What Business Schools Can Learn from Law Clinics

Should business schools develop a clinical curriculum?  Maybe so. In the May issue of the Harvard Business Review Professors Warren G. Bennis and James O'Toole argue that the typical business school curriculum needs major reform.  Their article, How Business Schools Lost Their Way, (on Westlaw at 2005 WLNR 8022923) argues that "many leading B schools have quietly adopted an inappropriate - and ultimately self-defeating - model of academic excellence."  As a result, "the focus of graduate business education has become  ... less and less relevant to practitioners."  In short, "business schools are institutionalizing their own irrelevance."

Their prescription for reform?  More novels, fewer equations, and hands-on training in business skills.  The authors suggest that "running businesses, offering internships [and] encouraging action research" will help "business school faculties . . .rediscover the practice of business."

No surprise then that their ideas have generated some controversy in the business school world.  A June 5, 2005 article in the Boston Globe recounts some of the responses to the suggestions made by Professors Bennis and O'Toole.