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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.