Word: reporter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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PRESIDENT BOK has been a prolific writer of late. In between letters about divestiture and the ethics of investment, he has prepared a massive, contemplative report on business education and changes he advocates for the Business School. Not that the two subjects he has recently addressed are unrelated--when Bok speaks of "the growing diversification of firms and their increasing penetrations into foreign markets" in the same report that he observes, "corporate executives have encountered mounting pressures and demands from a variety of quarters," he reminds us of his own recent problems as chief executive of the Harvard Corporation...
...report reveals a streak of iconoclasm--at least for the icons of the Business School--which might surprise those who know him only as the unbending opponent of divestiture. Bok first diagnoses the need for business managers more well-versed in the ways of government regulation, employee relations and the ethics of international operations. Few would argue against his advice, and Business School faculty are quick to point out parts of the present curriculum that already cover these fields...
...until the end of his report, where Bok names specific changes, that he steps on some toes. When he suggests that the school place less emphasis on the "case method" of teaching, he even smashes an idol or two. Under this method, teachers present details of actual business situations to their students, and force them to make decisions--using a Socratic questioning technique similar to that practised at the Law School...
BUSINESS SCHOOL administrators, faculty, and students are unanimous in their support of the case method--it is probably the chief reason Harvard MBAs are so eminently eminently employable and well-paid. Business faculty see cases as the heart of their work. A recent faculty report speaks of "the oral tradition that surrounds the program an involves the passing of program lore from one faculty member to another and from one student to another." "Case materials" are used in 80 per cent of the required courses in the MBA program. "We try to teach students not subjects and techniques but attitudes...
...time of professors and prevents them from conducting research into new fields in business education--like government regulation and ethics. Business faculty say the case method forces research into the kinds of practical problems their school wants to teach. "The case method is a method of research--Bok's report is somewhat like telling a chemist not to do any work in a laboratory, just to think up ideas," Wickham Skinner, Robinson Professor of Business Administration, says. "The business world is our laboratory...