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    Business Schools - Equilibrists On An Unraveling Rope

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    Rik Maes
    The document discusses how business schools can regain relevance for management practice. It argues that business schools are unable to address fundamental problems organizations face today and operate primarily to support faculty research interests. It advocates for an approach called 'learning-by-sharing' where students, practitioners, teachers and researchers collaborate and take on interchangeable roles to conduct more practical and interdisciplinary scholarship.

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    Business Schools - Equilibrists On An Unraveling Rope

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    Rik Maes
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    The document discusses how business schools can regain relevance for management practice. It argues that business schools are unable to address fundamental problems organizations face today and operate primarily to support faculty research interests. It advocates for an approach called 'learning-by-sharing' where students, practitioners, teachers and researchers collaborate and take on interchangeable roles to conduct more practical and interdisciplinary scholarship.

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    Opinion article on how business schools can regain relevance for practice.

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    Business Schools - Equilibrists on an Unraveling Rope

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    The document discusses how business schools can regain relevance for management practice. It argues that business schools are unable to address fundamental problems organizations face today and operate primarily to support faculty research interests. It advocates for an approach called 'learning-by-sharing' where students, practitioners, teachers and researchers collaborate and take on interchangeable roles to conduct more practical and interdisciplinary scholarship.

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    42 views2 pages

    Business Schools - Equilibrists On An Unraveling Rope

    Uploaded by

    Rik Maes
    The document discusses how business schools can regain relevance for management practice. It argues that business schools are unable to address fundamental problems organizations face today and operate primarily to support faculty research interests. It advocates for an approach called 'learning-by-sharing' where students, practitioners, teachers and researchers collaborate and take on interchangeable roles to conduct more practical and interdisciplinary scholarship.

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    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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    of 2

    guest editor

    Business
    schools:
    equilibrists on an
    unravelling rope

    Guest editor Professor Rik Maes discusses how business schools can regain relevance for
    management practice.

    orporate scandals in the US and in Europe caused important drivers of business performance, they measure

    C major business schools to redraw on the spur of


    the moment their favourite teaching toys, ie the
    case studies in question. This hasn’t prevented even
    themselves almost solely by the rigour of their scientific
    research (…) (They) exist primarily to support the
    scholar’s interests.” (Bennis and O’Toole, 2005). There
    leading management gurus (Mintzberg, Ghoshal, Bennis is as big a difference between teaching customer-
    and O’Toole, and many others) to assail the same orientation and being customer-orientated as there is
    business schools more fundamentally and more decisively. between reading about bulls and being in the ring,
    They are not only accused of educating future managers according to an old Spanish proverb.
    in an amoral (and even immoral) way, but equally of being Forewarned is forearmed: weren’t there any warnings
    irrelevant and detrimental for real management against the growing separation between management
    education at large: management practices simply don’t theory and management practice? Or, still more germane,
    work according to the mathematical formulas published weren’t there any models for a better-balanced and hence
    in Management Science and other so-called top more relevant business school? I bet there were! In 1990,
    management journals. Ernest Boyer published his landmark vision on
    My basic concern with business schools as they scholarship. In this highly acclaimed, yet just as
    operate today is that they are unable to solve (or even to disregarded manifesto, he stands up for the reassessment
    address) the very fundamental problems organisations of forgotten values in academic life: “Surely, scholarship
    (and not only companies) all over the world are facing means engaging in original research. But the work of the
    today. Societal, organisational and individual dynamics scholar also means stepping back from one’s
    are confronting organisations with their own identity and investigation, looking for connections, building bridges
    raison d’être, yet business schools continue to operate between theory and practice, and communicating one’s
    as if the career of their faculty based on esoteric knowledge effectively to students. Specifically, we
    publication rankings is their main concern. “Instead of conclude that the work of the professoriate might be
    measuring themselves in terms of the competence of their thought of as having four separate, yet overlapping
    graduates, or by how well their faculties understand functions. These are: the scholarship of discovery; the

    10
    convergence vol 6 no 3
    guest editor

    scholarship of integration; the scholarship of application; scholarship becomes a common quality of academics and
    and the scholarship of teaching” (Boyer, 1990: 16) non-academics alike.
    Elaborating on this model, Boyer asserts that The advantages of this approach, related to the above-
    discovery should not only contribute to human mentioned lack of relevance of business schools, are
    knowledge, but also to the intellectual climate of a straightforward. Just to mention some with respect to
    university and of society. The scholarship of integration, research, as this materialises to be the sitting target in
    for its part, is dealing with the interpretation and the discussion on business schools: (1) academic
    meaning of discoveries and their contexts; therefore, it is researchers are continuously invited to leave their ivory
    inherently inter-disciplinary. The scholarship of tower and to deal with fundamental business problems of
    application deals with the responsible application of the topical interest; (2) practitioners are stimulated to
    scholar’s knowledge in the outside world; Boyer explicitly
    notes that application not necessarily follows knowledge, Business schools are unable to address the
    yet that “new intellectual understandings can arise out of
    the very act of application (…)Theory and practice vitally
    very fundamental problems organisations
    interact and one renews the other” (ibid., 23). Through all over the world are facing today
    the scholarship of teaching, professors not only transmit
    knowledge, but transform and extend it as well through engage in research, often in collaboration with academic
    the interaction with challenging students. researchers, and hence to reflect deeply on their
    For a number of years, the Department of Information practical experiences; (3) sterile retrospective,
    Management at the University of Amsterdam has been quantitative research is naturally replaced by
    engaged in an analogous endeavour, although we were at generative research aimed at giving direction to the
    the outset not aware of Boyer’s ideas. All of its fundamental transitions organisations are faced with;
    educational programmes, ranging from undergraduate (4) mixed learning communities are both the breeding
    programmes in business studies and business ground and the test ground for joint action research;
    information systems to a post-graduate executive and (5) through learning-by-sharing and integral
    programme in information management and an scholarship, universities and business start recognising
    accompanying continuing education programme, as well each other again as the interesting and interested
    as its research programme, are organised according to partners they always ought to be.
    the “learning-by-sharing” approach (Maes, 2003; Business schools are invited to leave the unravelling
    Huizing, Maes and Thijssen, 2005). In this approach, rope and to jump in the space of fundamental relevance.
    four roles comparable with the scholarship typology of But I doubt they will ever have the guts to prefer
    Boyer are discerned: researcher, student, practitioner jumping above falling, paralysed as they are!
    and teacher.
    What makes learning-by-sharing unique is that References:
    Bennis, WG and O’Toole, J (2005). “How Business Schools Lost Their Way”,
    gradually, through the succeeding programmes, these roles Harvard Business Review, 83(5): 96-104.
    are deliberately spread over the different participants: Boyer, EL (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate.
    The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
    whereas bachelor students are still very much in their Ghoshal, S (2005). Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good
    Management Practices. Academy of Management Learning and Education,
    student role and their teachers in the teaching role,
    4(1): 75-91.
    participants in the continuing education programme, Huizing, A, Maes, R and Thijssen, JPT (2005). “Educating Professionals:
    Leveraging Diversity in a Globalising Education”, to appear in Educational
    students/practitioners and teachers/researchers alike, are Innovation in Economics and Business XI, Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
    Maes, R (2003). “On the Alliance of Executive Education and Research in
    members of a community of reflective co-learners playing
    Information Management at the University of Amsterdam”, International
    interchangeable roles according to the problem under Journal of Information Management, 23(3): 249-257.
    Mintzberg, H (2004). Managers, Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of
    consideration. Through learning-by-sharing, integral Managing and Management Development. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

    11
    convergence vol 6 no 3

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