I do feel as uncomfortable about this as you do. This sort of sponsoring ruins academic objectivity.
I do feel as uncomfortable about this as you do. This sort of sponsoring ruins academic objectivity.
Larger studies? No problem, the dean has you covered. The brilliance of b-schools is that they can mint $ with certificates and exec Ed, all of which is available to them at low overhead (namely the university collects a lesser cut).
It's preposterous to believe that faculty at the very top need to whore themselves out to industry for funding. What they will do to get their hands on data, however, is unspeakable. Yelp, Dropbox, eBay, etc. are merely providing data to the researchers, and more often than not, they have a say on what gets published. The truth always does eventually come out (e.g. negative company information) but it does so behind conference/seminar doors, not in print.