I loved the piece in the Sunday NYT by Christopher Marquis that is making waves among business scholars. I also get that nothing less than his suggestion they close their doors could get as much space in the Business section on something as wonky as management education. But since B schools won’t disappear in my lifetime, where DO we turn to revamp the system we have created; that by some measures—at least enrollments—is still flourishing?
It takes me to Finance classrooms.
Some years back we interviewed 50 finance faculty who were thinking differently. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation underwrote the research, and we could see the path, but it required a generational investment. We would need to recruit senior scholars to help identify and make room for newly minted PhDs, to create space for fresh ideas in journals, and to teach differently about corporate purpose, and systems change. Over time, the next gen would lay to rest the tired ideas that continue to put MBAs on the path to short-term thinking, externalizing costs, and a maniacal focus on shareholders. It would take time for both schools and employers to adjust, but they would be leaning into the problems we are facing today, not ignoring them.
Good news: there are MANY (many, many, did I say many?) scholars to work with on this goal. Consider the interdisciplinary work of Anat Admati at Stanford. Jerry Davis at U. Michigan who called out the decline of public markets years ago. Chris White, also at Michigan, who teaches social INTRApreneurs how to drive change from within the corporation. And so many more who have written books on the subject. Where is Lynn Stout, who literally rewrote the book on corporate purpose, when we need her most? And Todd Cort at my alma mater, at the Yale School of Management, who teaches finance focused on the health of the system.
Jean Stead at East Tennessee State University, who co-founded the Academy of Management working group on sustainability, writes:
“The tools exist. Ecological economics, systems thinking, stakeholder theory, circular economy design — the intellectual architecture for a richer strategic paradigm is already built. What’s missing is the willingness of the field’s leading journals, doctoral programs, and senior scholars to declare the old paradigm insufficient and mean it.”
She asks, “What is a business for?” and then responds with a call to action for her field:
“That is not a soft question or a philosophical indulgence. It is the foundational ethical question that determines everything else: what counts as performance, what counts as value, who counts as a stakeholder, and what obligations firms carry toward the societies and natural systems that make their existence possible. A field that inherits its answer to that question rather than earning it through honest inquiry is not doing strategy. It is doing theology.”
Schools that feed Wall Street will continue to thrive with the old paradigm for the foreseeable future, but even in those institutions, the next gen of students is looking for something different.
I appreciate Chris Marquis’s takedown of case teaching and its narrow focus on one individual coming to a decision within a corporation. And I especially like the attention he pays to the interdisciplinary work that we honored with a ten-year dive into Undergraduate business programs that align business teaching with the humanities and the liberal arts. But I think his strongest point is about lifting our sights to the organizations and systems on which business depends.
He understands it’s harder to build a new curriculum when it requires replacing one that commands so much attention and so-called “value creation.” We need a do over.
I remember fondly the original name of YSOM: the Yale School of Organization and Management. I am not sure SOM teaches finance any differently than its peers, but I aim to learn more. After all, attention to the systems on which business depends, and that corporations deeply influence, needs to move to the center of analysis in both management and finance.
Chris is right to highlight the issues he lays out about business schools today. If students demand more from their education, can these schools evolve at the pace of the changes we are living through?
This blog post was originally published on LinkedIn. Follow Judy Samuelson for more insights on business and society.
