Reflections on my educational experience at Michigan State University

Abstract

I learned my first important lesson on research from the research design seminars offered by Drs Tamer Cavusgil and Roger Calantone. During my first semester in the Ph.D. program, I took a Ph.D. seminar class, international business research with Dr. Tamer Cavusgil. In that class, each student was asked to select a topic to research, present findings to the rest of the class, and write a term paper that could be turned into a potential publication. In the midst of my struggle to find this big bang topic that could lead to a potential publication, Dr. Tamer Cavusgil showed us a few surveys designed by previous Ph.D. students. He mentioned that we could use these surveys as guidelines to develop our own thoughts. These surveys turned out to be the concrete piece of information that I needed to be on track with my research. Prior to this, I had gained some interests in understanding how trust and relational norms govern inter-organizational relationships. One of the surveys Dr. Cavusgil passed to us happened to be about this research area. Under the guidance of Drs Cavusgil and Joseph Bonner, I developed my first research ideas on understanding the third way of governance, relational norms in international channels of distribution.

Citation

Zhang, C. (2008), "Reflections on my educational experience at Michigan State University", Tamer Cavusgil, S. (Ed.) Michigan State University Contributions to International Business and Innovation (Advances in International Marketing, Vol. 19), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 173-185. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1474-7979(2009)0000019021