objectives for his lectures, specific criteria for evaluating assignments, and sticking with the schedule provided is greatly appreciated by analyticals. But in the midst of all this rigid structure of his course, Professor E also provides many elements of caring that are greatly appreciated by amiables and expressives. At the beginning of a lecture after the Thanksgiving holiday, Professor E acknowledged the fact that several students had missed class the previous week because they left early, presumably to spend Thanksgiving with their families. While he stayed on the schedule outlined in the syllabus (a fact appreciated by drivers and analyticals), he pointed out where the answers for the problems they had covered during the previous lecture could be located and encouraged students to see him in his office if they had any questions. Professor E treated each student, in class and outside class, with kindness and respect. He took time to answer student questions during the class break without showing disdain or appearing hurried. Amiable students are comforted by the fact that this professor sincerely cares for his students and wants to help them be successful in his class.

Expressives, on the other hand, believe that Professor E is one of them. More than 51% of the students in the sample believed that Professor E was expressive, even though he is amiable (see Table 5). Professor E has an engaging personality. He smiles and laughs easily and appears to exude warmth. Professor E is very good at interspersing a few jokes in his lectures and appears to appreciate good humor by students. But he never strays from the schedule. During the 80 minutes of lecture observed, Professor E never went on a tangent and always brought the class back to the topic being covered. Thus, though he can engage expressives with his warmth and enthusiasm, he never deviates from the course objectives and specified schedule. Merrill and Reid (1981) discuss the importance of making people with different social styles “comfortable” in social interactions not necessarily by changing one’s social style but by adding elements that will satisfy other social styles. Professors who are expressive should not cease to be enthusiastic, but they need to focus their exuberance to the specific task. Personal anecdotes and funny stories are appropriate only if they contribute to the objectives of the lecture. Thus, providing more structure in the classroom is essential if an expressive professor wants to satisfy students who are analyticals or drivers. Amiable professors should balance their desire to please and create personal bonds with students by providing more structure and absolute standards for students. One-on-one interactions with students during office hours can provide opportunities to assist and develop personal bonds with students who are amiable or expressive without alienating analyticals and drivers who prefer a more rigid structure in the classroom. In contrast, professors who are analyticals or drivers need to demonstrate more enthusiasm for the subject matter and more caring for the students. That is especially true when such professors interact with marketing majors who are most likely to be expressive or amiable. Versatility in one’s social interactions is not dishonest; it is simply a means of ensuring better communication and rapport. Ideally, a professor should be liked not for his or her personality but for the pedagogical skills exhibited in the classroom. If a professor succeeds in making all students, regardless of social style, comfortable in the classroom, then he or she maximizes the likelihood of being evaluated by students based on his or her merits as an educator. LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH This study was conducted on a sample of 403 students enrolled in upper-division business classes at a private AACSB-accredited university. Though this sample is sufficiently large, it may not be representative of business students in large public universities. The levels of assertiveness and



responsiveness and specific social styles of business students in larger universities should be measured. Very few of the students in the study fell into “extreme” social styles. The tendency toward the middle levels of assertiveness and responsiveness may be characteristic of business students in this particular institution and may not be present in other larger universities. The personalities of students may also be influenced by a variety of other factors, such as the location of the university, as well as the specific mix of students. It is also possible that the results of this study were affected by the fact that this university does not publish student evaluations; thus, students rely on information from other students about their professors. And as students tend to share perceptions of their experiences with professors with other students, a student who rants or raves about a professor may influence others. In addition, this study did not control for the effects of other variables that have been demonstrated to affect instructional effectiveness in previous studies such as ability to communicate effectively, use of real-life examples, and so forth. The ideal method of isolating the effect of social style is to develop an experimental design whereby professors with a specific social style change their social style in specific matched courses. Such a study would employ a similar research method as the one Williams and Ceci (1997) used to evaluate the effect of greater enthusiasm (expressiveness) in two matched sections of developmental psychology but would include a broader variety of courses and instructors. Unfortunately, such a methodology may be difficult to implement in actual classrooms as it would require that professors experiment with a different social style and may result in a reduction of instructional effectiveness. Future studies may want to explore the relative contribution of social style in student evaluations of professors compared to other variables that influence instructional effectiveness such as the ability to communicate effectively, instructor’s knowledge, organization, grading practices, and so forth. This study demonstrated that students’ social style had a significant effect on student perceptions in only four out of eight faculty for whom there were an adequate number of observations. Additional research needs to be conducted to determine the magnitude of the effect of social styles and the conditions that can increase or reduce their effect. Future studies may also want to examine how students’ social styles influence student acceptance of specific pedagogies that are used by marketing educators. As social styles influence all interactions, the effect of personality conflicts on all group projects used in marketing concentration courses can be explored. The application of social styles in student acceptance of new pedagogies used in marketing courses such as the “student-driven syllabus” (Frontczak and Daughtrey 2004) may be especially interesting. One can assume that only students who are high on assertiveness

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would be willing to step forward to lead the class to develop a new syllabus. Expressives are most likely best suited for such a task as they not only need to demonstrate initiative but must also possess adequate social skills to persuade their classmates to embark on a new venture. One can expect that amiables would contribute to the success of such a venture because of their “going along” attitude. In contrast, attempts to design a “student-driven syllabus” may fail if the class contains a high proportion of analyticals, who like organization and routine and respond negatively to anyone making quick decisions. Further examination of the effect of social styles on marketing education pedagogies may be needed to determine which pedagogies are most appropriate in specific concentration courses. REFERENCES Ambady, Nalini, and Robert Rosenthal. 1993. Half a minute: Predicting teacher evaluations from thin slices of nonverbal behavior and physical. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 64 (3): 431–41. Cahn, Steven M. 1987. Faculty members should be evaluated by their peers, not by their students. The Chronicle of Higher Education 34 (7): B2. Canary, Daniel J., Tara M. Emmers-Sommer, and Sandra Faulkner. 1997. Sex and gender differences in personal relationships. New York: Guilford. Clayson, Dennis E. 1999. Students’ evaluation of teaching effectiveness: Some implications of stability. Journal of Marketing Education 21 (1): 68–75. Conant, Jeffrey S., Craig A. Kelley, and Denise T. Smart. 2003. Mastering the art of teaching: Pursuing excellence in a new millennium. Journal of Marketing Education 25 (1): 71–78. Conant, Jeffrey S., Denise T. Smart, and Craig A. Kelley. 1988. Master teacher: Pursuing excellence in marketing education. Journal of Marketing Education 10:3–13. Cross, Susan E., and Laura Madson. 1997. Models of the self: Self-construals and gender. Psychological Bulletin 122 (1): 5–37. Desai, Suzanne, Earl Damewood, and Richard Jones. 2001. Be a good teacher and be seen as a good teacher. Journal of Marketing Education 23 (2): 136–44. Fagot, Beverly I., and Mary D. Leinbach. 1997. Qualities underlying the definitions of gender. Sex Roles 37:1–18. Franz, Randy S. 1998. Whatever you do, don’t treat your students like customers. Journal of Management Education 22 (1): 63–69. Frontczak, Nancy T., and Clay Daughtrey. 2004. An application of critical thinking principles to marketing education: The student-driven syllabus. In Marketing Educators’ Association conference proceedings, edited by Beverlee B. Anderson and Deborah Cours, 36–42. Madison, WI: Marketing Educators’ Association. Gaboury, Jane. 2001. Revealing our true selves. IIE Solutions 33:6. Judge, Timothy A., and Gerald R. Ferris. 1992. The elusive criterion of fit in human resources staffing decisions. Human Resource Planning 15 (4): 47–67. Kelley, Craig A., Jeffrey S. Conant, and Denise T Smart. 1991. Master teaching revisited: Pursuing excellence from the students’perspective. Journal of Marketing Education 13 (2): 1–10. Kristof, Amy L. 1996. Person-organization fit: An integrative review of its conceptualizations, measurement, and implications. Personnel Psychology 49:1–49. Lill, David J. 1996. Selling: The profession, a relationship approach. Nashville, TN: D. M. Bass.


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