如果商学院觉得自己有一件事很在行，那就是指导公司在各自机构中执行变革。如今，商学院得身体力行，教以致用了。
人们一度普遍担心，MBA课程学而无用，所以过去数年，几乎每所名实相符的商学院都在仔细考察课程内容和教学方式。这些商学院究竟是怎样推进改革的呢？事实可能证明，这会成为知识型公司和其他学术机构的行动指南。
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多顶尖商学院面临同样的批评，大多数采取了类似的解决方案，但执行课程改革的方法极少雷同。有些商学院自下而上进行变革——先说服教员们改变——另一些则从高管层面入手。
加拿大西安大略大学艾维(Ivey)商学院院长卡罗尔•斯蒂芬森(Carol Stephenson)在该校任职前，曾在IT行业有过长时间工作经历。她把这一做法称作一项商业命题。
“我们把它当作一个大项目，采用项目管理原则。”
她说，成功的关键，是确保时刻应对变革，然后成立专门小组完成。该学院先从调查内部人员着手：82％的人认为，商学院已做好变革的准备。
“对于公司部门而言，这个数字已经很理想了，”斯蒂芬森女士说。她表示，一旦教员和员工动摇，她总是可以重提这个数字。
制定时间表尤其重要。“我认为，有时候人们会放任自流，”她说，“希望情况事态会自行消失。”不到一年的时间，艾维就启动了一项全新课程：从美国传统的两年制学位转为欧洲式，一年便完成MBA课程。
斯蒂芬森女士自上而下的方法与加州大学伯克利哈斯商学院(Haas)采用的方式形成了鲜明对比。哈斯商学院花了一年时间，才说服教员采纳新课程。院长汤姆•坎贝尔(Tom Campbell)是位职业学者，性格温和，行事从容不迫，以确保协作方式的运作。
他承认，这一点与企业界不同。“我认为，他们[公司]会削减内容。要是我采用那种方式，就成功不了。”
“当然会有成功者，也会有……成不了的，”他说，“这并不意味着‘不'，而是‘时机未到'。”
耶鲁大学管理学院院长乔尔•波多尔尼(Joel Podolny)相信，说“不”是整体变革的一部分。耶鲁进行课程改革时，部分教员失去了他们最喜爱教授的课程，但波多尔尼教授说，这些教授并没有获得讨价还价的权利，来弥补他们的损失。“说到文化变革措施时，讨价还价是行不通的。我对这点深信不疑。”
他说，教授们可以做的，是帮助耶鲁建设成世界一流的商学教育场所。“我的确相信，教员们强烈渴望人们视[耶鲁]成为领袖。”
同斯蒂芬森女士一样，波多尔尼教授认为，巨大的变革需要教授们的支持。“我一进耶鲁就感到，教员们都觉得，该是学院进行改革的时候了，”他说。
斯坦福大学也是如此。2002年，斯坦福大学教授杰弗里•普费福(Jeffrey Pfeffer)声称，MBA学位基本上与商业成功无关。为此学术界对斯坦福大加挞伐。
斯坦福大学的改革是根本性的，今年秋天入学的新生将会接受与学长们完全不同的课程教育，商学院电子商务、战略管理和经济学教授加思•塞隆纳(Garth Saloner)如是说。课程将更适应个人能力发展，小组规模将缩小，研究会增加，同时须具有海外经历。
塞隆纳教授说，要使方案行之有效，重点是管理教授。“教室里坐的都是些想得到深刻思想的人，如何获得他们的好评呢？”
他说，斯坦福的解决办法，是设计一种同时有利于学生和老师的课程。学位课程修改后，其核心就是对核心课程进行了改革：学生不必坐在同一间教室听会计、金融或者市场等课程。例如，合格会计师可以加入学习小组，共同探讨更高深的问题，而不是初学者的内容。
“这样，教授们就有机会和一群学生讨论他们（教员）感兴趣的问题，同时，也是学生们很关注的话题。”
制定时间表也有助于让教授们喜欢上课程改革。“得有创造力，给教员充分的时间做研究，”塞隆纳教授说。这样做的好处是，如果教员已做好准备集中时间完成教学任务——新MBA课程要求学员通过工作坊一周五天进行学习，教员进行长期研究所需的时间就有了保障。
塞隆纳教授说，斯坦福教员“已开始行动……我对反响十分满意。”耶鲁大学的情况大致也如此。
所有商学院传来的信息都认为，认真管理教员十分关键，同样，承认变革很有必要也至关重要。波多尔尼教授也认为，在学术背景下，与递进式变革相比，进行大规模全盘变革相对容易，因为教授们喜欢实验和冒险。此外他表示，这样做也更有趣。
If there is one thing business schools believe they are good at, it is teaching companies how to implement change in their organisations. These days business schools are having to practise what they preach.
Following widespread concern that MBA programmes were not fit for purpose, almost every business school worth its salt has spent the past few years scrutinising what it teaches and how it teaches it. Just how these schools have pushed through change could prove to be a blueprint for knowledge-based companies as well as other academic institutions
While many top business schools have faced the same criticisms and most of them have opted for similar solutions, there is little uniformity in their approach for implementing curriculum changes. While some have worked from the bottom up - persuading faculty to change - others have taken a more executive approach.
In Canada at the Ivey school at the University of Western Ontario, Dean Carol Stephenson, who joined the school after a long careerin the IT industry, treated the exercise as a business proposition.
"We treated this like a big project and used project management principles."
Critical to success, she says, was ensuring there was a readiness for change and then setting up a task force to see it through. The school began with a survey of the internal community: 82 per cent said the school was ready for change.
"In the corporate sector that is a very good number to have," says Ms Stephenson. When faculty and staff wavered, she says, she could always come back to that number.
Setting a timeline was particularly important. "I think sometimes people let things drift," she says, "in the hope that they will go away." Ivey implemented a brand new curriculum - moving from a traditional US two-year degree to a European-style one-year MBA programme - in less than a year.
Ms Stephenson's top-down approach was the antithesis of that employed at the Haas school at Berkeley, California, where it took a year just to persuade faculty to adopt a new curriculum. Dean Tom Campbell, a mild-mannered career academic, took the time to ensure a collaborative approach.
He acknowledges this isdifferent to the corporate world. "I think they [companies] would have cut things. If I had adopted that approach I would have failed.
"There are winners and. . . failures to win," he says. "It tells nobody 'no'; it says 'not now'."
At Yale School of Management, Dean Joel Podolny believed that saying "no" had to be part of the package. When Yale implemented a curriculum change some faculty lost the right to teach their favourite courses but Prof Podolny says that these professors were not given individual bargaining rights to make up for this. "I'm a big believer in the idea that when you're talking about cultural change efforts, you can't turn it into bargaining."
What professors were given instead was the possibility of helping to make Yale a world leader in business education, he says. "I do believe there is a deep desire from faculty [for Yale] to be really seen as a leader."
Like Ms Stephenson, Prof Podolny believes big changes require buy-in from professors. "When I came in [to Yale] I think there was a feeling on the part of faculty that it was time for the school to change," he says.
So it was at Stanford, which took a pummelling from the academic community in 2002 when one of its professors, Jeffrey Pfeffer, declared that MBA degrees were largely irrelevant to business success.
At Stanford, changes have been fundamental and students enrolling this autumn will get a very different programme from their predecessors, says Garth Saloner, professor of electronic commerce, strategic management and economics at the school. Courses will be tailored more to their individual abilities, there will be more study in smaller groups and a requirement for overseas experiences.
Central to making the scheme work was management of the professors, says Prof Saloner. "How do you get high touches in the classroom from people who want to sit and have deep thoughts?"
Stanford's answer was to design a curriculum in a way that was both student- and faculty-friendly, he says. At the heart of the revised degree are changes to the core curriculum that mean not everyone has to sit the same accounting, finance or marketing course. Qualified accountants, for example, will congregate in study groups that work at a much more sophisticated level than those in which participants are new to the subject.
"It gives professors the opportunity to meet with a group of students and discuss topics which they [faculty] are passionate about and students care deeply about."
Timetabling has also helped endear professors to the changes. "You have to be creative, giving faculty time to do research," says Prof Saloner. The trade-off has been that if faculty are prepared to fulfil their teaching requirements in intensive bursts - in the new MBA curriculum participants are required to study in five-day workshops - this frees up time for protracted periods of research.
Stanford faculty, says Prof Saloner, "have stepped up to the plate . . . I have been extremely gratified by the response." At Yale it has been a similar story.
The message that comes across from all the schools is that careful management of faculty is critical, as is the acknowledgement that change is needed. Prof Podolny also argues that in an academic setting it is often easier to implement change if it is large-scale and comprehensive rather than incremental, because professors enjoy experimentation and risk-taking. Also, he says, it is more fun
