Business schools and lifelong learning: Inquiry, delivery or developing the inquiring mind

Abstract

‘[V]irtually all public and private enterprises – including most successful corporations - are becoming dominantly repositories and coordinators of intellect’ (Quinn, 1992: 241). University based management schools play a role in harnessing this intellect by supporting the development of leaders with the capacity to think critically, to make choice and to facilitate implementation. As centers working with a higher proportion of mature executives, management schools are forced to address the complex resource issues surrounding knowledge accumulation and knowledge dissemination. Enhancing the capacity of our future leaders to contribute to society requires gifted academics – academics that expand the desire for inquiry in their students and thereby develop their capacities for self-driven lifelong learning. Are such academics teachers, researchers or hybrids?
‘[We, researchers, should] not fall into the trap of answering questions of increasing irrelevance with increasing precision’ (John Gardner – cited in Davenport Prusak, 2003: 87).

Full text

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Business schools and lifelong learning: Inquiry, delivery or developing the
inquiring mind
M.J. Page*, D. Bevelander, D. Bond and E. Boniuk
RSM Erasmus University, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, J Building,
3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
mpage@rsm nl
Received June 2006
‘[V]irtually all public and private enterprises – including most successful corporations - are becoming dominantly
repositories and coordinators of intellect’ (Quinn, 1992: 241). University based management schools play a role in
harnessing this intellect by supporting the development of leaders with the capacity to think critically, to make choice and
to facilitate implementation. As centers working with a higher proportion of mature executives, management schools are
forced to address the complex resource issues surrounding knowledge accumulation and knowledge dissemination.
Enhancing the capacity of our future leaders to contribute to society requires gifted academics – academics that expand
the desire for inquiry in their students and thereby develop their capacities for self-driven lifelong learning. Are such
academics teachers, researchers or hybrids?
‘[We, researchers, should] not fall into the trap of answering questions of increasing irrelevance with increasing
precision’ (John Gardner – cited in Davenport & Prusak, 2003: 87).
*To whom all correspondence should be addressed.
Introduction
Ever since the first management education programmes
emerged, the hunting season has been open on management
education curricula in general and MBA programmes in
particular. Mast (2006) gives a fairly comprehensive
overview of such critiques and focuses on the issues that
have dominated the recently escalating critique from
‘insiders’, such as business school deans, programme
directors and faculty. Over recent years, this group of
writers has been exploring similar issues in the context of
AACSB, EFMD and AMBA debates, as well as, in our own
MBA curricula and policy reviews. The overarching
questions business schools face are: What should our
students be learning and how is this best achieved? How can
business schools, particularly those offering MBA
programmes to students with work experience, play a truly
value adding role in facilitating management and leadership
development to the benefit of society?
In reflecting on these questions, we feel the need to focus as
much on educational process and learning environment as
on specific output. In doing so, we find ourselves
concentrating on two crucial elements in particular – the
teaching-learning process and the nature of MBA faculty.
We consider issues in the ongoing debate about teaching
versus research, and business relevance versus academic
rigor. We argue that by seeing these as over-simplistic
dichotomies, management academics (and their critics) risk
losing the best of what is essential to promoting and
integrating lifelong learning and contemporary relevance.
From a business school perspective, turning the focus on
learning is becoming more important. At times, the nature of
employment practice seems to be at odds with developing
learning organizations. Employers seem to ask for total
commitment from their employees as a key ingredient of
building a learning organization, while they simultaneously
progress along the road of contract or limited life
employment (Thite, 2001; Schein, 1996). They seem to
expect transformational characteristics from employees
while offering transactional employment conditions. Under
these circumstances, education institutions that focus more
on developing self-motivated lifelong learners play a much
greater role in contributing to the business world and to
society in general. They produce individuals who develop
themselves in an inter-organizational rather than an intra-
organizational way. Such individuals do not rely exclusively
on the firm to develop them and, paradoxically, they thus
become more valuable as lifetime employees.
If this contention is correct, then business schools that wish
to remain relevant need to return closer to elements of the
traditions of universities - not in a governance or even
delivery sense, but in a mission sense. They need to revisit
their educational paradigm and ask what type of graduates
and executives they wish to – and need to – produce. Should
business schools (a) produce graduates that know everything
about current business practice and who return for regular
‘refuelling’ as practice evolves, or (b) should they produce
graduates who think critically, who have decision making
ability and who have the capacity for decision
implementation? We would definitely argue for the latter.

2 S.Afr.J.Bus.Manage.2006,37(4)
It is our understanding that within the education domain a
clear distinction has been drawn between teaching as an
externally oriented approach to development and learning as
an internally motivated approach to development (Kinman
& Kinman, 2001). It seems to us that focusing on the
internally motivated element meshes with ‘lifelong learning’
and makes it a far richer concept - one that sits much more
centrally within the university domain (De Angelo, De
Angelo & Zimmerman, 2005; Coolahan, 1998; Field,
2000)1. Such concept of lifelong learning is inextricably
linked to self-motivation. Lifelong learners are individuals
with a passion for inquiry. They are individuals who are pro-
active in searching for new and creative solutions or
understanding. This interpretation focuses the concept on
innovative learning rather than maintenance learning. It
involves anticipation and participation. It presumes
individuals can be motivated to anticipate change and make
plans to shield themselves against the trauma of shock. It
presumes individuals will voluntarily engage in co-operation
and dialogue to test their assumptions against the opinion of
others.2
Much criticism of business schools today and of the MBA
market in particular stems from the fact that the industry has
been guilty of selling the family silver. The huge growth of
MBA offering institutions, including many somewhat
suspect ones, may have turned the three letters into a
commodity. This commoditization may even have been
exacerbated by the revenue imperatives placed on some
more serious business schools. This has induced them to
offer the three letters in executive programs where form may
be guilty of outweighing substance3. However, in spite of
this negative perception, good business programs continue
to focus on the ‘right stuff’. They produce graduates with all
the characteristics expected by a university – individuals
with inquiring minds who are aware of self and
environment.
1Much of the popular literature on lifelong learning, particularly as it
pertains to the corporate world, seems to turn very quickly to the need
for continuous training (web searches on the topic indicate that the
term is generally used to refer to a range of adult education and
training courses, rather than an integrated philosophy of self-motivated
learning through life). In this sense, the topic appears to have been
defined within the realm of maintenance learning; Learning concerned
with ‘the acquisition of fixed outlooks, methods and rules for dealing
with known and recurring situations’ (Chan, 1994: 18). The argument
suggests that individuals need to continually return to places of
learning, or alternatively have on site interventions, that incrementally
elevate skills levels. This training paradigm may have significantly
curtailed a fuller debate about lifelong learning in the ‘real world’.
2Perhaps some of the clearest exemplars of the concept of lifelong
learning that we have witnessed are the traditional research academics
that populate our leading universities. These are individuals who,
through their continued questioning and research activities, learn and
develop throughout their formal careers and even past retirement when
all external motivators have been removed.
3A particularly bad example of this found its way recently to the desk
of RSM Erasmus University Dean - Euroforum offers a ‘Master of
Human Resources (Crash course MBA in 8 hours)’. This advertising
flyer cited academics from a range of top universities in the
Netherlands.
A key question for policy makers, educators (and
employers) is: How do business schools do this? We would
venture to suggest that there are three core elements that
contribute to the answer – research, teaching and the
capacity for decision implementation.
Research
We welcome the critical perspectives that have been brought
to bear on business and management education (Mintzberg
& Gosling, 2002; Pfeffer & Fong, 2002). Questions about
the relevance of academic research per se and the relative
benefits and disadvantages of research versus teaching
universities are certainly not new (for an extensive
overview, see Mast, 2006), and we suspect that they will
continue to be asked for years to come. Nevertheless,
excessive criticism of academic research as being too ivory
tower can make the mistake of focusing too much on the
output and insufficiently on the process and how it helps to
develop the inquiring mind.4 This does not mean that we are
not critical of some ‘unconnected’ research. However, the
problem has been considerably overstated – particularly by
institutions that offer management development sold as
‘relevant, applied and immediately useful’. While it may be
interesting to debate whether academic careers are becoming
‘more and more about less and less’, this detracts us from
more important questions pertinent to business education
and management development.
It is our contention that academic research provides
significant output in terms of research findings, whilst the
researchers serve as role models for questioning and
systematic inquiry. Whatever the discipline, whether
narrowly defined or broadly based, the rigorous process of
questioning, investigating, reflecting and revising that all
researchers put themselves through produces output and
showcases processes that are vital for the evolution of
business and management practice – local, national or global
in orientation. Without this activity occurring within the
business school, or within a network of associations from
which the school can draw, it dooms itself to playing an
increasingly marginal role. The school may continue as a
center of maintenance learning, but it will not meet the need
for discovering the new knowledge required by practicing
managers in contemporary business. (De Angelo et al.,
2005; Mast, 2006).
Teaching, learning and critical reasoning
This brings us to our second point. Good programs
recognize that the role models of lifelong learners described
above, are not necessarily the natural role models for
executive students fully engaged in the cut, thrust and
immediacy of daily business. Gifted teachers are needed to
4A strong argument in support of our perspective is the corporate
university. As far back as 1956, General Electric’s Crotonville
Management Development Center - the precursor to corporate
universities - used Harvard professors to both design and staff its
programs (Crotty & Soule, 1997). Much to the chagrin of many formal
universities, corporate universities continue with this practice today –
they use a significant number of ‘moonlighting’ academics to teach
their employees. This would certainly not take place if these
individuals were too ‘ivory tower’.

S.Afr.J.Bus.Manage.2006,37(4) 3
seed and mediate the process. Stimulating someone else to
inquiry is aligned with, but not synonymous with, having a
personal desire for inquiry. In our opinion, gifted teaching is
in large measure about inductively encouraging individuals
to develop an understanding of theories and models, as well
as, to see them as useful instruments for making sense of the
environment in which they find themselves. Such an
inductive approach may be considered useful in stimulating
an intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation for learning. We
use the term intrinsic motivation because, like attitude, it has
a cognitive and affective component (Kinman & Kinman,
2001). On the cognitive side we place self-determination
and the drive for mastery, while on the affective side, we
find interest, curiosity, excitement and the enjoyment gained
from absorption and ‘flow’5. Both of these elements are vital
to developing the passion for lifelong learning that we have
already described.
While one cannot transmit an enthusiasm for inquiry
without oneself being enthusiastic about it, teaching
executives to reason critically and to be passionate about the
process is difficult. Most executives, like most other
students, have been trained to look for immediate relevance.
Sustainability and social responsibility, for example, are not
new topics, they are just vogue! Because today’s executives
can see an immediate relevance – a natural ‘urgency’ in
current events – they are becoming more open to such
topics. But surely, nothing can be more important for
sustainable business than the capacity for critical thought?
Yet, critical thinking as manifested in philosophy,
psychology, linguistics and history is certainly not vogue.
Gifted teachers in the management disciplines have the
capacity to come across as being authentic and as
individuals that understand the world of the learner. This
provides them with the capacity to use their discipline to
both transmit knowledge about the field – that is often
considered a skill requirement by the learner – and to
stimulate an enthusiasm for the process that developed our
current understanding of the discipline. It is this enthusiasm
for the process that is the bedrock of lifelong learning and
that can sow the seed of lifelong critical reasoning. It is also
this enthusiasm that has the potential to enable graduates to
overcome the inherent bias in our academic institutions that
focus faculty on discipline-based careers at the expense of
more integrative views of how firms operate and decisions
are made.
Ghoshal (2005) argued that business schools have lost the
taste for pluralism over the past 30 years. He drew on
Boyer’s notion of four different categories of scholarship:
discovery (research), integration (synthesis), practice
(application) and teaching (pedagogy) and suggested that the
first (research scholarship) has come to dominate. ‘Those
with primary interests in synthesis, application, or pedagogy
have been eliminated from our milieu or, at best,
accommodated at the periphery and insulated from the
academic high table that is now reserved only for scientists.’
(Ghoshal, 2005: 82). If this has diminished the scope for
5The term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) to signify a
mental state of operation that entails full immersion in an activity
which leads to feelings of energized focus. It has come to denote
optimal experience that is linked to high levels of motivation, self-
confidence, competence and enjoyment.
pluralism in scholarship, it has probably also had potentially
limiting consequences for content.
We believe that criticism of business school programs for
the continued, discipline-specific, silo approach is valid, but
not necessarily because of the subject matter that is taught.
The real problem seems to be that insufficient attention is
paid to developing in the learner the critical approach that
makes questioning across boundaries not only possible, but
also unavoidable. The process of developing a more
systemic approach to decision making in executives does
not require that each and every management course be
offered in an integrating cross-functional way. It requires
skilled educators who are open to the introduction of other
discipline based perspectives into the debate, and who
actively encourage this as part of the development of critical
excitement that embeds broader relevance into the core
material of any course. Through their research and teaching
skills, universities need to provide strong functional insight
and broad perspectives – it is not a case of ‘either/or’, but
‘and’. If the goals of companies and organizations that
recruit our graduates are to improve sustainable
competitiveness by designing new strategies and ways of
thinking, then these businesses and organizations need
people with critical thinking capacity and drive that extends
well beyond the boundaries of their existing knowledge.
Extending Ghoshal’s categories to the teaching and learning
domain, we would argue that a good MBA programme
needs to focus on at least two of these areas, whilst
developing a respect for a third. That is, MBA graduates
need the ability to draw confidently on the findings of
research, to integrate across disciplinary boundaries and to
apply these critical thinking processes in the real, messy
complexity of living management problems.
The onus on business schools, therefore, is to source the
right kinds of faculty within the right kind of curriculum.
This requires a ‘hybrid’ approach both to faculty
recruitment, what some have called a ‘two-track’ approach
(see Mast, 2006), and curriculum development. Business
schools need to draw on experienced business executives,
rigorous researchers and those who can work effectively in
teams comprising both. Similarly, MBA curricula need to
retain the capacity to teach and explore some subjects in
critical depth, as well as, foster a more integrative meta-
perspective to deal with the dynamic complexity of living
management issues.
Decision implementation
Finally, leading business schools address head-on the
challenge of contributing to their graduates’ capacity for
decision implementation. At first glance, this may seem to
be outside of the university domain and something graduates
should ‘do afterwards’. However, once we recognize that
decision implementation is increasingly a collaborative
endeavor, the role of the education institution becomes
clear. Employees, managers and leaders execute with others.
In an increasingly internationalizing world, this means they
need to navigate around the difficulties of diversity in all its
forms. Educators who have the capacity to build a respect
for diversity of opinion and approach, and who go even

4 S.Afr.J.Bus.Manage.2006,37(4)
farther than this by developing an active desire to seek
diversity as a means of enhancing understanding of self and
others, play a substantial role in developing decision
implementation abilities.
The success of education generally, and business education
in particular, will be measured not only by the amount of
knowledge gained and critical thinking developed, but also
by the transformation that takes place to ensure that the
graduates become ‘comfortable with being uncomfortable’.
Are they able to handle ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’? Can
they face the risks of committing to decisions? Do they have
the flexible technical and interpersonal know-how to
implement these decisions themselves or through others?
Transforming businesses and societies requires individuals
of courage who are prepared to test their boundaries and
find creative and legitimate ways of moving those outwards
- individuals who have been exposed to the best that our
academic environment has to offer. Nurturing these
approaches requires particular kinds of educators with
qualities that are not necessarily easy to find.
Conclusion
To conclude, we find ourselves taking the stance of a lawyer
rather than a judge or member of a jury who is required to
reach a definitive conclusion. As a lawyer, we reserve the
right to use both hands, and possibly a third, in answering
our own questions.
• On the one hand, we propose that placing lifelong
learning at the center of MBA programme debates
requires a significant investment in inquiry. In other
words, an investment that both supports and
encourages academics in their efforts to uncover new
knowledge and to develop better ways of ordering and
making sense of what may be called existing
understanding. That research is placed so high on the
agenda of top-level academic institutions is to be
commended and encouraged.
• On the other hand, we believe that stimulating the
enthusiasm for inquiry in others is also critical, if we
wish to create a sustainable culture of ‘self-driven’
lifelong learning. Although not mutually exclusive by
any means, gifted teachers are those who have the
ability to inspire other individuals to seek information,
to question their own assumptions, and to develop as
self-motivated continuous learners. Achieving this
objective clearly requires that the teacher has an
inquiring mind, but he or she may not have as
developed a personal research capacity as the academic
we have described above.
• This of course, seems to bring up a third hand –
making the case for the hybrid! Much has been said
about the need for balance and for academics that are
both active researchers and committed teachers. Some
even suggest that there is a high correlation between
teaching and research performance, although studies do
not necessarily support this (Felder, 1994; Hattie &
Marsh, 2004). However, most of us have to
compromise when faced with the scarce resource of
time. Hybrid academics are no different. They make
the choice to sacrifice some of their capacity for
research in order to devote time and energy to
improved teaching or vice versa. However, by
choosing to operate in both domains, they may have a
natural advantage in transmitting their own desire for
inquiry to others and thereby planting the seeds for
self-inquiry in the learner.
Having presented three hands, like a gifted lawyer, we find
ourselves wishing to make the case for all three. We are
convinced that lifelong learning requires that we invest in
and support researchers, teachers and hybrids. Institutions of
higher learning are no different from corporations in this
respect. They require a portfolio of skills and need to
recognize that multiple actors are required when it comes to
the processes of inquiry and stimulating inquiry in others.
While we certainly do not hold with the view that teaching
and research are located at the opposite ends of the same
continuum, it is equally wrong to assume that one needs to
be a cutting edge international researcher to stimulate the
minds of others. An inquiring mind is necessary for any
teacher, but whether this mind needs, of necessity, to have a
capacity for research at the level of a leading international
scholar is another question.
Making the case for a career path for teaching oriented
academics does not presume that the case for the research
orientation is diminished. Business schools seek to produce
graduates who are wealth creators – individuals who
contribute to making the total worth more than the sum of
the parts. This is not a zero-sum game and neither, we would
argue, is the decision about multiple academic career paths.
However, we do acknowledge that, like wealth creation,
developing a system that accommodates and motivates the
portfolio of academics is by no means a simple task - but it
is a task worth facing.
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