Business schools 商学院
In terms of pure quantity of research and debate, business schools have performed amazingly in promoting management as a distinctive activity. No other discipline has produced as much in such a short period. It is unclear yet how much of it will stand the test of time, but for sheer industry, the business schools deserve credit. Not a day goes by without another wave of research papers, books, articles, and journals.
通过一定数量纯量研究和讨论，作为一个独特的学科，商学院已经在促进管理方面表现出色。没有另外一个学科能在如此短的时间内产出如此多。还不清楚这样的状况能否禁得住时间的考验，但就产业来说, 商学院值得信赖。另一波的研究论文，书籍，文章，期刊每天都出版。
In these terms, schools have produced a generally accepted theoretical basis for management. When it comes to knowledge creation, however, they find themselves in difficulties. They are caught between the need for academic rigour and for real-world business relevance,which tend to pull in opposite directions. The desire to establish management as a credible discipline leads to research that panders to traditional academic criteria. The problem for business school researchers is that they seek the approval of their academic peers rather than the business community. In the United States this has led to the sort of grand "paper clip counting" exercises that meet demands for academic rigour but fail to add to one iota to the real sum of human knowledge。
通过这些方式，学校已经产生了可接受的管理的理论基础。当提到知识创新时，然而， 他们发现他们自己遇到难题了。他们在理论的严谨性和真实世界的相关商业被难倒，这趋向于把彼此推向两个相反的方向。想把建立管理作为一个值得信赖的学科的渴望，导致了迎合传统学术标准的研究。商学院的研究员的问题是: 他们寻求他们学术同行的认可，而不是商业界的认可。在美国，这样已经导致了大量的不计其数的论文符合理论严谨的学术要求，但是未能添加任何一点微小的对真实的人类知识的贡献。
Business schools have too often allowed the constraints of the academic world to cloud their view of the real world. Business school researchers seek provable theories- rather than helpful theories. They have championed a prescriptive approach to management based on analysis and, more recently, on fashionable ideas that soon disappear into the ether. The "one best way" approach encourages researchers to mould the idiosyncrasies of managerial reality into their tightly defined models of behaviour. Figures and statistics are fitted into linear equations and tidy models. Economists and other social scientists label this curve smoothing. Meanwhile,reality continually refuses to co-operate.
商学院经常由于学术界的限制对真实世界的看法模糊不清。商学院的研究员去寻求理论的证明，而不是那些实用的理论。他们已经倡导了一种基于分析的管理方法，近期，他们倡导流行的管理方法很快消失。"一个最好的方法"去鼓励研究员把实际管理的特性套进牢牢限制的行为模型中。数字和统计的数字都带入线性的公式和整洁的模型中。经济学家和其他社会学者将这些曲线平滑化。同时，现实中不断的拒绝这种合作。
Central to this is the tension between relevance and rigour. In a perfect world, there would be no need to choose between the two. But in the business school world, the need to satisfy academic criteria and be published in journals often tilts the balance away from relevance. In other words, it is often easier to pursue quantifiable objectives than it is to add anything useful to the debate about management. To a large extent, the entire business schools system works against useful, knowledge-creating research. Academics have five years in which to prove themselves if they are to make the academic grade. It seems long enough. But it can take two or even three years to get into a suitable journal. They therefore have around three years, probably less, to come up with an area of interest and carry out meaningful and original research. This is a demanding timescale. The temptation must be to slice up old data in new ways rather than pursue genuinely ground-breaking, innovative research.
这个核心问题就是实际和理论之间存在的张力。在一个理想的世界里，不需要在两者之间进行选择。但是在商学院中，这需要满足理论标准并且在发表在专业期刊的文章经常需要从现实的相关性上偏移。换句话说，通常更容易实现可量化的目标，而不是增加对管理有用的争论。学术有五年的时间来证明自己是否达到学术的级别。这看上去足够的时间。但是这能花两年甚至三年时间去在一个合适的期刊中发表。他们因此有大概3年时间，可能会少一点，去想出一个感兴趣的领域，进行有意义和原始的研究。这是一个要求的时间范围。这个诱因必须用新的方式对旧的数据进行切分，而不是追求真正的开创性的，创新性的研究。
It is a criticism also made by some business school insiders." Academic journals tend to find more and more techniques for testing more and more obscure theories. They are asking trivial questions and answering them exactly. There has to be a backlash," says Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School. In large part, the problem goes back to a time when business schools were trying to establish themselves. Up until the 1960s, American business schools were dismissed as pseudo-academic institutions.Other academic institutions, including the universities of which they often formed a part regarded them as little more than vocational colleges. Since then, most of the leading schools have undergone major reassessments and introduced sweeping changes. However, it is questionable whether those changes have gone far enough.
这是一些商学院内部的人员发出批评。"学术的期刊趋向于发现更多的技巧，这些技巧用来测试更多的模糊的理论。他们一直在问没有价值的问题并且准确的回答这些问题。必须要有一个抵制这样的行动。"伦敦商学院的Julian Birkinshaw说。在很大程度上，问题回到了商学院试图自己成立的时候。直到19世纪60年代，美国商学院被作为一个伪学术机构被解散。另一些学术机构，包括那些商学院所属的大学，经常被看成不及职业学院。此后，大部分的知名学校经历了重大的评估，并引进了彻底的改变。然而，是否这些变化能走的更远是一个问题。
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