No simple solutions to questions about faculty

In his latest post, Dean Dinwoodie raised a key issue for business school’s deans and managers that I hope he will allow me to summarize in a single question: What should be the right blend of faculty at business schools? The natural answer, implicit in his post, is: “it depends on the nature of each business school, whether it is oriented towards undergraduate education or executive offerings or postgraduate education”. However, if we consider an institution that covers different segments and type of programmes, the mentioned answer actually begs its question.

I was invited to speak at a recent conference on the future of the MBA organised by Dean Roger Martin at his school, the Rotman School of Management, in Toronto. The conference was attended by illustrious academics that included Chris Argyris, Michael Jensen, Bill McKelvey, Henry Mintzberg, James O’Toole and Jeffrey Pfeffer. One of the most recurrent topics discussed at the conference was the ideal composition of the faculty of business schools. In his presentation, O’Toole described the two polar profiles of faculty members, the academics versus the practitioners, using examples from his university. At the end of his presentation he formulated the question: which of the two polar types of faculty does a business school need most? The quick answer from the audience was: “both!”. Initially I was not entirely convinced by this answer: I found it too almost too evident and I was looking for some magical solution, something more complex and elaborated. However I concluded that business school deans have, first to assimilate that there is no such thing as a “pure and ideal” model of faculty, even with Solomonic qualities. As dean Dinwoodie point out, isn’t management a question of balancing?

Comments

[Francisco Marín]

After finishing an Executive MBA program, I have realised more and more that most things taught by so-called "gurus" and most popular business leaders were already written many centuries ago, by historians, philosophers and writers.
The reason I have found for that is that business and management is after all about people. Therefore, literature, history and philosophy are also something to consider in the executive education: learn from great generals and politicians, philosophers or famous writers will also teach to think, write and express ideas.
I think that it is not enough with academics and practisioners from marketing, finance or strategy, for instance. It would also be good to complement with those other subjects already mentioned, in order to really develop human competencies, and not only management competencies.
Some good competencies to be developed could be:
- curiosity: to learn during all the life;
- humility: and respect to the others; and
- common sense: to be able to think and apply in the reality that we live today.

[Der Chao Chen]

It's a good question for any business school. Should we need more faculty from practical world or those purely trained in the academic community? Or how about those with practical experience before entering into academic career?

I do agree Marin's word that it's all about people. Or I should say, it's all about the mindset of people, how top executive toward his responsibility to stakeholders(customers, employess, vendors, etc.), how employees treat their own job?

Back to the question about faculty, it's also critical to rethink how do we evaluate our faculty? This mechanism also drive how and where does the businss school recurit and how it can attract those potential faculty.