Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/57707
The Future Is Now What lies ahead for business schools? Four experts pinpoint trends that they think will demand attention and reshape the future of management education. T he business school of the near future might look very different from the business school of today. As global commerce demands new types of leaders who can succeed in increasingly more complex, connected, and competitive environments, management educators might need to explore new approaches. In fact, they might have to completely rethink what they're teaching and how they're teaching it. That's why, for this issue of BizEd, we have invited prominent voices in the field to share their thoughts on what's about to change in the world of management education. Specifically, we asked them to explore the poten- tial changes to the management curriculum and the evolution of the busi- ness school itself. In the business school of the future, Barry Posner foresees a fundamen- tal shift in how faculty teach leadership and how students learn to lead. Schools will have to teach students to "do leadership," he says—to actually practice being leaders—before sending graduates out into the world. N. Craig Smith expects an interconnected marketplace to force busi- nesses around the globe to become more honest and transparent. There- fore, he says, business schools will need to put a greater focus on ethics and corporate social responsibility so graduates understand how their own actions can impact their companies—and the world. Denise Rousseau wants schools to back away from teaching popular current theories and commit instead to an evidence-based management curriculum. Students who are grounded in basic principles of organiza- tional behavior, she argues, will be better prepared to function in any workplace and solve any problem. And how will tomorrow's business school deliver the curriculum that these experts describe? Maybe not the way you expect. Clayton M. Chris- tensen identifies a panoply of potential disruptors to traditional manage- ment education. So many, in fact, that he thinks that schools will survive these influences only if they implement completely new models of doing business. In short, successful business schools of the future will focus on fun- damental principles while reinventing themselves in a competitive mar- ket. They will stay ahead of international trends, promote stronger ethical frameworks, and embrace 21st-century models of leadership. These are no easy tasks, but they are certainly achievable, say these four educators— particularly for those business schools of today that are already preparing themselves for tomorrow. 24 BizEd MAY/JUNE 2008