The things marketing studies are seen as ephemeral and practical rather than eternal and fundamental, and hence of less scholarly importance. I don’t think anyone explicitly articulates this distinction, but it pretty much explains the status hierarchy of disciplines at universities.

OB outranks Marketing at Stanford, too, in my experience, and I think this contrast with real-world priorities is partially but not fully explained by commenter Irene. HR departments do little or nothing to to unleash actual human potential through their influence over organizational culture; as Irene notes, they exist to insure that an organization’s culture conforms with legal requirements.

The people who are actually responsible for an organization’s culture (and thus its behavior) are the mid-career leaders making their way into the upper echelons of senior management, and these people come from many different functions depending on the organization–finance, sales, engineering–but they almost never come from HR.

While I was in business school, I attended talks by dozens of grads who had come back to campus to share their experiences with the current crop of students, and almost every one was asked, “What was the most important class you took?” And almost every one of them said the same thing: 1) their most important class was organizational behavior, 2) but they didn’t take it seriously when they were in school, and 3) they didn’t realize how important it was until they were 10 years into their career.

So there’s reason for hope yet, Grant.

Irene, It’s a great point. We demand equal treatment and then resent the outcome. And this says the employee has to change just as much of the employer. Thanks for giving this post new purchase on the real world (not really a way of life for me). As to story time, thank you very much for asking and I will meet you at the library next friday! Promise. Grant