In one episode of The Simpsons, the town of Springfield was hit by an asteroid. The townspeople gathered in a surly crowd and marched to burn down the observatory so that “this won’t happen again.” We can laugh at the wicked satire by Matt Groening, but universities view this story ruefully–they make an easy target for an angry public. For instance, following the collapse of Enron, the Internet bust, and the wave of corporate scandals, the public eye turned to business schools. Critics charged that B-schools were producing irrelevant and arcane research insights; worse, a few critics charged that some insights actually fueled the crisis. Academicians pointed fingers at one another as the cause of the trouble. Scholarly collegiality fell. Some new for-profit B-schools came into the field loudly proclaiming that they would have nothing to do with research and scholarship at all. Charitable giving, corporate engagement, and even student applications declined at all B-schools. It seemed that the good citizens of Springfield were marching on the observatory again.
One irony is that the observatory is hardly the monolith it appears to be from outside. The academy is fractured by disciplines and sub-fields. Within these silos individualistic entrepreneurs gamble the most precious resource (their time) on scholarly projects in an effort to gain the most ephemeral of prizes: national or global recognition. The schools vary tremendously in their missions. The fields and needs of the business profession change constantly. New research constantly tears down the old. Instead of a single observatory we have a field of solo stargazers who constantly move their telescopes.
Another irony is that the success and impact of B-school research is probably not much different from the rates of success and impact of business research, such as the discovery of new therapeutic drugs in the bio-medical industry, the development of timely and accurate stock recommendations in securities research, the success rate of M&A searches, or the success of consumer research in advertising. Once the good citizens burn the B-school observatory, they might as well get on with creating a real bonfire throughout the entire private sector. The reason I hope they snuff their torches is that all innovation is a risky discovery process. We want scholars and managers to take risks. A world with no research duds might be safe—and it would be stagnant.
The concern for the contribution of B-school research reaches an inflection point in 2008 when the Board of Directors ((Truth-in-blogging disclosure: until recently, I was a Director on the Board of the AACSB. I continue to serve on its Committee on Issues in Management Education.)) of the AACSB ((AACSB = Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business.)) will consider the adoption of standards that speak to B-school research. The AACSB is hugely influential; it is the gold-standard accrediting agency in the world. (Darden holds the AACSB’s seal of approval.) Accreditation is important: there may be 10,000 MBA programs in the world, of which perhaps 2,000 are accredited by groups like AACSB. The standards adopted by the AACSB become the hoops through which B-schools must jump to gain or hold the best accreditation. Therefore, it behooves anyone interested in the ongoing evolution of the management education field to read Impact of Research, a task force report of the AACSB that contains the recommendations on which the directors will vote.
The authors of the report represent some of the leading institutions in research: University of Chicago, Ohio State, INSEAD, HKUST, UCLA, and University of Rochester. These mandarins of research have proposed a standard for accreditation that seems likely to enlarge our notions of “scholarly inquiry” and “research.” The report sets a high bar for the field of management education whose institutions range from community colleges to the premier research universities. The task force makes numerous good points, of which four are salient:
- The task force writes, ”The word, “research,” is inappropriately used to refer exclusively to publications in refereed discipline-based academic journals.” Instead, the task force defines research “more broadly to describe forms of scholarly inquiry that lead to intellectual contributions of various types.” Sometimes scholarly inquiry pays dividends in the form of intellectual contributions, but “one can be engaged in scholarly inquiry without generating intellectual contributions that serve to provide a foundation for further inquiry or a greater general understanding of business or managerial processes.” The authors argue that scholarly inquiry can take many forms, including basic research or scholarship of discovery, contributions to practice, and learning and pedagogical research. Indeed, some of the best scholars do it all: Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson advanced the field of economics with his research ideas and educated generations of students with his textbook, Economics.
- The task force reminds us that unlike disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, or anthropology, B-schools are professional schools—their mission is ultimately to advance the practice of business. “Business schools have an obligation to maintain contact with and contribute to both underlying core disciplines and practice.
- The kind of research promoted at a school should complement the mission of the school. This seems to give schools some leeway to adapt scholarly inquiry to the purpose of the school.
- The task force proposes to require schools, as a matter for accreditation, “to demonstrate the impact of faculty intellectual contributions on targeted audiences.” The authors argue that schools should go “beyond counting refereed journal articles and other contributions (inputs) to demonstrate the impact of scholarship of all types (outcomes) on various audiences important to business schools….If the real value of faculty scholarship is to inform teaching and learning, advance knowledge of theory, keep faculty aware and involved in issues of current interest, and improve aspects of management practice, then the focus should be on assessing the measurable “impact” of faculty scholarship in these areas.” Defining and measuring the impact of scholarly inquiry is daunting. But I think this is the time to try.
A century from now, historians will connect this dot with many other developments in modern society including No Child Left Behind, ISO9000, Six Sigma, and security searches at airports. Quality assurance is a dominant theme in society today.
How this new standard gets implemented will be interesting. Darden has agreed to be a pilot test for this standard as we come up for reaccreditation in 2008. Our Mission Statement declares that we will “improve society by developing leaders in the world of practical affairs.” Consistent with the AACSB standard, we include among our targeted audiences research scholars, instructors at other schools, students, and practicing managers. Our activity of “scholarly inquiry” includes:
** formal research that gets published in the ‘A’ journals and generally books and articles written to other scholars. The AACSB task force disses the classic test of “impact,” counts of citations by other researchers. We will have to think of a new measure of impact of formal research. You may have seen the quarter-page Darden Perspectives in The Wall Street Journal in recent weeks—these talk about the scholarship and writing of our faculty members. Our purpose in publishing these brief summaries is to disseminate useful research insights and to inform the business world about the work we are doing at Darden. And pay attention to our new digital periodical, Research at Darden, which summarizes the scholarly work of our faculty.
**books and articles written to the world of practice. Here, we might solicit letters of assessment from respected practitioners.
**teaching materials (case studies, simulations, games, digital materials of all sorts); we are one of the largest case publishers in the world. According to the AACSB standard, teaching materials are an element of scholarly inquiry. Here too, we can count unit sales of our materials and solicit letters of review about the quality of our materials.
**pedagogical research. We assist instructors and schools around the world in learning how to deliver case method instruction. “Impact” might be assessed by written reviews of our ideas and programs.
**consulting. Our faculty write, teach, and consult for practicing managers. Here, we might assess impact from the comments of selected clients.
Our mix of activities under “scholarly inquiry” may not suit all B-schools. Darden’s vision is to build a better observatory and to complement well the work of all the other observatories, each of whom is following its own vision of what constitutes good scholarly inquiry. This variety of approach is what makes a market for ideas.
The challenge is not to burn the observatories, but to make them better. The related challenge is to align the expectations of those inside and outside the observatories around a definition of “better.” As the saying goes, what you measure is what you get. If you count books and articles as a measure of a scholar’s worth, then scholars will tend to write in high volume. Instead, the focus on impact relative to a stated mission seems likely to generate outcomes that serve society well.
Posted by Robert Bruner at 01/11/2008 11:41:03 PM