BizDeansTalk - What's up in Biz Ed

Leadership | - "Views on Teaching Leadership"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Deans Iniguez, Gupta, and Peters all have very interesting things to say about leadership development and I agree with most of their observations.   

It is my opinion that the coverage of leadership in business schools is perfectly reasonable and that it is a good thing that so many schools are experimenting with it.

Business education is so dynamic because our schools respond to the needs of our students, and in this era our students need to be stretched to improve and accelerate the development of their leadership skills. Research is helping us to sort out effective approaches. Of course corporations have tried many techniques and we learn from their experiences as well.

At Tuck we believe that we can further prepare our students for leadership and that self-awareness is a key.  Building on comprehensive teamwork exercises, each student is evaluated on several important leadership characteristics by fellow team members. That is followed up with coaches who review the feedback, reinforce the positives, and help the students create individual plans of improvement.  Our philosophy of leadership development includes work on each student's awareness of how colleagues and teammates perceive their leadership and this work is a very important step in the improvement process.

Specific leadership characteristics may differ in individuals. The ones we emphasize are those found in the literature on the subject and for which there is face validity such as:

- Knowledge
- Managerial Skills
- Teamwork Skills
- Honesty
- Creativity
- Ability toArticulate, and
- Ability to inspire others

It is hard to see how anyone would get the first chance to become a leader without having the requisite knowledge or possessing basic managerial skills.  Being a good team player will often mark one for advancement.  Honesty is a crucial trait as few if any will be advanced if they are thought to be dishonest.  Creativity may give one an edge in solving important problems.  Being articulate is a must as one approaches the top levels, and having the ability to inspire others is a big plus in reaching the highest ranks of leadership.  Having said that, we are still probing our understanding of the characteristics that make for a great leader.

The fact that the theories and scientific findings in this area are still evolving does not mean that we should stop experimenting.  The opposite is true because helping our graduates to become the next generation of leaders is the ultimate goal of most business schools.   It is imperative therefore that we experiment with the coverage in this area.  Just as in the past, when cross-cutting topics such as ethics, technology, globalization and entrepreneurship were introduced, we now must learn about this crucial topic as we teach it.  In the end, of course, research findings will play a bigger and bigger role in our offerings in leadership development, as is the case with all of our areas of knowledge.

Leadership | - "Can leadership be taught at our schools?"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.

Our debate has been enlivened after the recent contribution of Peter Lorange, President IMD and I plan to make some comments in the near future.

Both dean Gupta and dean Peters have raised so many issues that to tackle all of them would need several discussions, so for now I will focus on just one, that being the concept of leadership itself and if it can be taught effectively by business schools. Both authors mention the need for schools to broaden their scope of teaching, in particular dean Gupta says “Classic business tools must be welded with fields too often dismissed as separate and exclusive of business”.

I agree with dean Gupta when he submits that leadership can indeed be taught and reinforced and that every class, no matter the subject, is an opportunity to reinforce leadership skills. Furthermore he states that candidacies to a business school should not be discounted due to a lack of leadership experience. Dean Peters sees as crucial the matching of the methods of teaching with the maturity of the receivers of management education, as well as the context and personnel that with which management education is imparted.

Dean Peters mentions the importance for a manager to have a multidisciplinary view of the world and that this is a challenge for business schools as “there is little cross-functional research at many institutions”. I would urge readers particularly interested in the topic of Research to read some of the articles already written about this elsewhere in the blog that deal specifically with this theme and particular that of Peter Lorange especially where he speaks of his particular approach "to create cross-disciplinary academic value".

Dean Peters goes on to say that: “There are simply not many faculty members who have the psychological understanding of human drivers and who have the experience of practically influencing social constructs: organisations.” implying that business schools have certain limitations when it comes to the finer points of leadership teaching.

What is more food for thought is that Peters quotes a study (Simpson, GMAC) which states that the pivotal age where the organisation dynamic need begins to take precedence over functional one is 28. I am sure that many leadership gurus might have something to say about that. In fact I have asked some experts on the subject here within my own business school, Instituto de Empresa, that they share their thoughts on the whole topic of leadership with us, i.e. José Luis Alvarez and Fernando Bartolome.

I believe that a business school can and should provide all the necessary approaches for any given learning group and give the aforementioned need for schools have a certain size to be able to reach all segments effectively and the possible limitations pointed out earlier, would that infer that the industry of business schools is heading for a phase of concentration?

Due to the legal status of business schools that hinders the possibility of takeovers and mergers, as would be the case in other industries, does that mean that there will be more alliances and if so to what level of cooperation would that be. Will there be room for the smaller business schools that just cater to just one segment and is there a societal responsibility to cater for a region’s broader needs. As Peters said, especially the young would have need for a more local school?

Here at the Instituto de Empresa we had the honour of the presence of Ana Patricia Botín, Chairman of Banesto, at the opening of a new Master in Marketing program. She is a fine example of a leader and on Friday 14th October she received the “Europe's businesswoman of the year” from the Financial Times.

(Ana Botín, second from left, a few days ago at the opening of the Masters in Management at IE, along with Diego Alcázar (second from right) President of IE, Giuseppe Tringali, CEO Publi España(right)

Strategy means choice

Peter Lorange, IMD President.

In his contribution on 11 October, Kai Peters rightly states that schools that concentrate on the segments they can be successful in will surely do better than those who want to do everything.

I could not agree more. Strategy means choice. Not only in business but also in educational institutes. In the short term, choices that break with tradition may be painful but I firmly believe that in the long term they pay off. Of course, choices must be made consistently and must be based on a clear strategy, shared and supported by the whole institute.

IMD, our Lausanne-based International Institute for Management Development, focuses on learning for executives in international businesses and we continuously remind ourselves that that’s the business we are in. If we don’t, our clients will, as we have seen in the past!

Since 1993, IMD has tripled its income, has erased all its debt, continues to be self-funding, spends 25% of its cost base on research and development and attracts some of the world’s best faculty. Why? The only answer is: relevance for and focus on developing international businesses leaders, or in our own words, "real world real learning."

To stay relevant, we continuously check the value of our research, development and programs with our core customers--the 175 companies that make up our Learning Network. We meet these clients on an individual basis but also, twice a year, we invite them to our Business Advisory Council, a forum in which they give us input on their current business dilemmas and feedback on our activities. They help us revamp existing programs, test ideas for new programs and add to our research agenda. This means that our professors are challenged to continuously provide good research and development output and to speedily integrate fresh insights into programs. Their work must be relevant, first and foremost for our customers and second for their academic peers.

IMD has ruled out academic departments, tenure and title hierarchy and offers performance-based bonuses, all of this to be sure to create cross-disciplinary academic value that our clients can understand and appreciate. Our members of faculty value our flat organization and the freedom to work across disciplines.

Sometimes strategy means "No"

People have asked me why we do not have a PhD program. A PhD program calls for enormous amounts of resources, which we simply do not have. Above all we are not prepared to offer the many specialized courses needed for such a program. Nor are we prepared to supervise PhD students who ultimately turn out to be unable to meet IMD’s high standards. There are many places that are much better suited for a PhD program than IMD. However, we are systematically hiring Post-Doctorates, young academics who already have their PhDs and who have proven to be good. They work with our faculty on their research and the good news is that they deliver!

I have also been asked why we do not open a campus in Asia, like many of my colleagues have. We do have a research center in Shanghai, China, and we will soon open a second center in India, but we will not have an IMD campus in Asia. We believe that both Asian executives and executives from other places around the world are best served by one meeting place with maximum diversity. A place where they can meet professors and peers, exchange successes and failures and learn from a wealth of global, rather than regional, experience.

With its own approach to learning, IMD is perhaps unlike other business schools. While we are fully aware that our nonconformist model will not necessarily work for all executives or all companies, all the time, I do think it illustrates the need for all business schools--including IMD--to continuously pose this general question: "Who are our customers and how can we serve them best?" Even if the answer means saying no sometimes or making tough choices that break with traditions. Strategy means choice indeed and this may be more true today than ever!"

Bologna Process | - "Comment on 'PhD Programmes: Need of Reforms' (of 10 Oct)"

Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.

I think any comment on the future of the doctoral market is very timely, especially in light of the Bologna agreement in Europe. Prof Iniguez says he dares not dissect here the difference between PhDs in management and DBAs - very wise indeed!

Isn't the problem that, particularly in the US, DBAs and PhDs in management are exactly the same degree? My understanding of the situation in Harvard University, where the term DBA was coined, is that the PhD and DBA only differ in who awards the degree - if the business school gives the degree it is a DBA, if the department of arts and sciences awards the degree it is a PhD.

Can European schools choose to hijack the term DBA and redefine it for their own ends?

My particular concern in Europe is about the German system of higher education. There university business schools, with 70 or 80 full-time faculty, graduate 100 or more doctoral students a year. The universities claim these doctoral degrees are equivalent to a US or British PhD. But are they?

The Bologna agreement has at its heart the idea of portability of qualifications. How should corporations and academia outside Germany view these doctoral degrees?

Research | - "How should we train our PhDs?"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

In response to Dean Ininguez's entry on PhD programs, I agree wholeheartedly that professors must be skilled and dedicated teachers in addition to striving to push back the frontiers of knowledge in their fields.  One very complicated factor I have seen at many schools is the question of whether each and every faculty should be committed to dual excellence or should some specialize in teaching and others specialize in research?

Because top researchers are so rare and expensive to support, I would say that some may not be particularly devoted to MBA teaching but the majority who do teach MBA or other professional courses should be both excellent researchers and excellent teachers.  Most  of the top PhD programs do a small amount in the way of training teachers, primarily by  giving opportunities to teach a course or two or by being a teaching assistant, but they spend the vast majority of the program doing a fabulous job of training researchers. 

We should probably have a post-doctoral period where young PhD graduates could both hone their research skills and also really dig into both the theory and practice of good teaching.  The current system, is primarily "on-the-job" training where the  pressures and the stakes are very high.  This is probably not best for student learning. 

We need to also look at the other side of the imbalance, which is perhaps even more important.  There are so many non-researchers who teach a high percentage of the courses in some business schools and ideally they should get more training in interpreting high-quality research.  As I have said in other entries in this blog, the best teaching in MBA programs is done by those who are both cutting edge thought leaders and dedicated teachers.  In a world where perhaps as many as 30-40% or more of some programs are being taught by non-PhD's who do do necessarily follow the latest research findings, perhaps a concerted effort is needed to make them conversant with leading edge thinking.  Of course, they along with their PhD colleagues are not necessarily trained in good pedagogy. 

Bologna Process |- "An Uncertain Future"

Jonathan Slack, Chief Executive of the Association of Business Schools (ABS).

It is widely anticipated that there might be up to 12,000 new ‘Bologna Masters’ degrees by 2010 across the European Higher Education Area. What I have not heard being discussed is the huge additional costs that this will place upon those schools undergoing the Bologna reforms. These costs will arise from: curriculum development, additional quality assurance, new promotions, extra publications, website development to name but a few.

There is another (largely unspoken) element to these reforms and this relates to the likely drop in overall student numbers progressing directly to the Masters level as growing numbers of students exit into employment directly from their first degrees.

Is not the inevitable outcome of rising costs and reduced demand, that business schools in this situation will look to reduce their costs and that staffing is where they will look first? Another likely outcome is that the trend towards, two-year Masters courses, being widely adopted from the Bologna reforms, will be hard to sustain in a global market where one-year Masters are both the norm and highly popular with international students.

Business School Segmentation

Kai Peters, Chief Executive, Ashridge Business School

I've been reading through the comments that have been made in all kinds of directions, and some of the mail that has been sent to me about research and relevance in particular. I apologize up front for how long this is, but I think some clarity on the multiplicity of goals that can be ascribed to business schools are at the root of many of these debates. By clarifying a little, I hope to generate some reflection.

Managerial needs change over time. These changing needs have profound consequences for providers and consumers of business education, yet they are not sufficiently considered by the schools themselves in their provision of programmes nor in their selection of faculty. This lack of alignment is one of the causes of the soul searching which has been affecting business schools in the past few years, and which is exemplified through articles ranging from Mintzberg’s comments concerning the lack of a practice orientation, Pfeffer and Wong’s articles concerning misdirected and irrelevant research, Ghoshal’s criticism of the teaching of misguided free-market dogmatism, and Bennis and O’Toole’s critique of insufficient impact.

It is my belief that one can identify four basic ingredients within business education and that these components are required at different levels and with different intensities for managers depending on the career stages at which they find themselves. Schools which take these differing needs seriously can position themselves along a continuum of provision. There is a caveat, however. I do not believe that schools can easily serve all of the needs of participants across the whole range of career stages. To do so, schools must be large, and they will have profound challenges in faculty selection and faculty allocation. Few succeed.

Success in management comes from balancing these four ingredients. At a basic level, managers must be functionally competent. They must understand the fields of finance and accounting, marketing and strategy, IT and economics, operations and human resource management.

Lingua franca, Management Education and the UK

Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.

I think Fernando Jimenez (of Spain's state advisory body) is absolutely right when he says UK business schools (and universities more generally) have been highly successful in attracting overseas students because of the English language. So to answer Prof Iniguez's point.....why are there so few UK business schools in the Financial Times inaugural ranking of Masters in Management programmes?

I believe the answer is the way in which we have historically viewed management education in the UK.

Twenty years ago business studies as an undergraduate degree was seen as a second-rate option taught at polytechnics for those who couldn't get a place on a "proper" degree course, such as law, philosophy, economics or geography. This in turn influenced the way recruiters employed managers - graduates with these general degrees were employed in graduate trainee programmes in all the top UK companies.

If you look at France, by comparison, business degrees are one of the most highly sought after degrees, and their graduates get most of the top jobs.

In the UK things are changing, though. I visited the Said school at Oxford University last week where the university was effectively doubling the capacity of the business school there. Ten years ago Oxford had no business school at all, now its economics and management undergraduate programme is the most oversubscribed in the university.

Hopefully other UK universities will follow their lead.

Staying the Course in Management Education

Yash Gupta, Dean of the USC Marshall School of Business, Robert R. Dockson Dean’s Chair in Business Administration

In much the same way that corporations are being driven to produce immediate returns for stakeholders, many management educators seem compelled to generate instantaneous responses to public criticism. As institutions specializing in intelligent management, we can’t afford the classic marketing mistake of knee-jerk reactions. Our schools are in business for the long haul and we must maintain the breadth of and integrity of our objectives. This doesn’t mean we accept current levels of achievement or that we resist change. Staying the course is rooted in a vision that bolsters and builds upon our unique strengths and hews to these fundamentals.

Leverage what we do best.

In their eagerness to respond to criticism, many business schools have tried too hard to act like businesses rather than acting like business schools that know and understand their mission and assets. Recently, business schools have imported ideas from the business community like hands-on learning programs, but without the benefit of theory. This is the wrong approach. Learning on the job is a centuries-old practice, but one the best business schools in the world cannot possibly match. In a business school, students are free to experiment and err without financial peril. Business schools should provide the "safe laboratory" to take concept and theory, convert them to strategies and tactics, and finally implement them for a "reality check."

Emphasize soft skills.

We are often told that the "soft skills" of leadership, teamwork, and swift decision-making are missing in business schools. Some have argued that these are un-teachable elements but I submit these can be taught and reinforced. We must add these elements to the classroom, not only as separate courses, but as fundamental themes.

Strengthen and expand the hard skills.

Even if we enhance our training in the soft skills, it’s still a given that no one wants fewer "hard skills. Beyond the basics – finance, accounting, marketing, etc. -- we must add a fundamental understanding of economics and international trade.

Broaden our entrance requirements.

Graduate education starts with the premise that entrants have absorbed the foundation of communications and mathematics needed for management. Business schools must broaden and raise entrance requirements. The singular stress on scores (e.g., GMAT), is dangerously narrowing the spectrum of managers we produce. At the same time, however, we must not turn aside applicants who lack outstanding leadership and teamwork backgrounds. If we accept so-called "soft skills" as essential to management, business schools must infuse each course with these skills

Add another dimension to case studies.

How can we compress the knowledge process? In effect, by smarter teaching. The case study approach has been our classic teaching tool but it needs drastic overhaul. Nearly a century old, it remains effective but at the same time is primitive. Technology, thoughtfully applied, can bring a new era to cases and the teaching methodology. Using simulations and computerized models to build three-dimensional, interactive laboratories will more realistically replicate the marketplace.

Integrate breadth of knowledge beyond the business school.

Classic business tools must be welded with fields too often dismissed as separate and exclusive of business -- the arts, humanities, history, environmental, political, and cultural studies. In the end, the top-flight managers are the individuals who can link "hard" and "soft" skills, and who possess a macro-understanding of the global environment.

Obviously, all of us want our business schools to be relevant and attuned to changing needs and environments. It is our opportunity—and indeed our obligation—to create educational experiences that exceed our "customers’" wildest dreams.

Research| - "PhD Programmes: Need of Reforms"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

PhD programmes are essential to the whole education system. They are the pool of future university researchers and teachers. Last week, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, a US based non-profit organisation dedicated to promote excellence in education, released the report "The Responsive PhD: Innovations in US Doctoral Education", an extremely interesting document on doctoral education in the US that calls for important reforms: "there have been too many words and too little action", it states. The report also comprises a series of successful initiatives developed in PhD programmes at different US universities.

I want to focus on two recommendations of this report. First, that pedagogy should be an important part of doctoral preparation. For some time, PhD programmes have focused almost exclusively on training academic researchers. This has been essential, but not sufficient. In fact, the omission of some other important facets, such as preparing candidates to teach effectively and to link with the corporate world, has reduced the potential development and the opportunities of PhD graduates.

Another recommendation is the need of connecting doctoral programmes with other major social stakeholders outside universities, mainly the organisations that may recruit or work with PhD graduates: "the doctorate in totality and in every discipline will benefit enormously by a continuing interchange with the worlds beyond academia", says the report.

This report should be very welcome and it comes at a time when there is a growing market for DBA (Doctor in Business Administration) programmes in Europe. Significantly, the Association of MBAs (AMBA) recently launched a new accreditation scheme aimed at DBA programmes, to cope with the increasing demmand from the market. I do not dare to dissect here the differences between PhDs in Management and DBAs. Maybe in some future post. But it seems that the latter category of programmes is where the growth will take place in the future.

Bologna Process | - "English, the “lingua franca” of future European education"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

The 13th century saw the establishment of the first universities in the Western World. At that time, the language used for communication was Latin. This provided the opportunity for both professors and scholars to teach and study at different universities across Europe. Manuscripts were also written in Latin, thus allowing the sharing and the rapid distribution of knowledge. It was the beginnings of a common Western academic world.

Seven centuries later, we find ourselves in analogous circumstances. Globalisation has turned English into the "lingua franca", the language mostly used worldwide in business and academia. According to September 2005 figures published by "Internet World Stats", the four main languages used worldwide in internet are, respectively, English (31,7% of users), Chinese (13%), Japanese (8,1%) and Spanish (6,4%).

Eric Beerkens, a regular commentator in our blog, raises the question about whether multilingualism is a threat to the implementation of the Bologna process in Europe. I do not believe so. It is foreseeable that those European universities that aim at attracting foreign students will offer courses in English. But part of the richness of European educational offerings will consist of learning a second or a third language and a different culture.

Given the pre-eminence of English in academia, I believe that the first beneficiaries of the flow of students after Bologna will be universities based in English-speaking countries. However, the first European Masters in Management Rankings recently published by the Financial Times include only 6 universities from the UK and Ireland out of the top 25. Is this evidence that the language spoken in a country will not be a critical factor for choosing a university, provided that the teachings are run in English?

Bologna Process | - "EQUAL / EQUIS and the Bologna Process"

Povl Tiedemann, Head of Department, Association of Danish Business Economists.

As the Bologna Process moves on it becomes increasingly important to involve experience and applied knowledge, especially in the areas of quality development, -maintenance and -assessment.

For that reason it is evident to utilize some of the most recently developed ressources, operationalised by EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), supported by the Advisory Board of EQUAL (European Quality Link) involving 11 institutional and 4 professional associations under the auspices of EFMD (European Foundation of Management Development) Brussels.

The necessity and access for such involvement is clearly stated in:

A) The "Berlin Communiqué" from 19 September 2003, expressed in the paragraph "Promoting the attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area" pointing at attracting appropriate fora for maintaining academic quality.

B) The recommendations of the "Bled Seminar" from 23 October 2004 pointing at strengthening the active participation of e.g. professional associations.

Further it should be noted from the introduction to the findings of the GMAC study of the Bologna Project on the volume and intensity of the Business School sector as driver of the quality improvement initiatives - and the importance in relation to ENQA (European Network of Quality Assurance). In this connection it is also valuable to note that from personal contact with the Commissariate for Education of the European Commission, the Chairman of EQUAL has received positive and supporting attention concerning the role of Management Education as Ice Breaker in the process of quality development in the sector of higher education.

Alltogether - the basis and legitimacy for involving EQUIS / EQUAL as relevant source and inspiration for the BFUG (Bologna Follow Up Group) is evident - thus following the relations established with the Bergen Summit Administration, now to be continued with the London based Summit Administration.

ASSOCIATION OF DANISH BUSINESS ECONOMISTS
Povl Tiedemann
Head of Department

Bologna Process | -"Need of comparable information to implement Bologna"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

The Bologna Process will create a much more efficient and competitive European university market, similar to the American. The objective is that students could choose any university in Europe according to their preferences and personal merits. In turn, universities will compete to attract the best students and will have to fully exploit their resources to become the reference in their areas of excellence.

The creation of this university market requires the fulfilling of at least two requirements, which to date have not been developed nor contemplated in discussions by the Bologna stakeholders: 1) The creation of a transparent “information market”, where students have access to all relevant knowledge about existing offerings;. And, 2) the development of financial means that guarantee the efficient distribution of resources, e.g., grants and loan schemes.

I will now focus on the first of those requirements: the information market that will make more transparent the range of educational offerings across Europe. Economists say that for a market to be efficient, consumer information needs to be readily available, including their differential features and prices. Certainly, perfect information does not exist, but the more transparent markets are, the more efficient they will be. Nowadays, comparative information regarding university offerings on a European scale is incomplete and very fragmented. In the Bologna future, candidates will need to know, for example, which are the best schools in any given area of speciality, the average salaries of graduates from different schools, the quality of the support services, tuition and average costs of living in a particular city etc.

To generate this information flow, two means exist that can bring added-value to the consumer if produced rigorously: accreditation systems and school rankings. The international accreditation agencies give a guarantee of quality and in the context of business schools the most important are AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS (see the left side-bar of this blog). As regards rankings, this topic in itself warrants its own debate.

Bologna Process | - "The EU style"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

At the end of his latest post, Dean Danos rightly identifies the crux of the matter about Bologna when he says that it does not address the fundamental issue of adequately funding education.  The problem has not even been raised yet in the discussions of the Bologna Follow-up Group (BFUG), i.e. the group of different stakeholders responsible for pushing the Bologna process beyond national governments. The BFUG  is working well taking into account the diversity and different agendas of its members and the complexity of its mission. It is currently focused on identifying the key stakeholders and defining quality processes.

However, the key issue is how to finance the implementation of Bologna. There is no calculation of its estimated cost nor knowledge about whether financial support will come from the public, the private sectors, or from both. Strangely enough, there was no item in the 2004 EU (big as it was: 109 billion Euros) devoted to education nor any provision for the implementation of Bologna. You probably know that the major portion of the EU budget is dedicated to agriculture. Imagine what could be done by assigning just a little chunk of it to education!

Every reform in the European Union happens in a gradual and sequential fashion. Take the example of the started accession negotiations with Turkey, approved by the EU yesterday; something we should celebrate. The road to this decision involved many years of intense analysis and negotiations and it will still take a further decade to culminate. It is the EU style of development and institution- building. It is a detailed and intricate, sometimes tortuous, system, but once it is completed, there will be no way back. Some people accuse the system of being too bureaucratic, but in fact in the long run it works better than other systems of multilateral integration. The same will happen with Bologna. The first stages now are centered on harmonizing the different exisiting systems in Europe, establishing procedural norms and quality-assement frameworks. Once this stage is completed, the players will progressively confront more complicated issues, leaving for dessert the crucial matter of financing.

Bologna Process | - "More on the Bologna Accord"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

After participating in a panel discussion earlier this year on how the German business programs might respond to the Bologna Accord (see “Roundtable on future of business education in Germany” in this blog), I came away with the impression that the process would lead to a standard structure option for the first two degrees in business at most universities. I think that this opportunity for structural consistency has many advantages and should be supported.

I also came away with two major concerns: potentially rigid accreditation standards and a lack of response to market demands.

I often consult with new business schools around the world and usually suggest that they consider being innovative and adapting to local needs in the design of their curriculum. Some international accreditation bodies have adopted a “missions based” approach that emphasizes being consistent with a school’s own goals, as opposed to filling pre-established criteria. Thus, a school could be accredited as readily with very a unique curricula approach as with one lifted from a long-established school. Accreditation processes in all parts of the world should evolve in the direction of flexibility and away from rigidity.

Some very successful European business schools certainly understand this and are quite responsive to the needs of industry in the graduates they hire. On the other hand, some members of the Roundtable were concerned that the Bologna process smacks too much of a “push down” from government and less of a “bubbling up” from the markets. A guiding principle for professional schools should be that students need to be prepared for professional life and responsiveness to employers is very important.

Of course our academic programs, while affected by structure, accreditation standards and the influence of practice, are aimed at giving high quality educational experiences. Quality of this sort depends on, among other factors, student qualifications, faculty expertise in research and teaching, curricula relevance and innovations, adequacy of facilities and underlying all of these, overall funding. The Bologna process, as important as it is, does not directly address the fundamental issues of adequate funding of business education, assuring access to all who need it and the shortage of qualified professors.

Current-Affairs | - "Turkey belongs to Europe"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

Tomorrow, October 3^rd, and after 40 years of negotiations, it is expected that formal talks will begin on the membership of Turkey to the European Union. But the recently announced opposition of some of EU member countries, explicitly  Austria, has fuelled a crisis in the process. This week, the European Parliament demanded extempore that Turks acknowledge as genocide the mass killing of Armenians 90 years ago and that they recognise Cyprus, one of the youngest EU members. In order to find a last minute solution, the European Foreign Ministers are meeting in Luxembourg at the time of this post, trying to find a plausible solution for all parties. Nobody can reasonably deny that Turkey has fulfilled all the conditions established by Brussels to start this process and it would be right and beneficial for Europe to continue ahead.

Turkey is one of the signatories of the Bologna Agreement. The quality of its higher education system has improved significantly in the past decade, and it currently comprises 53 public and 19 private universities. The country has still few business schools but some of them are gaining international recognition and attracting students from overseas. On-line education has also grown importantly in recent years. Certainly, the increasing internationalisation of Turkish universities is contributing to modernise the country and given its key geopolitical enclave, it can become the pole of attraction of many students from Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

The Turkish Prime Minister has warned the EU members they are facing the acid test of whether Europe is a "global power or a Christian club." The words are unfortunate and may heat further debate about the inclusion of Turkey in Europe. But I hope they are judged as a spontaneous statement in the preliminaries of the negotiations.

Bologna Process | - To follow an inspirational pragmatist.

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

The implementation of the Bologna process needs political leadership and determination. The style of leadership required for multilateral initiatives, such as this one, was exemplified in Jean Monnet (1888-1979), considered as one of the fathers of the European Union (EU). It is a leadership model that may inspire other multinational projects where the interests of many different parties, each with its own agenda, have to be combined to produce a win-win situation.

Mark Leonard, Director of Foreign Policy at the London-based Centre for European Reform, refers to Jean Monnet, in his book “Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century”, as the model of leadership to imitate in multinational institutions. Monnet had a very different profile to that of war heroes such as Churchill or De Gaulle and could have almost been described as a civil servant due to the low profile he tended to keep on the political scene. He was intelligent, a great team builder, a tireless worker and a consensus maker. However, with his distinctive style of leadership, he played a decisive role in the construction of the EU. The great insight of Monnet was to understand that a diverse community of nations, with both common and divergent interests, could not be accomplished in just one go according to a general plan, but rather through consecutive and concrete achievements that could create a solidarity among the members. Paradoxically, his vision was to avoid a great vision. Pragmatism and gradual change were the key elements for the success of the project, implying iterative stages of integration and cooperation until the creation of the admirable EU of today.

We need a similar approach and leadership style in the implementation of the Bologna process, where initiative is delegated to the member countries with the participation of a wide panoply of stakeholders: representatives from universities, quality-assessment agencies, teachers, students, employers and administrations, amongst others. Given the need of several Monnets to orchestrate the implementation of Bologna, I took the opportunity of a recent visit of Klaus Schwab to Instituto de Empresa (IE) to suggest to him that at the next Davos summit he should organise a panel to discuss Bologna Process issues.

(Klaus Schwab (left), President of Davos World Economic Forum, speaking with Diego Alcázar (right), President of IE)

Current-Affairs | - "Update on Katrina relief efforts"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Earlier this month I wrote about Hurricane Katrina and the responsibility we share as leaders in the business community to teach and encourage corporate and personal social responsibility. I mentioned that our first-year students, in one of their first acts as a class, rallied together to raise funds for victims of Katrina and issued a challenge to the second-year students to match their goal of $2,500 or more. Today, just three weeks after my post, I am proud to share with you the results of this challenge. Both classes, far surpassed their goal, and with matching donations offered by our alumni, the combined amount raised to support Hurricane Katrina victims has reached $100,000.

The Tuck student body contributed to this effort, and donations also came in from faculty, staff, alumni, and corporations and four separate alumni each matched the total funds raised by each class.

Seeing the community come together on such short notice to respond to disaster on the opposite end of our country has been very moving to me, especially as a native of New Orleans. I have seen in practice many times that the Tuck community extends far beyond the borders of New Hampshire. Our community, our family, extends throughout the United States and abroad.

When one of our eldest alumni, who lives in the Hanover area, heard of our first-year's fundraising efforts by reading the local paper, he made a point to come by Tuck in person to drop off a check. People like this inspire me, and constantly remind me that fortune can turn to misfortune in the blink of an eye and that we rely on our neighbors and should be conscientious of our actions or inactions, as one day we may have to rely on them as they have on us.

When students arrived on campus at universities in Louisiana late last month, the last thing they expected was an immediate evacuation and then to have that extended from a week or two to four months or more. In the aftermath of Katrina, business schools and colleges have opened their doors. At Tuck, we now have two students from Tulane University in our second-year courses. We welcome them to our community and will work to do everything we can to make their work here productive.

Research | - "Comments at Academy of Management Conference, Hawaii"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

I had the opportunity to be on a panel at the Academy of Management conference in Hawaii last August where much of the discussion revolved around the value of academic research in a management program. Here are some of the thoughts I tried to express in that session:

When I look at the central question of value of research in a business school setting, my belief is that the understanding of business processes, best practices, theories, and methods will all grow in importance. In general, business professors who are leading researchers know, as well as anyone, best practices, and the efficacy of those practices. They have the advantage of studying a cross-section of companies and therefore they can generalize their findings beyond the single company or industry; and their research success depends on rigorous review of their work.

In the debate about the value of academic business research, one central question must be considered: What process is best at developing and teaching knowledge of business to our students? I believe that the research process, as practiced in top business schools, offers the best approach to giving students a forward looking and relatively accurate picture of the world in which they will work.

Some people criticize professors for a lack of understanding of general management processes and here the appeal is usually to a lack of “real business” experience for faculty and for students. I agree that some of what is important to an MBA student can be best taught experientially. For instance, areas like teamwork, leadership, ethics, and negotiations require some hands-on work, but even in those cases, research can and should inform the coverage.

Most of the material in the elective courses taught at Tuck is based on our faculty's expertise derived from their research, and I know the same is true for many other schools. These electives are very highly rated by students for relevance and effectiveness.

On balance, I believe in rigorous research as a way of unfolding knowledge of important business processes. I understand that different fields have different challenges in making progress and therefore are at different points in their development. Top researchers in business schools know a great deal about what can and cannot be legitimately said about those processes, and for the most part they work on important topics and are quite honest about what they know.

In general, there is much to admire in the schools with good MBA programs-innovation and response to markets, coverage of leadership, ethics, teamwork, entrepreneurship, technology, community action, communications, teaching quality, career development, and alumni services. In addition, business schools have found ways to support good research and professors have found ways to have that research become part of the learning process. In general, I know of no professional programs that have done more.

Bologna Process | - "A catalyst for Globalisation"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.


The Bologna Process will not only transform the European university landscape. It will contribute decisively to the globalisation of higher education worldwide. The current list of signatories of the Bologna Process includes 45 countries, which goes much beyond the membership of EU, and the number is growing. The harmonisation of educational systems among the signing countries will probably precede ulterior forms of integration–-social, economic and cultural--including future membership to EU.

I know that many other universities outside of Europe are preparing themselves for the Bologna future. North American institutions are looking at our continent as a promising future market, which explains the recent disembarking of some in Europe. Ironically, the institution that has developed the best study on the consequences of the Bologna Process in management education has been GMAC, an American company.

The interest in Bologna is also spreading quickly in Latin America. From my recent conversations with fellow deans of that continent, I detect a strong interest in anticipating the effects of Bologna in their region. In fact, some universities in Latin America are already adapting their higher degrees structure –from the typical 5 years “licenciatura” to bachelor+master- in order to get ready for the global effects of Bologna

Certainly, Bologna is a major topic at dean’s meetings. Today I was lucky to be the host at IE of Prof. Haifa Reda Jamal Al-Lail, Dean of Effat College in Saudi Arabia, an impressive person with a strong entrepreneurial drive and also a nominee for a 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

The subject of Bologna came out over our conversation and we both agreed that it may provide many opportunities of collaboration and understanding between European and Middle East communities. We should resolutely support the Bologna process because it will extend many bridges among civilisations.

(Prof. Haifa Reda Jamal Al-Lail, Dean of Effat College, second from left)

Looking at the map, I wonder why Belarus has not joined the Bologna agreement; it seems it’s the only exception in Eastern Europe.

Bologna Process | - "Scope for confusion"

Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.

I think the implementation of the Bologna accord is a wonderful opportunity for Europe to develop a common system of higher education, but there is still huge scope for confusion as far as I can tell.

Professor Iniguez suggests the reorganisation will result in a three-year bachelor programme and a two-year Masters programme, but all the evidence is that many countries, and many schools within those countries, will adopt different systems.

The Financial Times recently published a ranking of the top 25 Masters in Management programmes (for pre-experienced students). Of these 25 schools, 10 offered one-year masters programmes.

I am not sure whether this is such a bad thing. Clearly in the MBA market prospective participants can choose between one-year and two-year programmes, so why should the Masters in Management market be different?

What universities will have do is clearly articulate the value of their own programmes and successfully market them in an increasingly competitive arena. All of which could prove very expensive.

Bologna Process | - "Bologna"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

You may be familiar with the hit movie of a few years ago, L'Auberge Espagnole , which recounts the story of a European student who leaves home and studies in a foreign country. He wins his independence, expands his horizons and makes long-lasting friends from all around Europe on the same program as himself. The Erasmus program has changed how we view ourselves as Europeans and our knowledge of our neighbours.

However, this is nothing compared to the veritable revolution that is planned to occur by 2010 that bears the name “The Bologna Process”. Effectively the EU will become the United States of Europe, well at least in what refers to education. Imagine a Greek computer science graduate who heads to Ireland to finish their studies and gets accepted to do a Master in Computer Science receiving teaching from a Polish professor, all of them voluntarily there due to the reputation of the university that they attend. This example will be greatly amplified in number and will have enormous ramifications in terms of mobility and dynamism, creating the healthy situation where each university has to differentiate itself from every other comparable one in Europe. This transformation is the equivalent in higher education to what happened in the European economy with the adoption of the Euro.

Bologna is an Italian city famous for its University, the oldest in the Western World. But since 1998 the name Bologna has been associated with a transcendental process initiated by the European Union education ministers that formulated the European Higher Education Space (EHEA). According to this agreement, university studies must have the same structure in Europe by 2010. The main purpose of the Bologna Process is to foster cross movements of students, academics and knowledge, in turn improving the quality of teaching and research, ultimately increasing economic productivity in Europe.

Certainly, the creation of EHEA will transform the university landscape in Europe. Currently, university studies across Europe vary widely, both in terms of duration, contents and degrees, among other important issues. The Bologna Process will harmonise the current divergence into two major degrees: bachelor (three years) and masters (two years) degree programmes, in line with the prevalent model in the US or UK. The implementation is mainly delegated to national governments, in line with the standard way that most legislation is developed in the European Union. Most member countries have approved this legislation.

More information can be found at the EFMD website among many others. It might be beneficial to discuss the implications in terms of the necessary financial schemes that would need to be put in place as well as the extent of the IT system needed to keep track of that movement.

Economist and OECD.

Ethics | - "Ethics discussed at meeting yesterday of Sumaq at IE."

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

“Fire burns both in Hellas and in Persia, but men's ideas of right and wrong vary from place to place”, stated Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics. The great philosopher could hardly be accused of moral relativism but supporters of this philosophical stream have frequently used that passage to illustrate their basic tenet: that moral principles are culturally based and, consequently, vary across the board. From this descriptive observation, moral relativists jump into the normative sphere: we should respect the customs of other cultures, whether we believe they are right or wrong.

Aristotle’s quote came to my mind yesterday over a discussion on moral codes at business schools with representatives of Sumaq, the alliance of the leading business schools in Latin America. I found solace in that the attending deans and programme managers said that they encounter similar challenges when designing and implementing moral codes (students’ codes of conduct) in MBA programmes with varied student cultural profiles. The challenge is how to find the right balance of adherence by all students for a clear and defined set of rules -a sort of global Decalogue or minimal moral denominator- and at the same time leave room for cultural diversity and divergence in customs.

In our International MBA, with participants from over 60 different countries and no dominant culture, there occur multiple cultural clashes among students every year. This is to be expected and reflects what happens in the real world. The important thing is how to solve those clashes and learn from those experiences. Certainly, dealing effectively and respectfully with cultural difference is something our students should learn.

I very much oppose moral relativism. We should respect cultural difference but we cannot allow, for example, sexist prejudices in our classrooms, despite that this may be, unfortunately, common practice in other cultures. I suppose that codes of conduct in MBA programmes act as moral equalisers. It is part of the global learning our students can achieve.

Martin Varsavsky (4th from right ) spoke yesterday with members of Sumaq.

Research | - "My presentation on research at AMBA in Chile"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

Readers may trace the discussion on management research generated in the past weeks in this blog. We debated the meaning of research for business schools, the necessary link between research and teaching and what defines cutting-edge research. The discussion probably resembles a recurrent debate present in Academia since the beginnings: the tension between theory and practice, between speculative work and its adaptation to real life. You may recall one of the famous quotes attributed to Immanuel Kant: “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play”. The same author also explained that creating a separation between theory and practice is fallacious. Theories that are not applicable in practice are just bad theories.

In late August I was invited by the Association of MBAs (AMBA) to talk on the balance between teaching and research at business schools, on the occasion of their conference for Latin American deans in Chile. There, I had the opportunity to revive the same debate about the right balance between theory and practice in research activities. The main conclusions of my presentation were the following. First, since management education has become “glocal” and has varied sources and different distribution channels, business schools need to find their own sources of differentiation. Second, that there is a need to stipulate a wide and comprehensive conception of research. A plausible solution is to use the concept RDI (research, development and innovation. You will find the contents of my contribution ("Session 4"), along with others at the same conference, here at the AMBA website.

Current-Affairs | - "Message to the Tuck Community"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

MBA students must be involved in addressing societal challenges. In a world where the private sector is of growing importance and where the private sector controls so much of the wealth of most countries, business leaders cannot ignore the communities in which they work. Each person must decide how he or she will respond to the world's problems, be it an epidemic such as AIDS, a tsunami, or the destruction left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Being a native of New Orleans and having many relatives there, I have a special connection to this particular disaster. Growing up, I always heard of the dangers of living in a place that was surrounded by water, below sea level, and continuously dependent on pumps for drainage. It was said that a "perfect" storm from a certain direction and of a certain intensity would be devastating. It seems that now such a storm, Katrina, has taken a dreadful toll on many people and on a wonderful culture that played such an important part in so many lives. Many now say that the old city and the culture will never fully recover.

Certainly, our MBA students, who will some day be leaders in the world's great businesses, must view their sphere of responsibility to include the welfare of others in society. At Tuck we often discuss the relationship between business issues and societal issues. Students work directly on long-term solutions through projects and voluntary work. We encourage our students and the entire community to be involved in crises that demand immediate attention, and particularly in this case of the Gulf Coast devastation, to contribute to organizations like the Red Cross, Americares. Our goal is to expose students to business leadership in its broadest meaning, and to contribute to the immediate alleviation of human suffering and despair is a big part of that. I want to let you all know that Tuck will arrange for a limited number of special exchange students from the affected universities to be admitted to the second year of the MBA program.

I am gratified that our first-year students in their first week on campus are mounting a fundraiser for their class and challenging the T'06s to match their goal of $2500 or more. Jim Allwin has pledged to match the students' contributions and I want to encourage everyone in our community to join in. This is going to be a long and arduous road for the people in the disaster zone and I commend our students for taking this initiative.

Bologna Process | - "What will the Bologna agreement mean for the MBA in Europe?"

Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.

I was fascinated to read some of the comments made by German academics in Professor Danos's posting from his meeting in Germany. One question that really interests me about the Bologna agreement is what effect it will have on the MBA degree in Europe.

Professor Kieser from Mannheim University says that European governments assumed that under the new bachelor/masters system only 20 to 30 per cent of bachelor graduates would study a masters degree straight after their undergraduate programme.

So, what will happen to the other 70 per cent?

The traditional five-year degrees in continental Europe have always meant that most university students are 24 or 25 before they graduate with their first degrees. This means they are not eligible for the US-style MBA programmes at the age of 27 - the average age for entering an MBA programme - because they do not have the appropriate work experience.

If they enter the workplace two years earlier, will the MBA become an attractive option for them?

Diary | - "Roundtable on future of business education in Germany"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

The idea of a series of roundtable discussions in important regions of the world, which would include leaders of business education, came out of the enormous growth and changes I  have witnessed in this industry over the last five years.

Germany is a particularly dynamic setting and a good example of the burst of innovation and change throughout Europe created by the Bologna Accord. This summary of our discussion delves into the German situation. We plan to host future roundtables in other key regions in the coming years.

Research | - "Impact and Opportunities."

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

Kai Peters raises the issue of research on education and how could we measure the impact of the learning process on students. Business schools are probably the segment of higher education where impact is more closely monitored. This is reflected, for example, in the sophisticated systems to evaluate teaching performance at our schools or the processes in place to implement feedback from recruiters that hire our graduates. As regards executive education, some schools, along with specialized consultants and human resource departments, have developed mechanisms to measure the impact of tailored programs in the actual performance of attendees and the company itself. There are systems, with some limitations however, that can evaluate the return on sales or the increase in productivity attributable to educational programs.

At the same time, some of the prevalent methodologies implemented at MBA programs have become paradigmatic. The case method, for example, has the virtue of linking theory and practice by the application of concepts and tools to particular business situations, while at the same time allowing for the development of valuable skills of participants. Teamwork has also been fostered at our schools, preparing students for the working environments they will encounter in real life.

Another example of the constant search for suitable learning methods at business schools is the ongoing debate about how to instill a social responsible attitude in our students. If you just search in Google the item “can ethics be taught” you will find over 3 million entries, many of them referring to management education. I hope that this particular debate is already producing fruitful results. We see, for instance, an increasing number of MBA graduates who engage in social entrepreneurship.

Talking about research on educational methodologies, a major challenge we now face is how to take advantage of the opportunities that technology is offering us to optimize the learning process. All ideas are welcome here.

Research | - "A research challenge"

Kai Peters, Ashridge Business School.

I've been thinking recently that there is a research angle that business schools rarely address and we are working to change that.

The debate around research tends to follow along old familiar ground. Is the research too esoteric to be useful? Does a teacher have to be a researcher? Is the research too focussed because of the requirements of functional silos and their equivalent journals?

The area that has increasingly interested me is slightly different. My question is as follows: if we want to create programmes (MBAs, open courses, customized courses etc) that have an impact, should we not research management learning more, and actually use it for course design?

We have been working at thinking through what kind of an intervention works when and where. A part of the project involves a review of philosophy of education literature and much of it involves applying various aspects of adult psychology to educational programmes.

We have found that there is indeed a significant body of literature in this area, but it is not really applied to programme design. As an example, there is considerable evidence that action learning, practical approaches, reflection and thematic rather than subject teaching is important for business students to be successful. While we know this, MBA programmes, since they are often conducted in groups of 75 students per section, do not do this, but fall back on a talk-and-chalk sheep dip approach to learning.

Imagine what business education would look like if schools were really interested in impact??

Research | - "Need to find 'kangaroos' for our Faculties"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

Similarly to what happened in other sectors, management education has become global and this has affected the nature of management knowledge in terms of its content, origin, diffusion and relevance. An example is that the current sources of management research are multifarious, and authors in academic journals include not only business schools’ professors but also consultants, financial analysts and journalists, just to name a few. In this new global and brave world, some outsiders to education, such as consulting firms and investment banks, have sometimes more opportunities for originating new knowledge because of their larger resources and proximity to markets. In fact, the potential synergies between business schools and consultancies or other companies have prompted many joint alliances aimed at developing research.

Likewise, the channels of management knowledge diffusion, as Kai Peters points out, have become very varied and fuzzy. Here, Internet is making a big impact in the way business theories are currently being discussed and disseminated. Think, for example about collaborative online tools and Creative Commons. If we, as educators, aim at delivering the ultimate management inventions, we probably have to look also outside the canonical channels of diffusion.

These multifaceted origins and channels of management knowledge have driven some accreditation systems to amplify the meaning of research when it comes to assessing the quality of business schools. Some years ago, AACSB International opted to introduce a new concept, “intellectual contributions”, in order to cover a wide range of research outputs, from articles in refereed journals to teaching materials. On the other side of the Atlantic, EQUIS created a different category:  RDI (Research, Development & Innovation), which goes beyond a narrow conception of academic research and allows candidate schools to define the nature and forms of its knowledge processes and products according to their mission.

Globalisation is affecting decisively the meaning of management knowledge. Like Della Bradshaw and Dean Danos, I believe that cutting-edge research should be an essential activity at business schools and is the necessary basis for excellence in teaching. Some analysts characterise teaching as opposed to research when it comes to defining the ideal profile of a faculty member. But this opposition is fallacious. My experience, in line with what Dean Danos states, is that the most successful and sought-after professors, by corporate clients for example, are also those who excel both in research and performance in class. The challenge for business school deans is how to attract and retain the “kangaroos”, i.e., those professors that combine a remarkable research and teaching profile and have ample practical experience. This is becoming increasingly difficult in our global industry.

Research | - "Are the Perspectives of Academic Researchers too Narrow?"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Both Della Bradshaw and Kai Peters are rightly concerned with the relevance to students of different kinds of research. Do faculty who publish at the refereed journal level have the perspectives on their topics that would lead to their teaching being special? Or more broadly, what process is best one to develop and teach the knowledge our students need? I believe that the research process as practiced in top business schools offers the best chance of giving students a forward looking and relatively accurate picture of the world in which they will work. Sometimes we assume that our academic researchers are narrowly focused and that non-researcher teachers give a broader perspective, but I believe that it can be just the opposite. The top researchers give generalizations based on sampling of populations and/or very general principles. So, for instance, when they generalize about the effects of promotions on subsequent sales, they are not talking about one company or one person's experiences but about the class of companies under study. In a sense, they can be broader in their perspective and they are not limited by their own personal experiences. Of course, the “scientific research” approach to management studies does not always work well, and there are many great teachers who do not actively engage in that process. However, I believe that the practice at most high-quality schools to reward great teaching done by great researchers is rational and justified. As business education expands to new populations, we must look at the costs associated with research and decide on adaptations needed to make solid and relevant research a part of the education of all business leaders.

Research | - "Research constraints"

Kai Peters, Chief Executive, Ashridge Business School

Research means different things to different people. In the most abstract sense, research must surely mean looking at the world, thinking about things, and adding some new insights. In that sense, research must clearly inform teaching and the better the insights are, the better the teaching will be.

It is at the more specific level, however, that the debates begin in the business education arena and it is in many ways a debate about channels of diffusion. At the top of the academically recognized hierarchy sit academically peer reviewed articles published in journals fundamentally aimed at an internal, university audience. And, as many have pointed out, these journals tend to have narrow subject-specific foci, tend to a quantitative perspective, and are oftentimes written in impenetrable prose.

Subsequent members of the queue include refereed conference presentations and focussed scholarly chapters. From an academic world view, popular books, broadly-based syntheses, cross-functional collaborations, cases, articles and the like, are simply not considered serious scholarship no matter how influential they may actually be.

One must also be aware that this situation is not institutionally specific, but systemic. The reward system for faculty is based on counting the output recognized by the academic community as valuable, funding is based on this, promotion is based on this, tenure is based on this.

The challenging question is how can one return to a more broadly defined view of what constitutes valuable research when the system is set up for the narrow view. While I'm sure that university-based business schools will exist long into the future and will research and publish significant amounts of valuable material, it will be critical for students who want to make sense of the world to cast their nets more widely, to think for themselves and to look beyond universities for interesting and insightful research wherever it may be published.

What if, for example, someone posts the best idea of all time, based on verified research and using proper scientific method, on this blog? Would that be research? Would it be considered valuable?

We'll have to wait and see!!

Research | - "Research has to make a difference, otherwise it is irrelevant"

Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.

I have been really interested to read the comments about the relevance of research and its application to teaching.  I can't help thinking that the debate shouldn't be polarised around esoteric research on the one hand and on practical research and teaching on the other. Perhaps instead it should focus on how to develop really great ideas that can be researched, taught and used in the workplace. That is, how do you make sure research is provoking, whatever its remit and structure?

I'm afraid I'm on pretty shaky ground when I expound theories on high-level research, but clearly the best of it has changed the way businesses work, especially in the financial markets. I tend to think of it as being a bit like catwalk fashion - when I see some supermodel flouncing around in London or New York, I see clothes I would never wear in a million years, but eventually these designs influence the sort of clothes I buy in Marks and Spencer.

But that is the most exciting research - and clearly much research is neither exciting nor influential, particularly in second and third tier business schools.

I am reminded of the time when a subeditor on a UK national newspaper complained to the economics leader writer that he couldn't understand a word of his leader. The leader writer replied that there were only six people in the country would understand it - and the subeditor wasn't one of them! Clearly there are direct equivalents in the academic world, with academics publishing articles to impress other academics.

The same applies to "near-to-market" research: I often read case studies which only tell me things about a company that I have already read in newspapers. Unless they give companies new information on which they can develop strategies, what is the point of them?

Like Dean Danos, I believe the best teaching has to be informed by cutting-edge research. After all, teaching is about content as well as presentation. But it is what participants learn, not what the faculty teach, which is important, and there is a growing acceptance that other students, company internships or guest speakers are all contributors to this. 

I have just got back from China where the top business schools are working hard to write case studies of companies in the region. One dean made the point that China is changing so rapidly in areas such as investment opportunities and  banking, to name just two, that case studies are the most appropriate type of research. They capture the moment, if you will.

Perhaps the deep changes in the political, financial and business environments in Europe over the past 20 years have meant that lengthy research projects are less appropriate than in the US?

Research | -"Business Schools' unique research capabilities"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Dean Iñiguez asks about cutting edge research and the debate about how and where this fits into a business school setting, especially in light of the recent HBR article by Bennis and O'Toole.

I believe that business school researchers have special insights into best business practices and that they can therefore give students unique knowledge that non-researchers may miss. Of course, there are no absolutes here, and exceptions can be found in both directions.

The greatest researchers I have known are among the greatest teachers I have known, and because researchers are often generalizing across many observations, they bring a breath of knowledge that is hard to match. Many of the critics of current business school faculty seem to imply that these brilliant people are in some way engaging in frivolous research behavior and that their schools blindly support that behavior. On the contrary, I believe that for the most part business school research is serious and relevant, and most importantly it leads to truly exceptional learning experiences for students.

America v Europe, BizEd Alumni | - "Alumnus of both schools"

James Tatum, previous student of Dartmouth College and MBA Instituto de Empresa.

As an alumnus of both the American school system, namely Dartmouth College, and the MBA program at Instituto de Empresa perhaps I can provide a shareholder’s view to this fascinating conversation between the Deans...

London 7/7

Other blogs | - "Former Dean of HEC MBA hopes for change."

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

A former dean of Hec's PhD and MBA programs has today written an article on his blog about our debate. He gives five reasons why our blog is interesting : "This newcomer is interesting on many accounts" . He hopes that European students can begin to see themselves more as shareholders. It can also be read by clicking on the "TrackBack(x)" link at the end of the post of June 17th.

In our "Blogs in Education" section we have a link to another one of his posts: "Standford conference..."

Happy reading!

America v Europe | Research | - "Comment on Dean Danos' post of June 17"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

At the end of his post Dean Danos raises the question: “What is the relationship between cutting edge research and relevant courses?” I think it’s important to ask ourselves the question: What exactly is cutting edge research? Traditionally, there has been a taxonomist effort to distinguish between academic and applied research, theoretical and clinical knowledge, speculative and pragmatic thinking. The tension between those two broad types of intellectual contributions has upgraded the status of academic research at the expense of applied studies. A recent article in HBR by Bennis and O’Toole How Business Schools Lost Their Way questions this conventional approach of how research should be conducted. Basically, they assert that business schools have adopted an inappropriate and ultimately self-defeating model of academic excellence because they assess their performance almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research. Their accusation is causing lots of debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Is it sound?

America v Europe | - "North American and European Models for Business Education"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Business schools across the globe have considerable similarities in curriculum design and courses taught. One reason could be that global businesses call for strong common threads in how accounting, finance, marketing and the other business fields are covered, or that the course materials are produced in a global publishing regime that has few boundaries, or even that most professors have similar training and there is significant communication between professors in a field.

One of the big areas of difference across regions is in the sources of revenues. Top North American schools have significant annual gifts and endowment incomes and high tuitions. North American state-supported schools also get government subsidies, and they too have moved to higher tuitions. European schools have a few examples where revenue sources are similar to North American top schools, but most are largely state supported, with annual giving, endowment income and tuition currently making up a smaller percentage.

Another area of considerable difference is in faculty focus, where most top North American schools' professors aim their research at scholarly journals and they are rewarded for refereed publications. In other parts of the world, there seems to be more emphasis on publications that are accessible to a wider practitioner audience.

I don't believe that the North American faculty model will change much any time soon, though economic pressures seem to demand at many schools the adding of adjunct faculty who do not do as much primary research. I think that most of the growth in management education will come from outside of North America, and I predict that those schools will employ fewer PhD's and more adjuncts, primarily based on cost considerations but also to achieve what is believed to be a more practical set of offerings.

Interesting questions for future discussion are: “What is the relationship between cutting edge research and relevant courses?” “Will faculty prestige continue to be identified with refereed publications?”

America v Europe, Current-Affairs | - "Venus and Mars"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

Venus and Mars; is how some view European society and thinking as opposed to that of America (it’s debatable if that includes Canada or Mexico). This metaphor has been used to illustrate the different general abiding attitudes on opposing sides of the Atlantic vis-à-vis social issues, philosophy and religion etc. Does this same paradigm apply to management education?

Some differing cultural and structural features are at the root of this confrontation between the two different archetypes of American and European business schools. In America prevails a shareholder culture, universities rely heavily on the income generated by their endowments and the MBA market is the biggest and the most homogeneous worldwide. In Europe, there is a dominant stakeholder culture, management education is still very fragmented and there is a coexistence of various business school models. ( A difference of opinion | Economist.com 4/5th paragraph). If I were to choose a word to define higher education in Europe it would be “diversity”. The size of the American education market and the resources available to business schools result in more research-oriented faculties and in a more decisive role of a school’s brand name. As regards sources of revenue, business schools in our continent rely almost entirely on the revenues generated by their activities and, in the case of public universities, on state subsidies.

Let’s give credit to where credit is due: Management Education was invented in America. In fact, the first MBA in history was launched by Dartmouth University, my co-blogger’s stomping ground. However in Europe, the flourishing of business schools only occurred in the late 1950s. Many business examples demonstrate that being the pioneer does not necessarily ensure continuing as the benchmark in the long run. The Wright Brothers first flight heralded a subsequent US lead of the aviation industry for the rest of the century. However, Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturing consortium, has overtaken Boeing in the past years.(Financial Times: Boeing/Airbus)

Analogously, it seems that in the last decade European business schools have caught-up with their American counterparts and have lost their historical inferiority complex. Della Bradshaw, the renowned journalist of the Financial Times and co-blogger, might agree with me having written articles like European schools make a move up the table in her Business Education section.

Despite the two differing models of management education, the trend is, irreversibly, towards convergence: it is a consequence of globalisation. Will the descendent of Venus and Mars take more after its mother or father?

How to Use (or participate in) BizDeansTalk!

More information will be added to this page in the near future.

1. How to navigate:

If you wish to return to the main column or posts (the main converstion) while reading comments or a particular post, you should click on the "Main" link at the top of the central column, just under the banner image.

Categories: By clicking on one of the colour-coded categories on the top left-hand side of the blog you will list only those posts that have been placed in that particular category.

The most efficient way to search the blog for a particular quote or keyword is to use the "BlogSearch" field on the right of the blog. It is powered by Google.

Further to the Monthly archives on the bottom-right it is possible to change the month of the Calendar View that has dates with posts highlighted (on right), by using "Select Month" just above it.

2. How to make comments:

You should click on the Comments link at the end of the post and then scroll down until you see the comment making section, then enter your name and email address and click on the Post button to publish your comment on BizDeansTalk. Before publishing you can check your comment by clicking on the Preview button.

When making comments you can use HTML tags if you want (to add links, format text etc.)

e.g. to add a link to a comment you would need to include in your text:

<a href="http://www.interestingwebsite.com">The text that will

 appear you should write here</a>

3. If you wish to write a post (an article in the main column)

The Financial Times website also has a link to our blog:
http://news.ft.com/reports/businesseducation
The purpose of the blog is to create a platform for debate about business school issues, and to generate constructive proposals. We hope that a broad range of stakeholders from our sector - students, alumni, deans, vice-deans, professors, programme directors,recruiters - will join the discussion in this forum. Nothing would please us more than to receive your comments on the blog and for you to form part of this global debate. If you would like to participate as one of our distinguished guests, let us know. It is as easy as sending your text by email to mailto:blogmaster@deanstalk.net along with any questions you may have. A photo of any size or format would be nice. You should receive a prompt response.

                  3.a  Alumni and students.

                  You should write to the blogmaster about the topic you intend writing about in advance. There is currently a waiting list, with the other stakeholders mentioned above having priority.

4. Changing the contribution language

Please click on the flags to change to the appropriate language for comment making. It is intended, if there is sufficent interest, to include links corresponding to the particular language groups.

5. Signing up for the newsletter.

If you want to receive by email a list of the daily changes to the blog then sign-up using the field "Notify List" on the bottom left-hand side.

6. Using the mobile URL.

For a more user-friendly, and above all faster, browsing of BizDeansTalk when using a mobile device (PDAs, mobile phones, Treos, Blackberrys and using almost any operating system) then it is suggested to use the Winksite Mobile URL (web address) to be found on the bottom left-hand side of the blog.

7. Photo Albums.

To see over 80 photos related to the two deans please click on the two covering photos of the "Photo Album"s at the bottom right-hand side of the blog.

8. BizDeansTalk Newsfeed.

It is on the bottom left. It is recommended to use as reader- Websites: Bloglines, Newsgator, or Yahoo. Downloadable Software: SharpReader, Feed Demon. You could also look at this webpage: "Info on RSS Readers."

9. BizDeansTalk Podcast.

It is also on the bottom left, just below the newsfeed. You could used iTunes or something like iPodder to recieve multi-media content. "Beginners Guide to Podcasting."

10. Chat with the BlogMaster.

If you are lucky enough to find the BlogMaster with enough time to logon to Yahoo Chat then by all means try to chat using the address at the very bottom left.