Tag: McDonnell Scholars

Olin graduate Ming Xu, MBA’08, has received the Mark S. Wrighton Award from the McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

Xu is the director of Global Category Management at Emerson Systems and Solutions. She manages more than $200M across electrical, mechanical, computing and software categories for the company’s control system platforms.

She is an alumna of McDonnell partner Tsinghua University in Beijing and decided to pursue her MBA after she moved to St. Louis. Xu started her career at Emerson the same year she graduated, and over the past 13 years has held positions in analytics, logistics, strategic planning and sourcing, and category management across supply chain functions, according to the McDonnell website. Today Xu is an influential global supply chain leader.

Watch her interview with Kurt Dirks, vice chancellor of international affairs and Bank of America Professor of Leadership.




During the McDonnell International Scholars Academy symposium session on “Asset Building for Retirement Security,” we were presented with the examples of the Australian and Singaporean social security systems.

Even though both systems are highly praised, I was surprised to realize that the discussion offered a counter-intuitive dynamic. While Australia was optimistic about the shift towards individual accounts and a lower fiscal burden, the presentation regarding the case of Singapore –a highly praised social security system– focused on the problems of lack of transparency and consistency in the public policies of the country across time. It seemed like there existed some consensus that countries should be moving towards the individual account system (in any of its many flavors), given the current situation of higher longevity and decreasing birth rates.

But there is one key aspect of the discussion and the implementation of this new system that was not emphasized enough. That is, the role of expectations. When presenting a system like this to a country, the public usually cares about one particular variable: How large is my pension going to be?

An Individual Account Pension System sets the final pension as a percentage of the salary each individual received before retirement (called pension replacement rates). In particular, the Australian superannuation system is expected to achieve a replacement rate of 65% by 2050. And this is indeed very promising. But what if it doesn’t?

One of the characteristics of this system, contrary to what happens in a government-funded retirement scheme, is that the true replacement rate will only be revealed after 30-40 years of its introduction (once the first young beneficiaries retire). At that moment, if the initial promise is not met and pensions turn out to be too low, this will cause a great deal of social unrest and put pressure on the fiscal budget (the very situation this system is trying to avoid).

Achieving high replacement rates is intimately tied to a formal and efficient labor market. If people stop contributing to their funds for extensive periods of time (either because they are self-employed, unemployed or work in the informal sector), their accrued wealth will be dramatically diminished.

While admittedly Australia shows low unemployment rates and little difference between male and female rates, this is not the case in many countries, especially in the developing world. Hence, transparency about the inherent risks of this type of pension system, as well as acknowledging that the government will probably have to step up to provide minimum pensions is key. This will anchor expectations and provide a more accurate cost-benefit analysis, which will reduce the likelihood that moving towards this system will turn out to create a future liability.

 Photo by Mary Butkus/WUSTL Photos

Photo by Mary Butkus/WUSTL Photos

Guest Blogger: Rodrigo Moser, McDonnell Scholar and Olin PhD student in Finance.

The McDonnell International Scholars Academy provides the network with which Washington University in St. Louis incubates new ideas and mentors future leaders. Through our partnerships, we lead groundbreaking research projects and prepare our Scholars to be effective leaders in a global community.

Read more from the McDonnell Scholars




“Forget about the things you learned in leadership classes. They will be more destructive to your career than being helpful.”

When Alex Haslam, professor of psychology and ARC Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland, started his McDonnell International Scholars Academy symposium workshop by saying this, I knew that something I felt but could not understand or explain by myself was going to be uncovered by him. In his talk, he explained where the destructiveness of leadership classes come from and what kind of alternative understanding we need.

The mainstream leadership concept focuses on the individual leader’s skills instead of the group’s values. We are persuaded that achieving organizational goals totally depends on the leader’s skills, there is a strong emphasis on “I-ness” instead of “We-ness.” The leader becomes a figure that tries to isolate herself/himself from the group by having superior skills, by being different, instead of developing a sense of commonality with the people around her/him. In leadership classes, we take sophisticated tests to measure our skills and always hear good things about ourselves.

The reality is, leadership is never just about leaders; it is mostly about followers.

It is not about making yourself different from others, it is about creating a sense of commonality with people around you. If the leader is not able to create a shared group identity in the group to mobilize and influence others, there is no leadership that we can talk about.

This mobilization process is a group process rather than an individual’s success. Because if there is no shared identity in the group, it is very hard to mobilize a group of people toward a goal. Apart from enhancing a shared identity, a leader’s role is to help the group members become healthier individuals instead of pushing them into competition with each other. He explains the theory (Social Identity Approach) behind these views in the book “The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power.

Now imagine millions of unhappy people at their workplaces, being forced to have all the qualities of a single “super leader” instead of expressing their individual values, incentivized to compete for having the “best skills” among their team and “beating others” in the competition instead of contributing to a collective learning. I know from my Y-generation friends that this work environment does not work for us anymore, so we are blamed by our managers and families for being different, not loyal, and having a strong desire to leave the big institutions we are in. In reality, though, all we need is a different understanding of leadership from our leaders. As the new generation of future leaders, including the McDonnell Academy Scholars, I hope that we can become good representatives of this new leadership philosophy.

 Photo by Mary Butkus/WUSTL Photos

Photo by Mary Butkus/WUSTL Photos

Guest Blogger:  Gulcan Yayla, McDonnell Scholar, Olin MBA’17

The McDonnell International Scholars Academy provides the network with which Washington University in St. Louis incubates new ideas and mentors future leaders. Through our partnerships, we lead groundbreaking research projects and prepare our Scholars to be effective leaders in a global community.

Read more from the McDonnell Scholars.