Appeared in "The Observer of Management Education" Vol: 1, Issue 2, February 2006
As a management teacher there is one moment
in the classroom when fear overcomes me. And fear evokes lies and lies, guilt. But I love my students for that.
They have made me think deeply about an issue, which I present in this article.
Didn’t the original guilt make us humans search for redemption and, aren’t we
better searching rather than lying in uneasy comatose?
Please do not come to the conclusion that I am scared of big classes and
intelligent students. In fact, I love the impetuous quick wit and honest
intelligence of the bright MBAs whichever corner of the world they happen to
come from. It is precisely these smart alecks who make me go back to academia
after having left it thrice preferring it to the corporate world with its
better bank balances, more expensive eat-outs and air-conditioned mobility.
Let me come to the point. I have taught mainly in the areas of Strategy and
Policy, Organizations and Ethics, and the schools I have taught had always
insisted that I use case studies. I have enjoyed teaching these cases with all the flourish that comes by being privy to a lot more
information about the companies, and the industries they are in, than what the
students possess. Armed with the teacher’s guide and the inheritance of
transparencies from older, seasoned professor-colleagues one is certainly on
surer ground than one’s eager and less-than-eager victims.
But there is a deep existential problem that I face. It happens at the closing
stages of the case analyses when an eager student asks, “What happened to the
rest of the story after the closing events of the case?” This may come in other
forms. Did the company survive? What decision did he or she take? Was the guy
right in taking that decision? How is it doing now? Were the decisions once
considered smart enduring? And on and on…
Despite years of teaching I still do not know what a satisfactory approach
would be to these vexatious questions. I had searched in vain in books dealing
with every aspect of case study method of teaching. I have never found anything
that has fully satisfied me. Perhaps there is really no satisfactory approach
here given management professors’ and, no less, management students’ worship of
empirical virtuosity.
Let me go back to the issue of questions in the class room. My way out is
typical. I will be armed with some additional information, painstakingly
collected from popular press, which I proffer them like a wise bard. None of my
premeditated effort is revealed when I speak to my students with measured
carelessness. It is as if I just happened to know those facts! I conclude by
saying that case studies are events encapsulated in space and time and it would
be methodologically incorrect to go beyond that frame. Dismissively I would say
that what happened afterwards is irrelevant for the present discussion. I would
rub in further and add that the important thing is not to look at the final
decisions but the ways and means of looking at situations and at the
decision-making process. The less importunate students let me go off the hook,
others mumble in confusion. And myself? Feel helpless
and miserable within.
I think my problem lies in my (read our) need to be always realistic, or
“empirically virtuous.” That is why we have only case studies, not creative
stories for discussions. Case studies are predominantly representations of the
reality in a particular context where the situation is problematic and the
protagonists are presently in a decision-making dilemma. When it comes to answering
the uneasy questions students ask, we conveniently drop the “principle of
empirical virtuosity” and maintain that what is important is not the outcome
but the approach to decision making. We thereby ask our students to forget
about empirical validity and look for the process. The MBA world that deifies
realism with its bottom lines, top lines, goals and hopeless specificity knows
that this is at odds with the principle of empirical virtuosity. Having to violate the sacred principle and feeling lousy about it
something that I loathe.
We could avoid this if we, the management teachers, admit the limits of the
empirical virtuosity and instead emphasize creative exchange of thoughts,
whether fact or fiction, with our students. By limiting ourselves to case
studies we are limiting ourselves to a subset of the situations, dilemmas and
possibilities. This subset contains only those that we observed and recorded.
Can we then include in our curriculum creative works, such as novels, for
discussion? Somebody might say that a novel such as “The Goal” by Goldratt has already been adopted as a textbook by the
students of Manufacturing Management. I suspect that by its sheer force of
logic it has broken the “empirical virtuosity” wall to enter the portals of
accepted academic management literature. This novel is so logical that it is
like a series of equations, and the book cannot be alleged for any flights of
fancy. So I see the success of “The Goal” as an exception rather than as any
sign of admittance of novels in management teaching.
Using situations conjured by human imagination has been successfully used in
teaching, surprisingly in such “logical” subjects as Physics. For example, in
elementary mechanics we assumed friction arising from gravity to be zero. How
many of us have experienced zero gravity to assume it away so summarily? But
the understanding that builds from these super simplistic “realities” leads us
to build fuller understanding of real nature. By no means am I suggesting that
Management teaching should be patterned after teaching of Physics. I am only
saying that stories have proved to be a valid means of teaching. And if Physics
could have it, why could Management too?
Someone may argue that case studies are a certain kind of stories. Yes, they
are. But their boundaries are highly constrained by empirical virtuosity. While
they certainly improve the practical abilities of our students, it has
limitations in developing their “imagination” side. Perhaps my hypothesis will
become clear if we were to map the spectrum of stories that we are all familiar
with. At one end are the case studies that improve the practical sense. On the
other end is mythology that sharpens the imaginative side. Somewhere in between
are the novels, plays, short stories etc.
Then the question is can we have in the MBA curriculum a small dose of fiction
that has literary, aesthetic and ethical qualities. The power of the human
imagination is sacrificed while strictly adhering to empirical virtuosity that
stalks the corridors of management academia. Not that these cases have no place
in teaching Management. Far from it. It has been
successfully used in teaching functional subjects. However subject like “Ethics
in Business” when taught (or more appropriately, discussed) through traditional
case methodology seems rather flat. Where the dilemma is at the human level, forcefitting a standard solution seems rather naïve. It
would be a more complete exercise to study George Orwell’s novels to imbibe
ideas of the potential excesses of centralization than use case studies written
by management professors on the subject.
So my thesis is that we, as management professors, have to team up with the
literary folks and learn something from them to improve the human dimensions of
our future managers who are called upon to display every kind of skill and
sensitivity. Such teaming up cannot be done overnight. There has to be a lot of
thinking, talking, writing and experimenting to do before such an idea can even
be whispered at faculty meetings! I think such an approach will render teaching
of Ethics and other similar subjects a matter of thinking for the students
rather than learning ethics. There is a group of management thinkers who
believe that Ethics can never be taught. They find what is taught excessively
moralizing and “theoretical.” They may have a point. While seeking precision
the students miss out on aesthetic appreciation in such subjects. There is
impatience to grasp the finale and encapsulate all that understanding into
another “technique” slot. The result may be at best exasperation, at worst
ineffectiveness.
And, should we call the case stories “Management Fiction”?
Appeared in "The Observer of
Management Education" Vol: 1, Issue 2, February
2006