Dr. Marta Szabo White is the Program Director for both the Study Abroad in Transition Economies [China/Russia/South Africa] and for the Business Mediterranean Style: Study Abroad in Greece & Turkey Program. She is also the Director of the Robinson Honors Program and the Director of Robinson Business Learning Community.
Internationally, Dr. Marta Szabo White has lectured at The RONALD H. BROWN INSTITUTE for SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA and the UNIVERSITIÉ PANTHÉON-SORBONNE. She is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the 2004 Outstanding Teacher at Georgia State University, the 1999, 2003 and 2009 J. Mack Robinson College of Business Faculty Recognition Award for Outstanding Teaching, the 2002 Board of Advisors Teaching Excellence Award, the 2002 International Education Excellence Award, the 2005 Master Teacher Certificate Award and the nomination for the 2008 J. Mack Robinson College of Business Faculty Recognition Award for Outstanding Teaching.
In addition to striving for excellence and innovation in the practice of teaching, many of her contributions to the scholarship of teaching stem from her collaborations with the Duke CIBER, which have resulted in the publication of several Cross-Cultural Negotiation Simulations; the implementation of the ALBION in China simulation in Singapore, detailed in a 2004 Special Issue of Global Business Languages; and more recently, her role as ICE Teaching Consortium Advisor, the dissemination of CultureActive [pioneered by Richard Lewis] and ICE [initiated by Duke], both cross-cultural assessment tools grounded in the LMR [Linear-active, Multi-active, and Reactive] framework. Other research interests include strategy/structure/performance linkages.
This paper explores the intersection of ethos, pathos, and logos with the newest conference theme: Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In Drucker’s [1] entrepreneurial management, or new technology, entrepreneurship and innovation are systematically related through cause and effect, underscoring that entrepreneurship is a form of innovation and innovation is both a driver of and consequence of entrepreneurship.
Ethos (character/credibility), pathos (emotion) and logos (logic) fosters a powerful platform for this cause and effect relationship to cultivate. While innovation is the tool of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship is the tool of innovation, ethos, pathos, and logos provide a rich milieu for these catalysts to help create the inimitable.
The origin of ethos, pathos and logos began over 2,000 years ago: The Greek philosopher, Aristotle argued that persuasion consists of three categories: ethos, pathos and logos [2] & [4].
Ethos [Greek for character]
Ethical Appeal – Persuasion emanates from the credibility, authority, or reputation of the speaker or writer. An ethos-principled argument is characterized by an appeal based on ethics or credibility.
Pathos [Greek for experience or suffering]
Emotional Appeal – Persuasion is grounded in sympathy, emotion, or instinct. A pathetic story conveys emotion and imagination such that the audience is empathetic with the values and beliefs of the speaker or writer.
Logos [Greek for word]
Logical Appeal – Persuasion rests with reason and refers to an argument's logical appeal. Of paramount importance is the internal consistency of an argument and supporting evidence, e.g. constructs such as if A, then B.
Persuasion is both innovation and entrepreneurship. What is persuasion if not the exploitation of an opportunity, commercialization of a product/service, bringing something new into use, i.e, innovation [3]. From the previously established cause and effect relationship, then persuasion is also entrepreneurship.
If ethos, pathos, and logos comprise persuasion, then these constituents are linked to innovation and entrepreneurship.
This is a linear representation of a non-linear model. Joseph Schumpeter’s [3] Creative Destruction, where destruction of an existing product/service enables the new to replace the old. This is similar to Natural Economic Selection, where survival of the fittest is dictated by the market.
The value-chain of ethos, pathos, and logos (where each activity adds value), serve as a pivotal function in connecting the dots, in much the same manner as Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech reference. In this speech, he discusses dropping in on a Calligraphy class at Reed College and learning Serif and Sans Serif type spacing, all of which made perfect sense ten years later when the Macintosh was invented with beautiful typography, multiple type-faces and proportionally spaced fonts… and since Windows just copied the Mac (according to Steve Jobs), no personal computer would have such beautiful typography if he (Steve Jobs) had not dropped in on that class. His point is that connecting the dots can only be done looking backwards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA
For this Plenary session, I will share a video to illustrate the intersection of Academic Ethos, Pathos, and Logos with Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
References
[1] Drucker, P. [1998] Innovation and Entrepreneurship, New York: Harper.
[2] Ramage, J.D. & Bean, J.C. [1998]. Writing Arguments. [4th Ed.]. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. pp 81-82.
[3] Schumpeter, J. (1934). The Theory of Economic Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[4] Sproat, E., Driscoll, D.L. & Brizee, A. [2012]. Aristotle's Rhetorical Situation. Copyright ©1995-2014 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/625/03/ Accessed February 15, 2014.
