Lyman W. Porter, University of California, Irvine
Teaching managerial competencies is quite likely to be one of the major issues—perhaps the major issue —facing business/management schools in the last half of the 1980s. As almost everyone (at least everyone who is concerned about the quality of management education) is aware, there has been a steady increase in the last few years in criticisms of the typical MBA program. At best, these critical evaluations question the extent to which MBA degree programs contribute to improved management of American enterprises. At worst, some of the harsher critics maintain that the standard MBA program — even at the most elite schools — actually is one of the causes of flabby American productivity. Regardless of the degree of severity of the appraisals of MBA programs and more broadly of American business schools, most of them focus in on the crucial question of: What is the value added by an undergraduate or graduate degree in business/management? Who among us would dispute the legitimacy of the public's interest in asking such a question?
Partly in response to such questions or challenges, and partly in order to be as proactive as possible for a responsible educational organization, the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) eight years ago launched a multi-year study called the Accreditation Research Project. The charter of the project, to be carried out by an AACSB committee called by the same name, was to "look at the question of validation of current accreditation standards with special reference to performance and outcomes" (Status Report by Dean H. J. Zoffer to the 1983 AACSB Annual Meeting). The key overarching issue was to determine whether the quality of collegiate educational programs in business could be assessed against output standards as compared with the traditional and somewhat hoary input standards (e.g., quality of entering students, educational qualifications of the faculty, number of full-time faculty per number of FTE students, and so forth).
In the first phase of the project the Accreditation Research Committee~ through a rather elaborate process, identified a set of subject matter areas over which graduates should have a certain degree of mastery. Additionally, however, and to the point of the subject of this special issue of EXCHANCE, the committee also identified a set of so-called "noncognitive" dimensions (a phrase that the Committee used early on as a shorthand term but which has lately been abandoned as not entirely appropriate). Instead they have come to be referred to by the Committee as "skills and personal characteristics" — or as the Chair of the Committee, Dean Jerry Zoffer, refers to them: "SAP-C's." These were classified at the completion of Phase I of the Project under the following headings: Administrative skills (e.g., organizing and planning, decision making, and creativity), Interpersonal skills (e.g., leadership, oral communications, behavior flexibility, etc.), Intellectual ability (e.g., generally mental ability, written communication), Stability of Performance (e.g., tolerance of uncertainty), Work Motivation (e.g., inner work standards, energy) and Values. These "noncognitive" dimensions have been further refined in Phase II, and the committee recently has worked with outside contractors to develop methods for measuring mastery of some of the major SAPCs. (See Damm's paper for an example of the Phase II activity.)
The key point in all of this for this issue of EXCHANGE— and regardless of whether or not AACSB had ever undertaken its project — is the following: how does business education, as currently conceived and implemented in schools throughout the country, contribute to the development of managerial skills? Perhaps some will say that this is not the role of business/management schools, or that this is not an important question. I contend, however, that it is a central issue for those of us who participate in management education and that our constituencies— the general public, employers, and students — will want to know the answer. Hence, I believe we must face up to "teaching managerial competencies." And, we must do it sooner rather than later.
Dealing with this broad issue will not be easy for business/management schools or for those of us who teach in the organizational behavior area. At least four critical issues come to mind:
(1) What competencies should be taught? Phase I of the AACSB project identified some 20 skills and personal characteristics under six broad headings. Obviously, any grouping is arbitrary, but the question remains: given limited resources, which competencies should a school attempt to teach if it wanted to undertake this type of activity? (Incidentally, in Phase I of the AACSB project, the Committee attempted to rate the relative importance of the various SAPCs for various managerial roles — "leader," "manager," "functional specialist," etc., — on the assumption that different schools would be interested in concentrating on some but not all of these various roles in their educational endeavors.) The AACSB project itself, in Phase II, narrowed the number of competencies for which it is attempting to develop measures to eight (including, for example, "information gathering and problem analysis," "decision making," "leadership capacity," "written communication," "delegation and control," etc.). Clearly, it is not an easy decision-making task for a school or a group of faculty (even a set of obviously competent OB faculty) to decide which competencies to select for focus. Indeed, even defining what is a competency will not be a simple task! Choices will have to be made and alternatives foregone.
(2) Where should the competencies be taught? The key issue here is this: Is the business/management school the best location in which to teach or develop these skills? What about the myriad of training programs offered in-house and outside of companies? Even if these skills can and should be taught within academia, is the business/management school the appropriate site? It is not at all obvious—to me, at least—that the answer to this question is an unequivocal "yes." If one considers the entire range of potential competencies that might be covered, then some of them appear to be ones that could be as well or better developed elsewhere on campus. Obvious examples are "written communication" and "oral communication/presentation skills . " Are management schools better equipped than English or Speech departments to assist students in skill building in these areas? Not likely. Even in other broad areas such as "information gathering and problem analysis, " it would seem that business/management schools would not be the exclusive repository of faculty expertise. Whatever one's own views are on the question of where managerial competencies should be taught, the issue is likely to generate some lively "turf" discussions.
(3) Who should teach the competencies? Assuming, for the moment, that business/management schools would undertake the major, if not the exclusive, responsibility for teaching managerial competencies, which faculty members should undertake these tasks? Or, to put the question more bluntly: Should the responsibility for managerial skill development reside only or mostly with the OB faculty? Some AACSB deans familiar with the work of the Accreditation Research Committee, especially the SAPC part of the project, have declared: "If the teaching of managerial skills and personal characteristics is left to the OB faculty, that will kill any real action by our schools in this area." Leaving aside the observation "whoever listens to deans anyway?", it is hard to deny that this type of view would be held by at least some of the nonOB members of the business school faculty. However, potential opposition from non-OB faculty to the delegation of skill development instruction to the OB faculty is only one part of the issue of "who" should teach these competencies. Even if the remainder of the faculty would be willing to leave this to the OB component, would those of us in OB agree that we should be the ones (exclusively?) to do it? Are we, in fact, the most qualified to develop students' skills in all of these areas? Do we, really, know how to develop leadership as well as cover the research and theories about leadership? Similarly, do we know how to show someone how to delegate better than any other faculty in the school (let alone the rest of the campus)? I'm sure there are those of us who would answer "absolutely yes, and if not us, who?", but some of the rest of us might agree that the question is at least an interesting one. The question of "who?" in turn leads to a final issue.
(4) How do we teach managerial competencies? Here, of course, we have developed a number of teaching techniques and strategies that may prove useful for development of one or more of these areas. We do have a potentially rich array of approaches. Even so, it is not entirely clear that we have enough of the right kinds of texts, exercises, evaluation methods, and the like for a major and comprehensive effort in this direction. That could only be determined by experience in using those aids and methods currently available. We may discover more gaps in our methods than currently realized. It seems safe to speculate, in fact, that the topic of "how to teach managerial competencies" will likely occupy a number of pages in this journal in years to come. In conclusion, I believe that a special issue of EXCHANGE focused on the topic of "teaching managerial competencies" could not appear at a more timely point. The challenge is upon us. Are we ready for it?
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