单选题
Like other academic institutions, business schools are judged by the quality of the research carried out by their faculties. At the same time they mean to equip their students for the real world, however that is defined. Whether academic research actually produces anything that is useful to the practice of business, or even whether it is its job to do so, are questions that can provoke vigorous arguments on campus.
The debate, which first became intense during the 1950s, was reignited in August, when AACSB International, the most widely recognised global evaluating agency for business schools, announced it would consider changing the way it evaluates research. The news followed rather grave criticism in 2002 from Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford professor, and Christina Fong of Washington University, which questioned whether business education in its current guise was sustainable. The most controversial recommendation in AACSB"s draft report (which was sent round to administrators for their comment) is that the schools be required to demonstrate the value of their faculties" research not simply by listing its citations in journals, but by demonstrating the impact it has in the ordinary world.
AACSB justifies its stance by saying that it wants schools and faculty to play to their strengths, whether they be in pedagogy, in the research of practical applications, or in scholarly endeavour. And research of any kind is expensive—AACSB points out that business schools in America alone spend more than $320m a year on it. So it seems legitimate to ask for what purpose it is undertaken.
On one level, the question is simple to answer. Research in business schools, as anywhere else, is about expanding the boundaries of knowledge. But it is also about cementing schools"—and professors"—reputations. Schools gain kudos from their faculties" record of publication. In some cases, such as with government-funded schools in Britain, it can affect how much money they receive. For professors, their careers depend on being seen in the right journals.
Part of the trouble is that the journals labour under a similar ethos. They publish more than 20,000 articles each year. Most of the research is highly quantitative, hypothesis- driven and esoteric. As a result, it is almost universally unread by real-world managers. Much of the research criticises other published research. A paper in a 2006 issue of Strategy & Leadership commented that "research is not designed with managers" needs in mind, nor is it communicated in the journals they read...For the most part it has become a self-referential closed system [irrelevant to] corporate performance."
Business schools inhabit a highly competitive world; no matter what they may say, they care intensely about their rankings. If they find they can improve their positions by pursuing more practical research programmes, their administrators" attitudes may yet change. Whatever the defenders of academic purity may wish, there is hope for the real world yet.