BizDeansTalk-español

Biz Ed | - "The importance of Teaching"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.

The most dignifying and self-rewarding task that we, as educators, can engage in is dealing with the students in the learning process, particularly through teaching in class. Teaching has been at the core of education and the essence of academic work since its origins, something reinforced by the etymology of the word "academia". Every time we read Plato’s dialogues we rejoice at learning his and Socrates’ thoughts through the discussions between the master and his students. I do not mean that other scholarly activities are not necessary, even indispensable, for the correct performance of an academic job; we have discussed this here before. But teaching seems pivotal to the others. It is then surprising, if not disheartening, that sometimes academics may loose this track.

I have found one of the most recent interesting pieces of analysis on American higher education in an article entitled "The Truth About the Colleges", written by Andrew Hacker and published in the New York Review of Books last week.

The author comments on recent literature on university education and concludes that "all the books under review voice a similar lament: too many professors, perhaps most, are doing a mediocre job in the classroom". One of the books covered by the article is the latest report produced by the Princeton Review: "The Best 357 Colleges: 2005 Edition". An interesting finding of this survey is that undergraduates show a higher degree of satisfaction, regarding teaching performance, in colleges that have small enrolments, that do not have graduate programmes and that do not enjoy a wide national reputation. Surprisingly, the lowest scores in the survey were obtained by undergraduate instruction at large, well-known research universities. Another source mentioned in Hacker’s article is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, according to which seven out of eight undergraduates study in campuses "where the work of devoted teachers is rarely rewarded, and prestige and high salaries are conferred on professors who concentrate on their research, graduate seminars, publications, and reputations". Hacker goes on further and quotes Stanley Katz, a professor of public affairs at Princeton, who says that many universities "are dominated by faculties for whom thoughtful consideration of undergraduate education is simply not on the agenda". The author concludes with the devastating statement: "As matters stand, one measure of a university's prestige is how little teaching is asked of its tenured professors. Although there are more endowed chairs at the top, more undergraduates are now taught by graduate assistants, adjuncts, and part-time faculty who will never be promoted."

Teaching matters a lot. I believe that in management education we may be better prepared to avoid the undesirable syndrome described above. At most business schools I’ve visited, teaching performance is one of the key variables used in the selection and promotion of professors. It certainly becomes decisive for the assignment of docents in executive education programmes. If we aim at achieving our mission, we need to enhance the teaching skills of our professors in order that they become true academics in class.

Leadership | Diary | - "The varying shades of Leadership"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.

Unfortunately, the word “leader” does not differentiate between evil and good people: Stalin, Mahatma Gandhi, Hitler and Martin Luther King were all leaders. Next to some chilling examples of leaders, who in their thirst for power relied on terror, there is a risk that some misdemeanours perpetuated by recent business figures go unnoticed and unheeded especially by business school educators. Next to the undoubted evil in the world it is so easy to be numbed to lesser examples of business corruption which are further down on the scale of the difference between right and wrong. Paul Danos mentioned the word “honesty” in a recent post and I believe that the integrity upheld by business schools, sometimes with an academic honour principle, is fundamental to acting as a leader and in distinguishing the sometimes fine difference between right and wrong.

I was thinking about this yesterday, while watching a programme on the life of Sadam Hussein on my 13-hour flight to Santiago de Chile, where I am attending the Global Forum 2005. I was interested to know more about the man, given that he is now on trial for Crimes against Humanity. The programme portrayed Sadam Hussein as someone with a troubled childhood who later became a hired political assassin. It ended relating the shrewd means he used to ascend to power. I was particularly amazed at the cruelty of one particular chilling episode that happened the day after Sadam became president of Iraq. He summoned all the relevant politicians of the country in a big auditorium and announced that he was going to unmask all those who had plotted against his regime in previous days. The session was recorded by TV cameras. Dozens of people were arrested, without any explicit accusation and the rest of the audience was wondering whether the next one was going to be them. The documentary also shows a smiling Sadam, pleased with his purge. It was one of the most frightening testimonies I have seen.

The saying “It is safer to be feared than to be loved” is attributed to different authors, one of which is Machiavelli. I have sometimes heard it quoted by some business people as a maxim to be applied at work. I can not disagree more. In fact, we need to elaborate on the concept of leadership in order to weed out of its semantic map all those cases of evil leaders or "control freaks". Alternatively, we could focus more on how to nominate good managers who have ascendance and influence over people. The previous post of Professor Jose Luis Alvarez on “Shared Leadership” is a valuable proposal in that constructive way.

When reflecting on Della Bradshaw´s disappointment about Jack Welch’s response about the leadership question after Katrina, it reminded me of a study that was published recently in Knowledge@Wharton, based on a number of interviews with significant CEOs. One of the major conclusions is that leadership depends on whether a certain person does or doesn’t take the lead in some circumstances. Is that so?

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.