How to 'Take Charge' and 'Run Something'

Not long ago students thought a law school degree was the ticket to fame and fortune. But these days, if a student with a BA in his hand does not know what to do next, he is more apt to shrug and say, "I guess I'll go to business school." As President Bok says in his annual report this year, treating the B-School, "Before long, a business education will rival legal training as an outlet for ambitious students of uncertain vocation, since everyone who aspires to 'take charge' and 'run something' will perceive that a business degree offers a path-way to manage any complex organization from a company to a hospital to a government."

By aspiring to take charge and run something, Harvard Business School graduates are walking into prestigious jobs with starting salaries averaging $25,000 a year. Applications to Harvard's Law School fell 7 per cent this year, and Business School applications rose 11 per cent. Few would say the times are rough at the Business School.

But Bok saw fit to criticize the school in his report--not scathing criticism but the hallowed case method of study came in for some hard knocks, and he called for more integration of research and teaching and the development of several new areas of business study. James Heskett, chairman of the Masters of Business Administration program, calls the report "a very good invitation to discussion," but few Business School officials expect many changes to come from it. Some, including many students, feel Bok's criticisms are unjustified.

When Bok's report first came out, student reaction centered on criticism of the case method, which many students support. Bok acknowledges in his report that the case method, which exposes students to business problems and allows them, through decision-making and Socratic discussion with their professors, to learn about problems of management, "has undoubtedly played a central role in Harvard's successful effort to train general managers."

The method, however, "does not provide an ideal way of communicating concepts and analytic methods in the first instance," the report said, and junior faculty may feel compelled to adhere rigorously to the case method instead of developing their own techniques.

I don't think we need any major changes in the teaching format," argues Michael Nesbit, vice president of the Business School Student Association. "A few marginal changes in the amount of background material we receive might be necessary, but the basic structure is sound."

Nesbit says the case method gives professors ample opportunity to examine main points and issues while concentrating on a narrow case. "I don't really think more lecture formats are necessary," he adds.

"The case method is a very broad, varied way of teaching," George C. Lodge, professor of business administration, explains. "A 'case' can be anything from a structured situation to a magazine article. Each case serves as a basis for discussion. Some people see it as more rigid and dogmatic than it really is."

"I think we use whatever set of devices work best to teach," Lodge says, adding "In a management situation, I think that a decision-oriented discussion, like the case method encourages, provides the best learning."

"Belief in the case method won't be altered," Timothy W. Armour, assistant dean of the MBA program, says, adding he doesn't think Bok expected the school to change the case method much.

Bok specifically approves of the case method as a way of teaching business ethics. Elaborating on his report, Bok says, "I don't think we should have doctrinaire lectures on ethics, I think that problem is best treated by raising problems in the classroom that deal with ethical issues and by using Socratic techniques of teaching."

In addition to this, Bok calls for more faculty members who will specifically study the area of ethics and offer a course in it. "We need someone who really concentrates on ethics as such--only then will the discussion of ethical issues really permeate the entire school," Bok says.

"I think you're making a mistake if you assume that anyone can teach ethics. These are tough problems. It's a serious subject, requiring a lot of thought and background. The faculty should have someone whose area of expertise this is, who they can turn to with their questions," Bok adds.

Lodge agrees, saying, "There should be a specific ethics course at the school. There's nowhere near enough emphasis on ethics. But ethical questions should also permeate every course, whether it's marketing or advertising. Some ethical problems have to be dealt with in the context in which they come up."

As well as ethics, Bok calls for more courses on employee relations and government regulation--two other emerging fields. But some B-School faculty think Bok overlooked the considerable attention the school already pays to these areas. Just recently the faculty passed a revised curriculum including treatment, at least in bits and pieces, of the areas Bok outlines. Curricular reform is always a thorny process and not likely to occur again soon.

Nevertheless, the school still has no separate course. Heskett says the school prefers to treat ethics as it comes up in class and calls attention to a recent poll of students showing that they sense an increase, throughout the school, of concentration on ethical issues. He feels that the students who most need training in ethics are the ones who are not interested enough to take a full course in the subject.

Bok also calls in his report for increased integration of teaching with research at the school. He says faculty members may do better to spend more time researching new fields and less time in painstaking preparation of case materials.

Business faculty say the case method forces research into the kinds of practical problems their school wants to teach. "The case method is a method of research--Bok's report is somewhat like telling a chemist not to do any work in a laboratory, just to think up ideas," Wickham Skinner, Robinson Professor of Business Administration, says. "The business world is our laboratory."

Bok says he chose this year to analyze the B-School because next year he must appoint a new dean, and he wanted a chance to familiarize himself with the B-School faculty and programs. The current dean, Lawrence E. Fouraker, will leave his post some time next year. Bok says his report is not meant to be critical of Fouraker, but neither he nor Fouraker will give reasons for the dean's departure. Fouraker, in fact, has no comment at all on any of Bok's criticism.

The shadow of Stanford's business school looming large over Harvard's prestige may also have motivated Bok's report. MBA magazine has granted Stanford a higher academic rating than Harvard in its last two polls on business school quality. Although such polls always raise doubts, some of Bok's suggestions for the B-School--especially his eagerness for the school to do more research--hint that Bok may want Harvard to move a few degrees away from its management-training emphasis toward Stanford's academic research approach. Although Stanford's reputation for academic excellence has improved in recent years, Harvard students still insist Harvard's degree has greater market value

Business school faculty and administrators may end up simply filing Bok's report under miscellaneous correspondence and forgetting about it. They feel their recent curriculum reform constituted enough change for a while, and students seem to agree. B-school people don't even like to talk much about Bok's report. Instead, they present an unfrazzled and unrevealing front to the world, while inside students continue to prepare as before for the day when they will "take charge and run something."