Role of Research in Effective Teaching in Business Schools

1. Role of Research in EffectiveTeaching in Business Schools Workshop at IIM Bangalore on Feb 1, 2013 on “Building Quality in B Schools: Opportunities & Challenges” Ganesh N. Prabhu Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

2. What is happening in business schools? • Business school should teach students how to actually run a business – organize people, use technology, knowledge, factories, offices, etc. • Manager/owner who runs business will benefit from a more comprehensive business education. • But many business schools compartmentalize subjects and give specializations in the MBA. • Students (and even faculty ) with no real work experience memorize many subjects, but cannot connect across them to address real businesses.

3. What goes as business school research? • Business schools should research real business. • But many business schools compartmentalize research into specializations like in engineering. • These specialists publish in specialist journals that are unconnected to real business issues. • The over emphasis on few top journals means that many give up and do not make the effort. • Case writing is often on well known companies rather than what is useful for teaching purposes. • Writing for practitioners is often impractical!

4. What could be business school research? • Business schools should research real business. • Get students to work on real life issues in local organizations to identify ways to address them. • Connect them to faculty who can deal with these issues creatively and leverage existing knowledge. • Develop a detailed comprehensive write-up in simple language on what was actually done there. • Publish these write ups on our own website to start with - then move next version to journals. • Get our alumni to read these website write ups.

5. Impact of such business school research? • Business schools will get much desired visibility. • Alumni are more likely to sponsor such research. • Students will get to exercise minds on real issues. • Students and faculty will build their reputations. • Faculty will get to deal with issues across areas. • Faculty will learn to write in jargon free language. • Faculty will see their work is visible to managers. • Practitioner journals like Interfaces are more likely to publish what has worked in practice.

6. Impact of such research on teaching • Students will become more involved with faculty. • Faculty will build better teaching reputations • More alumni will come in to do guest sessions. • New faculty will get a head start in teaching. • Firms studied may give faculty board positions. • Faculty will collaborate in teaching across areas. • Faculty will communicate confidently/effectively. • Faculty may chose new research issues for PhD. • Eventually students are better prepared for jobs.

7. Tejas and Strategic Management Forum • Tejas is an IIMB website showcasing the best student projects guided and cleared by faculty. • Many projects are forward looking/actionable. • Leads to practitioner interactions and queries. http://tejas-iimb.orghttp://www.smfi.org • SMF started in 2004 offering 6 day faculty course • Foundation + 5 electives give faculty a certificate. • 663 faculty did foundation – about half at IIMB. • Many started with cases/project based research.