海角大神

They do a lot of thinking over at Harvard. Now they鈥檙e being nudged to speed up some rethinking.

A Harvard MBA has always meant a lot. Graduates of that program have disproportionately shaped American (and global) business practices. Its legendary approach to teaching is a 鈥渃ase method鈥� that plunks students into decisionmaking roles that reflect key moments in corporate reality. The method has rippled out to other institutions.

But a new academic paper 鈥� explicated in worthwhile detail this week 鈥� points out that the method was later revisited by the economist who popularized it in the 1920s. In retrospect he found it far too limited in its response to social and market trends.

Over the years critics have strongly agreed, maintaining that the approach the business school took was insufficiently holistic, that it exalted leaders at the expense of workers, and that it arguably slowed progress toward sustainability and social responsibility.

Those are areas where two-thirds of Americans today and where there鈥檚 a raging need. (Google execs, for example, stood before a Senate committee just this week to own up to .)听听

So will the wellspring of standard corporate methods pump out more attuned curricula? HBS, in responding to Quartz, hat-tipped the authors of the paper and seemed to acknowledge a will to evolve. 鈥淸The authors] 鈥� bring to light the thoughtful debate that shaped the evolution of the case method at HBS,鈥� the school said in an emailed statement. 鈥淭hat debate continues today at HBS as we work through the future of the case method 鈥� and the creation of complementary methods鈥�.鈥�

For updates on the Kavanaugh story, go to CSMonitor.com. Now to our five stories for your Friday.聽