A Community of Constructive Criticism

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.

One of those precious occasions that academics value and enjoy most is when they are lucky to find sharp and intelligent critics. Acute and smart criticism is what has fostered the progress of human thinking in all fields from philosophy to the sciences and the arts. Criticising and questioning lies also at the basis of the methodology used at the fundamental stages of professional academic life, such as the defence of PhD dissertations or the publication of papers and books.

Ronald Dworkin, a renowned philosopher who I was fortunate to have as tutor during my doctoral years -and whose work was the object of my dissertation-, used to say that he considered himself an extremely lucky person because he had many detractors. He even recognised that his most productive work were his replies to critics (1). Certainly, his publications had an apologetic character and he built up his law theory on the basis of comments, criticisms, replies and refutations. He was praised -and at the same time rejected- for making philosophy a profitable task, due to the many papers, articles and books published by and about him. Indeed, Dworkin was, and still is, a controversial and prolific academic example (a recent contribution), two attributes that I really admire.

Tags(clickable): Ronald Dworkin, Web2.0, MBA, Business School

Dworkin would be delighted to surf the blogosphere since it brings the opportunity of finding many potential critics of the highest calibre, like Daniel M. Harrison who, in his blog "The Global Perspective" reviews my previous contribution, "Management education in 2006: Anticipating some trends"

Mr. Harrison's blog is an interesting, inspiring and excellently written collection of opinions and experiences, whose author is currently studying for his MBA at BI, the prestigious Norwegian business school. He holds a romantic vision of education (see his post "The MBA Conundrum"), something poignant that many of us respect and even share.

Mr. Harrison argues that the trends for management education in 2006 I cover in my post could be hardly considered as predictions. I agree with him. I do not possess Delphic-like powers but in fact I refer to anticipated trends, not to predictions. Trends are anchored in past patterns and consolidated over months or years. They are not formed overnight but rather take some time to develop and cannot be introduced or changed just by decree. My purpose thus was not to fortune-tell, but rather to confirm patterns and to suggest some of their consequences.

Predicting is something different. For example, if we go back to 1996 and we look at the book "Mega-universities and Knowledge Media", written by John Daniel -the then Vice-Chancellor of UK's Open University- we could find valuable predictions on management education that are even applicable a decade later. He anticipated that some of the future things to occur included:

- "Emphasis on learning productivity in the route to more effective teaching...

- As the habit of lifelong learning spreads ...the majority of students will combine study and teaching

- The notion of academic community will have to be conceived with less emphasis on physical campus as a common focal point...

- Universities will become increasingly adept at managing collaborative ventures...

- Public funds will constitute a decreasing proportion of financial support for higher education..."

These predictions have proved to be true prophecies. In fact, they could still be considered anticipatory in many places where management education is still in the process of becoming truly global.

I believe that Mr. Harrison simplifies the list of trends anticipated in my post, but I would like to focus on his most serious criticism. He raises the question of whether business schools are really leading the transformation of management and society or whether they have lost the innovative track. His basic tenet is that, if the anticipated trends for management education are the ones I mention, b-schools are definitely lagging behind their customers students and corporate clients. Is his criticism sound? I do not believe so.

Take for example his sentence "the embracing of globalisation and information technologies are hardly the likely steps of change for 2006 in any thriving organisation today: companies have been reliant upon computers, software and technology to encompass a wider spectrum of international communication for decades now". Nobody could reasonably deny this but business schools have also made a very intense use of IT in the past decades. In my post I refer to the progressive integration of new technologies -all those derived from Web 2.0- to the learning process. Here, I believe, educational institutions still need to grow considerably but so do business organisations. How many CEOs of the Financial Times 500 run their own blogs?

Some business schools are becoming real icebreakers regarding the use of new technologies in the learning process. Interestingly, you would be surprised to discover how reluctant many companies can be when business schools offered them e-learning or blended (combinations of face-to-face with on-line modules) solutions. There are still many prejudices about the effectiveness of e-learning and many people still think that the "animal feedback" experienced in a traditional class has no substitute. I believe they are wrong. At our school, for example, we run an Executive MBA programme that blends short face-to-face modules (less than 20% of the programme) with intense on-line sessions. It is, according to the questionnaires completed by participants, the programme with the highest degree of satisfaction at the school. We are impressed by this phenomenon, worth analysing indeed.

Again, let me thank Mr. Harrison for his comments. I hope he is joined by many other bloggers to expand this community of constructive criticism.

(1) Ronald Dworkin, "Law's Empire", 1986, p. x.