Harvard Business School Bulletin

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Faculty Symposium Honors McArthur

A faculty symposium, "Breaking New Ground: Initiatives in Management Education, 1980­1995," was held October 9-11 at HBS to honor former Dean John H. McArthur for the many initiatives in research and course development he instituted during his tenure. Eight 80-minute sessions featuring the presentation and discussion of papers written to mark the event were conducted as a tribute to McArthur's academic leadership. During these sessions, HBS faculty participants assessed the progress of their own research and course development efforts, learned more about one another's work, and engaged in sometimes vigorous debate about pivotal issues.

The "tip of the iceberg" is how Professor Thomas K. McCraw, one of the principal organizers of the symposium, described the event's program. "A tremendous amount of important research and course development took place during the McArthur years," said McCraw, who chaired the group that Dean Kim B. Clark had asked to plan the event. "Only a small fraction of that work could be captured in this symposium," he added. "We had 8 sessions, but we could easily have had 25."

Despite the need to exclude so much material, McCraw believes that the papers presented at the symposium paint a rich portrait of the many "remarkable contributions" to management education made by Dean McArthur. "All of these essays," McCraw noted, "tell what happened in a given field, what the central ideas were, and where the field might go from here. And, of course, they talk about John McArthur's role, which was powerful and often decisive in these initiatives."

In McCraw's view, the topics chosen for discussion in "Breaking New Ground" illustrate two especially noteworthy outcomes of the McArthur initiatives in management education: the synergy between research and teaching and the collaborative and cross-disciplinary nature of the work. "You can look at some of these efforts," McCraw pointed out, "and ask, `Is this research or is it course development?' And the answer is, it's both. In an ideal world, research and teaching reinforce each other, although it's sometimes hard to accomplish this in practice. Yet, in the examples we discussed in our symposium, it worked brilliantly."
The principal reason for that high degree of success, McCraw concluded, was the cross-disciplinary nature of the work undertaken. "It involved HBS collaborators from many fields talking constantly with
each other and working to produce new research, new cases and courses, and
new ways of thinking about business."

by Daniel Penrice

Business History
Professor Thomas K. McCraw and Assistant Professor Nancy F. Koehn

Competition and Strategy
Professors Adam M. Brandenburger and Michael E. Porter

Technology and Operations Management
Professor Robert H. Hayes and Associate Professor Marco Iansiti

Global Financial Systems
Professor Robert C. Merton and Associate Professor Peter Tufano

Organizations and Markets
Professors George P. Baker III, Carliss Y. Baldwin, and Michael C. Jensen and Associate Professor Karen Hopper Wruck

Ethics, Economics, and Organizations
Professors Thomas R. Piper and Lynn Sharp Paine

Service Management
Professor James L. Heskett and Associate Professor Gary W. Loveman

Entrepreneurship
Professors Teresa M. Amabile and Howard H. Stevenson

John McArthur's tenure as Dean of HBS saw dramatic advances in research and course development at the School as well as a major expansion and revamping of the MBA curriculum.

In the course of two wide-ranging curriculum reviews, one in 1982­83 and a second lasting from 1991 to 1994, the School broadened the focus of many traditional courses, developed scores of new ones, and revised the structure and fundamental emphases of the entire MBA Program. New and revised courses incorporated innovative ideas developed by HBS faculty in key areas such as information technology, strategy, leadership, ethics, and the international economy. The new MBA Program, with its year-round calendar, features a greatly increased emphasis on skill-building and field-based learning delivered within a more integrated, cross-functional context.

Part of what made the McArthur initiatives in management education so successful is that the School dramatically increased its investment in research and course development: from $10 million in 1980 to more than $50 million in 1995. HBS faculty members cite the former Dean's long-term vision, his skill at matching people with resources, and his ability to bring faculty together from various disciplines as key factors in the remarkable achievements of the McArthur years.

With Dean Clark and former Dean McArthur present, along with some fifty current and former faculty members, two back-to-back sessions at the McArthur symposium under-scored differing views within the HBS community on some fundamental business issues.

A paper written by four members of HBS's Organizations and Markets unit (see page 34 for a profile of the O&M unit) quickly sparked discussion in two different areas. Noting that the unit's Coordination, Control, and the Management of Organizations (CCMO) course often advocates theoretical positions rather than presenting them impartially among a range of views, faculty members debated the ramifications of this approach to course content and HBS pedagogy. Then, O&M Professor Michael C. Jensen's summary of the unit's views on the corporate objective function and performance measurement - e.g., that maximizing total firm value should be the firm's only motivation if social welfare is to be maximized - provoked a round of spirited discussion centered on the social role and responsibilities of corporations.

The next session, on "Ethics, Economics, and Organizations," focused on a paper by two members of the School's Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Responsibility initiative. Professors Thomas R. Piper and Lynn Sharp Paine emphasized the importance of both ethics and economics for outstanding organizations. They argued that the only zone of sustainable long-term business activity lies in the realm where ethics and economics overlap and highlighted the key implications this has for management and management education.

When the afternoon was over, differences of opinion on the topics notwithstanding, participants agreed that they had learned a great deal about one another's thinking, research, and teaching and had engaged in a dialogue not likely to end soon.

Toward the close of the discussion, former Dean McArthur spoke of his pride in the faculty and its commitment over the years, despite its growing diversity and complexity, to the ideals of positive change and the School as a community. "We sometimes disagree about the pace and progress of change," he said, "but we've always understood the need to work together to achieve the highest possible standards."

Dean Clark concurred and concluded the day's proceedings by noting: "One of the things we've seen here today - something I hope we will continue to cultivate and nurture - is the willingness of people to engage in meaningful interactions across various boundaries. We've made a wonderful beginning to a set of interchanges that promises to be truly important for the School."

On Eve of Transition, Alumni Conference Set for Hong Kong

The final stages of one of the most significant events in Asia this century Hong Kong's transformation from British colony to Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China will be witnessed firsthand by attendees of the 1997 HBS Global Alumni Conference. Titled "Greater China: Myths, Realities, Oppor-tunities," the conference will be held in Hong Kong April 5 through 8 on the eve of the official transfer of power in June.

"We timed the conference to coincide with the transition," says David B. Yoffie, Max and Doris Starr Professor of Inter-national Business Administration and the conference's HBS faculty liaison. "It's an opportune time to consider how the change will affect business prospects in the region. By April we should have a clearer sense of what the future will hold."

With regard to the conference's first theme, Yoffie says that "the `myth' involves the widespread belief that Greater China which encompasses the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong is a huge, open market of 1.2 billion consumers who will buy anything that any business has ever wanted to sell. That is not the case."

Rather, says Yoffie, the reality is that "China poses significant challenges to multinationals, in part because the role of government in the economy is still more pervasive there than in other parts of the world." But, he adds, as the world's fastest-growing economy, China is a land of unquestionable opportunity.

This "opportunity" theme will be addressed throughout the conference, as a distinguished lineup of speakers including high-level Asian government officials, business leaders, economists, and HBS professors help attendees with practical strategies for capitalizing on the real opportunities available.

One session on consumer markets will ask, for example, "Who is the Asian consumer?" Another session, on investments, will explore whether Asia indeed offers bullish possibilities. Sessions on specific industries will probe prospects in telecommunications, media, entertainment, services, technology, and infrastructure. The leaders of these discussions will include a number of HBS professors.

The Hong Kong conference will also consider China in the larger context of the Asian business environment. HBS professor Michael E. Porter will offer his perspective on the competitive challenges in Asia, to be followed by a discussion of his remarks featuring Asian business leaders.
Westerners entering the Asian marketplace also need to know something about business relationships based on what the Chinese call guanxi, or "connection." The role of guanxi will be discussed in a session with panelists from major multinationals and Asian corporations who will identify common pitfalls for foreigners trying to conduct business in Greater China.

"Connection" known in the West as networking is an important part of HBS alumni conferences. There will be ample opportunity to interact with professors and peers and to meet Dean Kim B. Clark, whose opening remarks will elaborate on his vision for HBS in the 21st century.

Attendees will be able to have a firsthand look at Asian businesses during visits to Hong Kong companies and on trips offered before and after the conference to Beijing and Shanghai, cities that may well provide a glimpse of things to come in Hong Kong.

"Hong Kong is bound to become more like China," concludes Yoffie. "The hope is that it will become closer to the Chinese market while retaining its modern infrastructure. Hong Kong will move deeper into the midst of the ongoing energy and creativity that has been driving the Chinese economy for the past fifteen years."

For more information about the Hong Kong conference, contact:
Ms. Julia Mart, conference coordinator,
1997 HBS Global Alumni Conference,
GPO Box 491, Hong Kong.
Tel: (852) 2992 0445
Fax: (852) 2536 4605
E-mail: 97conf@hbsahk.org
Web site: http://www.hbsahk.org/97conf

by Elaine Gottlieb