We need a revolution in business academia or it will become irrelevant. Apprenticeships are already far greater value than academic courses in many places.
I must confess: this is an area of great irritation for me. Every time I get something from an academic or consulting institution starting with “research shows’, I reach for the stress management manual.
I cannot believe that in these times anybody with a Professorship, and his team, who has interviewed 2,000 CEOs and asked them whether culture was important, can declare that his research shows that culture was very important. That CEOs say that it is even more important than strategy, you know. And that the very, very, very, most important thing is that the company values are aligned with the culture, because if not, this is bad. And if the values are good, and the culture is good, good things such as innovation will come out. No kidding.
I am going to scream.
This is not a third grade university, in a third class underdeveloped world. It is one of the top US business academic institutions.
These people should be sent to rehabilitation camps with 24/7 Critical Thinking exercises. What kind of world are they in? What kind of desperate and intellectually poor corporations buy the services of these high rank institutions which do ‘research’ with 2,000 executives and find out that the world is indeed round? How can they get away with it? How can they go on social media to say that they (the professor, the team) have learned how important culture was from their research? And BTW there is of course a course to follow to tell you over a week or so, a few thousand dollars later, that culture is important.
In Medicine, nobody is allowed to practice until people in coats have gone through maybe six year training and a hospital rotation in which they have touched patients, worked with nurses, taken blood out of veins, dissect cadavers (sorry), stuck their eyes on microscopes and seen bugs move, helped deliver a baby and a few other minor activities (apologies for my personal recollection of my previous life). In business academia, nobody with zero hands on experience in running a business (or something within a business) should be allowed to teach.
Do these people in high business academic places know that Massive Confirmation Bias does not double as research? That intellectual tourism is not academic rigour? That they are embarrassing?
Anyway, who moved my Valium?
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