Research Centers

Commitment to ongoing innovation is at the core of the Tepper School of Business' educational philosophy. Internationally renowned for research achievements, business school students and faculty explore a wide range of issues and theories in coursework and investigative activities. The Tepper School’s graduate business research centers include: 

Carnegie Bosch Institute for Applied Studies in International Management
The Carnegie Bosch Institute for Applied Studies in International Management (CBI) is a unique alliance between the Tepper School of Business and the Robert Bosch Group, one of Germany's largest international organizations with long-standing operations in North America. Dedicated to supporting, educating and developing globally-minded managers, this partnership accomplishes its mission through conferences and educational programs. This mission supports CBI's vision of improving the understanding of both managers and researchers on fundamental issues related to the global orientation of business and to foster a dialogue between them. CBI was established in 1990 through a major endowment by Robert Bosch Corporation of North America.

The Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center
The Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center (CEIC) was established in August 2001 after an extended competition sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundatioan among a number of research universities. It is one of 20 centers of excellence in different industries that the Sloan Foundation has established at 13 universities. CEIC's primary mission is to work with industry, government and other stakeholders to address the strategic problems of the electricity industry. In doing so, CEIC produces a cadre of well-trained researchers, many of which will continue to address the industry's problems in subsequent professional careers. In addition to doctoral education, CEIC has a broad educational mission which includes the development of university courses, special topic short-courses and curricular advice for training programs.

Center for Behavioral Decision Research
The Center for Behavioral Decision Research was established in the Spring of 2005 with the support of the deans at the Heinz School, the college of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Tepper School of Business. The Center's goal is to promote and support research on decision making, building on Carnegie Mellon's historic strengths in the area. Affiliates of the Center use the tools of psychology, economics, and neuroscience to understand how people make decisions and the implications of these decision-making processes for individual well-being and the behavior of people, groups, organizations, and markets.

Center for Business Communication
Focusing on the value of effective communication in the business world, the Center for Business Communication encourages research, promotes best practices, fosters training and development programs and leverages technology all designed to advance effective communication strategies in corporations and business schools. To accomplish this objective, the center is developing an online collection of outstanding business communications; collaborating with a campus partners to develop streaming video demonstrations; maintaining a communications speaker series featuring business executives; and creating a day-in-the-life series to take students behind the scenes in the work place.

Center for Business Solutions
The Center for Business Solutions is a new partnership between the Tepper School of Business and industry. Residing at the intersection of business and technology, the Center leverages the experience of the faculty, the talent of the student body, and the diversity of the University’s rich resources to conduct research and develop solutions on behalf of the Center’s members. Companies that join the Center for Business Solutions will find this initiative is a valuable resource to apply technology as a critical element in converting data to knowledge, action and financial performance.

Center for Financial Markets
The Center for Financial Markets examines contemporary issues of portfolio design, risk management, valuation, security trading and market design, incentives and institutional and contractual design and computational implementation. Supporting the educational and research missions of Carnegie Mellon's finance faculty, enhancing the visibility of these activities, investigating issues of interest to financial practitioners and developing closer ties with the industry are goals of the center. Current research explores many issues, two of which are capital gains taxes and marketing design and trading. In 2004, the center received support for the first time from the New York Stock Exchange for its program of supplementing the stipend support received by final doctoral students.

Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Teams
The Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Teams (CIRT) was founded in July 2004. The mission of CIRT is to promote interdisciplinary research on the effective use of teams in organizations. It capitalizes on the existing expertise at Carnegie Mellon University, and in the Pittsburgh region more broadly, to stimulate innovative research that bridges disciplines, leveraging Carnegie Mellon University’s mission to foster interdisciplinary work and innovation. Because current research on teams is scattered across a variety of disciplines, there is great opportunity for the center, the Tepper School and Carnegie Mellon to advance theory, research and outreach in this area. Specific activities of note include a symposium that was presented at the 2004 Academy of Management meeting; meetings with outside teams of researchers to discuss activities of the center, local interdisciplinary conferences on teams, partial sponsorship of an international, interdisciplinary conference on teams (Interdisciplinary Network of Groups Researchers); plans to provide research grants to seed interdisciplinary research on teams; and working to build research relationships with companies that will provide funding and data.

Center for International Corporate Responsibility
Dubbed a pioneer in business ethics, the Tepper School of Business continues to innovate in the business ethics field with the Center for International Corporate Responsibility (CICR). By researching cultural differences, the CICR investigates business ethics from a global perspective. The center, founded in early 2002, approaches its mission from several directions: organizing conferences on international corporate responsibility with participants from around the world; sponsoring ethics-related courses that otherwise would not be available; publishing scholarly books and articles on international business ethics; organizing a speaker series for students and faculty; providing teaching material to faculty for integration into existing courses; and sponsoring research in business ethics.

Center for the Management of Technology
The goal of the Center for the Management of Technology is to develop information that contributes to the practice of managing new technology and new information systems in organizations. Developing partnerships with industrial sponsors, the center works with these corporate supporters to identify relevant problem areas, conduct the research in those areas and then disseminate the results. Some themes in the center's research include new approaches to costing in product design decisions, implementing information technology, designing real-time decision making systems and improving customer satisfaction.

Center for Organizational Learning, Innovation and Performance
The Center for Organizational Learning, Innovation and Performance supports and distributes research on how groups and organizations create, retain and transfer knowledge. Because knowledge management is inherently an interdisciplinary problem, the center brings together researchers from different disciplines, including psychology, organizational behavior, information systems, operations management, economics and strategy. This interdisciplinary community will advance our understanding of the psychological, social, cultural, organizational, technological and economic factors that affect knowledge creation, retention and transfer in firms. Researchers at the center are currently examining the role of technology in organizational learning.

Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship
Carnegie Mellon was one of the first business schools to offer formal entrepreneurship courses, a heritage that continues to grow with the nationally recognized Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship. Since its inception in 1990, the center has been offering exceptional graduate, undergraduate and continuing education programs. Carnegie Mellon is uniquely positioned to help entrepreneurs create tomorrow's reality: The Jones Center offers courses for other schools on campus including the School of Computer Science, the Carnegie Institute of Technology (engineering) and the Mellon College of Science. While its focus is high technology, the center’s program assists entrepreneurs in pursuing their dreams in whatever the sector they choose.

The Gailliot Center for Public Policy
The Gailliot Center develops market-based solutions to economic policy problems. It serves as the international economic policy advisor to the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the U.S. Congress and as an international economic policy advisor to the majority leader of the House of Representatives. The Center also is recognized worldwide as a leading authority on international financial institutions, global economic policy, sovereign debt restructuring and development aid. The Gailliot Center continues to hold a place of leadership in the broad sphere of global economic policy and responds to the course of events with innovative solutions. Many proposals originated in the Center’s work have found their way into U.S. government programs. The most recent examples are the Congressional approval of the introduction of independent evaluation of World Bank projects and the plans for reform of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Green Design Institute
The Green Design Institute is a major interdisciplinary research effort created to make an impact on environmental quality through green design. The central idea of the institute is to form partnerships with companies, government agencies and foundations to develop pioneering design, management, manufacturing and regulatory processes that can improve environmental quality and product quality while enhancing economic development. Carnegie Mellon researchers are working to address the regulatory issues that shape the global marketplace.