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Searching for a Strategy to Teach Strategy

LARRY E. GREINER ARVIND BHAMBRI THOMAS G. CUMMINGS University of Southern California We contend that the content of the required MBA strategy course in top-tier business schools has moved away from interdisciplinary thinking and practice toward an almost exclusive emphasis on theory and analysis. The once accepted Harvard model of capstone integration and learning-by-doing through case discussion is now much less in vogue. Consequently, strategy students today tend to experience a rather abstract approach to learning about strategy presented through the limited prism of a theoretical discipline. Even classroom discussions of cases are often guided by instructors to confirm the utility of a particular theoretical framework, instead of serving as an open-ended discussion of problems and solutions. After presenting our evidence and arguments against the current trend, we present some examples of MBA programs that give more emphasis to practice, including USCs Executive MBA program, where priority is placed on integration and implementation without sacrificing, we believe, essential theories and analytical skills. Finally, we explore the implications from our analysis for additional solutions in other strategy teaching contexts.

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SEARCHING FOR A STRATEGY TO TEACH STRATEGY Few of todays strategy professors have received doctoral training in the pedagogy of teaching strategic management. Moreover, many of these faculty members, because of their past training, lean toward either economics or organization theory in the treatment of course content. The consequence is that MBA graduates are frequently well trained in drawing sharp analytical insights in terms of a particular discipline but lack the necessary preparation in other concepts and skills to become capable strategic leaders. Although we have no quarrel with theoretical training, which is obviously necessary, we remain concerned about the growing lack of integration across the business disciplines and the neglect of practical skill training in the teaching of strategic management.

The consequence is that MBA graduates are frequently well trained in drawing sharp analytical insights in terms of a particular discipline but lack the necessary preparation in other concepts and skills to become capable strategic leaders.
HISTORICAL ROOTS OF STRATEGY COURSE The origins for developing a pedagogical approach to teaching strategic management go back to the Harvard Business School (HBS) in 1912 when the first business policy course was founded (Cruikshank, 1987). It included executives coming to class to discuss practical problems in their companies, ranging from strategic issues to plant layout and personnel problems, and it involved students in active discussion and presentation of their solutionsthus was born the case method. This effort also spawned the first research on strategy, which consisted largely of case writing. During WW II, a training program was introduced at HBS for senior government administrators, and the concept of general management first came into be402

We received valuable feedback and suggestions from the editors, anonymous reviewers, and Julia Liebeskind, Jonathan Jaffee, Kyle Mayer, Nandini Rajogopalan, and Arturs Kalnins.

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ing, which also reflected what the school called the administrative point of view. After WW II, the Harvard curriculum was revised in 1946 by a faculty vote, and the resulting business policy course was born, rapidly becoming the standard for similar courses at other business schools. The HBS policy course was required and positioned in the second year of the MBA program, and it became known as the capstone experience. It was taught largely through cases and discussion led by senior faculty, many of whom had prior business experience. The course content focused on the entire firm and its future direction, building on the functional disciplines known as the elements of administration, which were covered in the first year. The course was advertised as the place where it all comes together, given its heavy emphasis on integration and practice. The case method of teaching was prescribed as the dominant pedagogy for all HBS courses in the 1946 changes, and this teaching approach later became widely used at most business schools, especially in policy/strategy courses. During the teaching of cases, there were no right answers, just good questions and better answers, although one HBS professor claimed he sure as hell knew when there was a wrong answer. The Harvard professors also taught this method to all doctoral students, producing graduates who moved on to initiate strategy courses at other business schools. Faculty from around the world came to HBS for training in case teaching, and thousands of cases were developed at Harvard to be published in teaching casebooks and widely distributed through its case clearinghouse. Of interest, and contrary to much of todays deductive theory in the teaching of strategic management, the HBS case method advocated that every company situation was unique and not easily amenable to generalization. The learning emphasis was on inductive reasoning as students were expected to learn through Socratic debate and exchange in sharpening not only their analytical abilities, but also their intuition, judgment, and behavioral skills (Christensen, Andrews, & Bower, 1973; McNair, 1954). EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING FOR PROFESSIONALS As originally applied, the case method of teaching business policy emphasized the role and importance of doing in the learning process as students argued their various points of view about situations for which there were not supposed to be right answers. It drew on a tradition of education about how people learn through directly experi-

encing the phenomenon in question, especially in the acquisition of practical knowledge and skills (Dewey, 1910; Whitehead, 1947; Moore, 1981). It also paralleled similar experiential learning approaches being used in other professional schools at the time, such as rounds with doctors in medical schools, moot courts in law schools, and internships in schools of public administration (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980; Nuy & Moust, 1990). Learning-by-doing continues to gain attention among researchers and educators (Clift, 1990, Boshyk, 2000; Hutchings & Wutzdorff, 1988; Kolb, 1984). It is particularly relevant to educational settings in professional schools where students need to acquire competence and experience in translating complex cognitive knowledge into everyday behavior and lasting skills. Today, corporate recruiters increasingly seek business graduates who can both make good strategic decisions and execute them effectively (Bossidy, Charan, & Burck, 2002). Students need to be able to make analytical judgment calls on the spot in ambiguous settings, as well as to demonstrate the necessary behavioral skills to transform strategic decisions into tangible results produced by employees. Such professional expertise includes a good deal of what Donald Scho n (1983, 1987) has called knowledge-in-action, which involves both cognitive and behavioral capabilities where decisions and actions take place spontaneously in relation to the environment (Polanyi, 1983; Sternberg & Horvath, 1999). Knowledge-in-action cannot be fully verbalized or described, which is why professionals often know more than they can publicly articulate. This contrasts with explicit and theoretical knowledge, which emphasizes mind over behavior and advocates lessons that can be codified and explained.

Knowledge-in-action cannot be learned simply through lectures and readings; instead, it requires a healthy dose of learning-by-doing.
Knowledge-in-action cannot be learned simply through lectures and readings; instead, it requires a healthy dose of learning-by-doing. Because it is learned in use, considerable trial-and-error behavior and practice are involved. By analogy, people learn to ride a bicycle or to play golf by performing the task repeatedly until it becomes tacit knowledge and spontaneous to ones behavior. Similarly, many professionals learn professional behaviors in the course of trying to perform them,

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usually starting with a supervised practicum and moving gradually toward real-world activities. Moreover, as Scho n (1983) has astutely observed, professionals learn to confront the messy unanticipated problems inherent in their practice by reflecting on their actions. When faced with novel problems, new behaviors are tried out and assessed; they are thought about and talked about. Thus, professionals learn and develop knowledgein-action by continually reflecting on their own behavior and its consequences (Daley, 1999). Such reflection-in-action was a key aspect of Harvards pioneering strategy course. Students learned how to think and act strategically through reflecting on their behavior in highly interactive case discussions, causing them to adjust day after day and case after case as they gradually adopted new behaviors and thought patterns. Such learning-by-doing helped students translate concepts into action. KnowingDoing Gap in Business Schools Recently, there is growing criticism that business education, which includes the teaching of business strategy, has lost its original strong connection between learning and doing (Bailey & Ford, 1996; Mintzberg & Gosling, 2002; Pfeffer & Fong, 2002). Learning today is far more focused on concepts and tools than on behavioral skills and action taking. The leading business schools emphasize research over teaching, and most new faculty members are selected for their content knowledge and research skills, not for their expertise in teaching management practice. Only a small minority of business school professors have actually worked as executives in business organizations or served as senior managers in their own academic organizations. As pointed out in Porter and McKibbens (1988) seminal report on management education, the neglect of behavioral and implementation training can result in students graduating with strong conceptual expertise but weak skills in applying it to achieve positive results hardly good news for corporate recruiters. This failure contributes to a pernicious problem facing many organizations today, what Pfeffer and Sutton (1999) have termed the knowing doing gap. In their view, managers tend to know too much and do too little, resulting in smart plans and ideas that rarely get implemented. A large part of the blame, in their opinion (and ours as well), lies with modern business schools where students primarily learn how to think and talk smart, but not to act smart. They learn how to say and write smart things, and get

rewarded for it with high grades. They use those smart skills to impress recruiters and get good jobs, thus perpetuating the knowing doing gap.

A large part of the blame, in their opinion (and ours as well), lies with modern business schools where students primarily learn how to think and talk smart, but not to act smart.
Our focus here is on business schools and their lack of learning-by-doing in the currently required business strategy course. We have chosen to focus on the strategy course because of its importance and potential for helping students learn how to bridge the disciplines and close the gap between thinking and acting in the overall leadership of organizations. After all, strategic business problems are seldom captured by a single discipline, nor can one retreat to books for strategic solutions when called upon to react in real time. Graduates without adequate strategy formulation and implementation skills will not be prepared to later assume senior-level positions. Of course, one might retort that graduates today dont need much training in strategic practice because they wont be in senior positions for a number of years. Even early career managers, however, need to understand the strategic context for decisions in their companies, as well as to possess the skill to integrate business disciplines in their own decision making. Moreover, many of these graduates are likely to find themselves addressing strategic issues in their initial jobs as newly hired consultants or in staff positions at corporate headquarters. We also think it unrealistic to assume that managers will suddenly acquire strategic capabilities when they are promoted to senior positions. More likely, they will need to demonstrate this ability in order to get promoted. TODAYS TYPICAL STRATEGY COURSE We surveyed the required MBA strategy courses at the top-20 business schools, as ranked by BusinessWeek in 2002. By focusing on these elite programs, our assumption was that certain practices for teaching strategic management had emerged among them, and that these practices were likely in effect today not only at these schools but at many other schools emulating them. Our review consisted of examining course descriptions and syllabi from all the highly ranked schools, as well as interviewing several faculty

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members at these same schools. We recognize there is the possibility that course descriptions and syllabi dont represent what is actually taught, although when we cross-checked through interviews there seemed to be close agreement. We cite mainly the Web-based course descriptions here, because these tend to be more concise than longer documents, and the Web content is usually kept current and offered as a schools official position. The results reveal that the traditional required Harvard Business policy course is barely alive, having changed considerably over the years, and now resembling its past only as a mere requirement for all MBA students. The Harvard forefathers of the course would not recognize it today. Instead, its content and that of other required strategy courses has moved away from practice to emphasize theory and analytics at the explicit knowledge level. Remarkably, Harvards strategy course description on the schools Web site reveals a narrative without any words denoting the importance of practice and action taking, such as management, organization, leadership, change, or implementation: The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy, and provides an understanding of: A firms operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage. How to generate superior value for customers by designing the optimum configuration of the product mix and functional activities. How to balance the opportunities and risks associated with dynamic and uncertain changes in industry attractiveness and competitive position. Students learn to: Develop a mastery of a body of analytical tools and the ability to take an integrative point of view. Use these tools to perform in-depth analyses of industries and competitors, predict competitive behavior, and analyze how firms develop and sustain competitive advantage over time. Particular attention is paid to competitive positioning; understanding comparative costs; and addressing issues such as cannibalization, network externalities, and globalization. The rest of the top 20, with two notable exceptions at the Universities of Michigan and North Carolina, indicate an almost exclusive emphasis on theory and analysis, slanted mostly toward industrial economics but with a few schools emphasizing organization theory. The strategy course description below from the Darden School at the University of Virginia is typical of the many re-

quired strategy courses with a heavy economics and finance orientation: We begin with an overview of corporate and divisional strategies, followed by an introduction to industry analysis and a number of additional analytical tools and concepts. These include labor productivity, economies of scale and growth, corporate capital charges and EVA, cash flow and its relationship to growth, and the valuation of acquisitions and divestitures using both market multiples and DCF analysis. We then analyze a number of generic, focused strategic problems/opportunities. The analysis/methodology will then be extended to include a multidivisional corporate setting and decisions regarding tradeoffs among feasible sets of corporate goals. Finally, we will analyze a company composed of ten operating units along with three acquisition targets, from the perspective of both the parent company and the individual operating units and potential acquisition targets. This will lead to a determination of the most effective portfolio of businesses for on-going operations and allow for the forecast of future corporate performance under a range of financial scenarios. Interviews with a sampling of strategy faculty members from the top-20 schools suggest that, regardless of their underlying discipline orientation (i.e., economics or organization theory), instructors tend to lecture frequently about their preferred theories and models, supplemented by the occasional use of cases to gain practice in using the advocated theories. Todays case teaching approach appears to be heavily deductive, with instructors guiding students, sometimes unintentionally, to answers that confirm the validity of concepts being taught. This approach contrasts sharply with Harvards original open-ended approach, which used cases that inductively explore the opinions and intuitions of students for solving the problems of a particular company. In another significant departure from the Harvard tradition, all but two of the top-20 schools have positioned their required strategy courses in the first year of their MBA programs, usually in the spring semester. Surprisingly, a few schools actually begin the first year with the strategy course, thereby abandoning the capstone notion completely, while a few start and end the year with strategy acting as bookends for the intervening functional disciplines. Harvard has also transferred its course to the end of its first year. Move-

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ment of the strategy course to various places in the first year suggests that it is being taught more often as a separate academic discipline, competing alongside the other business disciplines. We detected little indication in the 20 course descriptions that any linkage is being made with surrounding courses, such as collaborating with faculty from other disciplines in the planning and teaching of the strategy course. Against the Trend Only one of 20 course descriptions, the University of Michigans, closely resembles the original Harvard course: This course focuses on the job, perspective, and skills of the general manager in diagnosing what is critical in complex business situations and finding realistic solutions to strategic and organizational problems. It is designed to build upon previous required coursework in the MBA program drawing upon the integration of various functional and technical areas and providing a total business perspective. Since the focus is on pragmatic, action-oriented, general management skills, the course will be taught primarily through the case method. Michigan also backs up its practice-oriented statement with its Multidisciplinary Action Projects (MAP) program, which is conducted as the only course in the last 7 weeks of the first-year core program. All students work in teams on strategy consulting projects with a cross-disciplinary team of faculty serving as advisors to each team. Its course description goes into great detail on the project format, which is presented as Michigans business residency program because of its similarities to how medical schools teach students to go from text books to practicing medicine. In another dramatic exception to the dominant trend, the Flagler School at the University of North Carolina has completely reorganized its first-year curriculum into sequential themes with an integrative experiential exercise on business strategy at the end of each theme. This approach is notable for its emphasis on integration, practice, and experiential learning. The course description on Flaglers Web site reads as follows: To keep pace with changes in the business world and to make our graduates as competitive as possible, the MBA Program implemented a new core curriculum in fall 2000.

This innovative curriculum is based on a business process model. Themes are: analyzing capabilities and resources; monitoring the marketplace and external environment; formulating strategy; implementing strategy and assessing firm performance. The academic year is comprised of four modules or mods. The mods are arranged around these themes, which follow the cycle of running a business. What students learn across courses is pulled together by an integrative exercise in each mod. The integrative exercises, which are tied to the four themes of the business process model, are: evaluating a company (Mod 1); business plan exercise (Mods 2 and 3); business simulation (Mod 4). The Reflective Challenge These results cause us to question why so many top schools are headed away from integration and practice and toward a relatively narrow focus on theory and analysis. Part of the explanation, in our opinion, stems from strategy scholars preoccupation with being seen as strong in theory and research. Industrial economists and organization theorists have clearly established a strong research presence in strategy, and they have done much to place the field on a secure academic footing. Although we agree that the strategy discipline has made rapid headway and gained credibility from a research point of view, this does not mean that this same preoccupation should be transferred to the classroom experience. A more troubling explanation lies within the politics between disciplines at some business schools. One senior strategy faculty member at a top-ranked school, who understandably prefers to remain unnamed, told us, Our economicsoriented faculty did a take-over of the strategy course from our more organizationally minded faculty. They wanted to add more theory and calculus to the course (personal communication). These discipline battles have unfortunate effects on students because theoretical orthodoxy inherently restricts the range of strategic problems being considered and the types of solutions that are entertained. A key step toward rethinking the design of the required strategy course is to consider what should be its overall structure and objectives. Should it be multidisciplinary? Should it integrate with other courses around it? Should the course be mainly analytical in its focus? How much practice should be included in the course? Should it take responsibility for teaching about strategic change and

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leadership? Although these questions are all relevant, the overriding question should be: What are the necessary conceptual and behavioral skills required of strategic leaders today and in the future? Todays strategy faculty might argue that the required strategy course is already headed in the right scientific direction by presenting concepts validated by empirical research. Unfortunately, as we all know, a long lag exists, often 35 years, between research discoveries and their publication in journals and textbooks. Moreover, research on business strategy is rarely conclusive about the final truth on a given issue. There is usually a large amount of unexplained variance in the most rigorous research studies, meaning that even statistically significant results may have relatively little practical relevance for understanding a specific issue in a particular company. As a result, strategy faculty members often differ in their interpretations about what content should be taught and how to teach it, causing the same course to appear differently in the hands of two faculty members at the same school. Personal preference and psyche comfort often dictate the selection of what content to teach and how it is to be taught.

SHORT HISTORY OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT In seeking to determine a course structure and set of objectives for teaching strategic management, one can turn in many directions for clues. An easy alternative is to join the majority of peer schools in emulating what is already being done (which today means a theoretical and analytically oriented course), or at the other extreme, one can return to the original Harvard model with its almost exclusive attention to practice through the discussion of cases. Neither alternative provides a solid foundation for educating tomorrows senior executives; moreover, if either alternative is followed, students are likely to be misled or uninformed about how to cope with the broad range of complex strategic issues ahead of them. They will be facing real issues occurring in real companies involving real people. Our clues for a third approach come from examining the evolving history of the developing field of strategic management. The value of this history is it lends perspective to the present situation, allowing us to incorporate the wisdom of the past and see the trends toward the future. As in all applied fields, knowledge about strategic management has evolved as managers have faced issues not previously encountered. New strategic theories and frameworks have been continuously invented to solve these issues. Interestingly, some theories have endured; for example, the five forces and resource-based perspectives are well over a decade old, and systemic theories of fit and alignment are even olderyet all are still being taught and widely regarded as useful. Therefore, by taking a historical perspective, we can detect the outlines of a possible foundation for constructing tomorrows required strategy course. It informs us about not only well-established concepts, but also about certain enduring strategic issues and the types of skills required of strategic leaders. Drawing on several accounts of the history of strategic management (shown below in abbreviated form) is our interpretation of the evolution of major strategic concepts, models, issues, and required skills (Ghemawat, 1997; Grant, 2001; Kay, 2000; Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2000). 1940sBudget Extrapolation and Financial Goals. This era focused narrowly on financial numbers, usually extrapolating them from one year to the next in forming a plan. Strategic plans became nothing more than extended financial forecasts; thus, if this years sales were up 5%, then next years should be up likewise. And probably that was all that was needed, because it was just after WW II when growth was easy and little hard-

Potential senior executives must learn how to conceive and enact new strategies in messy situations where there is often little time for systematic data gathering, and where many stakeholders must become involved and motivated for the firm to move forward in a coherent direction.
Despite these many uncertainties about what we know or dont know about the existing knowledge base in strategic management, all instructors must decide what to teach and how to teach it. In our opinion, a scientific approach oriented primarily at the conceptual and analytical levels may be appropriate for a doctoral seminar, but we see it as too abstract and narrowly limited in substance for teaching MBA students who aspire to nonacademic careers. Potential senior executives must learn how to conceive and enact new strategies in messy situations where there is often little time for systematic data gathering, and where many stakeholders must become involved and motivated for the firm to move forward in a coherent direction.

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headed conceptualizing was required. Mostly, tactical planning was called for in organizing production to keep up with demand (Drucker, 1955; Katz, 1955). Only in a very limited way were the seeds sown for more modern definitions of management that included systemic ways of thinking and the relationship between planning and organizing. The most enlightened management book of the era was Functions of the Executive authored by an executive, Chester Barnard, who provided a holistic view of the firm and its overall management challenges (Barnard, 1938). 1950sLong-Range Planning and Formal Models. Broader planning methods were introduced in this period, moving beyond simple financial projections to include other aspects bearing on corporate success, such as new product development, capital allocation, and human resources management. Formal strategic planning systems became popular, with an emphasis on top-down, calendardriven plans prepared and coordinated by specialized staff units. General Electric led in this effort with its large corporate staff and detailed planning books. Complex planning models were developed at GE and elsewhere in academe, with many of them depicted as decision trees containing a multitude of variables for consideration in formulating a strategic plan (Ansoff, 1965). 1960sThe Business Idea and Corporate Identity. In this decade, the strategy field is characterized by more reflection and conceptualization as executives are asked to determine their company identity. For example, the top executives of an airline company might ask, Should we only be in the airline business or should we be acquiring hotels because we are in the travel business? Many acquisitions took place in this era of the conglomerate and diversification. The concepts of SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and distinctive competence were made popular for determining a companys identity (Andrews, 1971; Selznick, 1957). 1970sCompetitive Advantage Analytics. The rapid conglomeration of the previous decade fueled a boom of new analytical frameworks developed mainly by strategy consulting firms. These included the Boston Consulting Groups growth share matrix and experience curve, and the GE-McKinsey matrix, which were used to discover the relative advantages of various business units in contributing to the entire firm (Haspeslagh, 1982; Rumelt, 1974). The decade included Michael Porters landmark book in which microeconomics was applied to the analysis of industry profitability and potential sources of competitive advantage. Terms such as barriers to entry

and first mover advantage became part of everyday strategic language (Porter, 1980, 1985). Scenario planning techniques also became popular for dealing with uncertainty and unanticipated consequences (Wack, 1985). 1980sStrategy Implementation, Capability, and Alignment. During this era, disillusionment with analytical models set in, as many well-designed strategies remained mere plaques on the wall in executive suites. Management teams frequently ignored their stated business strategies while acting to satisfy their own personal goals and political agendas (Argyris, 1985). As a result, attention turned to developing concepts and concrete steps for managing change, especially around aligning the strategy and organization with cultural values and leadership practices (Peters & Waterman, 1982). The conglomeration phase of the sixties and seventies was reversed as companies focused more on their core competencies (Hamel & Prahalad, 1994; Ulrich & Lake, 1990). The resourcebased view of the firm gained currency, its proponents proposing that competitive advantage is gained through building off internal resources that are rare, nonsubstitutable, and inimitable (Barney, 1991; Collis & Montgomery, 1995). Unrelated diversification was out and focused growth was in for taking advantage of core competencies and other resources. A more holistic definition of strategic management emerged with the concept of the need to achieve a better and tighter fit between many internal elements within the firm (strategy, organization, leadership, rewards, technology, etc.), so as to move a firm forward in a coherent and unified strategic direction (Ansoff, 1984; Miles & Snow, 1985). The McKinsey 7-S model reflected this emphasis. 1990sStrategic Leadership and Reengineering. This era of Jack Welch at GE revealed how important it is for senior executives to lead a company through effective strategy implementation and major transformation. For these leaders, strategy was embodied in the person of the CEO and her/his daily behavior and decision making (Welch, Tichy, & Charan, 1989; Welch & Byrne, 2001). Emphasis was placed on the leaders ability to articulate the strategy and motivate others to commit themselves to its implementation. The CEO was viewed as a heroic role model for other managers to emulate. These risk-taking executives were also willing to completely reengineer the corporation, selling off businesses or acquiring others, usually with the concept of the value chain in mind (Hammer & Champy, 1993). Economically oriented theories, such as transaction cost theory and various concepts of shareholder value became more common

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in strategic analysis and acquisition planning. Success stories of the era included companies such as Southwest Airlines, which achieved value innovation through a committed and engaged workforce. Southwests rallying goal became competitive advantage through people (Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1997; Pfeffer, 1994). In addition, many strategy discussions occurred in the context of global development and the difficult problems of internationalizing a company (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989; Yip, 1995). The strategy field had clearly broadened its focus beyond traditional conceptions of formulation and implementation to include daily leadership. 2000sStrategy Making and Continuous Renewal. Today, in a global environment that is turbulent and unpredictable, strategic plans are necessarily shorter, less concerned with details, and more flexible (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998). New ebusiness technology and hypercompetition are causing chaotic changes in industries. As a result, the practice of strategic management is emphasizing only a few accomplishable near-term initiatives and a limited set of financial goals, instead of detailed 5-year plans with lengthy goal lists. Human capital is taking on even greater significance with a growing focus on knowledge management and organization learning (Davenport & Prusak, 2000). The capacity of the organization and its employees to adapt to continuous change (rather than the heroic leader) is seen as the newest source of competitive advantage (Collins, 2001). In addition, organizations are becoming more virtual and dependent on other organizations as they reach beyond themselves for outsourcing, supplier alliances, and Web-based endeavors (Hagel & Armstrong, 1997; Moore, 1996; Tapscott, Ticoll, & Lowy, 2000; Yoshino & Rangan, 1995). Just how the firm can effectively govern itself and its alliances has become a major strategic issue. IMPLICATIONS FOR COURSE DESIGN Reflecting on this historical account, we infer two major building blocks that should underpin any required curriculum in strategic management. First, there is the need to impart an overarching concept even philosophy and set of beliefsthat comprise what we call the strategic mind-set. This consists of what one should know about the practice of strategic management in the modern corporation, including its role and importance, as well as the many ways that it can be formulated, enacted, and changed. Without this overall strategic perspective reflecting a balanced treatment of content, disciplines and issues, students can be

easily misled or uninformed about the realities of strategic management. The second building block exists at the applied level, consisting of specific analytical and behavioral skills. Simply remaining at the conceptual or mind-set level can leave students without the necessary skills to apply their learning. Our historical review further suggests that the reality of strategic decisions today and in the future will require students to learn to deal spontaneously with incomplete information about complex strategic problems and to have the ability to influence key players and the workforce in committing themselves to a firms strategic direction (Leavitt, 1989). The Strategic Mind-set: Comprehensive and Dynamic From the historical record just discussed, we can infer a set of eight principles that make up a coherent and integrated frameworka strategic mind-setwhich, we believe, needs to be taught and learned by students in any required strategy curriculum. These principles are more important than learning about any single theory or discipline, and they should underpin and guide content selection taught throughout a required strategy course. In essence, these principles represent major learning messages that need to be amplified and conveyed in ways that are not just understood but become instinctive to the behavior of students: 1. Strategic management is comprehensive and integrative. In companies, the concept of strategic management has evolved from a simple, formal planning exercise conducted once a year into a broad and organic point of view embracing many key elements that influence and leverage the future direction of the firm, including market focus, value-chain position, financial goals, organization structure, leadership, technology, management values, teamwork, controls, and rewards. In this definition, an espoused strategy such as low-cost provider remains abstract and impotent unless combined with many of the above elements to turn it into reality. 2. All major business disciplines are relevant. No single discipline, theory or conceptual framework, or course can completely capture the complexity and dynamics of todays strategic management. Knowledge and skills from all business disciplines are needed to understand strategy formulation and implementation. In this view, the current trend, in which the emphasis of strategy courses is narrowly placed on economic and financial theories is likely to be a serious mistake, as would be a curriculum based solely on organization and leadership.

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3. Strategic thinking and behavior are highly dynamic. Over the past decade, companies have learned to live in a fast-moving world, fueled by intense global competition, rapid technological advances, and many other factors that serve to breed environmental uncertainty. Therefore, instead of using terms such as formal long-term planning, we must now engage in real-time informal planning with limited time horizons of 23 years, and even then the firms leadership must remain flexible and continuously adaptive to new threats and opportunities. 4. Constant search for competitive edge with high returns. Numerous theories and techniques continue to evolve for explaining how companies can position themselves in the marketplace to win against competitors. Companies are challenged daily in allocating resources to gain a competitive edge and benefit financially. Even when this edge is attained, competitors rapidly find ways to retaliate and thereby cause further and continuous change in a firms competitive strategy and position. 5. Every firm is indeed unique in its strategic capabilities. Although general theories and techniques can be helpful in strategic analysis, the essence of strategy making will continue to depend on each organizations talent, leadership, and resources. No single organization possesses the same capabilities, history, products, culture, talent, strengths, and weaknesses as its competitors. So every organization will have to devise a tailor-made strategy and implementation effort. 6. The firms strategy and organizational context must align and reinforce each other. A firms strategy must closely fit not only with its market environment but also with its organization capabilities, made up of its design, culture, and leadership. In fact, building innovative and flexible organizations provides a necessary foundation for executives to create and continuously reinvent strategies. Resilient leaders and nimble organizations can more easily act rapidly to exploit new opportunities and fend off threats. 7. Strategic management requires spontaneous thinking and doing. If strategy is to be enacted, it must be envisioned and reflected in the daily behavior of many leaders and employees within the firm. Under todays dynamic conditions, much of this thinking and behaving must become natural and automaticto the point where spontaneous decisions and immediate changes in strategy can take place without lengthy analysis. By then, it may be too late. 8. Strategic change will happen frequently. In todays world, a firms strategy will likely change

on a continuous basis and occasionally in one big transformational move when the organization finds itself in serious trouble or facing a discontinuous technological change in its environment. Regardless, executives need to be highly skilled at implementing all types of strategic change. Taken together, these eight principles encourage students to adopt a mind-set that conceives of strategic management as: (1) comprehensive and integrative across disciplines, (2) requiring a wide range of analytical and behavioral skills, while, (3) making and behaving strategic decisions under highly dynamic, uncertain, and changing conditions. Although this sweeping conception appears to us as unheeded in the design of many current strategy courses, numerous scholars before us have made these same points (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2000). Interestingly, from an executives perspective, all eight principles are clearly illustrated and supported in Louis Gerstner, Jr.s recent enlightening account of the IBM turnaround (2002). This book should be required reading for all strategy professors. The current challenge before us is to use a comprehensive set of principles, such as the eight above, to provide the foundation for designing and teaching the strategy curriculum. If students are taught and can absorb a holistic strategic mind-set reflecting these basic principles, they will be better able to appreciate the importance of learning a wider variety of concepts and applied skills. The Applied Skills: Analytical and Behavioral Our review of strategic history clearly indicates that students must also acquire certain applied skills if they are to function effectively as strategic leaders. These include not only a wide range of analytical skills for diagnosing strategic issues and planning realistic action steps, but also the behavioral skills involved in formulating, implementing and changing a firms strategy. These two skill sets of analysis and behavior are closely related and interdependent. Analytical expertise without the complementary behavioral skills to involve others in the total process can result in both badly formulated strategies and failed implementation. Conversely, effective behavior without the substance of a sound strategic analysis confines one to motivated employees who are groping in the dark. Table 1 summarizes the required skills that fit under each of the two major skill sets. Analytical skills include frameworks and techniques for diagnosing and changing strategic situations. They provide future executives with a toolkit that can be

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TABLE 1 Analytical and Behavioral Skills

Analytical Skills Content Awareness What are the key concepts, theories and models in use today for understanding strategy formulation and industry dynamics, and where did they come from? What are the main analytical methods in use today? What are the key strategic issues facing companies todayglobally and by industry? What are likely to be the major strategic issues facing senior executives in the future? What are the useful theories and methods for introducing and succeeding at various types of strategic change? What are the well-documented cases and research findings on those companies that have succeeded or failed at setting new strategic directions? Content-In-Use How many different analytical frameworks are needed, and can be absorbed, by students and executives alike? Which are most understandable to nontrained executives? How can we use analytical tools outside the classroom to organize and understand data from specific companies and industry situations? How does one recognize patterns in messy and missing data, and then infer strategic issues from them? How can we frame strategic alternatives and then recommend a desirable course of direction? In what format can the leader put into writing or words the companys strategic direction so that it clearly communicates to employees, the media, and investors? How does an executive develop a realistic plan of action that takes account of trade-offs in priorities, timing, and political considerations? Behavioral Skills Developing the Strategy How can the leader act to gather data relevant to strategic direction when much of this information is rarely evident or perhaps even intentionally withheld from the leader? How does one act interpersonally to involve others in trying to conduct a diagnosis and infer conclusions? How does the executives personal involvement in the organization affect the quality of their analyses, as well as the validity of data made available to them? How can the leader translate academic concepts into an understandable strategic language for others who have not been exposed to the same technical language? Implementing the Strategy What steps are needed to mobilize the executive team and the rest of the organization to implement the strategy? How does one respond to others when they bring up implementation problems of resistance, negative feedback, and objections? How does one behave to create a sense of urgency to motivate others so they want to alter the firms existing strategy? How can the leader articulate the firms strategy in understandable and convincing terms to investors and employees? How can one build political coalitions to support the strategy? How does the leader locate and persuade the right people to take on key jobs while moving others out? How can one lead in a way that keeps mangers focused on implementing the strategy when daily events divert attention? How can one act in ways to demonstrate personal commitment to the strategic direction while also signaling openness to change? How can one quickly revise the strategy when under great pressure and competitive threats?

drawn on and used effectively depending on the requirements of the specific situation. Behavioral skills enable a strategic leader to navigate through messy organizational and political situations in order to devise an acceptable strategy that will be implemented. We describe these skill sets more as questions than answers for course planners. While all seem relevant, faculty must rely on their informed judgments as to how to define which skills to teach, and how to go about it. We hope our questions are sufficiently suggestive to form a mirror against which all of us can reflect and to ask ourselves if we are teaching the appropriate skills in our currently required strategy courses. Answers to these skill-related questions will no

doubt be difficult to come by or agree on. We do think, however, that no single course or faculty member can possibly convey all the required skills to students, especially given the inherent limits of course time and instructor capabilities. To rely exclusively on one required strategy course, as is the current practice, causes unfortunate tradeoffs about what should and should not be taught. These choices, as we have suggested, are currently being made in favor of economic/financial theory and analytical thinking over behavior and practice. In contrast, our reading of the historical evolution of the field suggests that the how of strategy execution needs to be treated with as much emphasis as the what of strategic content. Although strategy instructors may contend that they address

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the action issue with lectures, readings, and case discussions, this approach still causes students to miss out on valuable learning that can occur only from the experience of actually taking action on strategic issues. Such learning through actual behavior is a key part of gaining professional expertise in many professions (e.g., rounds in medical school), and should be essential to learning the applied skills and appropriate mind-set for becoming a strategic leader. Obviously, we cannot make all our students CEO for a day, so we need to invent new learning methods that simulate strategic reality as much as possible, and then help students reflect on their actions as they encounter these new learning environments. LIVING EXPERIMENT We will use USCs Executive MBA program as a concrete example of walking the talk, which represents our attempt to bridge the knowing doing gap in the strategy curriculum. Although we believe our approach to teaching strategic management is unique, we have no intention of setting it up as a paragon for emulation. We prefer that it be seen as a living experiment spanning over 18 years, with many strengths and weaknesses. But we hope to stimulate others to re-examine their approaches and to experiment further. To gain a clearer picture of the USC program, we focus on its second-year curriculum because it is entirely devoted to teaching strategic management from an integrative point of view, as well as to conveying the essential applied skills. The curriculum emphasizes the need for managers to frame strategic problems holistically and to behave effectively in reaching solutions. Without integration, a newly conceived strategy will be missing in key elements, and without leadership skills, it will not be implemented effectively. Achieving a Strategic Mind-set To provide a comprehensive and integrative view of strategic management, the curriculum is structured around five specific themes or modules, each composed of three to four disciplines selected from finance, marketing, communications, strategy, entrepreneurship, technology, and organizational behavior. The second year begins with a 10-week theme on understanding the strategic environment, then moves to an 8-day international trip to look at companies in the global environment, followed by a 10-week theme on formulating strategy, and another 10-week theme on strategy implementation.

As an example, the first theme of the second year is titled Understanding the Global Business Environment. In this theme, international finance addresses macroeconomics and comparative economy; communications teaches the importance of leaders as negotiators and spontaneous speakers to multiple stakeholders; marketing teaches how to recognize and exploit niche opportunities in highly competitive and changing global markets. Achieving integration within themes across faculty members with strong egos and deep attachments to their disciplines has not been easy (this is probably the main reason integration has not taken hold in many business schools). Despite putting in place the thematic structure, our faculty did not move quickly toward integration; in fact, they acted more as a herd than a team, going their separate ways while politely acknowledging one another. As a result, we created the following six mechanisms to support integration in the program: 1. A theme coordinator for each theme to lead the theme faculty members in planning and arranging the schedule, team teaching, project design, workload, and grading. 2. Required team teaching sessions built into the schedule, which for each theme are held in the opening session and also four to six times during a theme. 3. Frequent use of a single case for a concluding final exam on which theme faculty base their individual questions to probe unique but related perspectives. 4. A single grade for each theme based on a merger of individual faculty grades. The faculty members meet to combine their grades and agree on a final distribution. 5. Uniform policies to assure common treatment by faculty on grading, attendance, and workload. 6. Special feedback sessions, called pub sessions, where theme faculty members appear as a team and listen to student comments, followed by refreshments in the universitys faculty center. Team teaching has become an important pedagogical method for conveying a strategic mind-set to our students (as well as for building mutual respect among the faculty). Faculty members are constantly experimenting with their various approaches to team teaching; some jointly teach a case, others participate from the side while one is up front teaching, and some work together in workshops, advising students on cross-disciplinary projects. As an example, in one of our themes, finance and organizational behavior professors

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discuss newspaper accounts of two successful leveraged buyout (LBO) attempts. They then work back and forth in front of the students, leading a discussion about how the management approaches in each company either solve or detract from the financial and strategic restructuring of each firm. The entire second year has become, in essence, a lengthened, coordinated, and extended capstone strategy course. A side benefit is that faculty members, because of their many team-teaching experiences, have developed a more integrated perspective for the contribution of their respective disciplines. As a result, all instructors in the second year now increasingly teach their disciplines content from a strategic perspective. Learning Analytical and Behavioral Skills Given the dynamic and highly uncertain nature of todays economic, social, and political environment, students need to learn that corporate leaders must act out the firms strategy through their behavior on a daily basis. They have little time to refer to a theoretical framework or to conduct a lengthy study before making strategic decisions. Consequently, our program helps students to gain not only a strategic mind-set but also a wide ranging set of analytical and behavioral skills. We want students to be able to make judgment calls in ambiguous settings and to feel confident in acting as spontaneous leaders when real-time strategic decisions are required. To accomplish the imparting of applied skills and behavior, the second year of the USC program puts students through a continuous series of learning-by-doing exercises and projects, which repeatedly involve them in analyzing strategic issues and engaging in behaviors typically identified with strategic leadership. In the formative years of our program, these exercises were limited only to two consulting projects, one in the first year and another in the second year. However, we expanded the number of exercises and projects when students increasingly demanded greater relevance and application in our teaching about strategic management and its related disciplines. The faculty slowly reached the obvious conclusion that there is a big difference between hearing about concepts in the classroom and practicing them in real-world settings. So we gradually introduced more hands-on exercises intended to embed strategic thinking and action taking in the minds and behavior of students. These experiences are designed to enable them to try out new behaviors and applications, and then reflect on their results for

continued learning and development. This intensive exposure is similar to that practiced by athletic teams in preparation for game timerepetitive drills across a variety of situations so athletes can respond automatically and reflexively when faced with similar situations in actual games. Although we still use cases in our program, they have become less important than the experiential methods that now occupy half of the second-year curriculum (lectures and cases compose the other half). First, we frequently bring senior executives into the classroom to act as role models for students. Although faculty members are obviously important to the learning process, the students identify more with executives. These executives discuss strategic issues in their companies and their approaches to corporate leadership. All faculty members are expected to bring speakers into their classes, and this past year there were 14 executive speakers. Next is our widespread use of simulations, exercises, and field projects throughout the second yearall designed for students to practice strategic analytical skills and to reinforce certain behavioral capabilities. Listed below is a brief description of the major exercises and projects used during the second year, each of which is usually implemented across all disciplines in a theme, although in a few instances within a single discipline. 1. Publishable Paper (all program faculty members involved). Students are asked to investigate a topic in their industry and draft an article that they must submit to a trade journal. They are required to take a senior executive and strategic viewpoint on the topic. All faculty members in the program participate in the evaluation process; each faculty member reads and comments on four papers in two rounds of drafts. The objective is to train students to analyze industry issues by going out to gather data and to hone their behavioral skills by preparing an article for a practice-oriented audience, written in everyday terminology. Each year about one third of the students in the class (25) succeed in publishing their articles. 2. MarkStrat Simulation (marketing faculty member). This widely used simulation occurs in an 8-week strategic marketing exercise conducted in teams, with each team running a company and competing against other teams. Here students are trained to set and revise strategies in response to performance feedback, and to do so while interacting with other team members. Analytically and behaviorally, they apply analytic models, examine data, and make strategic decisions on a real-time basis. Moreover, they must learn to work as an

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executive team, influencing each other as they try to reach consensus on strategic decisions. 3. Meet the Press (communications faculty member). Students are given a strategic dilemma, such as, You are the CEO of Ford facing reporters questioning you about the Explorer turnover problem. Reporters from the Los Angeles Times and USCs Annenberg School of Communication play the role of reporters quizzing each executive. These encounters are videotaped for self-examination and peer critique. The purpose of this exercise is to train students to respond to a strategic crisis in a spontaneous manner while acting under pressure. 4. Debate Competition on Sociopolitical Issues (finance, communications, and marketing faculty). Pairs of student teams are assigned the same debate topic chosen from a range of contemporary issues, such as Was NAFTA a Good Idea? or Should consumers have control over the release of personal information given to companies? Each pair debates its topic in front of the class, followed by feedback from university debate coaches. This training emphasizes the ability to stand on ones feet and articulate a persuasive point of view in a few words about a complex macro-issue concerning a major sociopolitical issue affecting the corporation. All this occurs under pressure as the class observes and assesses which team comes across as most convincing. 5. International Trip (finance and organizational behavior faculty members). Here, students take an 8-day trip to two countries where they hear from senior executives, government officials, and visit companies. This training is intended to create firsthand awareness of comparative economic systems and cultural differences in conducting business abroad, as well as to enhance students confidence in negotiating their way in unknown cultures skills often required of strategic leaders today. 6. Merger and Acquisition Project (finance and strategy faculty members). This 11-week project involves teams of students assigned to investigate a major merger deal currently in the news, evaluating the price to be paid and the mergers likely strategic implications. Two teams compete on the same deal. It is both a finance and strategy project in that the merger has to be evaluated for both its financial and strategic value. The competing teams search out data on their assigned companies, study their industries, prepare financial spreadsheets, and develop a briefing book for the class before making an in-class presentation. Class members then react to each teams briefing book and presentations, providing constructive feedback. 7. Entrepreneurship Project (faculty members

from USCs Entrepreneur Program). Each student is required to create a new business concept and develop a business plan, which is written up as a prospectus in a short document. Here, students learn about the strategic aspects of entrepreneurship and how to integrate different disciplines to support their new business concepts. Faculty members evaluate and give feedback on each proposal. 8. Writing a Statement of Strategic Direction (strategy faculty members). This exercise teaches students how to make strategy clear and compelling by learning to write a strategic plan in concrete and easily communicated terms. The plan is divided into five key sections relevant to a firms intended strategic direction, preferably all stated on a single page with bullet points under each of following five topical headings: (1) determine competitive logic and market tiebreakers, (2) set key financial goals, (3) create rallying goal, (4) set organizational guidelines and management values, and (5) determine key action initiatives. In performing this exercise, students are required to use many of the analytical tools acquired earlier in the program, and to translate abstract strategy concepts into conversational rhetoric. They are taught the value and use of an applied strategic vocabulary, using such words as choice, focus, goal, align, team, consensus, collaborate, clarity, organize, communicate and behave in phrasing their bullet points. 9. Strategy Consulting Project (strategy and organizational behavior faculty members). This concluding field project occurs in the second-to-last theme just before graduation; it involves small teams of four to five students assigned to perform a strategic analysis and to make an oral presentation to a clients top-management team. Team members must locate their projects by selling a prospective client company on its value. This assignment lasts for 11 weeks and involves extensive fieldwork supplemented by five half-day workshops conducted during class time. The most unusual part of this project is the final presentation. Rather than write a lengthy written report, as is typical in similar projects, each team is required to make an oral presentation to the clients topmanagement team and to submit a videotape of its presentation. The tapes and presentation overheads become the final product for faculty evaluation. A feedback report is given to each team by faculty evaluators. It is interesting how students struggle with this consulting project despite having received a great deal of training in analytical tools for strategic analysis up to this point. They rapidly learn that

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real companies are messier and more incomplete than classroom cases, and that relevant data are both hard to obtain and analyze for patterns revealing strategic issues. Students also learn to stand up before real CEOs, distilling their ideas into persuasive insights, and facing tough questions. Continuing Challenges Needless to say, our program continues to face difficult challenges. Few of our incoming students arrive with a well-developed strategic mentality, despite 8 12 years of work experience. Most have been rewarded early in their careers for pragmatic problem solving, not strategic thinking and behavior. Although we find that conveying the appropriate analytical tools and frameworks is a challenging task, our biggest hurdle remains one of helping students recognize that learning theories and analytical models are only the intellectual starting points to understanding strategic management; in addition, the applied skills of analysis, implementation, and behavior still remain. Our program has to be continuously and actively managed and coordinated because of its integration, projects, and team teaching and grading. There is always something coming loose. Faculty members make assignments that conflict with others. New faculty members have difficulty adjusting to our team approach. Students like to play off one faculty member against another. Projects take considerable time and effort to manage. New content from developments in the business world needs to be introduced, yet we are squeezed for time and space. Heavy demands are placed on faculty time, far beyond those encountered in standard teaching programs. Frequent informal lunch meetings for faculty are typical, as well as a required half-day annual planning meeting of all faculty. Team teaching, advising on projects, and joint grading all require a large amount of time and effort. As a result, it is a challenge to devise special ways to reward faculty members. Their main need is time for research and writing, not money, so our most effective solution is to free up time by arranging for faculty to teach fewer sessions combined into intensive blocks of half-day class sessions held only once per week. In this way, faculty members are inclined to give more effort while finishing their commitments sooner than in a normal one-semester course that meets twice a week for 80 minutes each time. As for occasional new faculty members, their transition is made easier by becoming part of a supportive theme team. Course-based programs

often make this transition difficult because faculty members are treated as being in competition with each other for teaching ratings. Many issues mentioned above also exist in other MBA programs, although we probably feel them more intensely because we have created high expectations about course integration, faculty coordination, and hands-on training (Schlesinger, 1996). When we fall short, students are disappointed and they readily let us know. We constantly assess our progress, although it is hard to measure in precise terms. Keeping in mind that attributions about causality are problematic, we think that to date, several signs point to consistently positive results. On a survey taken by all students at the end of each theme in the second year, the overall learning scale from 1 (low) to 5 (high) has never fallen below an average of 4.0, and usually runs about 4.4. The program itself is ranked 6th worldwide in the 2002 BusinessWeek rankings, and 10th in 2003 US News, and its emphasis on integration has been praised by these publications. We have also been invited to give frequent demonstrations of specific aspects of the curriculum at the national Executive MBA Council meeting of EMBA directors each year. The EMBA Council conducts an annual exit survey of students, and we consistently score higher than peer schools on all items related to student learning and satisfaction. Another positive sign is that the faculty members strongly prefer to stay in the program; indeed, we have never had a serious request to leave. In recruiting students, we consistently fill our entering class with 70 to 75 students each year; many of whom are attracted by the programs thematic integrated approach, team teaching, and practice training, which we use as selling points against more traditional programs in the local market. Among our programs alumni, approximately 120 out of 1,000 graduates are currently at the C level (Chairman, CEO, COO, CFO, and CIO). SUGGESTIONS FOR OTHER STRATEGY PROGRAMS Our objectives in this article are to provide a critical perspective on current practices in teaching strategic management and to encourage greater experimentation by others in the future. We realize that we have taken a different path at USC, which works well for us but may not for others. We believe that most faculty members in other business schools, including nonstrategy faculty, will agree that strategic management should be taught and required in their MBA programs. Students of all

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ages and positions need its perspective for daily decision making and advancement in their careers. The key issue is how to structure and teach this important subject. Keep in mind that we are quite in favor of the use of theory and research findings in courses on strategic management; its just that we dont think they should be the only or even the main emphasis in preparing students for the future, and used by themselves, they can even be misleading. The first place to begin is in the training of doctoral students in strategic management. Little content about pedagogy is presented in most programs; rather, students learn about teaching indirectly from observing their senior professors and from teaching a few courses, mainly to undergraduates. Most doctoral students are not made aware of experiential training methods that go beyond case teaching and lecturing. Even the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management is negligent on this front; only two sessions out of 137 for the 2003 program refer to teaching or curriculum design, both conducted in the PDW program. But the issues go beyond pedagogy into areas of content related to strategy implementationwill doctoral students be taught more than a narrow range of theories related to

strategy formulation and analysis? Will they also cover theory and research findings related to strategy implementation, strategic change, and strategic leadership? Clearly, our doctoral programs and the Academy need to do more. A good way to begin is to design and conduct half-day workshops in our doctoral programs and in the PDW program of the Academy. New MBA students typically enter school having previously acquired a number of thought and behavioral habits that reveal limited tacit knowledge about stategic management. To move them off this habitual level of behaving and thinking requires more than the minimal conditioning provided through case teaching, which provides only initial practice at analytical skills but little in the way of action taking. Figure 1 depicts the educational process of habit breaking through the use of a variety of repetitive exercises, and how our USC program positions itself to deal with this issue relative to other types of strategy teaching. Although many MBA programs and their strategy courses leave leadership training to their organizational behavior courses, this can easily mislead students into thinking that strategic management is largely an analytical exercise without behavioral consequences. As a result, they mistak-

FIGURE 1 Behavioral and Analytical Skill Acquisition Through Tacit and Explicit Knowledge Methods

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enly assume that the process of strategy formulation contains within itself the solutions for implementation, or that implementation follows formulation in a logical sequence. These are mistaken learning lessons, failing to recognize that even seemingly minor decisions about who to include in the strategy formulation process can affect both the substance of strategic conclusions and the degree of commitment to a subsequent plan of action. Our program is based on a fundamental assumption that strategic content and related behavioral skills must be addressed simultaneously in the curriculum, and that this interconnection be made clear in the learning process. At the same time, we recognize that it has been much easier to implement our integrated second-year curriculum in an EMBA program for experienced managers than in a long-established MBA core program for younger students. Our program is relatively small (total of about 155 students and 18 faculty in the first and second years at same time), involves a fixed curriculum and a dedicated senior faculty team. Traditional full-time programs tend to be larger with more instructors who have a greater diversity of teaching and practical experience among them. Also, we are well aware that the culture and reward systems of business schools tend to reinforce the independence of disciplines, thus making it difficult for integration to occur. We do think, however, that varying degrees of change can be attempted in schools that want to experiment but not go as far as we have. Certainly, EMBA-type programs can be considered a prime target for change; most are currently organized as reactive replicas of their full-time, discipline, and course-based programs. Our view is that EMBA programs can be leaders in curriculum innovation, and that there can be spillover to the regular MBA program. For full-time programs, especially in schools where the strategy course occurs in the first year, an effort can be made to restructure the entire first year, resembling something like the second year of our thematic structure, or the first year cited earlier at the University of North Carolina, or the concluding 7-week project at the University of Michigan. Another good exemplar is the radical change made by the University of Denvers Daniels College of Business in its full-time program, which replaced 22 courses with 7 interdisciplinary megacourses. This effort was intended as transdisciplinary, so that total learning was greater than the sum of its individual parts (Fukami, Clouse, Howard, McGowan, Mullins, Silver, Sorensen, Watkins, & Wittmer, 1996). Short of this dramatic form of restructuring, the

strategic management course can be repositioned at the end of the first year and presented to students as the programs capstone course. In that position, its content can be built upon that of previous courses and integrated with surrounding courses. Integration with these other courses might begin with small steps involving one or two crossfunctional, team-teaching sessions, and later evolve to a field-based strategy consulting project with faculty from different disciplines acting as advisors to project teams. We have found that breakthroughs are often possible when instructors from different disciplines begin to realize that students react more favorably to all of the facultys disciplines when they are presented within a strategic context. In addition, we dont think it is asking too much to suggest that discipline-trained faculty teaching strategic management reach out to learn more about (and respect) other relevant disciplines, including not only economics and organization but also leadership, marketing, and operations. Even if links with other courses and faculty members are not possible, the strategy course itself can be restructured to include a greater emphasis on applied skills to be acquired through hands-on projects and exercises. The challenge here, because of limited class time for a course, is to find innovative ways to teach theory and analytical skills while simultaneously engaging in doing-type projects. Our view is that the pedagogy for developing these skills is still in a primitive state when it comes to the availability of excellent experiential methods. We have had to invent many of our own, and we hope these methods will look rather crude and obsolete in the years ahead. Behind these possibilities, we need to address the fundamental question of who should be teaching the strategy course. If so many of todays doctoral students are discipline trained, it may be too much to ask that they suddenly embrace more practice into their courses. Clearly, we need discipline-trained teachers and it would be stupid to suggest sending them out to work as executives for several years. More practical solutions have to be found by including additional material on practice in doctoral training and pairing junior faculty with senior faculty mentors when the latter go out to do consulting. Another approach would be to make the first 7 weeks of an MBA program theoretically focused and taught by a teacher capable in that arena, and then the last 7 weeks of the first year could be devoted to practice taught by highly experienced part-time executives and consultants. An even more intriguing, although more costly approach, would be to team up an academic with a

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practioner teacher in the same course, or a theoretical faculty member with a practice-oriented one, so that they could go back and forth to achieve greater balance and integration. It may come to splitting the faculty into two career tracks, research and clinical, with the latter responsible for teaching strategic management. This would be a regrettable solution because of the value of interchange between research and practice. Clearly, each school and its faculty members will find themselves at different places on this spectrum of issues and opportunities; therefore, each program will have to operate within its own resources and faculty culture to move forward. We continue to believe that the overriding challenge for those of us teaching strategic management is to find ways to integrate with other disciplines, as well as to invent learning methods that require increased practice of both analytical and behavioral skills. As we proceed, more knowledge about the teaching of strategic management needs to be shared between schools. It is remarkable how little we know and discuss among ourselves about teaching as compared to the many existing forums for sharing research interests. It is even more worrisome when we realize how little research has been conducted to evaluate alternative teaching models, especially when research is at the heart of the faculty enterprise. Ironically, we continue to invest in a questionable strategy curriculum for which there is little empirical evidence to support its current direction and learning value. We need to know much more about what happens to our students in their future careers, because the biggest challenge for teachers of strategic management will come when alumni attempt to apply their learning real time. Meeting that challenge will become everyones final exam, although it comes rather late for making corrections. In the interim, if schools and strategy faculty accept the challenges put forth here, we are hopeful and optimistic about the results. REFERENCES
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Academy of Management Learning and Education Dr. Larry Greiner (DBA, Harvard Business School) is professor of management and organization at the Marshall School, University of Southern California. He is the author of numerous publications on the subjects of organization growth and development, management consulting, and strategic change. He has been Academic Director of the USC Executive MBA Program for the past 15 years.

December Dr. Arvind Bhambri (DBA, Harvard Business School) is associate professor of management & organization at the Marshall School, University of Southern California. His research interests include strategic change, competitive strategy, global business development, and leadership. In 2002, he received the Golden Apple Award for outstanding teaching in the Marshall Core MBA program.

Thomas Cummings (PhD, University of California, Los Angeles) is professor and chair of the Department of Management & Organization at the Marshall School, University of Southern California. His major research and consulting interests include designing high-performing organizations and strategic change management. He is the vice president and program chair of the Academy of Management.