PRESIDENT'S LETTER

by Larry P. Ritzman, Boston College

THE WINDS OF CHANGE

I had the opportunity to participate in a session entitled "The Future of Business Schools and Business Education" at the Institute's Northeast Regional meeting last April. It seemed that every business school represented on the panel or in the audience was restructuring their program in some way. Following the same current, Al Simone will chair a special fellows session at our upcoming Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., entitled "How Will the Current Paradigm of Higher Education Have to Change to Meet the Exploding Dynamics of the Year 2000?." John McKenzie also will chair a special session entitled "Restructuring the MBA Curriculum." The premise of such sessions is that changes and restructuring are a foregone conclusion--the only remaining question being the specifics on how to do it.

Some Storm Warnings

The "winds of change" in business education definitely are blowing, and they can affect us all, including the Decision Sciences Institute. There are problems out there that need to be addressed. Some of the storm warnings are:

• The Porter-McKibbin and Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) reports made strong statements on the need for change. They call for students to be more savvy, human, and worldlyþstudents better versed in the role that the environment, ethics, global competition, technological change, and workplace diversity play in practice. They call for more emphasis on leadership, communication, and the relationships between functional areas. They call for a broader agenda in business education, one that gives more attention to relevance. We need to capture more of the real world environment in our classrooms and research papers.
• The popular press certainly has picked up on such ideas. It is difficult to ignore headlines in Fortune and The Wall Street Journal such as "The Trouble with MBAs," "Business Schools Get Bad Grades," and "Under Pressure, Business Schools Devise Changes." The Wall Street scandals contributed to this image problem, with some observers concluding that ethics cannot be found in business practice.
• Demographics, tight economic conditions, declining federal and state monies, built-in and escalating costs at universities, fewer middle management positions, and the somewhat tarnished image of business all have contributed to lower enrollments, tight university budgets, and a tight job market for our new Ph.D. graduates. As for demographics, the number of U.S. high school graduates peaked in 1987 at 2.8 million, and is now 2.4 million at the bottom of the trough. Furthermore, the market share of business schools seems to be slipping. The percentage of freshmen who indicate an interest in business was 26% in 1987, 19% in 1991, and 15% now. The number of women entering business schools in such large numbers in the 1980's has also declined. Universities will be out of the trough by 1995, which will mark the beginning of the greatest growth in university enrollments in 35 years. How business schools will share in this turnaround remains to be seen.
• The AACSB standards and accreditation process have changed; the goal is helping schools improve their quality, distinctiveness, and competitiveness. The AACSB welcomes more diversity and customization in business programs. The evaluation process is no longer lock step, whereby each school must satisfy the same standards. The process begins with a clear mission statement on a school's desired niche, and then tracking how well this statement is being accomplished in terms of measurable objectives. Each school is to understand what it intends to be, and then to capture this understanding on paper by measuring progress in achieving its goals. Although there might be some backpedaling on this accreditation process, the greater tolerance for diverse paths in management education seems well established. Some smaller schools might perceive these changes as a way to abandon their efforts in "classical" research. Continuing "intellectual contributions" might instead be expanded to include involvement with innovative practitioners, writing teaching materials, translating discipline-based research into cross-disciplinary situations, and providing leadership to professional associations.

Navigating in the Storm

The next few years will make for some rough waters, but I firmly believe that business schools will not only weather the storm, but end up stronger (albeit smaller) and more vital. I also believe that the Decision Sciences Institute is positioned strategically to help a good deal in this process of change and restructuring. There are several reasons.

BREADTH. The call for a broader agenda in business education means that we must give more attention to the connections between our particular specialties and disciplines. Areas of concentration often are not even integrated within themselves, let alone across the whole business program. We must be able to "look across the boundaries" of our disciplines and demonstrate how accounting, finance, marketing, and operations are connected. Our courses will not only teach a particular function, but also help students put their field of special study into perspective. Surely we will also see more research that cuts across functional lines in meaningful ways.

The Institute is well positioned to allow people to cross over functional boundary lines. Some of the biggest contingents of academic interest areas in the Institute at this point are information systems, operations management, quantitative methods, and statistics. However, the Institute offers a "home" for such areas as accounting, finance, international business, marketing, organizational behavior, organizational theory, public management, health care, and strategic management. In essence, the Decision Sciences Institute offers "one-stop shopping" where people from all areas of business can interact, not only advancing their own discipline but also making important connections to other fields of study. The Institute's special niche is decision making, but its unique interdisciplinary approach to decision issues allows specialists in diverse areas to come together for the study of decision making. It offers members the opportunity to "look over the line", "interact with professionals in other disciplines," and "pull it all together."

REVITALIZED TEACHING. There is definitely a call these days for better teaching both inside and outside of the classroom. How can we give our students a better education, and do it with fewer resources? Finding ways of better teaching has always been emphasized by the Institute. The first page of its Constitution lists "improving educational programs in the decision sciences" as one of its four goals.

We take seriously the Instructional Innovation Awards, provide a forum for examining curriculum innovation, and offer the many sessions devoted to some aspect of effective teaching. A quick scan of our upcoming program in Washington reveals such titles as "Hypermedia in the Classroom," "Deploying Quality in the Classroom," "Multimedia Computing Workshop," "Teaching Techniques," "High-Tech Futures for Higher Education," "Teaching Environmental Management in Schools of Business," "Integrating Technology into the Business School Curriculum," "Case Studies and the TQM Course," "Case Writers Workshop," "Management 101þAn Experiential Organization as Classroom," and "Why Aren't Services Included in the Business Curriculum?". There will be sessions such as "Becoming a Successful Teacher" in the Doctoral Student Consortium, and "Preparing for Career Success: Quality Teaching" in the New Faculty Consortium. Case studies are now published in the Proceedings (Volume I this year).

RELEVANCE. Another characteristic of the Institute membership (at least in my mind) is its concern for relevance in teaching and research. Perhaps we are a bit less patient with esoteric research that has no possible connection to managerial decision making. The ultimate goal is doing research that scores highly on both rigor and realism. Our research should be rigorous, and yet the problems that we choose to study should demonstrate relevance. The same applies to relevance in the classroom, and the need for sharper skills to manage "soft areas" and work in small groups. AACSB's call for more realism in business education dovetails nicely with a distinctive characteristic of the Institute.

STRONG REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS. As one of the Board representatives, it has been enlightening to have attended the annual meeting of most of the Institute's regions. These meetings offer many valuable competitive paper sessions, staged in a very professional manner. The regions have dedicated working groups of officers, many enthusiastic members, and often their own distinctive "personalities." Attendance remains excellent, despite difficult economic conditions. In fact, tight budgets might very well work in favor of DSI regions. There is at least one regional meeting that is nearby, reducing travel time and cost. Regional events, such as the new Graduate Student Workshops, make it possible for doctoral students in the pre-dissertation stage to attend an academic meeting and get some better understanding of academic life, without bankrupting their department's operating fund.

GROWING INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS. The Institute's regions soon will span the world instead of just the United States. The Institute has just experienced its Second International Conference in Seoul, Korea. We look to the continuation of such international meetings and the simultaneous creation of regions in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world. Such a thrust is in unison with the Porter-McKibbin Report and the GMAC Report that encourages business schools to do a better job with the fast-changing global economy, both in our classrooms and in our research papers.

A Favorable Breeze for the Institute

While shrinking enrollments and budgets are not good news, relief on enrollment shortages is in sight. There also can be a silver lining to the clouds for the Institute, which can be an active contributor in the process of identifying the right changes and types of restructuring. This contribution can in part be done through sessions that reflect on the problems and issues, such as the ones being offered at the November meeting. The Board of Directors also charged some of its committees to consider the issues. Three particularly important committee charges this year are:

1. The Development Committee for Excellence, chaired by Max Wortman, is identifying the likely changes in business education and research, and what the Institute should do to take advantage of such changes. Should the Institute be doing something different in terms of workshops, tutorials, consortia, or publications? Are joint endeavors with sister organizations desirable?

2. The Doctoral Student Affairs Committee, chaired by Bob Jacobs, is assessing the past, present, and future trends in the job market for new doctoral students, and how the Institute's distinctive competencies with the Doctoral Consortium and Placement Services can be used to best advantage.

3. Leon Price, the Coordinator of Placement Services, seeks to develop nontraditional sources of employees to participate in the placement services process.

Just as businesses must adapt to new missions, structures, and relationships, so must business schools. The challenge for the Institute is to accommodate the new needs and priorities of our members, while preserving and building on the traditional strengths that have helped the Institute grow to where it is today. The Institute must show relevance to its constituents, so as to maintain its vitality. In making the necessary navigational corrections, the Institute needs to distinguish authentic needs for change from the latest critical whims and short-lived fads.

Your ideas on helping winnow the wheat from the chaff are much appreciated. Please share your inputs with me or a Board member. See you in Washington!