College of Business: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Madhu Viswanathan

Professor of Business Administration

Biographical Sketch

Madhu Viswanathan has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, since 1990. His research programs are in two areas; measurement and research methodology, and literacy, poverty, and subsistence marketplace behaviors. He has authored books in both areas: Measurement Error and Research Design (Sage, 2005), and Enabling Consumer and Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces (Springer, 2008, in alliance with UNESCO). His research program with a methodological orientation on measurement and research design paralleled many years of teaching research at all levels. It culminated in a book directed at the social sciences that provides a most detailed conceptual dissection of measurement error. This work is a striking departure from the existing literature, which emphasizes a statistical orientation without sufficient elucidation of the conceptual meaning of measurement error.

His research on subsistence marketplaces takes a micro-level approach to gain bottom-up understanding of life circumstances and buyer, seller, and marketplace behaviors. This perspective aims to enable subsistence marketplaces to move toward being ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable marketplaces. His research is synergized with innovative teaching and social initiatives. He teaches courses on research methods, and at the intersection of subsistence and sustainability - on sustainable product and market development for subsistence marketplaces, and on sustainable marketing enterprises. He directs the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative (www.business.illinois.edu/subsistence). His research is applied through the Marketplace Literacy Project (www.marketplaceliteracy.org), a non-profit organization that he founded and directs.