The B-School Makes Its Case

The Associates of Harvard Business School, a group of corporate alumni and advisers, came to the school's defense last week in response to criticisms President Bok launched in his annual report last spring.

Their report, "The Success of a Strategy," supported many of Bok's points but opposed his call to de-emphasize the school's use of the popular "case method."

The case method is a Socratic teaching technique that involves the student in decision-making in "cases" adopted from real business situations. To compile cases, professors research the problems and accomplishments of companies in areas ranging from advertising practice to human relations. Many members of the associates are executives in companies that have opened themselves up to such research.

Bok proposed the Business School use more traditional teaching techniques in some fields, arguing that the case method "does not provide an ideal way of communicating concepts and analytical methods." Bok emphasized teaching students about the pressures on businesses from the outside--from government, special interest groups, and the community--and said the case method less effectively teaches such subjects.

The associates' report, while seeking to minimize the differences between their findings and Bok's, directly contradicts Bok's stand on the case method issue: "We urge the school to keep the case method dominant," the report states.

"To my mind, our real risk is not excessive concentration on case analysis and de-emphasis of theory and concepts, as Bok argues," the report quotes one unnamed professor as writing. "It is, in fact, just the opposite." He cited the "risk" of letting concentration on theory and concept; "much of it undigested by students," take time from the teaching of decision-making.

"We believe that the professor's concern should be taken more seriously than Bok's," the report states.

Professors and students at the Business School support the associates' report. "We teach judgment and decision-making, and the best way to do this is to develop general concepts by looking at actual decisions," Kenneth R. Andrews, David Professor of Business Administration, said, adding that Bok does not appreciate the usefulness of the case method.

"What Bok would like the students to get out of Business School is not what students attempt to get out of school," David M. Tolmie, president of the Student Association at the Business School, said this week. "Students come here to get general management training, and the best way to get that is to practice making decisions," he added.

The associates' report acknowledges the importance of analytical and theoretical concepts, but argues strongly that such concepts can be taught adequately through the case method. Professors at the B-School also say writing cases is an important research technique that keeps the B-School faculty in touch with both the factual and the theoretical side of modern business.

Beneath the specific disagreement over the use of the case method lies a deeper conflict between Bok's and the associates' reports: should the school train managers for effective decision-making in business, or teach broader business theory through more academic methods? For now, the Business School community seems to agree with its associates that the school's strategy is successful, and that the case method should remain prominent in the school's canon regardless of Bok's report.