Page 52 - Chapter One

20 The Management Shift

table 1.3 Continued
Traditional management New management paradigm
paradigm
Scholarship of discovery Scholarship of discovery (research), scholarship
(research) of integration (synthesis), scholarship of practice
(application), scholarship of teaching (pedagogy)
Logic of falsification essential Integrated, interdisciplinary, emergence- based theories
for positivism (hard to apply
with rigor to social theories,
provides only a partial analysis
of a complex phenomena);
partial, reductionistic,
deterministic theories
Neoclassical economics Reverting back to evolutionary economics, behavioral
economics and institutional economics thinking

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In his book From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, Harvard Business School
professor Rakesh Khurana argues that the predominant educational
paradigm in the US business schools has been influenced by Harvard
Business School’s case- based clinical model and Carnegie Tech’s quantitative

scientific model, forming the foundation of the “management science”
and technocratic leadership, neglecting practices based on judgement and
intuition. This led to the separation of academic disciplines in business
schools from more integrative and multi- disciplinary thinking and the

proliferation of scholarly business journals that have been publishing
academic output of little interest to practitioners. Khurana concludes
that business schools have lost their societal mission and calls for a new
holistic institutional context that “recognizes the legitimate economic and
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social interests of many members of society other than shareholders”. In
Chapter 7, I provide some information about my own involvement in an
initiative to influence changes in business schools.
Business as usual will not work anymore. Instead of just focusing on
numbers, processes and structures, management needs to focus on people,
their values, passion to make a positive difference, trust, higher purpose,
integrity, loyalty, compassion, their need for togetherness and to be part
of something bigger than themselves. Businesses have to view people as