Pdf-muodossa - Kymenlaakson ammattikorkeakoulu

usiness schools respectable academic underpinnings and offered grant money
toward achieving that end. Driven by conscience and cash, top-tier universities
began to treat their business schools almost as seriously as law schools. By the end
of the twentieth century, nearly all the nation’s leading business schools – the two
dozen or so elite MBA-granting institutions and another dozen schools fighting
to join the highest echelon – offered a curriculum of academic distinction. But, in
the process, their focus switched, and now the objective of most business schools
is to conduct scientific research (Ibid.).
European business schools were, and still are, heavily influenced by their US peers.
It is enough perhaps to remember the MBA frenzy of the 1990s when MBA programmes
were introduced by most major business schools in Finland. It is not
only the MBA programmes whose curriculum and main actors are in question.
The problem seems to be in the relevance of available and offered business education
to its main consumers: students and businesses. The backbone of business
education could be summarised in who does what thus narrowing the problem
area to the academic personnel that is involved in teaching and the academic
curriculum.
2.1. Lecturers
A key player in the learning process at any business school is the academic personnel
in general and particularly lecturers. That will mean that the quality of academic
personnel is of upmost value, especially since often it is the lecturers that
will determine the academic curriculum and course content. Thus the selection
criteria when choosing academic personnel appears to crucial. It is a cold fact of
life that getting an academic position in most business schools is directly linked
with the publishing record of the applicant measured not only in quantity but also
in quality (Frey, 2004). With different variations in job description requirements
that aim to diversify the expected skills and knowledge, at the end of the day it is
ones publishing record that matters.
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Such selection criteria have a tremendous impact on the way and thinking and career
construct for academic personnel that boils down to the US originating slogan
“publish or perish”. It could be laughed of as pathetic if it were not taken by academic
scholars totally seriously. As a result all energy is focused and invested on
publishing in “good” journals, which is a world in itself. Quoting people from the
targeted journal editorial board is recognised if not an openly acclaimed strategy.
Getting into an editorial board is thus considered important advancement in ones
academic career. Other ingredients of the fine art of publishing include extensive
quoting of recognised authors and basically imitating their style and reasoning.
Most importantly one must definitely try to contribute towards better theoretical
understanding. One example could be the impact of research in entrepreneurship
for business and policy makers. There are numerous indications that such research
does ”Nothing much, really” - the suggested reason is partly an inability of
researchers to address the most relevant issues and to present their findings in a
form and place that reach practitioners (Davidsson, 2002).