Blair Flicker, assistant professor of management science, hopes students leave his classes and the Moore School with connections, life lessons and the skills to build a successful career.
His dedication to inspiring students and creating a sense of community contributed to his inclusion on Poets&Quants 2025 list of the 50 Best Undergraduate Business School Professors.
To curate the list, the editorial team at Poets&Quants – a publication that provides news, analysis rankings of business schools – evaluated more than 1,200 nominations from students, alumni, colleagues and administrators describing the impact each professor has in the classroom, their departments and business at large.
“I try some unconventional approaches in class, and I often wonder whether those choices are inspired or misguided,” says Flicker, who has taught at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business since 2019. “After the Poets&Quants announcement, a former student reached out to say that the ‘weird’ aspects of my teaching — my characterization, not hers — were actually what made the class great. Hearing that, together with this recognition, gives me the confidence to keep experimenting with new ways of teaching.”
In his bio for the Poets&Quants 2025 list, Flicker says that in course evaluations, students often mention they feel he genuinely cares about them. While he adds that most professors care about their students, “what may stand out are the ways I try to make my concern visible. Students respond to sincerity and honesty.”
He has observed that students’ laser focus on grades can sometimes narrow their openness to genuine learning. “I remind students that there are more important things in life than grades. Real life solutions often require judgment, creativity and trade-offs rather than a single ‘right’ answer.”
Flicker’s research examines how human behavior interacts with technology in operational settings, with a focus on improving human-algorithm collaboration. His work has been published in Management Science, a leading journal in his field, and has received multiple honors and several best paper and presentation awards at major conferences. His research has also been supported by the National Science Foundation.
His research on how people respond to different descriptions of wait times on websites and apps recently won first place among 70 submissions for Best Working Paper from the Behavioral Operations Management Section of INFORMS, the largest professional association for operations research, analytics, behavioral science, artificial intelligence and other relevant fields. Flicker calls the project a years-long journey, with co-author Charlie Hannigan, a professor at the University of Southern California Marshall.
“We were convinced we had clear evidence of a profound but underappreciated phenomenon: people act as if they are substantially more patient when a wait is framed as a position in line rather than as an expected wait time,” he says. “It took a lot of effort to demonstrate and articulate this clearly to a broader community, and this award suggests we have finally done it.”
The award is among several recent accomplishments for the Moore School's Management Science Department. Flicker and associate professor Priyank Arora received best published paper awards from INFORMS – Management Science Best Paper Award in Operations Management (Flicker) and Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Best Paper Award (Arora). Flicker and associate professor Necati Tereyağoğlu had featured papers in Management Science, The Value of Replications in Operations Management (Flicker) and How Can a Sports Team Win off the Field with Variable Ticket Pricing Strategies? (Tereyağoğlu).
In addition, in the past two years, the Management Science Department was awarded the industry-renowned UPS George D. Smith Prize from INFORMS. The department’s undergraduate operations and supply chain program sustained its No. 3 ranking in North America, according to global research firm Gartner, and the graduate program climbed one spot to gain its first top 5 ranking, also according to Gartner.
-Carol J.G. Ward