THE OMBUDSMAN - BUSINESS SCHOOL PRESTIGE RESEARCH VERSUS TEACHING

Following the article by Scott Armstrong and Tad Sperry on business school prestige are comments by David Webster, Arnold Barnett, Frederic Murphy, Edwin Locke and Shelley Kirkpatrick, and Richard Franke. Scott and Tad then reply to the comments. The subject of this group of papers is the determinants of business school prestige and whether business schools should emphasize teaching over research. Each author has his or her own perspective. Important to the analyses presented here are the data developed by Shelley Kirkpatrick and Edwin Locke to formally measure research. In compiling these papers, we first obtained peer reviews of the Armstrong and Sperry paper. Then we asked the other participants to contribute comments. We then provided all the participants with peer reviews of their own and each other's commentaries. In addition, we sent the package for review to William Ross at The Wharton School. Although the subject of this collection does not directly relate to the practice of management science, it affects our ability to practice management science in the future. The current graduates of MBA programs are future customers for our models and analyses. Business schools have been reacting to beauty contests, such as Business Week's annual survey measuring student satisfaction. As a response, some business schools have reduced the amount of quantitative material, which students find difficult. This increases the ignorance of future managers and makes our jobs of communicating quantitative management models more difficult. Through their surveys, the press has affected educational curricula without examining the educational issues in business schools. This collection of papers is a step towards articulating what the agenda should be.