Five Questions with Jun Park
Junbeom (Jun) Park is an assistant professor in the school’s Management and Entrepreneurship academic area.
He received his doctorate in business management from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focusing on strategic management and organizational theory. His research interests lie in how organizations and their leaders manage publicity and stakeholder perceptions.
What got you interested in your field, and what is the most rewarding part of being involved in it?
Strategic management and international business have deep roots in economics, particularly in explaining why some firms outperform others. But businesses are also social systems, and numbers do not always tell the whole story. Organizations and their leaders are influenced by reputation, impressions, media narratives, celebrity and other social and political forces. All of these are ultimately created and interpreted by people. I became interested in understanding how these human factors shape the way businesses and their leaders behave.
The most rewarding part for me is intellectually engaging with people. I enjoy talking with students, scholars and people in practice. Those conversations help me connect theory with what is happening in the real world and contribute in some small way to our understanding of human nature and its implications for business.
What is your favorite part about being a Jayhawk?
What I have enjoyed most is the strong sense of belonging surrounding KU. There is a genuine attachment to this university among students, faculty, staff and alumni that is hard to miss. My favorite part would be being part of such a proud community and having the chance to contribute to the tradition and carry that legacy forward. And of course, I cannot leave out the Rock Chalk chant.
What would you see yourself doing if you weren’t a professor?
I do not have a particularly fancy alternative career in mind. I think I would like to run a small deli near a college campus, a place where students could get a really good meal without spending much money. I would be perfectly happy being a quiet supporter of students. I would enjoy feeding them good food, getting to know them and watching them chase their dreams.
What advice would you give your college self?
I would tell myself that life is not a horse race.
When I was in college, I was very focused on achieving things, moving on to the next goal, and trying to stay ahead. Looking back, I think I spent too much time thinking about where I needed to get and not enough time appreciating what was around me. I missed out on things like art, music, nature, and other experiences because I did not think they mattered as much at the time. Now I see them very differently. I would tell my younger self to slow down a little and remember that not everything valuable in life comes with a grade, a title, or an award.
If you could require students to read one thing before graduation (outside of your class reading), what would it be and why?
I would choose Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.” The book features a photograph of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 from about 4 billion miles away, where our planet appears as little as a tiny speck of light. Sagan famously describes Earth in the image as “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
As Sagan points out, nearly everything we worry about, compete over, celebrate, or fight about happens and has happened on this tiny point in an unfathomably vast universe. To me, that does not make our lives meaningless. It reminds me of how extraordinary and fragile our lives are, and how little sense it makes to spend them consumed by status, resentment, or trivial conflicts. Before students leave college, I would want them to think about this at least once.