The Big World Out There

PRESIDENT BOK has been a prolific writer of late. In between letters about divestiture and the ethics of investment, he has prepared a massive, contemplative report on business education and changes he advocates for the Business School. Not that the two subjects he has recently addressed are unrelated--when Bok speaks of "the growing diversification of firms and their increasing penetrations into foreign markets" in the same report that he observes, "corporate executives have encountered mounting pressures and demands from a variety of quarters," he reminds us of his own recent problems as chief executive of the Harvard Corporation.

Bok's report reveals a streak of iconoclasm--at least for the icons of the Business School--which might surprise those who know him only as the unbending opponent of divestiture. Bok first diagnoses the need for business managers more well-versed in the ways of government regulation, employee relations and the ethics of international operations. Few would argue against his advice, and Business School faculty are quick to point out parts of the present curriculum that already cover these fields.

It's not until the end of his report, where Bok names specific changes, that he steps on some toes. When he suggests that the school place less emphasis on the "case method" of teaching, he even smashes an idol or two. Under this method, teachers present details of actual business situations to their students, and force them to make decisions--using a Socratic questioning technique similar to that practised at the Law School.

BUSINESS SCHOOL administrators, faculty, and students are unanimous in their support of the case method--it is probably the chief reason Harvard MBAs are so eminently eminently employable and well-paid. Business faculty see cases as the heart of their work. A recent faculty report speaks of "the oral tradition that surrounds the program an involves the passing of program lore from one faculty member to another and from one student to another." "Case materials" are used in 80 per cent of the required courses in the MBA program. "We try to teach students not subjects and techniques but attitudes and habits, "James L. Heskitt, chairman of the program, says. Students trained in the case method get into the habit of making three decisions a day, and they carry the habit to the $25,000-a-year average starting jobs they take.

While Bok doesn't suggest the abandonment of the method, he does seem to want to make junior faculty feel more comfortable about departing from it when they want to. His chief criticism of the method is that it monopolizes the time of professors and prevents them from conducting research into new fields in business education--like government regulation and ethics. Business faculty say the case method forces research into the kinds of practical problems their school wants to teach. "The case method is a method of research--Bok's report is somewhat like telling a chemist not to do any work in a laboratory, just to think up ideas," Wickham Skinner, Robinson Professor of Business Administration, says. "The business world is our laboratory."

Any changes in the use of the case method are bound to be glacial. Still, the term covers many different types of teaching, "as many different types as there are cases," according to one professor. The changes Bok proposes for the Business School curriculum are another matter. He favors the creation of separate new courses to cover the emerging disciplines of ethics, employee relations, and government regulation.

The faculty recently approved the recommendations of a committee chaired by Heskett, which studied the Business School curriculum for two years. Under the revised curriculum, the areas Bok outlines get treatment in bits and pieces in a variety of courses, including "Human Behavior in Organizations," "Business Policy," and "Business, Government, and the International Economy." There is no separate ethics course. Heskett says the Business School prefers to treat ethical problems wherever they come up in each course, rather than pigeon-holing them into one course which might, be dominated by those students who already have a special interest in ethics.

THE BUSINESS FACULTY is unlikely to sit down to review its curriculum again in the near future. This leaves Bok's suggestions in limbo, making his report more a spur to discussion than a set of concrete reform proposals. Even so, Business School administrators should take the report as a sign that others within and without the University are concerned about the strength of the school's commitment to ethics. Witness the flurry of media attention earlier this year over a course in "Competitive Decision-Making" taught by Howard Raiffa, Ramsay Professor of Managerial Economics, which drew fire from the Wall Street Journal as a course in "teaching lies." Administrators may have their reasons for not instituting a separate required ethics course, but the outside world knows only that there is none. The unwillingness of administrators, aside from Heskett, to comment on Bok's report or to answer some of his questions only aggravates matters.

Heskett says, "I would hate to see a siege mentality develop--right now the only thing we're besieged with is applications." No one--least of all Bok, who praises the Business School throughout his report for its leadership in new fields--is laying siege to the idyllic lawns and halls across the river. But the Business School administrators must not only answer Bok's criticisms with internal discussion and reform, but also try to let the public know they are responding. If they fail to, the public will have nothing to base its opinions on but its suspicions and their silence.