[REBORN FROM THE ASHES][comment][01.05]

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

The role of the business school
Deans debate
Dec 1st 2009
From Economist.com
http://www.economist.com/business-education/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15006681

How do business schools remain relevant in today’s changing world?AS THE clamour grows for more regulation to address the corporate failings that led the world into a two-year recession, business schools sense a chance to drive the agenda. By producing academic research that can inform the debates within Washington and Brussels, there is a chance to become relevant once again. But business is also changing its mind about it wants from MBA students. The super-confident, gung-ho leader, that was once their calling card, has fallen out of fashion. So can schools adapt to a changing world?
To find out, The Economist spoke to two prominent business deans from either side of the Atlantic: Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño, dean of Spain’s IE Business school, and Paul Danos, dean of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business in America.

Has the role of the business school changed as a result of the economic crisis?
Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño: Actually management is very much demanded these days. Management is everywhere. All our universities are demanding programmes in management from many different quarters: for engineers, for doctors, for architects.
But some things have changed. The presence of the visible hand [of regulation] is now more explicit. This means that business schools may have a role in preparing members of governments and the administration. The collaboration between the public and private is becoming one of the fastest growing areas of business schools.
We also see more demand for entrepreneurship courses. In times of crisis managers need to reinvent their existing businesses, launch new products and diversify. But also there are many opportunities for the creation of new business—start-ups in fields like technologies, biotechnology, in energy, even in education.
Then we also see some things changing at business schools. We field the demand from the real world to develop research which can actually address the real problems of business. This will probably affect the profile of professors. Not only must they be solid in terms of their research skills and teaching skills, they should also be able to interface with the top management.

Have you seen a change in what professors are researching over the last two years?
Paul Danos: Research grinds slowly. Let's take a marketing professor who's an expert on internet marketing. Well that hasn't changed because of this crisis. Some people say "everything has changed," well it's not true. Most of the courses that we teach MBAs have not changed because of the crisis.
I think the change has come at a higher level. It's the level of: can leaders be made to be both responsible and analytical enough to understand the complexity of the world? And why did the leaders, the regulators, the CEOs and the board members miss these risk factors? Well you can debate that but it doesn't change everything. It doesn’t even change everything in finance. Finance is primarily the same as it was before the crisis. When you get to a higher level though, when you start asking CEOs and board members to contemplate their responsibilities, then you have to think about it in a different way. So it's subtle, nuanced.
Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño: This brings me to another thing that many of our schools are currently contemplating: that all the areas evolve over time. So in finance, as Paul was saying, the golden rules are still valid. But the institutions, the concepts of risk, the ways of assessing risk have evolved in the past years. We need people to come back to school. Managers cannot just rely on what they learned 30 years ago in their MBA programmes. This is a clinical profession like medicine, like architecture, where you need to update your knowledge. So something that may come out from this crisis is the need of managers to come back to school and update their knowledge and validate what they do in the real world.
Paul Danos: I think one thing I've walked away from the crisis with is that no-one can know it all. You need the right kind of probing mindset when you attack problems of such complexity because no one could have ever seen the combination of factors before. So it's not the understanding of every eventuality—which is impossible—it's the right mindset.
So at Tuck we have instituted a whole series of small scale, deep courses where students are forced into that sceptical mindset of truly questioning the foundation of theories. Now that sounds esoteric, but it's really practical.
My main takeaway was not that it was an ethics problem, not that people were cheating overtly, it is that people were using the wrong mental attitude when they approached extremely complex problems that they hadn't seen before. Practice can hypnotise you into using old models and old ways of thinking. When you talk to people about the risk management systems in the big banks and at the Fed and at the regulators, it's amazing how they put together old models and old ways of thinking and tried to lay it on top of a new system.
So it proved that they weren't doing it right; they just didn't have the right mental attitude about the models and how they worked and how they hooked up. So we're trying to reinvestigate that.

Does that imply that schools have historically failed to inculcate that attitude in their students?
Paul Danos: The crisis was not caused by the broad 90% of our students who went into businesses. It was caused by the dynamics of the interplay between big banks and the regulators. Now you might say [that] those are business people too and they were trained at business schools. True, but ordinary corporations didn't do what banks did. I'm on boards of corporations and we weren't blinded, we weren't 40-to-1 leveraged. So this particular virus was in the banking system, and I think it can be analysed. I really think, at the end of the day, even though the banks themselves were irresponsible, the real irresponsibility was with the regulators because when everything else fails, the regulators are supposed to keep things safe and keep people from doing unsafe things and they didn't do it.

Can business schools exert any leverage over regulators?
Paul Danos: I think so. We have a group at Tuck right now that is made up of several schools—finance professors and economists—and they are writing white papers on many aspects of regulation. So they, as an independent party, are trying to get their voice into Washington and into Europe about the future of regulation and the future regime. They are able to get into congressional and other hearings, but it's just one voice. You know how politics is: there are many voices and lobby groups trying to influence the future of regulation.

Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño: My impression is that we still need to develop many new things in financial theory and the way we assess risk. Again, we are attending the early stages of these sciences. If you look at medicine 200 years ago and the remedies that were applied to some illnesses we get horrified now. So we will probably see some changes and here academics are actually paying the best possible service to society. Again, now we need good management. We need to recover the golden rules of what is good management, what is establishing the mission for a company. And from business schools I think we can train regulators because they need a very solid technical preparation that they lack. If you look at public administrations, people in both national, local and federal administrations, they need more preparation in finance, in management in order to take better decisions.
Paul Danos: For instance, we're doing a lot of work with healthcare delivery which is a big, important topic. If you talk to people who try to deliver healthcare, one of the biggest problems is that there's very little management education. I'm not talking about high-level finance, I'm talking about the basics of budgets, of cost containment, of deficiency. Very little of that is part of the medical-school training.
I think that in every aspect of society some amount of management education is necessary in order for those institutions to deliver the services that they intend to deliver at a reasonable cost.

Is the nature of leadership changing?
Paul Danos: If you looked at the top-level demand from executives for our programmes, it's almost all about leadership. And it's really interesting how it has evolved. So much is now focused on a teamwork-based leadership model that really emphasises self-awareness. It's a very humanistic philosophy. It's not the person that charges ahead and rallies the troops. It's more of a person that is sensitive to the situation and to themselves.
Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño: It is a different sort of leadership than the one which has grown in the past decade. It is not charismatic leadership, but teamwork. We will also see in the future many institutions getting rid of this spirit of elitism or arrogance which has contributed to create this atmosphere of overconfidence. They [believed that they] were actually beyond any controls or rules—that Nietzschean moral of the super-masters. We will get back to more controls, the golden rules, more supervision, getting rid of superficial things. History is very recurrent and we are attending again a move of the pendulum.

hugeseaUID: 190158

占一个
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To be frank, I have, actually, learned nothing from the above debate.

Mr. Santiago was always talking up the business schools, while the point of view of Mr. Paul seems to be skin-deep.

Sigh....I really have not much to say on this article...Let me read it some more times.

miki7catUID: 2533330

My comment
Since business is changing its mind about it wants from MBA students during the two-year recession, the super-confident, gung-ho leader as their calling card was never in fashion. Mr Paul thinks the nature of leadership is sensitive to the situation and to managers themselves, while Mr Santiago thinks it will back to be more controls, the golden rules, and more supervision.

For Mr. Santiago, management is very much changed in demand these days. Business schools may have a role in preparing members of government and administration, and also be demanded for entrepreneurship courses. For the professors, affecting by the crisis, not only must they be solid in terms of their research skills and teaching skills, they should also be able to interface with the top management. The golden rules are still valid though, everything has evolved over time, and everyone needs an advanced study to update his knowledge. Moreover, the golden rules of what is good management and what is establishing the mission for a company should be recovered. He thinks business schools should train regulators because they need a very solid technical preparation in finance and in management that they lack in order to take better decisions.

On the contrary, Mr. Paul does not agree with the view that "everything has changed", at least most of the courses teached in his school have not changed because of the crisis. He thinks the change is not at the level of skill and knowledge but at the level of mindset, that is the responsibility and analysis capability to understand the complexity of the world. But these changes at higher level don’t change everything in finance. So what a manager needs is not the understanding of every eventuality but the right mindset and mental attitude about the models and how they worked and how they hooked up. Mr. Danos believes that the crisis was caused by the dynamics of interplay between big banks and the regulators, rather than by the business schools' historical failure in inculcating the right attitude in their students, and business schools can exert some leverage over regulators: a group of finance professors and economists from several schools is writing white papers on many aspects of regulation.

I do not know what kinds of courses are designed for the MBA student. But in my opinion, no matter what field we get into, finance or technology or philosophy, one of the most important elements of success is the sensitivity and adaptability to the situation changes. Thus, schools should offer courses not only in teaching skills and knowledge but also in establishing a right response to changes.

豆腐店的86UID: 2512956

Today is really a bad day for me! Everything goes against my will and it keeps happening!

Again, as happened last night, i was editing my reading comments on the BBS editing box and when I misclicked a button, everything just gone.

I don't know what is going on with me today. Wish the day can come back to normal later.

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Comments

The debate raises a good question that is it really the MBA programs' fault that educate nowadays businessmen to unsuccessfully run their companies and eventually, cause the recession？ Of course not, MBA programs provide basic knowledge to their students: golden rules, fundamental techniques and etc. It is because of the inappropriate use of this knowledge that contributes to such a recession. Both deans of business schools hold proper evidences to support their believes, but contrarily, one is on behalf of a view that emphasizing regulators’ education is important while the other one thinks that there is still a lot more in business field to be researched and revealed. That is to say, on the topic of maintaining a safe market, we still do not sure whether a complete knowledge on business field is a more urgent issue than a well organized supervising system. I prefer to arrange a well trained regulation system first. As the invisible hand failed to rule the market, it is time to let the visible one to take charge.

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Wish the chaos goes away along with my bad luck and awful feeling!

plukaUID: 2721764

NOTE
AS THE clamour grows for more regulation to address the corporate failings that led the world into a two-year recession, business schools sense a chance to drive the agenda.

The super-confident, gungho leader, that was once their calling card, has fallen out of fashion.

reinvent(彻底改造、重复发明、从新使用）

We field（使上场） the demand from the real world to develop research which can actually address the real problems of business. This will probably affect the profile of professors. Not only must they be solid in terms of their research skills and teaching skills, they should also be able to interface with（连接、协调） the top management.

You need the right kind of probing mindset when you attack problems of such complexity because no one could have ever seen the combination of factors before.

eventuality（不测的事，可能性，可能发生的事）

My main takeaway was not that it was an ethics problem, not that people were cheating overtly, it is that people were using the wrong mental attitude when they approached extremely complex problems that they hadn't seen before. 有道理。Practice can hypnotise（使催眠、恍惚） you into using old models and old ways of thinking. 这句话很好用！

It's not the person that charges ahead（冲锋在前）and rallies the troops（集结军队）. It's more of a person that is sensitive to the situation and to themselves.审时度势。

It is not charismatic leadership, but teamwork.

spirit of elitism（杰出人物统治论，高人一等的优越感）

Nietzschean（尼采） moral of the super-masters

History is very recurrent and we are attending again a move of the pendulum.
===================================================
COMMENT

Money and power always co-exist. They support, conform or administrate one another, especially when critical times come. As Mr Santiago mentioned, there comes a more flexible and reflective time when the collaboration of business and government are accepted not as a rude and malign intervention but the exigent endeavor. (Well, I admit that I feel a little bit ironic and interesting upon such swiftly transformed attitude and the saying,"only China can save the capitalism".) Business students are required to learn more on balancing the tricky scale between the regulator and the arm-length market, so too those ministers. Spain’s IE Business school, according to Mr Santiago, launched corresponding courses already, but it marks only the beginning of the story.

Another topic that have caught me is that both the two dean showed strong inclination of preparing and rebuilding the apt attitude, in Mr Danos's words, probing mindset, of students. This emphasis stemed from the doubt on current turbulence, on the false judgment incumbent entrepreneurs have made, and on the misleading method they are employing now. Mr Dano particularly mentioned the skeptical mind, which is essential in the field of economy. This hints me the importance of doubt and questioning: they pervade every area as long as the change and complexity exist.

The third that I concerned in this article is the changing image of leadership. The era of personal cult has gone; teamwork and cooperative spirit has been highlightened. This applies not only in financial world but almost every field and work. A little bit sorry may it be to lose potential extremely radiant and charismatic leader, it assures the abandon of extreme wrong and the attendance of each person in the group.

错别字：emphasis, malign, doubt, entrepreneur, attendance.

qisaimanUID: 2703629

corporate 全体的
presence 出现
launch new products
biotechnology
esoteric 奥秘的
risk assessment
风险评估
pendulum 摆，兴衰

to find out the function of business school and answer the question that can business school be relevant in the ever-changing world, a debate is held.
according to mr san, business school may find new customers coming from the regulation administration, and the professors face a more challenging scenario.
mr dan: he thought the change is not obvious and emphisized the significance of proper mindset on tackling the crisis and potential risk.
with the background of this financial crisis, the two speakers both agree that the regulator need technical knowledge to assess the risk effectively and make better financial decision. also management education is necessary for many fields to deliver the service at a reasonable cost, which may be right but more sound like an advertisement.

rodgoodUID: 2619326

请问：
I think one thing I've walked away from the crisis with is that no-one can know it all.

My main takeaway was not that it was an ethics problem.

中的walk away 和 takeaway 分别怎么理解呢？谢谢

Useful words and expressions:

clamour吵闹的

gung-ho同心协力的，雄心壮志的 leader

calling card名片

affect the profile of professors

nuanced微妙的nuance细腻地表演，细微的差别

This brings me to another thing that

probing mindset探索的心态、习惯

attack problems of such complexity

hypnotize催眠

hooked up衔接

exert any leverage发挥影响力

get their voice into

regime社会制度，管理体制

remedy治疗，药品v/n

rally the troops
charismatic有魅力的 leadership

recurrent复现的

Business schools sense a chance to drive the agenda.

So can schools adapt to a changing world?

That sounds esoteric神秘的, but it's really practical

My comments:

The financial crisis has become one of the most popular topics recently because an era with new opportunities and challenges is followed. Business schools, which are collected with relevant specialists and scholarships and play a role in offering preliminary education of leadership, are of course greatly concerned.

Someone argues that everything has changed because of the two-year recession. The two specialists don't think so though. They state that golden rules remain unchangeable. The change has come at a high level that what needed to be changed is nothing but demand to leadership. New situation followed the crisis calls for new models and new ways from leaders, which are what they lacks. According to the deans, this new model and new way come from a so-called mental attitude, which is not elaborated in the report.

For me, what I am concerned is the encouraging education functions from business schools that involve social service works such as healthcare delivery mentioned in the report. These social service works are always bringing problems that leaders never face. All these questions need researched by business schools. In post-crisis time, business schools will undertake more burdens so as to confront, what the report says, recurrent history.

Misspellings:

finacial，financial
opportunaties，opportunities
relavent，relevant
prelimilary，preliminary
unchangable，unchangeable
concered，concerned
invole，involve

AdelineShenUID: 2630498

Comment:
The world-wide economic crisis has threatened the whole world, especially the business world. Professors in business schools rethink profoundly about the MBA education. Many believe that the former way of business education overlooked the importance of management and entrepreneurship and pay too much attention on super-confident and gung-ho leader.

Although I am not a student of business or management, I have taken part in similar training and know something about the business education. We focus on the way to get the most interests, while little emphasis on the whole society, which might become one of the reasons for the economic crisis. I have talked with a friend who once had the chance to learn MBA in Harvard, who finally decided to drop out of the MBA class and started to learn humanism and philosophy. He once said jokingly that fortunately I dropped out of the MBA class, or I might have been one of the guilty persons who leads to the world-wide economic crisis. He told me that humanism and philosophy are better than MBA classes. When you learn humanism and philosophy, you learn about the whole human society and the interaction between different people. You learn how to deal with people, which is the most important factor in management. You learn to behave considering different point of views. You learn the essence of human nature psychology. After such training, your teamwork-based leadership will not overlook the importance of interaction between different people and self-awareness will be avoided.

So in my opinion, managers need to learn more about humanism and philosophy. Or the business education should add more such courses. It is not their knowledge of finance and business that lead to their poor decision, but the lack of knowledge of humanism and philosophy.

错别字
：management, guilty

tequilawineUID: 2702008

gung-ho  ['gʌŋ'həu]

adj. <美>同心协力的, 强烈的, 雄心壮志的

calling card
n.<美>名片

dean
[diːn]

n.
院长, 主持牧师

reinvent  [ˌri:in'vent]   

vt. 再发明, 改造, 重新使用

field

1 a : to catch or pick up (as a batted ball) and usually throw to a teammate b : to take care of or respond to (as a telephone call or a request) c : to give an impromptu answer or solution to <the senator fielded the reporters' questions>
2 : to put into the field <field an army> <field a team> also : to enter in competition
intransitive verb : to play as a fielder

interface  ['intəfeis;'intəˌfeis]   

n. 界面,接触面

vt. 连接,作接口

vi. 连接

grind  [graind]   

n. 磨,碾,挤摩擦声,无聊的苦工作

vt. 磨,碾,挤压,摇动手柄

vi. 磨擦,磨碎,用功

nuanced  ['nju:ɑ:nst;'nu:ɑ:nst]   

adj. 有细微差别的，微妙的

动词nuance的过去式和过去分词形式

validate
['val·i·date || 'v&aelig;lɪdeɪt]

v.
使有效, 确认, 使生效

walk away from
v.从...旁边走开, 轻易地胜过

mindset  ['maindset;'maindˌset]   

n. 意向, 精神状态

心态

esoteric
[es·o·ter·ic || ‚esəʊ'terɪk]

adj.
秘教的, 秘传的, 奥秘的

hypnotise  ['hipnətaiz;'hipnəˌtaiz]

vt. 使催眠，使着迷

=hypnotize（美）

Practice can hypnotise you into using old models and old ways of thinking.

inculcate
[in·cul·cate || ɪn'kʌlkeɪt /'ɪnkʌlkeɪt]

v.
反复灌输; 教育; 谆谆教诲

white paper [简明英汉词典]
白皮书(英美政府关于某一问题的官方报告)
White Paper [简明英汉词典]
n. （英国）白皮书

charismatic
[char·is·mat·ic || ‚k&aelig;rɪz'm&aelig;tɪk]

adj.
神赐能力的; 领袖魅力的

elitism  [ei'li:tizm;ei'li:tizəm]

n. 精英主义, 优秀人士统治

1 AS THE clamour grows for more regulation to address the corporate failings that led the world into a two-year recession, business schools sense a chance to drive the agenda.
2 The presence of the visible hand [of regulation] is now more explicit.
3 We field the demand from the real world to develop research which can actually address the real problems of business.
4 Not only must they be solid in terms of their research skills and teaching skills, they should also be able to interface with the top management.
5 Research grinds slowly.
6 So it's subtle, nuanced. 怎么翻译呀？
7 All the areas evolve over time. 所有的领域都随时间而前进。
8 I think one thing I've walked away from the crisis with is that no-one can know it all.
9 My main takeaway was not that it was an ethics problem, not that people were cheating overtly, it is that people were using the wrong mental attitude when they approached extremely complex problems that they hadn't seen before.
10 . It's not the person that charges ahead and rallies the troops. It's more of a person that is sensitive to the situation and to themselves.
11 History is very recurrent and we are attending again a move of the pendulum.

Comment:
The interview gives us some preface of business school start-up performance conferring on the finance crisis. Let us integrate all of the statics spewing out in the recession, therefore first and last, we steam out the conclusion that business is involving in this stage and playing an important role in it at least form aspects of the deans. We got three clear dimensional comprehensive explanations from them basing on three issues.

First one, descending on our suspiciousness, does the economic change? Both of them have gave us the full description on it, which may a little bit different from each other, but deeply contemplating, you will notice the standpoints of theirs are just two sides of one coin, that one is inside, the other outside. I mean finance is primarily the same as it was before the crisis, at the meantime, the presence of the visible hand [of regulation] is now more complicit, so that not only they must be solid in terms of operating skills and implementing skills, they should also be able to interface with new situation handling skill now probed in some labs.

Second is that were we able to call for account, should we contribute part of it to school? Answer is not. Allow me to coin the sentence in the superhero style:" Truth comes from minority." So they reckon that, at the end of the day, even though

The banks themselves were irresponsible, the real irresponsibility was with the regulators because when everything else fails, the regulators are supposed to keep things safe and keep people from doing unsafe things and they didn't do it. Good shoot.

Confronting the last one, the dean makes clear it that the nature of the leadership is changing. If you look at medicine 200 years ago and the remedies that were applied to some illnesses we get horrified now. We need to keep pace with our time, evolve with the progress.

windandrain2004UID: 2597690

占~~~

zhengchangdianUID: 2563082

我曾经也想选这篇文章贴上来的
Comment：

Well, I am not so interested in this passage because I have heard about its theme in my political class. The financial crisis paves way for further financial education and forces the business to operate in a new way.

Of course, it still creates an atmosphere of inspiration for me in some aspects. To begin with, the author contends that politics is many voices and lobby groups trying to influence the future of regulation. This latent rule makes an explanation for the establishment of the separation of the three powers and the American parliamentary system. As the author contends that the financial professors and economists are writing white papers on many aspects of regulation, the force from business schools has already involved in enacting decrees on behalf of their interest. So it is of much necessity for people in positions of power to exercise caution and restraint in the use of that power.

On the other hand, it is said that we would attend the previous stage contained more controls and supervision in terms of the history recurrent. According to the passage, leadership based on teamwork would be more effective than charisma in the following days. In my point of view, leadership originated from teamwork could promote the internal competition and reduce the risk of decision making, while the charismatic leadership could encourage persons in authority to be overconfident and arrogant. In this sense, financial crisis would sober people up instead of compelling them to fall off the precipice.

Questions：

1.The super-confident, gung-ho leader, that was once their calling card, has fallen out of fashion. So can schools adapt to a changing world?
是不是指以前那些leader是他们的名片呢？

2.We field the demand from the real world to develop research which can actually address the real problems of business.
field怎么翻译？

3.This is a clinical profession like medicine, like architecture, where you need to update your knowledge.
Clinical 是临床，冷静沉着，还是？

doodaUID: 2712643

Reserverd :P

sunflower_irisUID: 2720580

阵地占~

KiKi~淇水滺滺UID: 2679824

When talking about business schools, many people also think about the bright future it brings after the students graduate from them. The top business schools such as Havard, Stanford are really popular among whether students or working people.

During the financial recession, what should be taught in business schools become another hot topic all over the world. People all accuse that it’s bussiness schools cause this global recession. It is not hard to understand this shared outrage: students graduate from good business schools have better jobs and better salary, looking bright.

People may think that only financial fields need business students, however, in my perspective of thinking, the leadership, teamwork spirit and many other things taught in business schools are also useful in many other industries.

123runfordreamUID: 2697608

All our universities are demanding programmes in management from many different quarters: for engineers, for doctors, for architects.

Not only must they be solid in terms of their research skills and teaching skills, they should also be able to interface with the top management.

Have you seen a change in what professors are researching over the last two years?
Paul Danos: Research grinds slowly. Let's take a marketing professor who's an expert on internet marketing. Well that hasn't changed because of this crisis. Some people say "everything has changed," well it's not true. Most of the courses that we teach MBAs have not changed because of the crisis.

Paul Danos: I think one thing I've walked away from the crisis with is that

people in both national, local and federal administrations,

History is very recurrent and we are attending again a move of the pendulum.

Comment：
Debate again. The trend of returning to school is coming after the financial crisis. Some may think it is that necessary to go back to the campus or whether it is worth. What are the business schools going to teach their students during the crisis? Those simple questions are only things once remained in my head. Through this debate, these two professors do tell us the new direction of the course. I think the gold rule for everything is that learning from the history and dealing with the current situation. As what I thought, management education should not only focus on leadership but also should be sensitive about the trend of business. But what’s the relation between those two? The managers are charged of people recourses. The financial crisis should not affect them though.