How Business Schools Lost Their Way

Business schools are facing intense criticism for failing to impart useful skills, prepare leaders, instill norms of ethical behavior, and even lead graduates to good corporate jobs. These criticisms come not just from students, employers, and the media but also from deans of some of America's most prestigious B schools. The root cause of today's crisis in management education, assert Warren G. Bennis and James O'Toole, is that business schools have adopted an inappropriate--and ultimately self-defeating--model of academic excellence. Instead of measuring themselves in terms of the competence of their graduates, or by how well their faculty members understand important drivers of business performance, they assess themselves almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research. This scientific model is predicated on the faulty assumption that business is an academic discipline like chemistry or geology when, in fact, business is a profession and business schools are professional schools--or should be. Business school deans may claim that their schools remain focused on practice, but they nevertheless hire and promote research-oriented professors who haven't spent time working in companies and are more comfortable teaching methodology than messy, multidisciplinary issues--the very stuff of management. To regain relevancy, the authors say, business schools must rediscover the practice of business and find a way to balance the dual mission of educating practitioners and creating knowledge through research.

• Business education
• Management skills
• Market research
• Business ethics