Article On Business Schools Losing Their Way

My wife (a business school professor) and I all always interested in improving business schools, so this caught my eye. Andy points to a really great article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, "How Business Schools Lost Their Way". It is a bit of a long article, but worth a read because it sheds light on some of the systemic forces regarding the tenure track for professors, how it ties to curricula, and how this ties to the effectiveness of business school training.

I have mixed feelings on this article though. On some points I agree. On other points, I think the conclusions are wrong or the analogies are dangerous.

Here’s the one-liner just under the title of the article:

Too focused on
“scientific” research, business schools are hiring professors with
limited real-world experience and graduating students who are ill
equipped to wrangle with complex, unquantifiable issues—in other words,
the stuff of management.

I
cannot deny that business schools (and the culture between business
schools) seems to be set up such that professors are mostly
incentivized by quality of research and the respect of peers. As an
example that shows the seams of the academic culture, it is more the
exception than the rule that a non-tenured professor will perform
something like blogging. Blogging tends to be perceived as pandering to
the public and not appealing to the scientific respect of other
academics. That said, while overall university cultures may not be
supportive of teaching (as the article points out), I know many
professors that have self-control mechanisms that drive them to serve
students as best they can.

Do I agree that graduating business schools students are
ill-equipped? I don’t know, but even if this is so I don’t think this
article or other articles along similar veins are pointing out the
shortcomings in an in-depth way.

I agree that business schools are under need of improvement (perhaps
not as extensive as the term "reform" connotes), but not for reasons
cited in this article and other articles regarding things like lack of
ethics training, leadership, etc. No doubt these things are important
factors, but it seems a little late to be teaching ethics to 30+ year
olds. And why do we single out the business schools for lacking
training in things like ethics? Good thing Bernie Ebbers (former CEO of
Worldcom) didn’t have an MBA. MBAs would never hear the end of that
one. If society and culture values these things so much, then perhaps
ethics should be taught earlier in life like during undergraduate
studies. There are many non-MBAs out there that have been culpable in
corporate fiascos. Why not make ethics or leadership training a job
requirement like Powerpoint or speaking skills as opposed to something
for MBAs only?

The article is also critical of business schools overly rewarding "business as a science" versus "business as a profession":

This scientific model,
as we call it, is predicated on the faulty assumption that business is
an academic discipline like chemistry or geology. In fact, business is
a profession, akin to medicine and the law, and business schools are
professional schools—or should be. Like other professions, business
calls upon the work of many academic disciplines. For medicine, those
disciplines include biology, chemistry, and psychology; for business,
they include mathematics, economics, psychology, philosophy, and
sociology. The distinction between a profession and an academic
discipline is crucial. In our view, no curricular reforms will work
until the scientific model is replaced by a more appropriate model
rooted in the special requirements of a profession.

No
doubt that having practical, real-world business knowledge helps in
teaching. I can see how things can start to get wound in the wrong
direction if business schools overly reward scientists and do not
reward those with practical experience. But why limit things to the
resume of the professor? I know many professors that bring in or draw
on the knowledge of alumni and executive-level practioners.
Additionally, there’s something to be said about the rigorous aspects
of business theories too. It serves as checks and balances for
"business education anarchy" and the amount of ad-hoc and arbitrary
teaching that can be brought by a pure practitioner. Imagine "Chainsaw"
Al Dunlap or Bernie Ebbers professing their management theories to be
fact or science.

As for business schools helping students to gain training in making
decisions under uncertainty or applying psychology areas to business
(the article favorably points out the works of Nobel Prize-winner
Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky), perhaps this is something
for improvement. Books like Malcolm Gladwell’s "Blink" have recently
become highlighted in the business world, yet only a handful of
business schools (e.g., The University of Chicago, Wharton, INSEAD,
Dartmouth, Duke) have separate judgement and decision-making courses
for their students.

Update (5/4/05): Nicholas Carr (former editor of HBR) and author of "Does IT Matter" also has an interesting take on the article at his blog. Hat tip to Andy (he’s also got an update there on his perspectives).