U. of Rochester Reassessing Kodak Ties After Incident

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The University of Rochester is planning to re-examine the close relationship between its graduate business school and Eastman Kodak Co., which persuaded the school to rescind the acceptance of an employee from rival Fuji Photo Film Co.

Dennis O’Brien, the university president, said Tuesday that the William E. Simon Graduate School of Management will have to reassess some of its teaching methods and educational programs that are closely oriented toward Kodak.

“We are very closely integrated with Kodak managerial strategies. We have access to a database at Kodak apparatus division,” O’Brien said. “These are the kinds of things we have to look at.”

Kodak officials told the university that they were apprehensive that the Fuji employee would learn some Kodak secrets through normal class work.

O’Brien said Kodak expressed a legitimate concern about the university’s acceptance of Tsuneo Sakai, an employee from Fuji, who has since enrolled at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“We don’t want to be in the position where we’re closing our classrooms, but we don’t want to create a situation that endangers a company’s proprietary strategies,” O’Brien said.

Henry Kaska, a Kodak spokesman, said Sakai’s enrollment would have made it difficult for Kodak executives to talk freely in class discussions.

He said that had Sakai been allowed to enroll this fall, the company would have considered pulling out some of its employees from the university’s business school.

In a memo to professors and students that will published next week, O’Brien called the incident an extraordinary case.

“The university accepted in good faith the judgment of Kodak about a situation which the company believed to be potentially very harmful,” O’Brien said.

He said Kodak, which earlier this year pledged $10 million to the school for the next five years, did not threaten or bully the university into its decision.

Kaska said Kodak’s main concern was “protecting our business interests.”