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While building Lego skyscrapers is not usually on the MBA agenda, students at Fairfield University’s Dolan School of Business in Connecticut will break out the bricks this autumn as part of efforts to promote cross-disciplinary learning. But while projects such as this can prompt students to think in different ways, a tougher challenge is breaking down silos in the teaching of the core curriculum.
尽管建造乐高(Lego)摩天大楼通常不是MBA的议程，但美国康涅狄格州费尔菲尔德大学杜兰商学院(Fairfield University’s Dolan School of Business)的学生们将在今年秋季打破陈规，作为推动跨学科学习的努力的一部分。然而，尽管此类项目可以促使学生们以不同角度思考问题，但更为严峻的挑战在于打破核心课程教学中的“竖井”。
Since 1950, when management writer Peter Drucker published a Fortune article, “The Graduate Business School”, questioning whether management education institutions had successfully established their purpose, academics, deans and administrators have worried whether the MBA reflects the evolving realities of business. Now, some are questioning the relevance of the traditional MBA, with its core curriculum serving up a carefully packaged menu of disciplines such as accounting, finance, marketing, human resources and operations management.
1950年，管理作家彼得•德鲁克(Peter Drucker)在《财富》(Fortune)杂志上发表了《研究生商学院》(The Graduate Business School)一文，质疑管理教育机构是否成功实现了其目的。自那以来，学者、院长和管理机构担心MBA是否反映了日新月异的商业现实。现在，一些人质疑传统MBA是否与现实脱节，其核心课程提供了精心打包的学科组合，比如会计、金融、市场营销、人力资源和运营管理。
The trouble is that in today’s business world, roles no longer fit these neat functional packages. As geographic borders continue to erode, managers need to handle an increasingly diverse range of issues – from climate change to cyber terrorism.
麻烦在于，在当今商业世界中，这些纯粹的职能性教学已无法再满足职位需求。随着地理边界持续消失，经理们需要处理从气候变化到网络恐怖主义等日益多样化的问题。
“The world’s challenges are not siloed,” says Peter Boatwright, marketing professor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, which last year launched an Integrated Innovation Institute of which Prof Boatwright is co-director.
美国匹兹堡卡内基梅隆大学泰珀商学院(Tepper School at Carnegie Mellon University)市场营销学教授彼得•博特赖特(Peter Boatwright)表示：“世界的挑战不是竖井结构的。”泰珀商学院去年创办了一个“融合创新研究所”(Integrated Innovation Institute)，博特赖特担任联席主任。
In the days when most students left campus to take up traditional positions in large corporations, the core curriculum line-up made sense. However, students now seek jobs from a far wider range of postgraduate options, from start-ups to healthcare systems and social enterprises.
在大多数学生毕业后去大企业担任传统职务的时期，核心课程组合是有意义的。然而，现在的学生在毕业后有了更广泛的就业选择，从初创企业到医疗体系和社会企业。
“More and more students are interested in starting their own business and in social entrepreneurship, where some of the problems – like health and the environment – don’t fit into neat little boxes,” says Dan LeClair, executive vice-president and chief operating officer at AACSB International, the accreditation body.
认证机构国际商学院联合会(AACSB International)执行副总裁兼首席运营官丹•勒克莱尔(Dan LeClair)表示：“越来越多的学生有意自己创业和加入社会企业，其中有些问题，比如健康和环境，根本不是竖井教学所能解决的。”
“Students aren’t stepping into a functional role,” says Olav Sorenson, director of the core curriculum at Yale School of Management, whose integrated curriculum focuses on business decisions and complex systems. “They are stepping into a situation where they have to address problems that span multiple parts of the organisation.”
耶鲁大学管理学院(Yale School of Management)核心课程主管奥拉夫•索伦森(Olav Sorenson)表示：“学生们当前进入的不是职能性岗位。他们面临的形势是必须解决牵涉组织内部不同部门的问题。”耶鲁大学管理学院的融合课程聚焦于商业决策和复杂体系。
A changing economy also means executives must take on additional roles. “There’s economic pressures post-recession,” says Nigel Peters, managing partner at Alium Partners, a search company that provides senior interim executives to its clients. “Companies have to do more with less – and that means multiskilling.”
不断变化的经济形势也意味着高管们必须担任额外角色。Alium Partners管理合伙人奈杰尔•比德斯(Nigel Peters)表示：“衰退之后经济压力加大。企业不得不少花钱多办事，而这意味着必须掌握多种技能。”Alium Partners是一家为其客户提供临时高管的猎头公司。
The question for schools is how to respond. Some are adding new, non-traditional business experiences as electives or one-off programmes.
商学院的问题在于如何就此作出回应。一些商学院增加新的非传统性商业案例作为选修课程或者一次性项目。
The Lego project at Dolan School of Business is one example, as is the recent staging by England’s Warwick Business School of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, designed to expose students to complex decision-taking and creative thinking.
杜兰商学院的乐高项目就是一个例子，英格兰的华威商学院(Warwick Business School)最近上演的莎士比亚(Shakespeare)剧作《皆大欢喜》(As You Like It)也是如此，该舞台剧旨在让学生们接触到复杂的决策和创造性思维。
Another approach is to form partnerships with other schools on campus to offer joint degrees or to create new cross-disciplinary institutions. At Carnegie Mellon University, the Integrated Innovation Institute brings together the Tepper School of Business, its College of Engineering and its School of Design.
另一种方法是与校内其他学院建立合作关系，提供联合学位或者创建新的跨学科机构。在卡内基梅隆大学，“融合创新研究所”让泰珀商学院、工程学院(College of Engineering)和设计学院(School of Design)联合起来。
At Yale, the approach has been to design core courses that, rather than focusing on functions, are built around the different responsibilities executives might take up, whether customer facing or operational. Within each course, the first half covers basic business tools with the second covering how a particular function connects to areas such as accounting, information systems, strategy or organisational design.
在耶鲁大学，方法是围绕高管可能承担的不同责任（无论是面对客户还是运营方面）、而不是致力于职能设计核心课程。在每门课程中，前半部分涵盖基本商业工具，后半部分涵盖特定职能如何与会计、信息体系、战略或组织设计等学科联系起来。
The idea, says Prof Sorenson, is “to help the students see how all those pieces connect”.
索伦森表示，这种想法是“帮助学生们理解如何将所有这些学科联系在一起”。
In introducing an integrated curriculum, Yale’s relatively small size made it easier for faculty to collaborate, he says. The school also reduced class sizes for a period of time after launching the programme.
他说，耶鲁推出了规模相对较小的融合课程，这更便于该大学教职工彼此协作。耶鲁还在推出该项目之后的一段时间内缩小了班级规模。
For many schools, however, reshaping the core curriculum will be tough in the face of the tenure system, the time pressures of teaching and an academic environment in which expertise is highly specialised.
然而，对许多学院来说，面对终身聘任制、教学的时间压力和高度专业化的学术环境，重塑核心课程将会很难。
“Much of the research done by business faculty is defined by a function or silo,” says Mr LeClair. “That makes it more challenging for schools to repackage the curriculum.”
勒克莱尔表示：“商学院教职员工做的许多研究都有职能性或竖井的特征。这为商学院重新打包课程带来了更大的挑战。”
Even at Yale, the transformation was significant. “You’re talking about taking the entire core curriculum of a school – which in an MBA programme is typically 50 per cent of the teaching – and completely reorganising it,” says Prof Sorenson. “That’s a massive shift.”
即便在耶鲁大学，转变也是巨大的。索伦森表示：“你们谈论的是拿走商学院的整个核心课程（在一个MBA项目中，这通常占到教学的50%）开刀，对其进行彻底重组。这是一个巨大的转变。”
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So why should schools make the investment? Part of the answer lies in increased competition because of the growing availability of commoditised business knowledge and the rise of massive open online courses (Moocs).
那么商学院为何要进行这种投资？部分答案在于，随着商业知识日益商品化和大型网络公开课(Massive Open Online Courses,简称Moocs)的兴起，商学院之间的竞争也在加剧。
Mr LeClair points to the “unbundling” taking place in higher education, largely driven by Moocs. “Students can take more control of putting together their own curriculum by picking courses at multiple institutions,” he says.
勒克莱尔指出，高等教育出现了“分类计价”，这在很大程度上归功于大型网络公开课的兴起。他说：“学生们可以在多个院校选课，从而更有能力整合自己的课程。”
And if business education is becoming a commodity, schools will have to work increasingly hard to justify their high price tags and the opportunity cost of a full-time MBA.
如果商业教育成为一种商品，商学院将不得不日益加大努力，证明攻读全职MBA的高价和机会成本是物有所值的。
“To the extent that the MBA is a standardised product, as with any industry, you start to worry about competition from low-cost providers,” says Prof Sorenson. “So increasingly we’re going to see schools trying to differentiate themselves.”
索伦森表示：“既然MBA是一种标准化产品，那么和任何行业一样，你开始担心来自低成本提供者的竞争。因此我们将会逐渐看到商学院努力显得与众不同。”
Integrating the curriculum is one way of doing this, particularly given the growing appetite for courses that feature innovation.
融合课程是实现这种目的的一种方法，尤其是考虑到人们对以创新为特征的课程的兴趣日益增长。
“Innovation occurs at the intersection of different perspectives,” says Mr LeClair. “When you break down silos both within the business school and with other schools on campus, you create opportunities for new ideas – that’s a particularly important benefit in the long term.”
勒克莱尔表示：“创新产生于不同观点的互动中。当你打破商学院内部以及商学院和其他院系的竖井的时候，你为新思想创造了机会，这尤其有利于长远发展。”
