Alex Slitz/Daily NewsAfzalur Rahim is a distinguished professor at Western Kentucky University.

Western Kentucky University Distinguished Professor of management Afzalur Rahim is a leaders’ leader.

His story is also one of WKU’s most inspirational on the value of an education – a story that starts with poverty in his native country of Bangladesh and ends with a hard-won ticket to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship.

“Without that, my life would be quite different,” said Rahim, who clearly recalls every question in his Fulbright interview, for which he was chosen from among thousands of applicants.

His preparedness played a key role in the selection process, he believes, as well as his nice, new white shirt and suit, which added to his confidence level.

“I was very poor. I could not even buy my own clothes,” said the professor, who is now quite a snappy dresser. “But I did not complain because I was happy that I was getting an education. I had a bright future and that is what I tell my students. You can have your dream fulfilled, but you need to get educated. So my Ph.D. was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

Now he can afford whatever clothes he wants. But there is a lot more to Rahim than meets the eye. He is one of WKU’s most prolific authors and one of the university’s most widely read and widely respected scholars.

“Dr. Rahim has carved out a name and reputation for himself both nationally and internationally as an expert on conflict management and the emotional intelligence and social intelligence influence on leadership styles,” said Zubair Mohamed, also a university distinguished professor and chair of the Gordon Ford College of Business Management Department, who has known Rahim for more than 20 years.

WKU President Gary Ransdell reads Rahim’s work on a regular basis and values his research on leadership.

“Rahim is a superb scholar of leadership,” Ransdell said. “He plays a critical role in our Gordon Ford College of Business in that his research is about leadership traits and trends. He is able to take theories and validate or refute them when applied to real data or actual workplace behavior. Our students, in business or other disciplines, would do well to take Dr. Rahim’s classes.”

Rahim came to WKU in 1983 from the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned a Ph.D. in management following his Fulbright graduate study in business administration at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

“Pittsburgh was a good school but it was cold,” he said. “I was thinking of the South.”

Rahim liked what he saw when he came to WKU for an interview, though some colleagues discouraged him from coming to Kentucky, which they considered “not very progressive.”

“Some people were horrified and wondered why I would even consider such a place,” he said. “But it looked all right to me.”

While Rahim researches conflict management, that does not mean he wants it in his workplace, another reason he chose to come to a smaller university.

“I did not want to go to New York or Chicago or any of those places. I wanted a country life,” he said. “That is what I am accustomed to and I did not want to work at a big university with a big name. There is too much politics and infighting. I did not want to put up with that.”

WKU has been a good fit and has allowed Rahim to be very productive, he added.

His work is widely referenced, with 2,418 citations just this year, according to Google Scholar. Rahim is the author or co-author of 20 books and 148 articles, book chapters, case studies and other research publication, and his work has been published in a long list of academic journals.

He is the founding editor of the “International Journal of Organizational Analysis,” the “International Journal of Conflict Management,” and the International Association for Conflict Management and International Conference on Advances in Management.

Rahim has also been consulted by NASA on conflict management in training astronauts. Harvard University has used a questionnaire developed on the topic, and last month he lectured at India’s most prestigious medical school, the Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, on social intelligence and conflict management.

Social intelligence and leadership is a new area of research for him.

“We are missing it,” he said. “When you select a leader what do we look for? Their education, family background and other things. All of that is wrong. We need to understand social intelligence. The guy who flunks college could be a CEO. I am constantly telling the MBA office here that they are eliminating people who have great potential as leaders who didn’t do well on the GMAT. We are missing it.”

Rahim teaches conflict management and a new course, strategic management.

“I like to teach a variety of courses,” he said. “It helps me understand the different areas of management and business. It is more work, but I like it.”

In addition to national awards for his work in 2003 and 1987 from the International Association for Conflict Management, Rahim in 2003 was awarded the Vitale Award for Initiative, Innovation and Leadership at WKU and the Outstanding Research and Creativity Award in 1999 and in 2002. Recently he served on the selection committee for new Provost Gordon Emslie and is the Hays Watkins fellow in research.

Rahim’s research centers on the premise that conflict in management is not necessarily bad. “There is good conflict and bad conflict,” he said. “Bad conflict should be reduced and good conflict should be maintained.”

For example, sexual harassment is disagreement of a negative kind but in strategic planning – also called substantive conflict – disagreement can be a good thing when worked out with logic, often resulting in a better solution, he explained.

“People can solve their problems in good ways if they are empowered to do that,” he said, “but many organizations are not doing that.”

Inertia or politics, whatever the reason cited, reluctance often comes down to the fact that people just don’t like change, said Rahim, who likes to be involved in projects and discussions where he can make an impact.

He has done that at WKU, his colleagues and students said.

“Rahim has not only built an international reputation as an expert in conflict management and leadership styles, but he has always been willing to help any research project of a faculty member or student who asked,” said Bob Reber, acting dean of Gordon College.

Luis Llontop, a manager in the Kentucky financial services industry, is a former graduate student of Rahim’s.

“In my management career, I’ve had to interact with a variety of diverse personalities,” said Llontop, who earned a master’s degree in business administration from WKU.

“Dr. Rahim’s class in conflict management prepared me for dealing with just such situations,” he said. “Not only was the content informative and up to date, it was also very relative to the real world of management today. I’m immensely thankful to Dr. Rahim for teaching me and continuing to be on the leading edge of management research. He will always be my mentor. It is a privilege for this community and for WKU to have such a knowledgeable and dedicated professor.”

Rahim, who also taught at Youngstown State University, the University of Pittsburgh, and several universities in Bangladesh, has a passion for teaching that springs from being the perfect example of the difference an education can make in a life, and he loves to teach as a result.

“I say to them, ‘Look, how do you think I came here?’ Without education I would not be anywhere,” he said. “I didn’t have money but there is the American dream and it came true for me. I found a way to do it. Education is the most precious thing you can have.”