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MBA INSIDER: BEST SCHOOLS FOR MANAGEMENT By Mica Schneider The Making of Good Managers - Part 1 Turns out that effective management techniques aren't so easy to define -- or impart. And these days, those skills are more crucial than ever 
INTRODUCTION B-school professors like to point to Kirkstall Forge, a metalworking shop in Britain, as the first company to have ever been organized, in 1151. It finally closed in 2002. And they cite Zildjian, a maker of cymbals founded in Constantinople in 1623, as the world's oldest family-owned company. The difference between those pioneers and a modern-day multinational such as General Electric may be a matter of light years, but they all have had one thing in common: To one degree or another, they had to be managed. That's obvious, but its implications seem to frequently elude the people who run Corporate America. How else to explain why more than half the companies listed in the Fortune 500 back in 1979 no longer exist, at least as independent entities -- or that more than 90% of the companies on that list when it debuted in 1955 are kaput, according to Will Mitchell, a professor of strategy and international management at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Consider, as well, that more than half of the 24 largest bankruptcies in U.S. history have occurred since 2001. And let's not forget the scandals of 2001-02 that brought down or tarnished such major names as Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Tyco, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup. What caused those failures and miscues, and how do executives make sure their companies avoid such a fate and prosper? In broad terms, those two, simple questions drive the research worldwide by hundreds of B-school academics whose specialty is the presumed science of managing. Their goal is to unravel the cause of the failed strategies -- poor execution or unforeseen crises -- and the management reactions that separate a Montgomery Ward from a Wal-Mart. ------------------------------------ The Top Management Programs The following B-schools win acclaim from students and researchers alike for being at the vanguard of management education (in alphabetical order): Dartmouth: Students get lessons in both the nuances of leadership and cutting-edge research on strategy. This small department benefits from a distinguished history of teaching management and from a new generation of strategy experts. Duke: The management department has increased its research and its course offerings by hiring a new batch of strategy professors and by adding management specialties. Harvard: A cutting-edge faculty and student access to global business leaders help explain why this is the place to go if you want to become a CEO. Michigan: A seasoned cadre of faculty members lead Michigan's management departments. The school offers an excellent mix of electives and strong research. MIT: Students benefit from innovative thinking on management -- plus a just-updated curriculum. Northwestern: Its strengths in research and teaching make it an established route to management-consulting firms. Pennsylvania: Wharton's management department covers all the bases, with a large faculty teaching time-tested courses. And it's no slouch on research. Stanford: It's home to one of the largest organizational-behavior groups at any U.S. B-school. Some strategy courses round out the school's management offerings. Data: BusinessWeek Online How They Made the Cut This list of leading schools represents the best judgment of the BusinessWeek Online staff, based on information and reporting that includes the following: The rankings of corporate recruiters BusinessWeek polled for its 2002 B-school rankings; the number of electives a school offers in the subject and the number of full-time faculty who teach it; interviews with the department chairperson or leading academics at the school to review its strengths and weaknesses -- and those of competing schools; and an assessment of the school's contribution to research in the field. Note that we haven't ranked the leading schools in any order other than alphabetically. ------------------------------------ How Recruiters Rate the Schools The following MBA programs got the best marks for teaching management: 1. Harvard 2. Northwestern 3. Michigan 4. Pennsylvania 5. Duke 6. Virginia 7. Dartmouth 8. Indiana 9. Chicago 10. Stanford Data: BusinessWeek 2002 MBA Recruiters' Survey ------------------------------------ That's no simple assignment, especially in the wake of the dot-com bust. During the last years of the 1990s, the biggest problem many companies faced was finding a way to participate in the breakneck growth of the Internet Era. Analysts and investors demanded it and were quick to label conservatively managed companies unimaginative and backward. Since then, however, the focus of management has returned to the basics, with a vengeance. The skills that inspired admiration in the late '90s -- the ability to create quirky (and often crazy) product ideas; the chutzpah required to raise millions from overly eager venture capitalists to fund wispy concepts; the first-mover, short-term, me-first mindset it took to cash out while the opportunity was ripe; the arrogance of a generation of young managers who had never experienced a setback -- all of that seems irrelevant, or nearly so, in today's more sober environment. No longer do 20somethings refer disdainfully to their older, pre-Net peers as has-beens who "just don't get it." Instead, if they're lucky enough to still have a job, they've learned the painful disciplines of drastic cost control, grubbing for revenue, and leadership under fire. And don't forget how to motivate underlings even as they get loaded down with mountains of extra work for no extra pay. Because of the changed environment, schools are slowly beginning to alter the way they teach management. Topics such as how to manage in changing times are suddenly the rage, as are courses in ethics. The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University has decided to drive home such lessons with a new focus on leadership and ethics in its core curriculum. Other schools, such as the Chicago Graduate School of Business and Dartmouth's Tuck School of business have similar programs. Continue to Part 2  Schneider covers management education for BusinessWeek Online in London
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