A year of fanfare to celebrate 100 years of the MBA, Harvard Business School published a study questioning its role in business and economic crisis. Shortly thereafter, the Harvard Business Review began an online discussion titled “How to Fix Business Schools.”
Harvard is not alone in passing through this “dark night of the soul.” Many business schools now recognize at least implicitly – that something was broken in the world of management education loa. A recent meeting of the agency that accredits business schools in the United States – the AACSB – was described by one participant as a therapy session for deans.
The views on the responsibility of schools ranging from the economic carnage both ends, as well as recipes to regain the confidence of businesses and students.
Richard Cosio, president and CEO, AACSB and dean of the Krannert School (Purdue University) represents one end of the spectrum. He says that personal greed and unethical lending practices were the cause of the problem, not the business school. To say that schools should not teach complex financial models is wrong, he says. “That’s like saying that one can not teach chemistry because you can make things explode. People take their own decisions. ” Others are more cautious. Santiago Iniguez, Dean of IE Business School in Spain, speaks for many when he says: “I do not accept some responsibility would be like saying that we are not part of the game.”
While some believe that schools can continue as usual, others have introduced new materials or materials reviewed. Harvard, traditionally slow to react, has been one of the first this time, together with INSEAD, to launch programs without an executive to fill the new issues that now face companies. Most are reviewing the issues of risk and the financial models in their careers.
Is it enough?
According to Garth Salon (Stanford) believes that in addition to the content, you must also change the pedagogy. Installed in a school system in which students study in small group tutorials to discuss the issues. It is proposed to equip them to think critically about the issues.
Others believe that the problem is deeper and more systemic. Dipak Jain, the outgoing dean of the Kellogg School (Northwestern University) said that only 10 to 15 years of economic growth had its costs. Students focused more on winning than in learning. Corrected the salaries of MBA. ”
Peter Tufano, a professor of finance at Harvard, said that the case study approach and its role in developing students arrogant, was one of the concerns raised by the faculty when Harvard began months of examination.
The truth is that even the most immovable be horrified at Harvard in the number of graduates of that house who were key figures in the development of the crisis: Hank Paulson, former Treasury secretary, Christopher Cox, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Stan O’Neal and John Tahina the last two heads of Merrill Lynch in Europe and Andy Hornby, former chief executive of HBOS.
Many believe that what is needed is a drastic change.
Henry Mintzberg, professor of management in France and Canada, believes that education is no longer being created in United States but in Europe. In United States created peacocks, which are not going to change voluntarily.
The promises of graduates
Students who complete their master’s degree in business administration at Harvard sign an oath that requires them to create value with “responsibility and ethics,” an idea of Maxwell Anderson, who expects to sign half the litter of 900 students who graduated this month.
“It’s back the votes of marriage. One take, does not mean it will not betray, but, as a society, we believe in the power of those votes. “
Shadow
December 30, 2009 at 3:04 am
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