Special Supplement _ Volume 06 _ Issue 02 2012

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www.efmd.org Special supplement | Volume 06 | Issue 02 2012

A GLOBAL FOCUS SP ECIAL SUP PLEMENT

The Unfulfilled Promise ofManagement Education?Its role, value and purpose



Special supplement | Global Focus Vol 06 | Issue 02 2012

The Unfulfilled Promise of Management Education?Its role, value and purpose

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www.efmd.org/globalfocus

Introduction

Despite the continued success and growth of management educationmany writers, including particularly Rakesh Khurana in his importantreview of American management education, have pointed to the“unfulfilled promise” of management education.

The extensive critiques of management education also attest to thecontested nature of debates about the role, legitimacy, and academicand social status of business schools. They argue that business schoolscurrently face an image and identity crisis.

In the evolution of business schools there have been a number of keymilestones en route to the present somewhat confused set of affairs.

In the initial “trade-school” era, in the late 19th to the early 20th century,the original purpose of management education centred on the idea of aliberal and moral education for business people. The aim was to enhancethe status of the professional manager in public and private life.

Pioneer schools, such as the Wharton School (influenced by the founderJoseph Wharton and Taylor’s scientific management principles) andHarvard Business School, thus became the catalysts of the future growthof business schools. The founding of AACSB (the American Associationfor Collegiate Schools of Business) in 1916 closely followed the growthof the new business schools. However, these schools did little or noresearch and were seen by Herb Simon as “wastelands of vocationalism”.

The Gordon/Howell (Ford/Carnegie Foundation-sponsored) reportsin America in the late 1950s were therefore charged with examiningthe claim that business schools lacked research output, academiccredibility and legitimacy. These reports proposed an alternativebusiness school model that emphasised strong social science

perspectives and academic rigour. Its educational philosophy – logicalpositivism – embodied discipline-led scholarship with a clear focuson analytical models and scientific rigour. Business schools generallyadopted this model. Indeed this American model together with aredesigned general management MBA degree became the dominantdesign for business schools.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s concerns began to emerge frompractitioners and academics about the overly scientific focus ofbusiness schools and the irrelevant nature of management research.Notable academic critics included Professors Hayes, Abernathy,Levitt and Livingston at Harvard Business School.

As a consequence, the field of management education saw the emergenceof readable management books from authors such as Jim Collins,

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

HOWARD THOMAS

Howard Thomas is the Dean

of Lee Kong Chian School

of Business at Singapore

Management University

and LKCSB Chair of Strategic

Management, former

Vice-President of EFMD,

honorary life member of

EFMD and long-standing

Board Member.

LYNNE THOMAS

Lynne Thomas, Director, Visual

Counseling and Coaching,

Stratford-on-Avon UK

ALEXANDER WILSON

Alexander Wilson, Research

Follow, Warwick Business

School, UK and Lim Kim

San Fellow at Singapore

Management University

FURTHER INFORMATION

To celebrate and recognise

EFMD’s 40th Anniversary

Howard, and co-authors, are

writing a book to be published

by Emerald Group Publishing

next year. It examines

management education and its

futures focusing on EFMD’s

contribution to management

education in Europe and its

influence around the world.

The book’s material is drawn

from a wide range of interviews

with leading management

educators and this special

Global Focus supplement

introduces some of the themes

and issues from the book.



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EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 02 2012

Gary Hamel, Tom Peters and Michael Porter. These books told, throughthe vehicle of cases and well-constructed stories, how managers andleaders addressed and handled strategic issues such as competition,diversification and organisational change. They helped to bridge the gapbetween academic research and managerial relevance and had strongappeal for the growing generation of managers and “fast-track” leaders.

At the same time European management schools such as HEC, IESE, IMD,INSEAD and LBS, established their growing influence in managementeducation (see Howard Thomas, ‘What is the European Management SchoolModel?’ Global Focus, 6, 2012, pp18-21).

They stressed elements that were more reflective of European traditionsincluding action-learning, practice-engaged research, customised executiveeducation and, most importantly, a focus on international linkages, activitiesand research. It is now clear that there is already a European identity and stylein management education and also a rapidly evolving Asian identity and style.

Nevertheless, criticism of business schools and management education hascontinued in an unabated fashion. The conventional judgement is that thebusiness school model is definitely in transition and business schools are ata “turning point” in their evolution.

The concerns of some of the most eloquent critics must be recognised inthe transformation process in this transitionary period:

• Jeff Pfeffer and Christina Fong at Stanford have suggested that businessschools are too market driven and that management research has fallenshort of good scientific traditions.

• Henry Mintzberg has argued that management is an art, not a science,and that the emphasis on analytical methodology and science in businessschools is misplaced. He maintains that the traditional MBA curriculum is

too narrow and specialised and ignores the development of leadership andmanagement skills.

• The late Sumantra Ghoshal pointed out the moral decline of business andargued that business schools had been guilty of propagating and teachingamoral theories that destroyed sound management practices.

• Recently, Edwin Locke and J C Spender amplified Ghoshal’s argumentsand showed how the business school focus on numbers, mathematicalmodelling and theories, and specifically those based on financialeconomics, can lead to rational choices that ignore important issuesof culture, managerial behaviour and ethics. They conclude that marketcapitalism has evolved into “casino capitalism”, largely absent of amoral and ethical compass in which the lack of financial morality and

ethical leadership partially fuelled the global economic crisis of 2008.





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Indeed, business schools have been blamed not only for their influenceon the global financial crisis but also for ethical business failures suchas Enron and WorldCom in America and Parmalat in Europe.

Khurana has observed that a manager’s role has shifted from “higheraims” as professional stewards of a firm’s resources to that of “hired

hands” operating only on the basis of contractual relationships. A keyconsequence of this demoralisation and de-professionalisation ofmanagers is that the self-interest of relevant parties has overcome aproper ethical and moral compass and that the principle of trust thatwas central to the operation of market capitalism has been abandoned.

Clearly, the ethical tradition in business life is in danger of erosion by theinstitutionalisation of management education and business schools intheir current form.

Others, including Chris Grey of Warwick Business School in Britain, haveargued that business schools have become “finishing schools” for elitesto prepare for positions in finance and consulting without requiring themto examine the ethical and moral challenges of leadership and reflect ontheir broader roles in society.

It is, therefore, urgent for management educators to engage in a periodof sustained reflection about the purpose of management education.Important questions include the following:

• What is business for?

• What are business schools for?

• Who are the key stakeholders in management education?

• Should the curriculum of management education emphasise breadthand a holistic perspective encompassing disciplines, theories, models,cultures, ethics, social science, history, philosophy and embracingtraditions of both analysis and synthesis?

There is clearly an emerging and important school of thought promotedby agencies such as EABIS, GLRI, PRME, UN Global Compact andthe 50/20 WBSCB group that advocates that the business school is ahuman institution embracing humanistic and societal values and thatmanagement is a creative art and not a deterministic science. Thereforeit is important to view management education from a wide range ofstakeholder perspectives – society, business, government, students,employers. (Even though, currently, curricula in business schools pay“lip service” to these topics, showing more evidence of rhetoric ratherthan reality in their actions.)

In short, their position is that the sole purpose of firms is not to maximise

shareholder wealth. Firms must deploy their power in a sociallyresponsible manner, balancing the competing interests of different

35This research is based on a series

of 35 in-depth interviews lasting

between two and three hours

each were conducted taking in the

informed views of stakeholders

from academia, professional bodies,media, business and students



stakeholders. We, therefore, believe it is imperative toexamine the stakeholder perspective in managementeducation as an alternative model in a systematic fashion.

This paper consequently focuses on the relative influence ofstakeholders, individuals and organisations, the issues they

focus on, the lessons not learned and the potential for change.To gain insight into these issues we draw on the perspectivesof interview participants from a range of stakeholder groupsin management education. The debate and criticismsurrounding management education energises a numberof stakeholders and changes their relative interests andinfluence. Understanding the relations and interactionsbetween the various actors in management education isfundamental to our analysis of the roles, value and purposeof management education.

This research is based on a series of in-depth interviewsconducted across a set of stakeholders to develop a morecomprehensive and informed view. Around 35 interviewslasting between two and three hours each were conductedtaking in the informed views of stakeholders from academia,professional bodies, media, business and students.

Interviews followed a semi-structured design to guide keythematic areas and to allow respondents the flexibility toexpand on issues they found relevant and important to thediscussion. Interviewees were asked to focus on the timeperiod from EFMD’s formation in 1971 to present and also toconsider the likely future scenarios for management education.

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There is clearly an emerging andimportant school of thought thatadvocates that the business schoolis a human institution embracinghumanistic and societal values andthat management is a creative art

and not a deterministic science



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Stakeholders in management education

Who are the most important stakeholders in management education?

At the centre of the criticisms and challenges facing managementeducation is an apparent disconnect between the role of businessschools and the expectations and experiences of stakeholders.

Respondents were asked who they consider key stakeholders to be,which stakeholder has the greatest influence as well as to identifythe role of their own stakeholder group.

These are questions that are implicitly raised by critics and commentatorson management education.

For example, the criticism that management research is irrelevant containsa substantial disconnect between stakeholders – for whom is managementresearch relevant and why?

Despite this, rarely is the management education community asked directlyto discuss the position and role of its own stakeholders. There is thereforea clear and current need to understand better the roles and needs of

stakeholders in management education.

The first question asked was who do you consider to be the keystakeholders in management education?’ Where possible, respondentswere also asked to rank order key stakeholders by their relative importancewithin management education.

Table 1:

Key stakeholders in management education

Rank Students Organisations Employers Society Faculty Government Others/Business

1st 58% 17% 13% 4% 0% 0% 8%

2nd 29% 17% 13% 0% 13% 8% 13%

1st and 2nd 88% 33% 25% 4% 13% 8% 21%



Table 1 shows that students are identifiedas the most important stakeholders inmanagement education with over half therespondents placing them first. However,this is not as clear-cut as it first appears.This question prompted much critical

reflection by respondents and an analysisof the interview data reveals underlyingissues in identifying key stakeholders.

These can be divided into two categories ofresponse:

The first is a pragmatic assessment thatcontrasts who should be a key stakeholderwith which groups are best served undercurrent arrangements.

The second draws a distinction between thetypes of student involvement in managementeducation and specifically focuses on thedifferent stakeholder roles in executiveeducation versus other modes of study as amain factor in determining key stakeholders.

Both categories are consistent with the tensionsbetween multiple and diverse stakeholderswe identified earlier, yet both tell us in greaterdetail about the nature of these tensions.

Should students be key stakeholders?

First, the majority of interviewees took theideological position that students should taketop position as the key stakeholders. Afterall, students are the principal consumers ofmanagement education and should thereforebe the most important stakeholders. Accordingly,interviewees were quick to assert the studentsshould be top of the pile, yet many would citecompeting demands that meant this was notalways the case. Interviewees grappled with thiscontradiction in the process of working-throughtheir answers. For example, one respondentarticulates the problem as follows:

“You’d think that in order of priority it should bestudents and employers at the top. …but I think thatit doesn’t always work out that way in practice.”

Students are also seen as key stakeholdersbecause of the relationship between businessas consumers of skilled graduates andbusiness schools as suppliers of thisresource. As such, businesses and employersemerge among the foremost stakeholders asa result of their position in the labour marketas customers seeking skilled managers.

This perception of management educationas a supply-chain arrangement reinforcesthe position of students at the very core ofmanagement education. This maintains

the view that business schools must serveto develop skilled individuals who providesignificant added value to business. Again,our interviews revealed that business schoolsare subject to competing pressures, not leastto function as a legitimate academic departmentwhile keeping the customers happy:

“[It] leads to an academic dilemma because if youtreat the student as a customer then you arecompromising the academic side of the business...somehow they have to balance the idea of beingan academic institution but also being abusiness that is selling bodies to companies.”

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This response summarises the constanttensions existing between teaching andresearch, with what amounts to a balancingact – an academic dilemma – for businessschools to negotiate. Is it still the case thatbusiness school deans continue to enact

Steven Kerr’s (1975) notorious folly of hopingfor excellence in teaching while rewardingresearch activity? Certainly, the evidence fromthe ground shows that students are not keystakeholders and it appears that the problemdescribed by Kerr persists.

The relative importance of stakeholders indifferent types of management education

A further observation from our data suggeststhat the relative importance of stakeholders wascontingent on the kind of student in question.Students become increasingly importantstakeholders, particularly where companiesbecome involved in executive education.

“There is the education of people for a job, whichis the role of post-graduate executive education.There I think that the key stakeholders arethe companies… And then there is educating

younger people, and there I think that thekey stakeholder is society and the individual.”

Indeed, throughout the interviews it wascommon for respondents to say “it depends

on what kind of student” and the answerabove illustrates how divergent or conflictingstakeholder interests might exist in managementeducation. As another interviewee remarked “itdepends what the product is” and that there areboth “business to business” (b2b) and “businessto consumer” (b2c) activities in business schools.

Therefore, determining the key stakeholderis again contingent on the kind of student orcustomer involved. Generally, executive courseswere perceived as a b2b proposition withbusiness schools providing a service to thebusinesses that employ these graduates.

Undergraduates, postgraduate and doctoralstudies represent a b2c arrangement where keystakeholders are the students themselves andincreasingly are subject to broader concernssuch as their contribution to society.

Clearly students are an extremely importantstakeholder, both from an employer and acustomer perspective. To assess the relativeinfluence of stakeholders, interviewees wereasked which stakeholders have had the greatestinfluence on management education overthe last 20 years and to rank the influenceof these stakeholders.

Which stakeholders have had the greatestinfluence in management education?

The ranking of influential stakeholders by

interviewees presents an interesting contrastto the viewpoint that identified students as thekey stakeholder group.

Table 2.

Ranking of the most influential stakeholders in management education

Stakeholders Ranked 1st Ranked 2nd

Faculty 40% 43%

Business 25% 21.5%

Students 17.5% 14.5%

Rankings 3.5% 7%

Business Schools 3.5% 7%

Auditors 3.5% 7%

Educators 3.5%

No one 3.5%



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Faculty, business and students emerge as thethree most influential stakeholders. With facultyclearly dominant in terms of their influence overmanagement education and yet studentsdeemed to be a key stakeholder, it is inviting toenvisage the “Gravy Training” scenario outlinedby Crainer and Dearlove where the relevance of

student training comes second to the pursuitsof faculty in their ivory towers.

If faculty drive the agenda in managementeducation, the simple rankings shown inTable 2 give us a helpful yardstick to gauge therelative perceived influence of stakeholders.The detailed responses of our intervieweesreveal two different spheres of stakeholderinfluence in management education: a supply-driven model and demand-driven model ofmanagement education over the last 20 years.

The first is a supply-driven perspective wherethe preferences, terms and conditions ofemployment and institutional factors meanthat faculty call the shots and determinewhat is taught to students and the areasof research pursued. Our data containexamples of faculty’s influence in the runningand direction of business schools, as oneinterviewee commented:

“Faculty are at the front lines of managementeducation, and in many institutions there’s atradition of family governance and they wield afair amount of decision making power in someways because of things like tenure. I think thatthey’ve been most influential.”

Additionally, interviewees spoke of the waythat faculty have shaped and continue toinfluence teaching in management education.For example:

“[faculty] have historically defined what is taught,and when subjects need to change, and how theyneed to change. They are the dynamic drivers ofchange.”

With a high level of control over the governanceand also of what is taught in business schools itis possible to see why faculty are perceived asthe most influential stakeholders. We regardthis as a form of supply-driven managementeducation.

What also emerged from the data is an indicationthat both business and students are alsoperceived as playing a highly influential role inmanagement education. It is this that forms ademand-driven perception of managementeducation. This was especially evident inexecutive and post-experience courses, possiblybecause stakeholder interests are much moreclosely aligned where each student is a de facto

representative of business as both an employeeand agent of business.

Therefore, within a demand-driven form, thesphere of influence is shifted from withinacademe and is led by consumer demandfrom student and business stakeholders. Underthis scenario the mechanisms of influence forstudents are that they pay fees – as onerespondent commented “extortionate fees”.This means that they are positioned to influencehow and where courses are delivered and alsoexpress demand for specific course content

(such as finance, management accounting andconsultancy skills).



Similarly, businesses are seen to be in aninfluential position either because, likestudents, they are paying for managementeducation for their staff or prospective staff. It istherefore likely that businesses, following thetrials of the global financial crisis and their

relative importance in funding higher education,will increasingly influence the agenda andswing the balance of power from the state andacademic constituencies.

Another mechanism that allows businesses arole in driving the classroom agenda is in termsof the kinds of skills and expertise expectedfrom business school graduates. As the ultimate“consumer”, businesses have influence bydemanding employable graduates and the skillsthey should have (CSR, ethics, sustainability,negotiation and decision making or knowledgemanagement).

In a climate of economic recession and ageneral trend of state austerity reducing orfreezing funding for higher education, thebargaining power of fee-paying studentsand businesses is strengthened. We shouldexpect the relative influence of studentsand businesses to increase as they push forvalue-for-money from management educationand pay the bills for business schools.

The rich interview data and our own experiences

reveal that much has changed in managementeducation in the 14 years since Crainerand Dearlove’s wake-up call: globalisation,advances in information technology, a continuedgrowth in student numbers, the prominenceand expansion of accreditation bodies as well asan increasing focus on performance in rankingsare all driving changes in the relationships andinfluence of stakeholders.

It is somewhat surprising that media andprofessional organisations have not featuredhighly as influential stakeholders. Both

rankings and auditors were seen as influential

stakeholder groups by a small number ofrespondents, yet this is far less than faculty,students and business.

The comparatively low perceived influenceof rankings and auditors tells only part of

the story; there is a link between thesestakeholders and the supply- and demand-driven models of management educationdiscussed earlier.

On the one hand, rankings have continued tofollow the customer, for example, providinginformation on average earnings and thenumber of alumni in employment. Thisreinforces the shift of influence over coursesand education toward students or, at least,away from faculty. On the other hand, theconcerns of auditors such as EQUIS and

AACSB can be seen as more closely alignedwith a supply-driven model with theirconcerns anchored to academic quality.

However, many deans and universityadministrators view rankings as an increasinglyimportant signal of the reputation ofmanagement education. The tyrannyof rankings, as Khurana has consistentlyargued, has a dysfunctional relationship withmanagement education by focusing attentionon things like the increase in earnings ofgraduates or school image rather than either

academic concerns or the need for problemsolving by businesses.

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Which individuals have had the greatest influence?

It is not only businesses, faculty and students that have influencedmanagement education over the last 20 years. We asked interviewees toconsider which individuals have been most influential, becoming opinionleaders in the field. Two individuals emerge as definitive opinion leaders,

both Henry Mintzberg and Peter Drucker were mentioned by over halfof interviewees. In total, this question provided a list of 47 influentialindividuals and the top five most frequently nominated influentialindividuals are shown in Table 3 below:

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Table 3:

Opinion Leaders in management education

Rank Opinion Leaders

1 Henry Mintzberg

2 Peter Drucker

3 CK Prahalad

4 Michael Porter

5 Peter Lorange

A distinguishing feature of these individuals is their emphasis onmanagement as a practice and their consequent attraction for aspiringleaders. Indeed, Minzberg, Drucker, Prahalad and Porter have dominatedThinkers50 – a global ranking of management thinkers published bybusiness school critics Crainer and Dearlove – since the rankings beganin 2001. Drucker was voted top management thinker in 2001 and 2003;Porter in 2005 and Prahalad in 2007 and 2009, underlining their influence

on management thought inside and outside management education.

Drucker and Mintzberg both stress management as a practice. ForDrucker, management is an integrated practice – an art of balancingmanaging a business, managing managers and managing workersand work.

With management practice in mind, Mintzberg holds a mirror up tomanagement education in his book Managers not MBAs, which is scathingof the skills taught in management education not to mention itsdamaging effect on the quality of management. The birth of managementschools leading to a set of core (and competing) disciplines and analyticalapproaches means that they are often ill-equipped to deliver integrated

management education that resembles the skills that Drucker andMintzberg identify as essential.

50% When asked to consider

which individuals have

been most influential,

becoming opinion leaders

in the field, two individuals

emerge as definitive

opinion leaders, both

Henry Mintzberg and Peter

Drucker were mentioned by

over half of interviewees



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What we can conclude from this is thatmanagement practice requires a holistic andintegrated set of skills. However, managementeducation is best structured to deliver teachingin discipline-oriented silos, leaving studentswith a distorted view of management and the

immense task of integrating their own learning.

Another individual in the top five, Peter Lorange,has also had a direct impact on managementeducation through his initiatives as head of IMD,the creation of an innovative learning model,and the establishment of the Lorange Instituteof Business in Switzerland.

These individuals stand-out because we havenot yet worked out how to teach the kind ofmanagement they describe. Alongsideinfluential individuals are the schools and

organisations that deliver managementeducation. We asked respondents to identifywhich schools have influenced managementeducation.

Table 4:

Distinctly different providers of management

education

Institution Mentions Region

IMD 13 Europe

INSEAD 10 Europe

Harvard 7 US

LBS 5 UK

WBS 5 UK

Cranfield 4 UK

CEIBS 4 Asia

Open University 3 UK

Wharton 3 US

IESE 3 Spain

Ashridge 3 UK

SAID 2 UK

Lancaster 2 UK

Stamford 2 US

Melbourne 2 Australia

Chicago Booth 2 US

HKUST 2 Asia

Aalto 2 Scandinavia

15The top fve schools – IMD,INSEAD, Harvard, LBS and

Warwick Business School

(WBS) – transformed

themselves from being very

strong European schools into

excellent, internationally

competitive business schools

consistently ranked in the top

10-15 of the Financial Times

Ranking of Global MBA

Programmes



Which business schools ororganisations have had thegreatest influence?

Clearly the top fve schools in Table 4 are

IMD, INSEAD, Harvard, LBS and WarwickBusiness School (WBS).

Insights about IMD, INSEAD and LBS canbe gleaned from a recently completedextensive research study (FernandoFragueiro and Howard Thomas: StrategicLeadership in the Business School (CUP,2011)) of the leadership processes in fiveleading schools: IAE, IMD, INSEAD, LBSand WBS. In the case of IMD (founded1992/3), INSEAD (founded 1960s) andLBS (founded 1965/66), they examined

their internationalising processes in theperiod of 1990-2004 when these schoolstransformed from being very strongEuropean schools into excellent,internationally competitive businessschools consistently ranked in the top10-15 of the Financial Times Ranking ofGlobal MBA Programmes.

The role of strong deans, who had thetime and courage to implement theirvisioning and positioning strategies,

is evident in the actions of deans suchas Bain at LBS, Borges, de Meyer andHawawini at INSEAD and Lorange at IMD.

Bain faced the challenge of strategictransformation of LBS from a well-knownUK school to an international school. Heused his strong reputation as a changeagent to set a clear strategic changeagenda. Borges promoted and strategisedthe growth of INSEAD as a leadingresearch school and a business schoolfor the world with an overseas campus in

Singapore. Lorange shaped IMD’s strategyof simplicity with four elements: ‘Real life,

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real learning’, “The global meeting place”,“All learning is lifelong learning” and“A minimalist organisational approach”.

In this internationalising process each ofthese schools built up strong reputational

and stakeholder capital that led to a verysignificant level of recognition by other

business schools, business leaders,media and professional organisations.

Similarly, over 100 years HBS has

reinforced its strong pioneering reputationand image as a leading business school. It

is regarded very highly internationally forits pedagogical innovations including casestudies and many textbooks, the influence

of the Harvard Business Review and

Harvard Business School Press books andthe continuing high quality of HBS faculty.It has also reinforced these advantagesthrough consistently stable leadership and

a financial endowment that enables theschool to maintain investments in faculty

and innovative management education.

It is no surprise, therefore, to see Harvard,INSEAD, IMD and LBS identified as strong

influencers in management education. Itshould be noted that they are all essentially

private universities and in the case of IMD,

INSEAD, and LBS “stand-alone” businessschools.

WBS, (founded 1967), on the other hand,is an example of a publicly funded,

university-based business school thatmanaged to grow innovatively(for example, with the construction

of an extremely well-regarded blendeddistance learning MBA programme) and

gained a strong reputation in the context ofan entrepreneurial university through the

strong initial leadership of Bain and morerecently Thomas.



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Which issues do key stakeholders stress?

Despite a number of significant changes to the context of higher education,no one interviewed suggested that there have been any “game-changing”innovations within management education. Among respondents there is asense that far-reaching and high-paced change in the macro-environment

drives some of the most important challenges for management educationand yet the sector has only responded with incremental change.

The key issues identified include information technology, new or emergingsubject areas in management education, globalisation, the role of facultyand the influence of competition and performance measures.

Information technology

The most commonly cited innovation in management education is theinfluence of information technology, especially its role in delivering distanceand e-learning. However, precisely what impact IT-driven innovation hashad on management education is a contested issue. There is no doubtabout the pace and change in IT and its influence over higher education

in the last 20 years. One respondent captures the changes in IT as follows:“Well there is obviously the whole area that has to do with technology. Itchanges the way we live, and interact, and communicate, in the broadersense, so it also has an effect on how people learn.”

While there was consensus that much has changed in terms of thecapabilities and kinds of technology available, the assessment of how ithas changed management education indicates incremental change. Theevidence from our interviews suggests that the role of technology hasinvolved more cautious developments through incremental innovation.

“…we fine-tuned our use of technology in the classroom and our understandingand appreciation of it is much better, but do I see anyone who’s been

totally revolutionary with technology and pedagogy? – I don’t think so.”

Another area of IT-driven innovation in higher education occurs in thecontent and delivery of management courses. Bringing teaching andassessment online opens up great potential for the kind of content that canbe distributed across almost the whole world and to a far greater audiencethan ever before. The growth of distance learning courses (worldwide) isseen as intertwined with innovation in technology as well as innovationsin scalable forms of teaching and assessment for management students.Alongside a cautious approach to new technology, interviewees report thatthere have been relatively minor developments in curricula.

Subject areas in management education

There have been few major developments in management education.Indeed, no radical innovation or innovative new paradigm has emerged,





according to respondents. This suggests that curricula have remained fairlystable.

“There’s been the kind of incremental improvements that have allowed usto understand the nature of management itself. So there have been somedisparate improvements. But I don’t think that they’re paradigm shifting.

Nor has there been a radical change in curriculum.”Management education maintains its core disciplines and has incorporatedsome new, faddish topics. However, these often occur within theestablished disciplinary silos that exist in many schools.

“Innovation in subject areas: for example, entrepreneurship has come throughstrongly and recently as well as CSR. Some of those I see as faddish, althoughnot entrepreneurship. Developments have occurred in subject areas such asfinance, but I don’t necessarily see those as innovation.”

More recently, there is a sense that deans would like to see more multi-disciplinary, integrated programmes but are yet to energise a concerteddrive towards this ambitious goal.

GlobalisationAs indicated earlier, globalisation and its influence has been stressedby many authors and the latest AACSB (2011) report. The sense is thatadjustments have been made but there is still considerable growth andchallenges that arise from having more students coming from a far widerset of countries than ever before. At the same time, the internationaldiversity of faculty is increasing.

Indeed, teaching with a global outlook is essential. So much so,internationalisation is incorporated into various high-profile rankings,for example the Financial Times Global MBA rankings include 18%(20% including languages) weighting to measures of internationalisation.However, a number of respondents noted that the responses toglobalisation have not been uniform throughout the sector, one intervieweesummarised the situation as follows:

“Business schools, especially in Europe, have been quite good at adjusting toglobalisation. I think that this is a very important innovation from being verymuch European-centric. As for USA schools, they still have a long way to go.

Asian schools are already developing a lot. This is an important achievement,because you look at other higher education institutions and you don’t see anyother type of institution that has been so successful in terms of adjusting.”

Globalisation presents new challenges, some of which business schoolshave already started to address and others that will continue to shape thelandscape of management education. A fundamental feature of being on

the global stage is that competition for the best students, faculty andresearch is intensified.

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The role of faculty

The role of faculty is thrown into question,particularly in light of new technology andglobalisation. There is growing consensusthat combination of who, where, what andhow we teach is shifting away from socalled talk and chalk and towards differentcombinations of traditional teaching, onlineand interactive media. An example of thiswas given by a respondent:

“I always think of the kid in China taking a programme done by an English-speakingfaculty member, the fact that it’s supported bytechnology, that they can rewind it and reviewit, they have a much better chance of gettingit than the old way, where we take really goodnotes and try to internalise those and then theclass has gone”

Respondents question whether the role offaculty needs to change, especially wherethere is a perceived shift away from asupply-driven model of managementeducation. An interviewee portrayed thisas a movement away from a model wherefaculty are the curricula to one wherebusiness schools are able to realise scaleeconomies by plugging them into thecurriculum to create specialists. Thiscertainly resonates with a demand-driven

model of management education.Competition and performance

Alongside the pressures from a global theatrefor management education, our interviewsalso signal changes in the competitivedynamics of management education. Thistakes the form of increasingly strong for-profitorganisations including the Apollo Group,Kaplan and corporate universities. The risein for-profit providers in the market providesboth opportunities and threats to incumbents.



Threats were perceived in the process of breaking-downstate-owned monopolies with (typically university-based)schools becoming exposed to market forces through the entryof for-profit providers coupled with a reduction in the level offunding made available by the state. However, a focus onperformance has also presented opportunities:

“People talk a lot about competition from the for-profit sectorbut they talk less about how business schools have becomebetter at profit seeking. I think that there has been a fairamount of innovation in their ability to seek profits, despitetheir not-for-profit purpose”

The ability of business schools to generate substantialrevenues is a great opportunity and the idea that schoolshave become better at profit seeking can be overshadowed bydebates surrounding academic legitimacy within universitiesand their relevance to the management community.

Of course, by improving their capabilities as profit-seekersbusiness schools have become subject to more intensecompetitive pressures. A constant reminder of competition inthe sector emerges from an acute focus on rankings:

“I think that we have to offer state-of-the-art facilities, especially ifwe want to compete for executive education and that sort of thing…we are concerned now about rankings and league placements andit maybe goes hand in hand with having a smart building andstate-of-the-art technology.”

These findings reveal that much has changed in the 14 yearssince Crainer and Dearlove’s wake-up call to managementeducation: IT, the subject areas in management, globalisation,

the role of faculty and increased competitive pressures presenta more complex scenario for business schools to cope with.

In addition to these factors, a continued growth in studentnumbers, a rise in the prominence and scale of accreditationand professional bodies such as AACSB and EQUIS are alldriving changes in the relationships and relative influence ofstakeholders. However, despite these changes, some of theirkey criticisms of management education remain, which leadsus to ask what lessons have not been learned.

16


A continued growth instudent numbers, a rise inthe prominence and scale of

accreditation and professionalbodies such as AACSB andEQUIS are all driving changesin the relationships and relativeinfluence of stakeholders



17


Which lessons have not been learned?

There are several areas where stakeholders believe there are blind spots inmanagement education. These blind spots link closely with two key areas.

The first has an interface with the debate surrounding the tensionsbetween rigour and relevance in the management discipline. Crucially,management education cannot meet stakeholder expectations if it istorn between becoming a legitimate academic subject, establishingmanagement as a “true” profession and providing relevant training whileconducting research that addresses real-life managerial problems.

The second concerns the inertia that exists in established structures andreward systems in management education and the institutional capacityto deal with the pace of change in businesses and organisations. Putsimply, what are the major problems within management educationand what are the barriers to change that will address these problems?

When discussing the problem of lessons not learned, respondentsexpressed concern that the activities of teaching, research and problem

solving are not meeting the needs of students and businesses. While therewas consensus that there is a problem within management education,there was limited agreement on precisely where the problem lies.Interviewees provided a range of responses as to where blind spots exist:

“We seem to downgrade the importance of practice-based education andaction-based learning in the journey of managers.”

It is reasonable to assume that a central concern of managementeducation is to produce better managers and yet a perennial problem is thefact that it does not equip students with practical skills in being managers:

“… We’ve lost sight of the teaching of skills…I think that the role and purposeof business schools is to develop the next generation of business leaders.

They need to be equipped with knowledge, certainly, but they also need tobe equipped with the ‘how to’ experience. And we haven’t kept pace with that.We’ve become too research focused.”

Indeed, the shortcomings of providing largely theory-driven managementeducation are also captured by Mintzberg’s adage “managers not MBAs”.Critics of management education have argued that the values and cultureinstilled in MBAs – by management education – have been instrumentalin causing problems such as the current financial crisis:

“We constantly crash into the fact that rational management aimed at profitmaximisation can often end in tears. We seem constantly surprised thatanother recession has come around or that some other schmuck has created

a mega-scandal.”





Yet this situation seems completely counter-intuitive given that the most influentialindividuals for stakeholders in managementeducation, Drucker and Mintzberg, argue fora far greater understanding of the practice ofmanagement as opposed to the alleged narrow,

short-term approach adopted by our students.Despite this, management education isstructured around disciplinary silos, which offersno or limited integration between managementconcepts for students. Institutions are structuredto deliver teaching in silos that have grown upfrom the various disciplines that contributedto the formation of business schools:

“…if you just teach finance, for example, you alsoneed to teach the linkages that it isn’t finance forfinance’s sake. Students need to understand whatthis actually means out in the real world: it isn’t

just equations and just investing in stocks andshares or doing NPV calculations.”

This means that there is a serious blind spot inbeing able to deliver integrated managementeducation, let alone practical management skills.

Overall, the evidence implies that a lack of focuson practice, teaching in silos with no integration,a focus on rational managerial behaviour andacademic research all reduce the effectivenessof management education in teaching the “Artof Managing”.

Consequently, there are blind spots in theinterface between research and teaching, thequality of teaching as well as the content ofmanagement curricula. All of which wouldhelp management education to develop bettermanagers and business leaders.

18


There are blind spots in theinterface between research andteaching, the quality of teaching aswell as the content of management

curricula



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19




Can we change management education?

Given the sometimes conflicting viewpoints of stakeholdersand the many issues and lessons not learned that theyidentify, it is appropriate to ask whether change is possiblein management education and its models.

Our evidence indicates a common refreshing concern aboutrevitalising curricula and encouraging diversity in teachingand learning approaches. In addition, there is a felt need tounderstand, through the lessons of history, how businessschools got it wrong during the global financial crisis andto stimulate rankings/accreditation agencies to focus moredeeply on the schools’ educational distinctiveness andprogrammes rather than a value proposition stressinggrowth in graduate salaries and reputation.

However, it is evident that business schools occupy a difficultposition in attempting to straddle the conflicting goals of

academic legitimacy and identity and management practicewhere, arguably the needs of neither are met! Crainer andDearlove caricature this predicament with business schoolsportrayed as schizophrenic organisations that mustdemonstrate their capacity as “bona fide” academicinstitutions, improve knowledge to provide solutions tomanagement problems and at the same time performas businesses.

Alternative models have nevertheless been suggested forstrengthening the perceived legitimacy of business schoolsin the eyes of management practitioners and otherstakeholders. These include stakeholder models such

as the 50/20 Initiative, schools in the professional modeland schools oriented towards a liberal arts/humanitiesor knowledge-based focus.

But the key question is whether business schools willexhibit a willingness to change and adopt a new approachto management education. One problem that is centralto answering this question is the quality of leadership bydeans with respect to faculty and staff in business schools.The main issue is the “management of autonomy”.

How should deans mediate a decision-making processand serve as a bridge between the interests of externalstakeholders and faculty? Collegiality, in terms of critical

should dominate bureaucratic control if strategic changeis to be successfully implemented by deans in businessschools.

Mintzberg confirms that covert forms of strategic leadershipare preferred. A metaphor for such a leader might be theconductor of an orchestra. Translation into the businessschool environment implies little direct supervision fromdeans but with “protection and support” that createslegitimacy and reputation for the business school.

The second associated problem is often about the deficit ofstrategic leadership in many business schools. Deans have

been variously described as “jugglers”, “dictators”, “doves ofpeace” and “dragons”. Their roles are seen as multi-faceted,stressful and often characterised as similar to middlemanagers squeezed between university presidents anddemanding faculty members.

Further, deans face short tenures (the median tenure of abusiness school dean is three to four years), ambitious goalsand critical challenges as they lead schools through theirfuture evolution.

As a consequence, particularly of time pressure, many deanswill probably “muddle through” and make incremental minor

changes to their existing business schools models andscenarios. (This is confirmed by the somewhat “ostrich-like”responses by academics in our sample who focus narrowlyon improving the status quo).

A few who have experience, time and the courage,determination and resilience to follow through theirchosen path and strategic direction succeed. Successis personified by leaders such as Bain, Borges andLorange. They reach the quality level described by JimCollins as Level 5 leaders who possess “a paradoxicalcombination of personal humility and professional will”.

The key question is whether businessschools will exhibit a willingness tochange and adopt a new approachto management education

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Special Supplement _ Volume 06 _ Issue 02 2012

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