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Your Turn Relevance and Reality Whenever I meet with alumni and business leaders, I am repeatedly asked about two important topics: the relevance of graduate management education and the teaching of business eth- ics, morality, and corporate social responsibility. From my perspective, they are not two separate questions, but rather two closely linked aspects of the same question: How do we as educators best arm young profes- sionals with the mindset, knowledge, and skills to face the realities of the global business world? In recent years, business educators have increasingly heard that the b- school model is outdated for today's global and fast-moving economy. The false implication is that graduate business educators are a collection of disinterested academics research- ing and writing about issues of little practical application. Faculty are cer- tainly rewarded for their activities in research, but critics claim they have no incentives to solve tangible busi- ness problems, particularly those that revolve around moral, ethical, and corporate social responsibility issues. Obviously, business schools take a range of approaches to teaching management education, and some are more successful than others. But if we look at b-schools as a whole, there is no question that their basic mission is critical to business and becoming more so as the business world grows more complex. To be successful in producing graduates who are ready for this environment, business schools need to do more than expose students to the basics of management. They must provide hands-on, real-world 62 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 global experiences and a grounding in ethical leadership. Only then will business schools be doing their jobs. I believe that to turn out fully prepared gradu- ates, business schools must offer a focused pedagogy with three fundamental layers: foundational theory, experiential learning, and moral leadership. by James W. Bradford James W. Bradford great business school can build a curriculum and experiences that make these "complicat- ed" industries under- standable. In fact, it's our job as management educators to do so. At the Owen Graduate School of Manage- ment, our students and faculty are engaged in virtually every business sector, and we have yet Building the Foundation The first layer, providing students a strong foundation in business skills, is where most business schools excel. Schools draw on their faculty research and the knowledge of great leaders to impart business theory to their students, who will use these basic building blocks in their future decision making. For most schools, these building blocks are the essence of the core curriculum, rooted in a vast and continuously evolving framework of ideas, knowledge, research, and experience. The more business stu- dents understand this framework, the better equipped they'll be to analyze challenges. Providing the tools to support critical, imaginative thinking is the bedrock of b-school education, and it has application across virtually every industry. I've heard people in some sectors claim this fundamental schooling does not apply to them. It is com- mon to hear a businessperson say, "My industry is so complicated, no one could understand it unless he grew up in this business." It's true that there are some highly regulated or extremely complicated business sectors, such as healthcare; but a to find one that could not benefit greatly from having leaders steeped in the fundamental knowledge of business practices. Offering Experiential Learning For this foundation in theory to be truly effective, I believe it must be reinforced with experiential learn- ing. D.A. Kolb has called experien- tial learning "the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience." Cog- nitive studies have long concluded that while some people learn best through visual means and oth- ers through aural means, every- one learns by doing. We learn by informed trial and error—by failing as well as succeeding—and that kind of learning stays with us. Many business schools today have added a component of experien- tial learning to their curricula. The United States Military Academy calls this model: "Know, Be, Do." Gain the knowledge, forge the character, and take action. At Owen, students learn by doing in real-world "labs" that go beyond the traditional internship. For instance, students in our Health Care MBA program are exposed to the clinical medical setting by going