The Harvard Business School Story

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DOI: 10.1177/1350508404041614 2004; 11; 211 Organization

Ianna Contardo and Robin Wensley The Harvard Business School Story: Avoiding Knowledge by Being Relevant

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The Harvard Business SchoolStory: Avoiding Knowledge byBeing Relevant

Ianna Contardo and Robin WensleyInstituto de Empresa, Spain, and Warwick University, UK

Abstract. Almost a hundred years after its foundation, the HarvardBusiness School (HBS) continues to represent the epitome of generalmanagement knowledge. As an academic organization, it is both idio-syncratic and conventional; as an institution, it is admired for itsposition, longevity and power. This paper investigates institutionalmechanisms that have allowed HBS to organize around a particular setof values and beliefs, which may account for its privileged standing. Weargue that a complex institution like Harvard is mirrored somewhat inthe written text it produces, the case and the case method, which can bedeconstructed by “reading” the resulting predicaments in sustainingsuch a model of knowledge. What is produced at the HBS is specific toits own organizational structure but intrinsically linked through thenotion of relevance to three business ideologies: managerialism, institu-tionalism and American capitalism. The case method as organizationalartifact and methodological tool provides a basis for understandingthese general institutional dynamics as a limit to HBS’s ability tochange. Key words. business ideologies; case method; institutionaliza-tion; storytelling

Almost a hundred years after its foundation, the Harvard Business School(HBS) continues to represent the epitome of general managementknowledge. As an academic organization, it is both idiosyncratic andconventional; as an institution, it is admired for its position, longevity andpower. This paper sets out to investigate the institutional mechanisms that

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have allowed HBS to organize around a particular set of values andbeliefs, which may account for its privileged standing. Specifically, weargue that since 1908 the school has achieved persistence and stabilitythrough a distinct mode of teaching and researching, and that throughthis mode it has acquired its perceived position as the doyen of businessschools.

The HBS represents a mature organization that has been influential notonly in managerial practice but, more generally, in the very concept ofwhat business schools ought to teach. This institution processes andproduces general management knowledge, and has developed a uniquemethod for teaching such knowledge through what is recognized as theHBS case method. Further, the HBS is embedded in a broader institution,American capitalism, which endorses the school’s approach and is pro-moted by the school itself.

From our perspective, a complex institution like Harvard is mirrored inthe written text it produces (the case itself), which can be deconstructedby carefully reading the predicaments contained in the case ‘stories’.What is produced at the HBS is clearly specific to its own organizationalstructure and is identified in the case method and the HBS cases.1 Also,through the cases one can observe how three key business ideologies—managerialism, institutionalism and American capitalism—becomeintrinsically linked. It is our argument, therefore, that the case method isa key organizational artifact and methodological tool that provides a basisfor understanding the general institutional dynamics.

Beyond its obvious nature as a pedagogical tool, the case method hascritical consequences for the production and constitution of managerialknowledge. It provides a means of packaging ‘knowledge’ in a standardfashion and according to specific canons which make cases ‘good prod-ucts’. Sold as ‘knowledge products’ all over the world, the commodifiednature of cases allows the school to exercise systematic influence onmanagerial and educational environments, for the case captures the‘reality’ of business in problems whose solutions are exemplified in theform of ‘best practices’. This persistent form of researching and teachinghas also produced a homogeneous, standardized mode of explanationabout ‘what business is/should be about’.

Moreover, as a representation of ‘relevance to/for business’, the casestudy has imprisoned managerial knowledge in a reciprocal interactionwith best practices, engendering greater legitimization but also highconformity. The latter poses serious threats to the ability of the school toinnovate, where innovation is understood as questioning the underlyingassumptions sustaining managerialism or acknowledging problems thatmay subvert the dominant capitalist system. The significance of ‘beingrelevant’ and its implications in maintaining HBS’s pre-eminent positionare, therefore, at the core of our analyses.

Specifically, in this paper we critically assess ‘relevance’ by revisitingthe notion of the case method, which becomes deconstructed at the end

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by considering this paper as a case—the case of the HBS—itself. For theseends, we report perspectives and explanations of eminent HBS facultymembers about the notion of the case method, drawing upon materialscollected in interviews at the school during 1999.2 These materials areorganized according to an interpretative framework that considers threeinterconnected levels of analysis: the institutional, the philosophical andthe textual, representing, respectively, the school, the case method andthe case.

This analytical strategy enables us to emphasize, first, the central roleof the case method within the school as a means for maintaining acommon culture, where the method mediates between the organizationand its products. Second, it enables us to focus on the possibility ofrethinking this mediation by showing how central questions remainmarginalized by the dominant rhetoric of the method, which protects theinstitution from subversive forces. More generally, as a deconstructivecase study of the HBS, our analyses shed new light on the ideologyunderlying the school, as well as its relationship to the school’s institu-tional persistence and to the very form of knowledge that the schoolproduces. Such a textual approach, we argue, contributes to a betterunderstanding of the mutually constituting relationships betweenmanagerial knowledge, the management profession and the social con-text in which they exist.

As a starting point in our analysis, we review several theoreticalapproaches addressing institutionalization and argue that contributionsfrom literary theory, which recognize the textuality of organizationalphenomena, may be able to bridge certain analytical limitations acknow-ledged in the institutional theory literature. That is, we maintain thatstudying HBS cases as linguistic phenomena in relationship to organiza-tional mechanisms of control and power offers theoretical advantages forunderstanding institutional persistence. Next, we present informationcollected at HBS, including analyses of our interviews, to illustrate howinstitutional homogeneity is produced and reproduced in the creation ofcases and the stories they tell. Concurrently, we trace the relationshipbetween the content of cases and the pursuit of relevance as the ideo-logical condition that supports HBS’s persistence as a dominant educa-tional institution. At the end we reflect upon the broader context of suchinstitutionalization.

Debates on InstitutionalizationThe last two decades have seen an outburst of institutional theory inorganization studies, which has generated much attention and numerouspublications (Czarniawska and Sevon, 1996; Hirsch and Lounsbury,1997; Oliver, 1991, 1992; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Scott, 1987a,1987b, 1995; Zald, 1993; Zucker, 1987, 1991). Despite the variety of

The Harvard Business School StoryIanna Contardo and Robin Wensley

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approaches, from normative (Leblebici and Salancik, 1982) to morephenomenological (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Silverman, 1971), themajority of institutional theorists agree upon the notion that‘institutionalization connotes stability over time’ (Scott, 1995: 78).

However, what constitutes the basis for stability and persistence,namely whether the mechanisms underlying inertia depend onnormative, regulative or cognitive factors, remains under debate. Asexpected, some would argue that social knowledge is sufficient to main-tain control over the existing taken-for-granted assumptions of the com-munity because once institutionalized, it becomes a ‘fact’ (Zucker, 1977).Others emphasize the importance of power contests and stress the role ofagency in the process of maintaining certain structures in place(Stinchcombe, 1968; DiMaggio, 1988).

In the midst of these important debates, empirical research has beeninterested in testing the sources of institutions and addressing therelationship of these sources to organizational structures to show simil-arities in organizations across contexts (Powell, 1991: 183; Mizruchi andFein, 1999). Further, institutionalization is often approached from adeterminist perspective, either by modelling it through dependent andindependent variables and causal relationships, or by viewing it as aprocess where history has its own significant place and where ‘path-dependent processes make it difficult for organizations to explorealternative options’ (Powell, 1991: 193).

Despite the spread of institutionalism into fields varying fromeconomics to political science and sociology (Scott, 1995), problemsremain for organization theorists (Hirsch and Lounsbury, 1997). First, theprocesses of institutionalization are still seen as moments of value, normsor symbolic creations. Although diverse approaches exist to unravel thenumerous sources of institutionalization, not much has been done interms of reflexively capturing the self-reinforcing processes embeddedwithin these moments of institutionalization (Seo and Creed, 2002).Second, complex phenomena of institutionalization often preventresearchers from combining a diachronic with a synchronic analysis(Greenwood and Hinings, 1996). Third, persistence, legitimization andcultural inertia have dominated the scene, often emphasizing the increas-ing isomorphism amongst organizations exposed to similar institutionalpressures (Mizruchi and Fein, 1999). The focus, therefore, has been onthe role of environmental forces in shaping similar organizational struc-tures. Fourth, given the privileged focus on the macro-level, few studieshave delved into the importance of language in the process of retainingspecific forms of organizing (Czarniawska, 1997a; Mische and Pattison,2000; Tolbert and Zucker, 1983; Zucker, 1977, 1991). Finally,institutionalization still needs to pay more sustained attention to funda-mental issues of strategic versus inherited mechanisms of persistence andlegitimization (Scully and Meyerson, 1996).


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In sum, it can be argued that institutional theorists have paid greaterattention to institutional forces rather than to the mechanisms engender-ing and sustaining those forces. It also appears that emphasis on iso-morphism, as DiMaggio and Powell elaborate them (1983)—via coercive,mimetic and normative modes—undermines the processes of enablementor ‘enactment’ (Weick, 1976). While Powell and DiMaggio (1991) havealready argued for a more pro-active description of organizational choiceof the actors involved in ‘seeking legitimation for changes that enhancetheir prestige and power’ (Powell, 1991: 194), these issues are starting tobe addressed, perhaps more systematically, through what Lounsbury &Ventresca (2002, 2003) designate as the new structuralism in organizationtheory.

Nonetheless, in our view the function of language in micro-processesof institutionalization can be more fully observed beyond what thesenewer institutional analyses have been considering. Specifically, the‘linguistic turn’ in organization studies (e.g. Deetz, 2003), promoted bystructuralist and post-structuralist analyses, and the increasing emphasison reflexivity in the constitution of knowledge, can contribute to a morenuanced understanding of these micro-processes (Burrell and Morgan,1979; Calas and Smircich, 1999; Chia, 1994; Cooper, 1989, 1992; Tsoukas,1992; Willmott, 1995).

In addition, the combination of narrative (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1992;Czarniawska, 1997b, 1998) and ethnographic approaches (Hatch, 1993,1996, 1997) would help capture processes of socialization and patterns oforganization (e.g. Watson, 1994, 1995). These approaches have beenextended by other works focusing on storytelling as legitimate expres-sions in the study of management and organizations (Boje, 1991, 1995;Boyce, 1995, 1996; Gabriel, 1991, 1995; Martin et al., 1983; Phillips,1995). Finally, considerations of textuality in the study of organizationalphenomena, stretching from hermeneutics (Phillips and Brown, 1993) tosemiotics (Barley, 1983; Calas and Smircich, 1987) and even applicationsof deconstruction (Calas and Smircich, 1991; Kilduff, 1993; Kilduff andMehra, 1997; Linstead, 1993a, 1993b; Martin, 1990), provide a wide rangeof approaches for the study of institutionalization as a linguistic phe-nomenon.

Yet, despite the remarkable impact of these linguistic approaches toorganizational analyses, few have focused on organizational mechanismsof control, power and institutional persistence, these few opting for aFoucauldian approach rather than a more narrative emphasis (cf. Sewelland Wilkinson, 1992; Townley, 1993). Hence both traditions, that of neo-institutionalism and literary criticism, present a significant opportunityfor organizational theory to bridge the gap by complementing each other.At the same time, they offer a methodological challenge which demandsrelating the form of writing to the form of organizing (e.g. Smith, 1987). Itis on this matter that our approach to studying ‘the case of HBS cases’aims to make a contribution.


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Three Enfolding Levels for Greater InstitutionalizationIn the following pages we illustrate the importance of studying institu-tionalization as a textual phenomenon at the micro-level, which nonethe-less enfolds broader contextual considerations. As we will show, theinterviews we conducted at HBS, in particular, reveal how institution,case method and case reinforce each other at the institutional, philo-sophical and textual levels, and create a series of ‘virtuous cycles’ thatcapture ‘knowledge’ without jeopardizing the role of the institution. Inaddition, relevance appears as the key concept that has rendered theschool successful and has guided the genre of cases in their goal toexplain business phenomena. Nonetheless, relevance consists in present-ing always a posteriori an event that necessarily involves interpretation.

Our ‘case study’ of the HBS and its cases is thus guided byreconstructed material from interviews and other documents to show theexistence of these three levels and the mechanisms that conjoin theprocesses of persistence and legitimization. Yet, at the same time, byreconstructing this ‘case’ we question the very narrative that it presentsand produce a wedge that prevents closure in telling the success story ofthe HBS.

Changes and Continuities at the Institutional Level

In the last decades, only a few books have been written on the history ofthe Harvard Business School. Probably the most interesting is the one byCruikshank (1987).3 This retrospective concludes with important com-ments on how the past and most of all the intentions of the ‘foundingfathers’ are still shadowing all decisions, values and strategic movesundertaken by the HBS. Undoubtedly, however, the organization hasfaced numerous changes and needs to readjust continuously to novelchallenges, in particular changes in faculty demographics, student demo-graphics, technological innovation and growth.

Traditionally, most of the faculty came from the HBS doctoral pro-grams. Today, inbred faculty members are a small fraction of the staff,which means that most of them have had limited exposure to the casemethod. The expansion of the school combined with the lack of internalintellectual resources has caused a series of tensions that contribute tocreating a fragmented culture. Most importantly, the perceived changehas raised new issues for the strategy of the institution that can all besummarized as questioning the case method. Nonetheless, the methodserves to overcome the fragmentation as it becomes the basis of discus-sions transcending these tensions.

The second change has to do with the composition of the student body.The student body 30 or 40 years ago had three defining characteristics: itwas virtually all male, almost entirely domestic, and most people cameeither directly from an undergraduate program or with military experi-ence. All that has changed as the student body has become more diverse


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regarding gender, ethnicity and nationality and there is no longer anational military draft. The military experience turns out to be a fairlyimportant factor in the development and use of the case method formanagerial problems. While many of these students had actuallymanaged in the military context, they had done so without confrontingthe specifics of the managerial world and without being trained in moreanalytical or managerial skills.4

Today, several students of every class work for well-known consultingor investment companies between their undergraduate degree and entryto the HBS. While there, they do essentially analytical work but alsodevelop knowledge about financial and administrative techniques in amore competitive, global and complex managerial context. Accordingly,once they have been trained for some years by these companies, the valueadded of the MBA program, content-wise, is much less than if they camedirectly into the MBA from undergraduate programs. Yet, use of the casemethod is still seen as valid for developing abilities to analyze generalproblems (not the specifics), to develop confidence in doing so, and tolisten to and convince other people, which, arguably, is a more intangibleand arduous task.

The third change has been much more dramatic in the last few years:the use of information technology. When Kim Clark was appointed Deanof the HBS in 1995, he soon became the new symbol for technologicalinnovation at the school. He wanted to make more use of computers,claiming that ‘as an institution, we are not comfortable with technology’(Economist, 1995: 107). However, despite the investment of $11 millionin the high-tech initiative and a goal to transform the way case studies areused or studied in the classroom (Byrne, 1996), the total impact of thesetechnological innovations has proven to be more difficult to assess.Students still use their computers mostly as typewriters, and the impacton faculty has been primarily on administrative tasks rather than on themethod with which they teach.

Finally, a fourth change pertains to the growth of the school into newexecutives programs, and the complex incorporation of new disciplines(e.g. business ethics, corporate finance, human resources management)into the curriculum, whichs foster specialization in contrast to theschool’s orientation towards general management knowledge. Altogether,what used to be a tight community relying on oral communication andphysical proximity has now become a more fragmented bureaucraticinstitution whose core platform remains the unchallenged belief in thecase method.

Specifically, in the instances of these four changes, their possiblenegative impact on the school has been so far minimized by the con-tinued endorsement of the HBS case as a research and teaching method5

and the need for acculturation that it requires. As such, it has remained acentral focus of cohesion through agreement on its methodologicalapproach. Concurrently, maintaining the case as the centerpiece of the


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school, in form and content, has reinforced the continuation of theorganizational form implemented by the school to maintain its identityand position.

The Case Method at the Philosophical LevelThe ‘espoused theory’ at HBS, as Chris Argyris reminds us, was andremains such that the institution greatly values participation andinvolvement in the classroom, which is the first aim to which the casemethod ostensibly contributes.6 This factor also seems to have promotedan early expansion into less academic realms, of which the executiveprograms have become a significant instance. Central to this expansion isthe notion of actionability or relevance, which neatly dovetails with theHBS institutional strategy of remaining close to business practices.

Why Actionability is Key and What it Means for Research Chris Argyrisdescribes how to write a case by defining what it means to do research.Hence, it is important to remember that his theories and the school havefound very fertile ground on which to progress with the case methodwhile at the same time conserving a common focus on practicality. Thedirections that Argyris provides are particularly useful for grasping theessence of the institution and its research, in terms of case methodobjectives.

I think I would write the case so that it is an illustration of a generalizablepattern. I think that the reason why research isn’t more connectable—andnow I have to speak for my own field—is that sound research as illustratedin say an Administrative Science Quarterly uses methodologies that almostassures that the knowledge will not be actionable. Then what do we do?—We have to have a theory, for example, of taking a look at a person—wehave to have a classroom in which the human being projects data abouthim/herself that then can be used for learning and which he cannot squirmout of and say I didn’t really mean that. The notion that the way you dodeals is to meet people halfway, I think is wrong. I felt I never met anexecutive halfway. I wanted to meet him all the way if he could help me tosee that I wasn’t understanding his practice, and I wanted him to meet meall the way when I could help him to see that the theory I was producingwas intended to be actionable and helpful. He couldn’t do this unless hefelt free to criticize me. As one faculty member once described me ashaving courage in the classroom—the courage was not so much to get at thestudents but for the students to get at me and not feel particularlythreatened and so on.

Argyris’s approach to how the institution is evolving remains very muchlinked to his own understanding—much of which has been publishedtogether with Donald Schon—of his contribution to organization pro-cesses on defensive routines, and the possibilities for moving from asingle-loop to a double-loop learning process. In other words, he seeschanges as evolutionary and in the direction of unravelling the assump-tions guiding the theory-in-use of students while working on cases. This


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is clearly illustrated by the emphasis on actionability and applicability,two concepts that constitute the core of his critique of what is happeningin the ‘academic’ world of management.

Therefore, Argyris’s approach contributes to the sustainability of theHBS method in training future leaders by ensuring that relevance andactionability have a privileged position where the practical suggestionsare always given by the contextual logic of the case. Argyris argues thatthe case method has been moving in the right direction and has thereforesustained the school. This is because the ‘structural drivers for reducinglimitations is to require faculty and students to be concerned aboutimplementation’ and the HBS has done this, sometimes better sometimesworse, since its inception.

Collective constructs Building consensus in a higher education institutionaround what is to be taught is fundamental for its survival. More so atHBS, for it reveals the organizational commitment to relevance forpractitioners, and its contribution to ‘knowledge’ as custodian and innova-tor of the profession’s essence. The HBS has always been distinctiveinsofar as it has been closer to practice and possibly more attentive togeneral managers’ needs than most other American or, for that matter,European business schools. But relevance is mostly defined by whatguides the school’s mission, and hence it is linked to the training ofmanagement leaders. Relevance relates to the notion of developing cer-tain skills that are useful to the survival, success and perpetuation of themanagerial profession.

Teaching is at the heart of the institution because it sustains the role ofthe institution itself, by training students in skills that from the startserve the interests of a certain managerial philosophy. It is also a value-laden judgement. Teaching comprises much more than just discussingcases. It encompasses a series of activities that the school values andaround which it organizes itself. Some of these are: determination ofcourse objectives, choice of topics, selection of cases, readings, coursenotes, class visitors and renewal of the course cases (it is estimated thatabout 30% of the material is updated every year). This approach assumesthat in general management students learn much better by participatingthan by memorizing. Hence, teachers understand that students mustlearn by inductive reasoning. As Uyterhoeven has pointed out, ‘theylearn the intangible, a certain way to look at things, to decide andapproach these with confidence’.

Corey (1981) mentions Agassiz’s training in the method by observingfacts and letting students make the links between them and some higherform of generality. ‘Facts are stupid things, he would say, “until broughtinto connection with some general law”’. Inductive learning thereforestresses the intangible aspects of the learning process. As McArthurwrote in the HBS Brochure The Business of the HBS:


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These cases—these descriptions of real circumstances—are not ‘learned’.Each case is merely a basis, a framework, for a learning experience thatgoes far beyond the facts of the case—even beyond the intellectual implica-tions of the case. The guided discussion of the case partially simulates theemotional atmosphere in which managers must operate.

The older generation of traditional ‘case method teachers’ are, notsurprisingly, the ones who express most concern about the way in whicha current HBS strategy to gain more academic recognition may be puttingthe idiosyncratic and collective constructs around the case method atrisk. They are less involved in the daily operations and also about toretire or to move away (e.g. Christensen or Argyris). However, a keyquestion for the future is whether a balance can be struck between thenovel approaches, ‘the new ways of bringing the world of business intothe classroom’ (in McCraw and Cruikshank, 1999), and the older ways ofdoing research and teaching with cases.

Form as Content: the Fabric of the School’s Philosophy The learning processemphasizes the ability to diagnose a situation in which students mustlearn to provide answers for action. The case method develops a specificform of thinking:

Management education using cases is like legal training, medical trainingor any field of professional education based essentially on situationaldiagnosis and prescription. The reasoning is inductive; it proceeds fromthe particular to the general . . . In management, though, problems do notyield to sets of laws, theorems, or principles unless perhaps the problemsare reduced to artificially simple forms. (Corey, 1981)

Hence, as described earlier, the live discussion of cases enhances theindividual abilities on the emotional, intellectual and behavioral levels.The learning objectives reside not so much in the substance of what casesdescribe, but rather in the form in which they encode the informationand structure the debate which organizes the classroom discussion. Thefollowing comment by Garvin addresses this issue. It exposes the institu-tionalization function of the cases by linking their analytical purposewith their content.

Well, I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase more times than you care toremember, but when John McArthur was Dean, he had a very famousphrase: ‘how we teach, is what we teach’. What he meant is that we’reteaching the art of management. Management is not a science, despite anypretense that it makes to that. We give students tools, we give themtechniques, but we force them to face real business situations, often highlystylized and compressed, and to react to them, and to try to make decisionsas if they were the key protagonists in the case. That’s what we teach.

The form of the discussion is the essence of what the school aims toteach; content and what contains it at the HBS become one and the sameby conflating pedagogy and textuality. Concurrently, faculty is trained toemphasize the use and validity of cases as a vehicle for conveying a set of


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rather qualitative ‘truths’. For the faculty, organizing real world phenom-ena into cases represents a privileged artifact to reflect upon and bridgethe logics of two different worlds: academia and practice.

Developing the Case without De-stabilizing the InstitutionThe interviewees, almost without exception, believe it is impossible tojust write cases that will foster a ‘good’ class discussion ‘from anarmchair’ and using secondary sources, such as newspaper articles,journals or book chapters. This raises important issues about what isconsidered real and what constitutes reality. The underlying assumptionguiding this common understanding relies on the ability to distinguishbetween fictional writing and realistic narratives. It is as if HBS cases hadspecial powers to convey ‘reality’ without revealing their textualidentity.

Yet, cases represent a desired and particular sort of reality, for theyavoid raising issues that would question the managerial system in whichthey are embedded and upon which they are dependent. They show atleast two rather self-serving advantages: the first has to do with what canbe grouped under the category of ‘virtuous cycles’, a phrase we haveborrowed from a senior faculty member, Joe Badaracco.7 The secondrelates to issues represented by yet another phrase, ‘going native’, asdescribed by another professor, Willis Emmons8. Both expressionsencompass at least some of the themes indicated above, such as thenotion of creating links with the practitioners’ environment and writingmaterial that is relevant to managers. They do however specifically definethe functional and more conceptual characteristics of the HBS cases astext, genre and pedagogical philosophy.

Virtuous Cycle: The Double Effect of Virtual Reality The process of institu-tional legitimization is tightly intertwined with the notions of relevanceand the methodological approach to training business leaders—in otherwords, to the continuous development of ‘case method’ as a guidingconcept. There are cycles in developing a case. The first cycle emphasizesthe interaction of the case with its environment—the student body—asthe case story stresses the role of successful professionals. The second,third and fourth cycles address respectively the role of the case content,the case format and the integrated faculty training, linked to the processof field-based case development9 research. Badaracco explains:

Let me go back to my first point about this virtuous cycle where we writecases about important companies. Students want to learn about thoseimportant companies. We have seen a lot of cases about the Internet andabout e-business. We write cases about companies where our graduates areworking, so they feel good about the school and more likely to send usmoney. More and more cases are about success stories than failure stories.This helps the companies recruit students. So we have more of thesevirtuous cycles going on. In addition, to write cases the faculty have to getout into the company and the big problem in academia now is that you


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have a lot of faculty who have never worked in a company, who are verygood at mathematics but have no spirit of the people. We train the facultyand keep them fresh by getting them out there.

Badaracco defined the HBS as a place where students come for anexperience. He apparently means the need for students to be able to giveand take to achieve part of what they want, while creating an environ-ment in which they can learn. And if students want to be future leadersof organizations, the cases endorse their needs by allowing them toengage in this process as virtual reality. He mobilized the idea of thepostmodern in explaining the essence of case studies:

I say that there are a few defining characteristics. The students do themajority of the talking and they enjoy being taught about issues that theyraise. This is where some of the postmodern speech comes in. We try hardto teach about what is really happening in a business, but we are actuallyconstructing a reality. The fact is that no one really understands everythingthat is going on in a company because it is too complicated, even seniorexecutives don’t understand it.

The above description emphasizes the social construction of reality inthe classroom. It also pinpoints the conventional mediation of cases as asuccessful means to convey a message that the case author has intendedto capture. What, then, do cases teach if the reality they represent losesits authenticity? The answer lies at the intersection between the institu-tional arena and the managerial world, between ideology and practices,and between the notion of knowledge and relevance.

When the interviewee attempts to go further in his description of howthe text itself—the case—is constructed, the notion of reality is frag-mented and then reconstructed in an ultimate, self-referential endeavourto make sense of the difficulties that emerge when trying to explain ‘acase’ without using one. He tries to answer the question of what is lost inthe translation of reality into cases by justifying the approach as simplyreplicating something that ‘seems’ real. He mentions that there are twophases in the creation of ‘reality’. One belongs to the actual writing of acase, the other to the enacting of the case in the classroom with students,teacher and other factors. Badaracco starts with the first and says: ‘Thecase is a negotiated document’. Essentially this negotiation is a two phaseprocess. In phase one, the company has to agree to its release andapprove the account of events in the case; phase two is the classroomdiscussion.

I do not think a lot is lost as long as this simulated reality that they[students, instructor, and others] create has some of the essential featuresof not the original situation, but of reality in general, where you havepeople being purposeful but confused, organizations where you have a lotsof politics going on and so forth. It does not matter that you are notreplicating the original events, as long as you are simulating somethingthat is real.


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The problematic of ‘what is real’ is shifted to focus on the text, whichapparently needs to have a semblance of reality so the students canbelieve in it. What is real, however, remains precisely that which isproblematic and undisclosed. This is more vicious than virtuous cycle,given the impossibility of explaining where the original lies. Fortunately,for the HBS, it also hints at the possibility of denying the case story.Reality cannot be found in the case method other than in a series ofevents which independently make sense on their own and which overallresemble each other in their textual form. Reality, like relevance then, isdefined by the self-referential argument that specifies cases as ‘casemethod’ and its concomitant institutional location at the HBS, whichserves, accordingly, specific interests of an elite community.10

‘Going Native’ and the Rules of the Community

‘Well I think there is a kind of schizophrenia to this place.’ (Emmons)

The dilemma between scholarship and case method approach is articu-lated in the notion of schizophrenia. Subverting the case method hasmajor implications for the sustainability of practice-oriented elite HBSscholars. Faculty, in general, must be exposed to the world of manage-ment practices by carrying out field research in lots of companies anddeveloping contacts with the management community. Yet, from anindividual faculty perspective there is tension with the alternative needto allocate the right amount of time to developing a more academic-oriented career in terms of writing papers, going to conferences andpossibly developing theoretical frameworks. Emmons reiterates thispoint:

There is a phrase that is used around here: ‘going native’. What it means isto be really a part of this place, and unfortunately going native may alsomean that you are not doing as much traditional, academic research as atother schools. So there is a schizophrenia within the institution, within theindividuals and maybe within the student body as well. I would be curiousto know whether the students consider their education here to be more ofan academic experience or, instead, a ‘punching of the ticket’.

Not all faculty members are willing to assume the risks of ‘going native’and becoming exclusively reliant on the HBS for their careers. If a facultymember does not get promoted then s/he will look for other opportunitiesin academia but this can turn out to be more difficult than expected:cases, more often than not, do not count as publications in other elitebusiness schools. Eventually, a more lucrative route may be found inconsulting or positions in companies. For a scholar, however, that mightbe seen as failure.

Whether the virtuous cycles or the schizophrenia will win in the end isa question that goes beyond this paper. The past record of the institution,however, sets the standard for what is to come. In that sense, the traditionat the school concerning its method of teaching and of doing research


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still prevails in the common agreement and belief that this is the bestapproach to general management. Previous tensions, external challengesand novel subjects have all seemed to be subsumed in the underlyinglogic produced by cases and its method. Only if these key elements wereremoved would there be a reason to worry about the homogeneity andidiosyncrasy of the school.

Implications: Avoiding Knowledge by Being Relevant?As described in the previous pages, the HBS cases privilege a certainform of knowing that cannot be segregated from the institutional dimen-sion nor its task environment, but which are also precious artifactsreflecting academic practices. The three levels (institutional, philo-sophical and textual) are intrinsically bound together and reinforce eachother. In turn, they affect the way reality is constructed at the school. Re-capturing the processes of institutionalization from this ‘textual’perspective exposes the self-reinforcing organizational mechanisms thatsustain the HBS over time: ‘the world becomes a case’. At the knowledgelevel, organizational phenomena are translated into problem-solvingtexts, which enclose the logic of what managers ought to be. However, theprocesses of representation that contain the relevance of cases are notthemselves questioned. Rather, the case method emerges as the centralmeans of cultural and organizational control, which directs the commun-ity of thinkers on a common basis.

While the case method emphasizes the practitioner-oriented role it alsoimposes constraints and boundaries on the form in which this knowledgecan be cast. This form produces what we characterize as deep dynamicsof inertia, which underscore the contradictory tensions between changeand stability existing within the organization. These contradictions aresuperficially resolved by avoiding a discourse on knowledge prevalent inmore traditional approaches to academic research and writing, which isimmediately counteracted by the notion of ‘being relevant’. There is, inshort, a fundamental failure to develop a critical understanding of whatthe case method cannot address, emphasizing instead the homogeneousnature of legitimate knowledge at HBS.

Relevance has been driving the school throughout its life history. Yet,why is relevance so legitimate? What possible category of explanationcould we find in looking at the texts produced by the institution thatwould give us a pattern for understanding the power of relevance? So far,we have tried to unravel the meaning of this question in relation to issuesof knowledge whereas it seems that the stability of the logic of relevanceremains impervious to its own self-referentiality. This becomes patentlyclear at times when questions become more urgent in terms of definingthe very notion of ‘relevance’ for what or for whom.

‘Relevance’, we thus argue, is a narrative with internally defined rulesand goals sustained through ‘knowledge’. The latter is harnessed by the


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form of the case and subjected to an institutional structure that isembedded in the broader setting of American capitalism. In this sense,the virtuous cycles described by Badaracco are the mechanisms requiredfor maintaining the legitimacy of relevance, for their repetition endowsthe institution with a self-serving enclosure to preserve the rationalesustaining a central core of privileges. In fact, the notion of ‘relevance’here can be associated with that of ‘real-evidence’ whereby the socialconstruction fostered by the cases assumes a higher dimension of reality.

ConclusionsModern institutions, among them universities (Bender and Schorske,1998), play a vital role in transforming society and history. We havesuggested that to unravel the deep dynamics of inertia in one of the mostinfluential institutions in the management field, the HBS, it is necessaryto work from within the core of their institutionalization: the HBS casesthemselves. We have adopted a methodological perspective where theorganization is studied at the micro-level and where we deconstruct itskey artifacts, the texts constituting and mirroring the institution. In sodoing we have pointed at the significance of writing and form of narratingthat simultaneously explains self-reinforcing institutional phenomenaand opens up new questions about the meaning and sense of suchphenomena. According to Derrida (1982), this can be understood as the‘rule of metaphysics’ which has allowed us to deconstruct the HBS casefrom within by emphasizing the margins of its tautological arguments.

We are now in a position to review the significance of the frameworkpresented in this study. Our three-level framework has shown that theorganization uses self-serving mechanisms of knowledge institutional-ization, where that process is present both in the variety and novelty ofcases over time, and in the structure through the logic of the textual form.The interrelated levels of school, pedagogy and cases reinforce thevirtuous cycles whereby relevance gains a privileged meaning. Successcases are reported as illustrations for best practice, failure cases are usedas examples to reinforce the existence of a best way, and the HBS standsas the case par excellence of an institution that has marked a wholecentury and influenced a great number of other business schools.

By paying attention to practitioners, the academic community of thatinstitution established a mechanism through which it attained legitimiza-tion from the outer business world and made possible the myth of thebest way. The business stories, such as the conventional case study on theHBS by Copeland (1958) therefore constitute a cosmology of myths,which endorse a reality a priori interpreted and transcribed. They arealso the traces from which to re-cover the de-stabilizing elements thatcould subvert the system. At the HBS, the case methodology is pervasiveand not questioned because it is too central for the whole institution.


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Unfortunately, the rhetoric of conventional case studies marginalizesany knowledge that may be required for managing within changingideological conditions in a global economy. The HBS members weinterviewed presented the success of the institution by focusing on thetraining that is provided at the HBS. This sort of indoctrination hasprepared students, since the inception of the school, to perform in themanagerial profession because they become acquainted with a particularrepresentation of practical problems. The case form plays a great part inthis preparation. It is embedded in the notion that despite constantmanagerial changes, there are fundamental and unchanging principlesthat underlie US capitalism.

Concurrently, given their self-promoted superiority to other methodo-logical approaches to knowledge, the HBS case method and stories do notallow pertinent questioning such as whether management knowledge canbe segregated from business relevance, since method and institution arealready cast in a logic of relevance. And yet, by publishing this ‘casestudy’ and deconstructing our own interpretations, and by criticallyfocusing on how method and institution are mutually constituted, wehave transgressed the logic of ‘relevance’ of HBS cases and opened a doorfor further interpretations.

NotesAn earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Re-OrganizingKnowledge, Trans-Forming Institutions: Knowing, Knowledge and the Universityin the XXI Century’ at Amherst, MA, September 17–19, 1999.

1 Faculty write on average 750 cases every year and sell 6 million copies a yearto other institutes, so the school is by far the biggest producer of cases.

2 The main research site was the HBS campus in Boston. The study wasconducted during the summer term of May 1999. Data were gathered in thetwo-week visit. A total of 12 faculty members were interviewed, includingseven Professors Emeriti: Professors Argyris, Aguilar, Lawrence, Barnes,Uyterhoeven, Salmon and Berg. Fourteen hours of semi-structured inter-views were recorded on tape and then fully transcribed. A summary of thedoctoral research that constituted the basis for this paper had been submittedto all interviewees before the meeting. They were asked to comment on thepreliminary findings. Additional material was collected by attending MBAcourses with Professors Porter, Moore, Rivkin and Emmons, and at the BakerLibrary.

3 For greater detail on the role of ideology at the HBS, we refer the reader toO’Connor (1999).

4 The emphasis on the military reminds us of the link between the origins ofstrategy and the mode of military organizations. The USA’s pre-eminence indeveloping cost and management accounting resulted in some respects fromthe influence of engineering graduates of the US Military Academy at WestPoint. Daniel Tyler, an 1819 West Point graduate, was a member of a reviewteam at the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts that led to the armouryestablishing full accounting for labour productivity. The West Point influ-


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ence also is seen in the Western and Pennsylvania railroads, whose com-plementary chains of command and organizational structure reflect thesystems devised earlier at the academy (Hoskin and Macve, 1988). Nowa-days, the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point states itsvision succinctly: it must ‘provide leaders of character who will serve thecommon defense’. To accomplish this mission it reinforces the commonvalues of US society which makes the USMA’s academic curriculum verysimilar to the rest of higher education in America (Priest and Beach, 1998).This change in competitive advantage for the HBS highlights not only itsrelationship with central governmental institutions in the USA but also itsdanger of becoming less relevant to a group of people interested in leader-ship.

5 Of course, the Division of Research at the HBS has over the years had a muchwider remit than just one of producing cases. In a number of key areas,particularly in sponsoring doctoral work on topics such as the role ofstructure and strategy based on Chandler’s original insights, it moved wellbeyond a simple notion of the case study as the sole form of managerialresearch. However, the legitimate role of case study development as anappropriate research method has remained a key argument in HBS policy.

6 Professor Argyris has taught at Harvard for more than 20 years. He nowworks at Monitor Company in Cambridge, a consulting group founded byMichael Porter.

7 Professor Badaracco is the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics and amember of the school’s General Management Area. He is particularly inter-ested in bringing traditional moral philosophy into the realm of business. Hehas written numerous cases and his recent books include The KnowledgeLink (1991) and Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose BetweenRight and Right (1997).

8 W. Emmons is now an Associate Professor at Georgetown University’sMcDonough School of Business in the area of Strategy, Economics, Ethicsand Policy. He currently teaches courses on strategic management andinternational business. Emmons was a professor at Harvard Business Schoolfrom 1989 to 1999 in the area of Business, Government and the InternationalEconomy. His research focuses on the interaction of government policy,industry dynamics, company strategy and performance. At Harvard BusinessSchool, Emmons developed the MBA elective course Capitalism Con-strained, which explored the interaction of business strategy and governmentpolicy in the telecommunications, energy, natural resources, transportationand health care sectors. In addition, he instructed the HBS foundationscourse Society and Enterprise, which emphasized the interaction of busi-ness, government and community, including the not-for-profit sector. He isthe author of over 30 Harvard Business School case studies and conceptualnotes in the field of business, government and competition.

9 This normally takes around three months in total, with two or three days inthe field.

10 It seems to us that the orthodox representation reproduces the ‘same’ model,although in a microscopic artifact as the ‘case’, as the macro-system does.That is, they are both conducive to obfuscating the complexity of humaninteractions and the stability of an elitist distribution of power.


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Ianna Contardo is Associate Professor of Strategy at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid,where she also teaches as a full-time Professor in Management Studies at SchillerInternational. Her interests lie in researching processes of knowledge creationand transformation focusing on linguistic aspects and on cognitive paradoxes.Her publications can be found in journals such as Long Range Planning, StrategicChange and Revista de Empresa. Address: Strategy Department, Instituto deEmpresa, Intergolf 42, La Moraleja, 28109 Madrid, Spain. [email: [email protected]]

Robin Wensley is Deputy Dean and Professor of Strategic Management and Marketing atthe Warwick Business School. He is also Academic Chair of the Warwick Instituteof Governance and Public Management. He was co-editor of the Journal ofManagement Studies 1998–2002. His research interests include marketing strat-egy and evolutionary processes in competitive markets, investment decision-making and the assessment of competitive advantage. His books include (with D.Brownlie, M. Saren and R. Whittington) Rethinking Marketing: Towards CriticalMarketing Accountings (Sage, 1999) and (with B. A. Weitz) Handbook of Market-ing (Sage, 2002). Address: Warwick Business School, Warwick University,Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. [email: [email protected]]


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