The Faculty-in-Residence program - Wake Forest University's Babcock School of Management

Business Horizons, Jan-Feb, 1996 by Bernard L. Beatty, Robert E. Lamy, Peter R. Peacock, Brooke A. Saladin

The corporate partnership approach recognizes that the responsibility for creating a new research paradigm does not fall solely on business schools--corporate management must also be an active participant. Some concern has been expressed that such a partnership would also take on the appearance of consulting and thus would not be appropriate for academic research. However, such an arrangement, say Ghoshal, Arnzen, and Brownfield, "may represent a new model of collaborative research that may prove as useful for developing theory and faculty as it is for educating managers and managing change."

Leonard observes that severing relationships between business and business schools certainly does not foster increased relevance in management education and faculty research. Members of each group must roll up their sleeves and work toward a consensus of what is relevant and how it can best be taught and studied. But business leaders and business faculty have fallen short of this--not with the concept of partnering, but in our understanding of and commitment to its implementation.

Ghoshal, Arnzen, and Brownfield point out that several business schools have implemented such a partnership to create "an on-line learning process in which the participants not only learn new concepts, tools, and skills, but also learn how to learn." Emory's Business School and INSEAD, for example, feel that allowing business practitioners to become actively involved in the learning process as producers of knowledge is the obvious response in their efforts to close the relevancy gap. The basic design of these programs, says Leonard, is a partnership based on mutual respect that draws on the assets of each partner and "can provide a platform for building a different kind of relationship between business and business schools."

Emory's Customer Business Development Track emphasizes placing MBA students directly in a "real-time" business environment, in addition to an active field study program and CEO workshops. The objective of improving the program's relevance in terms of pedagogy and research is viewed as a necessary extension of the overall program's goal of providing students with the basic analytical tools necessary to conceptualize and execute the decision-making process. Enabling business executives to be active partners in the education process--for example, assisting in the development of teaching and research program design through a formal institutional structure--facilitates the faculty's desire and ability to improve relevance. Emory also recognizes the need to implement a system that rewards faculty -- for engaging in cross-functional research on real world problems.

INSEAD's Advanced International Management Seminar (AIMS), developed jointly with Digital Equipment Corporation in 1989, focuses on the issue of enterprise integration. The program brings managers to the campus and faculty to the company in an effort to foster interactive education and research agendas. Ghoshal, Arnzen, and Brownfield report that Emory and INSEAD have embraced the view that research and teaching are "simultaneous outputs from a shared learning experience and not independent, sequentially linked activities."