This phrase, Why Business Schools Suck, is a lead-in to the article, Business Schools Laid Bare, in the April issue of CNBC European Business. The article lays out an argument similar to the one made by James O’Toole and Warren Bennis in their HBR article from a couple of years ago, How Business Schools Lost Their Way. We’re just reporting…you get to decide.
Each of these pieces (as well as the general editorial position that we advance here) suggests that business schools suffer what some call physics envy, that is, the desire for management studies and management research to be highly scientific and highly scholarly. Problem is that over the past 50 years or so, as business schools have clawed their way to credibility within the university sector, they have become increasingly separated from the actual world of business and business practice.
Business school professors are incented (I know because I used to be one) to publish their work in a rather narrow range of academic journals, each of which has a ranking in a hierarchy of quality. One receives quality points for publishing in these journals, and 0 points for publishing books that any busy manager might actually read. Peter Drucker had close to 0 quality points after 50 years of being the most influential business thinker/writer ever!
NotHarvard.com
The CNBC European Business article points out, interestingly, that the most successful book ever published with ‘Harvard Business School’ in the title is What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes From a Street-Smart Executive (by Mark McCormack). Similarly, just think about the careers of people like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and the thousands of other successful entrepreneurs who got to the top by learning from doing.
Wow! What a concept!
The Butcher
