Getting her booth ready at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) annual budget rollout day, Linda Argote had a lot of challenges to consider. She had been selected by the NSF's Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences directorate to present her work in Washington, D.C., to serve as an example of that entire swath of science. During the rollout, the NSF and lawmakers negotiate science and research budgets for the upcoming year. As such, Argote had to be prepared to provide an introduction not just to scientists, but to lobbyists, bureaucrats, and lawmakers as well.
Oh yeah, and to schoolchildren, who take field trips to the event every year to learn about science.
As the Carnegie Bosch Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Tepper, Argote primarily studies organizational learning-literally, how businesses acquire, use, and internally disseminate knowledge. Heady stuff even for a gathering of eggheads and suits. How do you explain it to roving packs of fifth-graders?
"I used the example of pizza," she explains. If you run a pizza business, is it better to have the store staffed by the same people all the time, or to bring in lots of new and different people? Do you value efficiency or innovation? She and the youngsters talked it over and decided maintaining the staff was the best choice.
Argote's booth was popular with the students, and it was also a success from a rollout perspective. Congress didn't make deep cuts in the NSF budget, as it had in recent years.
—BRADLEY A. PORTER (HS'08)
