here - Rotterdam School of Management

and knowledge; Van Duijvenbode lectured
on his area of specialty, leadership. “At Hay
Group our work is based on decades of
global research in which we see that
business performance can be influenced
directly by organisational climate; the
better ‘climate’ a leader is able to establish,
the better performance he or she will get
from the team. And the main influencer of
climate is the leader him- or herself,” he
says. “That was one of the major messages
we delivered to the GM students – that by
changing your management style and
thereby influencing your organisational
climate, you influence business overall.”
Dr. Irma Bogenrieder, the Academic
Director of the GM programme, notes that
“what is really important is that students
experience ‘real world’ issues in leadership;
the Hay Group uses the same exercises with
our students as in their own executive
courses.” Sometimes these ‘real world
executive exercises’ are a bit off the wall
– literally. “We taped raw eggs onto the
ceiling; the facilities manager wasn’t happy,
but the students were surprised and happy
to know this is an example of what we do
with our clients,” say Van Duijvenbode.
How do eggs on the ceiling mirror a real
world leadership situation? The goal of this
game is, of course, to get the egg off the
ceiling without it breaking: pretty much a
metaphor for the sensitive, potentially
messy issues business leaders face every
day. “There’s time pressure, there’s a group
without a formal leader, and you get to see
how everyone is involved and how they are
communicating,” he says. “This learning
is fun; students see that gaming can be part
of how we teach our clients, and that there
are crucial learning points attached to the
‘game’.” Hay Group also engages with
students in building their coaching skills,
offering them the same tools provided to
clients; and on Bogenrieder’s request,
provided the GM students with a real
life business case at KLM, one of Hay
Group’s clients.
Sponsoring ‘Thought-
Leadership’ in Real Estate:
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Like many major multinationals,
PricewaterhouseCoopers interacts with
RSM in a variety of activities, and through
its many different divisions. One in
particular – the PwC Real Estate Group –
has aligned itself with research by
sponsoring the Property Chair of Professor
Dr. Dirk Brounen, RSM faculty member
and head of the Erasmus Real Estate
Centre (EREC).
“With more than 150 professionals and
15 partners, we form the Real Estate Group,
which consists of lines of service related
to assurance, tax and advisory activities,”
says Eric Hartkamp, a Partner and Chair
of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Real Estate
Group. “We as a group have a goal regarding
thought-leadership; wanting to be thoughtleaders
in service to our real estate clients,”
he says. “I’m being frank here – we’re all
professionals concerned with serving our
clients, and we spend a lot of time on that;
in practice we recognised the need to find
new ways to expand our thoughtleadership.
Then Dirk came along – he had
contact with some colleagues within PwC,”
RSM CORPORATE COLLABORATION
he continues, “and we began to discuss the
opportunity to sponsor his chair.” As a
young and prominent researcher in a
relatively new field, Brounen was a standout
choice. “At PwC we concluded this was
a great opportunity – to combine both the
practice we as professionals can offer, with
the scientific background of the market,
and all the knowledge and experience
offered by Dirk and his group.” How does
the collaboration work? “Dirk will present
his research plans for the next year, and
asks our opinion – for example, do we see
in practice a need for this kind of research?
– and we can address certain issues to Dirk
and his group that we think should be
investigated and researched, and see if it’s
of interest to him.”
While the relationship is still relatively
young, Hartkamp sees more than leading
research emerging from it already. “It’s
working out perfectly. Dirk is one of the
key professors in real estate, he gets very
“Develop a close partnership with the joint aim of creating
and acquiring new talents and enhanced knowledge
within the fields of research and education.”
good feedback on his performance – he’s
high profile, and that’s very beneficial to
us,” he says. “Further, he is a great speaker
with an original vision on relevant
developments in the real estate market –
luckily he most often accepts our invitation
to be a speaker at the internal and external
events the Group organises.” In terms of
real estate, RSM is the only university with
which PwC collaborates. “I’m happy Dirk’s
research is going forward – there are some
studies going on now that will have
beneficial outcome for both PwC and
Erasmus University, and we’ve made
arrangements on how we’ll leverage those
outcomes,” says Hartkamp.
RSM OUTLOOK SUMMER 2009 13