Connecting theory and practice in B-schools

For business schools, it is critical to link real-life issues and research-based education. Teaching business students should not be considered as a one-way process. We should focus on talking 'with them' instead of 'to them'. We need to deliver our research findings in more meaningful and interesting ways so that practicing managers can internalise them and apply them to their real-world situations.

Industry practitioners and academicians both need to address the following three questions:

How can research and learning in the classroom come closer?

How can the rate at which research findings reaches the classroom be improved?

How can a more innovative culture be created in business school teaching?

Therefore, there is a need for the creation of academic value in our key academic programmes. We need to address the current challenges that companies have to deal with. In doing so, we need to recognise that executives are typically facing multidisciplinary management issues that are, in general, no longer served by the narrow axiomatic research conducted in the more discipline oriented silos of traditional business schools. At the same time learning partners (the market) come to business schools to 'learn the latest' and be conceptually inspired. Consequently, we need to create the right balance between being market driven and conceptually driven. The latter comes via insightful research that brings new and challenging thought leadership to the table.

I classify two types of knowledge in business education classroom: propositional knowledge (the what) and prescriptive knowledge (the how). Propositional knowledge is focused on understanding and developing basic laws and models. Of course, we realise that in business there are few, if any, definite laws. Instead, the laws in business represent the fundamental truths by which business operates at a particular point in time. For example, the widely tested “five forces” model of Michael Porter – an influential scholar in the field of strategy over the last three decades – is an example of propositional knowledge. Many of the efforts in academia to add empirical insight fall into the category of propositional knowledge.

Prescriptive knowledge, by contrast, is gained through experiencing, understanding and developing techniques to manage specific situations. It can be found in many management books by practitioners. In business strategising, for example, prescriptive knowledge could be illustrated by the saying, “Strategy means choice”. It has not been tested, nor is it testable, but it represents good business practice. Of course, business will always be evolving, and executives will continue to develop new prescriptive knowledge and techniques.

The interplay between these two types of knowledge – propositional and prescriptive – should be the core of teaching methodology at today’s business school. They complement each other and the continuous interaction between them sets the stage for positive change. These complementary sources of knowledge – propositional and prescriptive must meet each other in an iterative process. In applying this thinking to management education, we can see thus that when the two types of knowledge are brought into the classroom – the prescriptive knowledge, primarily by the participants through good practice, and the propositional knowledge, primarily by the faculty through research – they reinforce each other, provided they are introduced at the appropriate time and in the right balance.

This approach requires dialogue, as it involves blending new academic knowledge with the tried and tested actions of practicing managers in a dynamically changing world. A give-and-take attitude and the ability to listen and reflect will be key. In reality, managers, as well as faculty, develop propositional knowledge all the time, and they bring this knowledge into the classroom.

And faculty, through their consulting, case writing, coaching and facilitating activities, develop prescriptive knowledge. Thus, in reality, both managers and professors develop both categories of knowledge, and they must both be mentally set to lead and to be led. This has important implications for teaching and research.

Research must be exposed to strong practicing managers so that the research insights themselves evolve. Indeed, research now takes the form of grounded theory building, i.e. the creation of grounded rationality in a more meaningful way.

(The author is a professor at a Business School)