David Hunger:
Writing a textbook that defines a field

The sixth edition of Strategic Management and Business Policy won a 1999 Text and Academic Authors McGuffey Award for longevity. The judges called it "a solid book that is well-organized and up-to-date with numerous references from business that will appeal to students." Hunger and Wheelen are now working on the seventh edition.

Two things, said Hunger, have been the secret to their success and longevity: Writing the book so students could understand it without an instructor's help, and being ahead of any research being done in the field. The first was passed down to Wheelen by another successful author while he was on sabbatical at the University of Arizona. "He said not to fill it up with a bunch of academic gobbleygook and terms that are extraordinarily complicated and don't make a lot of sense but to instead make it something that students could actually use and understand," Hunger said.

So that's just what they did, and it's what, said Hunger, made their book different from the very beginning. "It's the type of book an instructor can ask a student to read and not have to go over it and explain everything," he said. "The typical undergrad can read the book and really clearly understand what's going on." He said using a lot of examples and illustrations helped make it into a book that teaches itself. "The emphasis in the course had traditionally been on integrating the different concepts and getting students to do oral presentations and written case analysis," he said. "Our book left the instructor to do that while providing them with as much of the concepts, techniques and models that students could use to then apply to case analysis."

Since the field of strategic management was just developing, Hunger and Wheelen had to do a lot of research. While Wheelen was the innovator who came up with great ideas and new ways of looking at things, Hunger was the writer and researcher who had to find the facts to back up Wheelen's ideas and make the book fit together. "Wheelen is often brilliant, coming up with brand new innovative ways of looking at something without research to say it's true," Hunger said. "So I would go through the idea logically and try to find the research to back it up. Over the years, the research would come out that basically validated everything we said."

The book is organized so that it is not only readable and up-to-date, but so the chapters flow in such a way as to form an integrated whole. To make sure that all of the chapters are connected, they included a model of the process of strategic decision making. "We tried to include as much material as possible from the research and literature that was developing in the 1980's and 90's so that the student could make sense of what was happening in today's business and non-profit organizations in terms of strategic decision making and dealing with a constantly changing environment," Hunger said.

The 1,000 page book includes 400 pages of text dealing with strategic management and business policy content and 600 pages dealing with cases. Once the book came out, some people said they really liked the text, but didn't need the cases, so Hunger and Wheelen came out with a 400-page softbound copy that included just the text portion and called it Strategic Management. Others said that they really liked the cases, but didn't need the text, so the two came out with a 600-page version of the text, Cases in Strategic Management, that didn't include the text portion. Hunger then talked Wheelen and his publisher into doing a fourth book, Essentials of Strategic Management, that took the 400 pages of text from the original book and boiled them down to 200 pages. "My argument was that especially in a lot of graduate strategic management classes, you'll have a number of people who have gotten an undergraduate degree in business and be familiar with the basics of strategic management, but you'll also have many students from liberal arts or engineering backgrounds who wouldn't have any knowledge of the subject," he said. "Essentials would be a book that those unknowledgable students could pick up to get a quick concept of what's in field without the instructor having to review it."

This multiple book approach, said Hunger, has been very successful: "We've really only written one book, but the multiple versions provide a nice stream of revenue and allow us to do lots of different things."

Hunger says writing the books hasn't significantly boosted his teaching career. At Iowa State, where he is a professor of management, they consider textbook writing under the category of teaching. Hunger disagrees with that: "When you write a textbook you have the opportunity to mold the development of the field. Much research is done piecemeal and adhoc and follows a trend of thought in a very narrow area. A textbook is an opportunity to see how the whole field fits together, to point out problems and areas where things need to be further developed. As textbook authors, our job is to sift out the research that is really making a contribution and to highlight it. Our job is extremely important in developing knowledge and disseminating it, it's just that as textbook authors we're not typically seen as developing new thoughts. But that's just what we did, by developing models and all sorts of things that didn't exist before we did it. But since it's a textbook, it's seen as basically just a teaching tool, not really a contribution to research. In reality, you really are affecting the field. Everything you do has a big impact on others. It's really fulfilling to see other people write articles that cite your book. That to me indicates what we do really does have value and an impact on the field. It's one of the reasons I do it."

Another reason Hunger writes textbooks, is that he genuinely likes to write. "I have the ability to write so it's fun to use one's ability," he said. "If you have something you're good at, using that ability gives you pleasure. I think that's why I do it and why I tolerate all the pain that goes with it."

"If you don't enjoy textbook writing, don't do it; get a second job at Kmart or teach summer school," he said. "It takes a huge amount out of you and if you don't get something back from it other than the royalties you shouldn't do it at all." The value of writing textbooks, he said, is that it keeps you up-to-date in your field. "You're able to use your own abilities to their utmost," he said. While no one may remember your name 20 years from now if you just write research articles, Hunger said, people in the world who find out you've written a book are extremely impressed."

He said he most enjoys looking into the research that has developed in the field and see how it all fits together. He also likes to write the content in such a way that other people can understand it. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, he said, where every bit of research is another piece in the puzzle. Over time, the different articles are like different pieces. "There are more than 5,000 different pieces of research out there," Hunger said. "I read through all that stuff and find those things that are really interesting concepts and write them down on cards. I then read them over to see how they fit together and if it all really makes sense. Then I start putting together the puzzle." He and Wheelen developed a model for their book that they use as the "puzzle border." "I find myself taking out old pieces and putting in new ones," he said. "Redoing them fixing them, and ending up seeing a whole new picture of the field developing. Sometimes I can change the way the pieces look a little, although I can't affect the research. I try to see how what they're doing fits in with what people are doing in another area and how they interact with each other."

A good textbook should, Hunger said: * Be understandable to the average person. * Have examples. Not boxed vignettes or cute little things that distract people, he said, but examples that are written into the text so that they flow along with it.

Hunger said he enjoys teaching because it allows him to do the things he's interested in, like writing and making presentations. "I enjoy making presentations to large or small groups," he said. "I was very active in debate and speech in high school and in student government in college. I realized that I had the ability to be very persuasive as a speaker. It was fun to be able to do that. When you're a professor you're doing that all the time. There's part ham in me, sort of an actor. When you're a professor, especially in front of a large class, you have to be part actor, sometimes part comedian. It's fun to help people develop and grow. To try to make some sort of impact on improving society in some way through research and activities that help make people more successful in their life and in their careers."

Hunger had been working at Proctor & Gamble when he began thinking about going back for a doctorate. He was interested in why people act the way they do. "I got really interested in social psychology, which in the '60s was really booming," he said. He went to Ohio State University and began taking continuing education courses. He started talking to people in psychology and business about what a Ph.D. in psychology and business would be like. He chose to center on industrial psychology, but was told it was better to get his degree in a business school since that was where he would most likely teach. "I looked at business schools and saw that a whole new field of management was redefining itself as organizational behavior: why people act the way they do and how organizations operate," he said. In 1973, he earned a Ph.D. in organizational behavior at Ohio State University's business school. It was at his first full-time job at the University of Virginia where he and Wheelen teamed up to write the first edition of Strategic Managment and Business Policy. Wheelen received his doctorate at George Washington University. He worked in management positions for General Electric and the U.S. Navy. He is currently professor of management at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Now a professor at Iowa State University's College of Business in Ames, Iowa, Hunger was recently awarded an innovation in teaching award for developing an entrepreneurship major and minor there. While the major is open to students in the business school, the minor is open to any student at Iowa State regardless of their major. "People are starting businesses all over the place and that seems to be a key way our economy develops and grows, which has become extremely important for the world as well as the U.S.," he said. "So we'll see engineers, agriculture, veterinary medicine and design majors interested in starting their own businesses. I really pushed this program and as far as I know it's the first one in the country to offer a minor in entrepreneurial studies to non business school students. I've developed it and nurtured it. It's now doing reasonably well."

"I like to build things, be proactive, change things around," said Hunger. "I'm not afraid of taking chances and doing something different. In fact I enjoy doing that -- exploring new fields and taking chances on what's happening. I get bored staying in one field too long. I think the students pick up on that and find it interesting. They like it that I've worked in business, that I've researched an area and am an authority in the field. It does impress them that I have written a book in the field. Enthusiasm is what students pick up. The student reviews I get will often be: 'Dr. Hunger did a great job of making the class interesting.'"

In his spare time, Hunger likes to bike, work on his model railroad and work on computers. He married Betty Johnson on August 2, 1969. He has four daughters: Kari McMullen, born February 6, 1970; Suzi, born December 7, 1972; Lori, born August 18, 1978; and Mary, born August 8, 1981.

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 1999