[英语时文阅读 中英文对照] 《哈佛商业评论》专家论点:管理,并不是

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理，并不是一种职业

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September 30th, 2010

The Big Idea: No, Management Is Not a Profession

《哈佛商业评论》专家论点：

管理，并不是一种职业

by Richard Barker

作者：Richard Barker

It is natural to view management as a profession. Managers’ status is

similar to that of doctors or lawyers, as is their obligation to

contribute to the well-being of society. Managers can also be formally

trained and qualified, notably by earning an MBA. If management is a

profession, the business school is a professional school.

人们一般认为，管理是一种职业，而经理人的地位类似于医生或律师，他们都对社会做出了杰

出的贡献。经理人大多进行过系统学习和正规训练，个别优秀的会有MBA学位。如果我们把管

理看成是一种职业的话，那么“商学院”就和“职业学校”没有分别了。

That perception has fueled criticism of business schools during the

recent economic crisis. They have come under fire for allegedly failing

in their obligation to educate socially responsible business leaders.

The same perception has informed the schools’ response, which has been

to work toward greater professionalism. Writing in the June 2009 issue

of Harvard Business Review, Joel Podolny, a former dean of the Yale

School of Management, argued, “An occupation earns the right to be a

profession only when some ideals, such as being an impartial counsel,

doing no harm, or serving the greater good, are infused into the conduct

of people in that occupation. In like vein, a school becomes a

professional school only when it infuses those ideals into its

graduates."

这种看法在最近的经济危机中招致了许多批评，责怪那些商学院没有培养出具备社会责任感的

商界领袖。同样，越来越职业化的学校也对这种看法做出了回应，耶鲁大学管理学院前院

长Joel Podolny在2009年6月的《哈佛商业评论》上的一篇文章里这样说道：“一种职业之所

以被称之为‘职业’，是因为（所提出的）一些想法可以获得公众行为准则的认可，比如一位

公正的律师，不仅可以服务大众，而且对社会无害。就像血管一样，只有学生们接受了那些想

法，学校才有可能变得更加职业化。”

Podolny is in sympathy with Harvard Business School professors Rakesh

Khurana and Nitin Nohria, who argued in the October 2008 issue of HBR

that it was time to make management a true profession. In their view,

“True professions have codes of conduct, and the meaning and

consequences of those codes are taught as part of the formal education

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of their members.” Yet, they wrote, “unlike doctors and lawyers,”

managers don’t “adhere to a universal and enforceable code of

conduct.”

Podolny和哈佛商学院教授Rakesh Khurana与Nitin Nohria的观点一致，他们在发表

于2008年10月《哈佛商业评论》的文章中谈到已经是时候将管理变成一种真正的职业了，在他

们看来，“真正的职业有自己的行为准则，而从事这项职业的人一定接受过关于这些准则的含

义与重要性的教育”，他们还说，“与医生和律师不同”，经理人不会“局限于那些普遍的、

可执行的行为准则”。

These calls to professionalism are hardly new. Writing in the very first

issue of HBR, in 1922, HBS professor John Gurney Callan claimed,

“ay be thought of as a profession [and] we may profitably

spend a good deal of time in considering what is the best professional

training for [those] who are to take important executive positions in

the coming generation.”

其实这种关于“职业”的说法早就不新鲜了，在1922年，哈佛商学院教授John Gurney

Callan在《哈佛商业评论》上就声称：“企业管理……或许应该被称为是一种职业，我们要用

大部分时间来考虑如何为那些将要身居管理要职的人们提供最好的职业训练！”

A. Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard University, was even more

assertive in his 1923 HBR essay “The Profession of Business” (adapted

from his address to the incoming class at HBS the previous September).

He attributed the very creation of HBS to the emergence of business

management as a distinct profession.

哈佛大学校长ce Lowell在1923年《哈佛商业评论》上的评论文章《企业管理中的职

业》（改编自他1922年9月的讲课内容）中的态度更加自信，他认为哈佛商学院独具创造性地

把企业管理培养成了一种明确的职业。

In contrast with these views, I will argue that management is not a

profession at all and can never be one. Therefore, business schools are

not professional schools. Moreover, laudable and beguiling though

professional standards and ethics may be, and however appealing

professional status is, hanging the mantle “professional” on business

education fosters inappropriate analysis and misguided prescriptions.

和这些看法相反，我认为管理不是一种职业，并且永远不会是；同时，商学院也是不职业学

校；此外，不管如何来判定职业道德的好坏，职业地位有多么诱人，打着“职业化”名头的企

业管理教育只会培养出错误的分析与解决办法。

Let’s begin by examining what actually constitutes a profession.

下面，我们先来看一看“职业”是怎么构成的。

What Is a Profession?

什么是职业？

Professions are made up of particular categories of people from whom we

seek advice and services because they have knowledge and skills that we

do not. A doctor, for example, can recommend a course of treatment for

an illness; a lawyer can advise us on a course of legal action. We

cannot make these judgments ourselves—and often we cannot judge the

quality of the advice we receive. The Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow wrote

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y

about the medical profession, “The value of information is frequently

not known in any meaningful sense to the buyer; if, indeed, he knew

enough to measure the value of information, he would know the

information itself. But information, in the form of skilled care, is

precisely what is being bought from most physicians, and, indeed, from

most professionals.”

职业由一群特定的、可以为我们提供意见或服务的人组成，这些人拥有我们所没有的知识和技

能，举例来说，医生可以告诉我们如何对疾病进行治疗；律师可以告诉我们如何进行诉讼，而

我们对这些事无法做出自己的判断，同时也无从得知所得到建议的质量。诺贝尔奖得

主Kenneth Arrow是这样描述医学类职业的，“对于（医疗）信息的价值，一般的消费者（患

者）完全不知道它的意义所在，如果他知道如何去衡量信息的价值，那他一定对信息本身相当

了解，但据一些医疗护理信息显示，专业化程度越高的医生，会越受到患者的青睐。”

It is true, of course, that most nonprofessional providers of goods and

services also have knowledge that we don’t. We cannot, for instance,

manufacture a computer or operate a train service. Nevertheless, we can

judge whether or not our demand has been met: We know what to expect

from our computer, and we know if our train is delayed. The difference

is that we might act on a lawyer’s advice and not know its quality,

even after the case has been completed. Perhaps she gave us good advice

but the case was lost, or vice versa. The outcome might have been more

or less favorable had her advice been different. We are in no position

to know, because the professional is the expert and we are not. There is

an asymmetry of knowledge.

这当然是事实，即便是那些商品和服务的提供商也拥有很多我们所没有的知识，比如制造一台

电脑或者提供“一条龙服务”，可我们可以判断他们是否能满足我们的要求——比如对电脑性

能的要求，对火车准时性的要求等等。但律师行业有所不同，我们可能会遵照某个律师的建

议，但是却无法得知这些建议是否合理，即便案子已经结束。或许会出现这样的情况：她给我

们提供了非常好的建议，但是却输了案子，反之亦然，最终的结果可能会因为她意见的不同而

大相径庭，但我们却不知道其中的原因（知识的不对称），就是因为这是他们的职业。

In some cases the knowledge asymmetry is relatively transient. A taxi

driver in a foreign town provides us with a service, using his knowledge

of the local geography. Once we arrive at our destination, however, we

can ask a local whether the driver’s route was the most direct, and

thus reduce the asymmetry. But who evaluates legal advice for us?

Although we could ask another lawyer, he couldn’t offer a second

opinion without being informed of the details of our case—which would

amount to hiring two lawyers to do the work of one. Furthermore, the two

lawyers might advise us differently, and we’d be unable to distinguish

the better advice.

在某些情况下，知识不对称是相对暂时的。比如在国外的某个小镇上，一位出租车司机依靠自

己的乡土地理知识为我们提供服务，当我们到达目的地的时候，我们会问当地的居民那位司机

所走的路是不是最近的，以此来降低知识的不对称性。但是又有谁来为我们来评估那些“法律

意见”呢？我们倒是可以咨询一下其他的律师，但他是不可能给予我们额外意见的，因为一个

案子只能请一个律师，而他并不是这个案子所指定的正式律师。此外，两个律师有可能会给我

们提供截然相反的建议，而我们却无法分辨出哪个是更好的。

In practice, our lawyer herself implicitly assures us that we can rely

on the legal advice she is giving. This relatively permanent knowledge

asymmetry is the mark of the true profession; as consumers, we have no

option but to trust the professionals with whom we transact.

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Nevertheless, we might be unwilling to transact at all without some

guarantee that the services we receive meet a minimum quality threshold.

That requires the existence of professional bodies, whose regulatory

role enables consumers to trust their advisers, thereby making a market

for professional services feasible.

在实际中，律师会向我们保证可以相信她所提出的法律意见，这种相对持久的“知识不对称

性”是“职业”的一个显要标志，对于消费者来说，除了相信这些专业人士之外别无选择。不

过，我们大都不会与那些连最低的服务质量都无法保证的人达成合作，这就需要那些专业机构

促使消费者相信他们的意见，从而使“专业服务市场”保持繁荣。

For a professional body in any given field to function, a discrete body

of knowledge for that field must be defined, and the field’s boundaries

must be established: When, for example, is something a medical or legal

issue, and when is it not? There must also be a reasonable consensus

within the field as to what the knowledge should consist of: If

physicians cannot agree on how the human body functions, or lawyers on

the nature of a contract, no discrete body of knowledge can be said to

exist. The boundaries and consensus for any profession will evolve over

time, but at any given moment they can be defined—which is what enables

formal training and certification. Certification signals competence to

consumers who would benefit from it.

对于任何一个领域里的专业机构的职能，我们一定要对这些“知识分支”加以界定，让其与其

它的领域划清界限，比如某件事究竟属于医疗问题还是法律问题？同时，对于这个领域内应有

的知识内容，大家应该达成一致——如果医生对人体的各项功能意见不一，或者律师对合同性

质的见解不一样等等，那么这些知识的分支就没有存在的必要了。对于各个行业的界定都在随

着时间的推移而趋于一致，一旦它们被定义下来，那么就需要进行正式的培训和认证了，而所

谓的“认证”就是告诉消费者谁有能力做好这件事（而从中赢利）。

Professional bodies hold a trusted position. They have, in effect, a

contract with society at large: They control membership in the

professions through examination and certification, maintain the quality

of certified members through ongoing training and the enforcement of

ethical standards, and may exclude anyone who fails to meet those

standards. Society is rewarded for its trust with a professional quality

that it would otherwise be unable to ensure. This is the model for the

legal and medical professions and others, including accounting,

architecture, and engineering.

专业机构一般都可以获得大众的信赖，实际上他们和整个社会有一个约定：由他们组织考试或

认证来控制某种职业的人数，通过不断的培训和道德标准的约束来保证从业人员的质量，同时

剔除那些不符合标准的人们。社会将认可那些职业素养高的（低的可能会被淘汰掉），这样的

模型适用于法律、医学、会计、建筑师和工程师等职业。

As I will argue, neither the boundaries of the discipline of management

nor a consensus on the requisite body of knowledge exists. No

professional body is granted control, no formal entry or certification

is required, no ethical standards are enforced, and no mechanism can

exclude someone from practice. In short, management is not a profession.

Moreover, management can never be a profession, and policies predicated

on the assumption that it can are inherently flawed.

所以我要说，无论是管理学科的诸多界限，还是知识界所存在的各个分支，没有任何一家专业

机构是可控的，没有任何一种正式的认证是必须的，没有任何一条道德标准是被强制执行的，

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也没有任何一种机制可以排除实践中的人。简言之，管理并不是一种职业，同时管理也永远不

可能成为一种职业，而以上的分析中也能看出管理和职业之间是有本质区别的。

Why Not Management?

为什么管理不是一种职业呢？

One might ask, If medicine can reach agreement on the requisite body of

knowledge for becoming a physician, why can’t business do the same for

management? After all, isn’t the MBA a general-management

qualification, and isn’t there a reasonable consensus on MBA curriculum

content? It is generally agreed that nobody should be allowed to

practice medicine without schooling and certification; is society not

also at risk from a business leader with no license to operate?

Moreover, don’t several organizations, including the Graduate

Management Admission Council and the Association to Advance Collegiate

Schools of Business, play roles similar to those of established

professional bodies? And why shouldn’t we introduce and enforce ethical

standards?

有人可能会问，如果学医学的人可以在达到相关行业机构的要求后成为一名医生，那么学商学

的为何不能成为一名管理者呢？是因为MBA不是一般的管理认证？还是因为MBA的授课内容不一

致？大家都知道，如果没有接受过教育和取得认证（行医执照），任何人都不能从医，但是如

果那些商业领袖没有所谓的“从业执照”，这个社会就要陷入危险的境地了么？此外，也没有

几家组织，包括“管理专业研究生入学考试委员会”（译者：简称为GMAC，成立于1954年，是

总部位于美国的一个非营利性教育协会，其成员包括世界各地许多知名的商学院）和“国际高

等商学院协会”（译者：简称为AACSB，成立于1916年 ，是全球首屈一指的商学院和会计项目

非政府认证机构），可以发挥类似于前面所提到的专业机构的作用，那么为什么我们不能自己

来制定和执行（管理方面的）道德标准呢？

Asking whether a consensus can be reached on the body of knowledge that

qualifies someone to be a manager—on the basis of which society would

delegate control of the training for, certification in, and practice of

management to a professional body—is not the same as asking whether

consensus is possible on the MBA curriculum. That is a narrower question

of whether business schools can agree on what they should teach. The

real issue is whether what the schools do teach qualifies students to

manage, in the way that an MD qualifies someone to practice medicine. I

will argue that the answer is no, and that therefore management cannot

become a profession.

如果你要问那些对职业经理人进行认证的行业机构是否能达成一致（在一个可以对那些提供管

理培训、认证和实践服务的专业机构进行授权的社会里），这个问题与“MBA课程能否统

一”是不一样的，它其实就是在片面地问商学院能否同意教授那些制定的课程。真正的问题在

于，学校所教授的知识是否符合学生？是否阻碍了医学博士指导某人进行医学实践？我的回答

是否定的，这也正是管理不会成为一种职业的原因所在。

Consider the nature of a business contract, which in its narrowest form

is a detailed, precisely worded document, drafted by a professional

lawyer and specifying the terms of an agreement, including prescribed

remedies in the event of certain outcomes. The contract is the result of

a professional service delivered to managers. Managers also seek the

services of accounting firms for internal audits, of engineering

consultancies for capital expenditure projects, and so on. Each

transaction requires the specialized skills of a professional. Each is

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also an output from the professional’s perspective and an input from

the manager’s perspective.

想一下商业合同的特性：统一的格式、专业律师起草、措辞严谨而详尽、对协议的各个方面进

行规定，包括对某些结果的补救措施等，而合同就是经理人所收到的专业服务之一，他们还需

要其他的服务，如让会计师事务所进行内部审计、让工程咨询公司进行项目支出预算等等，每

一方面都需要特定的专业技能，而每一方面又都是由经理人提出，然后由专业的公司来实现

的。

The manager, however, is responsible for bringing together many inputs.

The lawyer is always concerned with matters of law, whereas the

manager’s focus may change significantly and unpredictably from one day

to the next. In general, the professional is an expert, whereas the

manager is a jack-of-all-trades and master of none—the antithesis of

the professional.

经理人，主要负责汇总各方的意见。律师一般只关注法律相关的问题，而经理人所关心的东西

是不可预测的，随时都在发生着变化。职业人员一般都是（某个领域内的）专家，与之相反，

经理人就是样样皆通、样样稀松的“万金油”。

The argument can be taken further. The lawyer writes a contract and

charges for her time; her work is finite. Even when she has an ongoing

relationship with a corporate client, her contribution is always a

specialized input, measurable in terms of the amount billed. But the

manager is responsible for the combined value generated by all inputs to

the firm. Inputs are managed at varying stages in a product’s life

cycle, and at any given time products are at different stages in that

life cycle—meaning the manager’s job is never done. The manager’s

contribution is inherently difficult to measure and has an

indeterminable impact on a variety of outcomes. The difference between

the lawyer’s world and the manager’s is rather like that between the

value of a single revenue transaction and the value of a company as a

whole. As a completed output with a monetary value, the revenue

transaction is relatively objective. A company’s share price is

subjective—dependent on imprecise assumptions concerning a range of

inputs, and ultimately a best guess about the future.

我们可以就此论点进行更加深入的分析。律师的工作是有限的，写了一份合同的费用可以一次

性支付，即便她和某个企业客户达成了持续的合作关系，她的付出也是一种特定的投入，是可

以用数量来衡量的。而经理人需要对公司在投入与产出间产生的所有价值负责，在产品生命周

期的不同阶段要有不同的投入，而每个“阶段”的任何时间都可能会出现问题，这也就意味着

经理人的工作是永远做不完的，经理人的贡献本来就很难衡量，还要受到各种不可估计的结果

的影响。律师与经理人之间的区别就如同“单独的交易收入”与“公司的整体价值”之间的区

别，作为一种货币价值的输出形式，一笔交易的收入是客观的，而一个公司的市值是比较主观

的——依赖于一系列不精确的假设和对未来的猜测。

All this accords, of course, with the reality that no true professional

bodies have emerged in the field of management. Consider again an

analogy with medicine: Although we cannot expect an unqualified person

to successfully conduct brain surgery, successful businesses are

frequently run by people without MBAs. It is unthinkable that society

would allow an unqualified person to even attempt brain surgery, but

nobody would seriously suggest that an MBA be required for entry to

management. We can, of course, offer business education, including

certification in the form of MBAs and other degrees, and such education

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can reasonably be assumed to generate better managers. Yet the

difference between a business education and a professional education is

stark and fundamental: The former may help individuals improve their

performance, but it cannot certify their expertise. The role of the

manager is inherently general, variable, and indefinable.

出现上述的这些观点，都是因为目前在管理领域没有真正的专业机构。再来看看对“医学”的

分析：我们绝对不会希望一个不合格（没有行医执照）的医生来进行脑科手术，但成功企业的

领导者大多没有MBA学位；社会不会允许不合格的医生来尝试进行脑科手术，但却没有人认为

非得有MBA学位才能进入管理层。当然，我们可以认为通过商业教育（包括授予MBA学位和其他

形式的认证）可以培养出更好的经理人，但是商业教育和一般的专业教育是完全不同的，前者

可以帮助个人提高（某方面的）能力，但是却不能证明其有何专长。经理人的角色本来就是不

断变化且难以描述的。

Business Education

商业教育

The inherent differences between the professions and management have

direct implications for the design of education in each. Professional

education enables an individual to master the body of knowledge deemed

requisite for practice. It comprises three stages: admission, during

which potential entrants are screened for intellectual ability and

aptitude; a taught program, during which educators impart knowledge of

the subject; and formal assessment, which leads to certification.

Business education also involves admission, a taught program, and

assessment, but the similarity is superficial only. If business

educators, imbued with notions of professionalism, fail to recognize the

fundamental differences, flaws in the business education model will

inevitably result.

“职业”与“管理”之间的内在差异直接影响到各自的教育课程设计，“职业教育”中所学到

的知识是一个人进行实践的必要条件，它包括三个阶段：①入学——对入学者进行智力和学习

能力方面的筛选；②教学——教师教授各学科的专业知识；③评估——决定谁能获得（从业）

证书。“商业教育”也包含这三个阶段，但仅仅是看起来相似罢了，如果从事“商业教育”的

老师还用“职业教育”的观念来授课，而没有认识到两者的本质区别，那么势必造成“商业教

育模式”上的缺陷。

Admission.

入学

Professional education is about taking a given individual on the journey

from having little or no knowledge or experience to becoming qualified.

But business education is typically post-experience, meaning that

participants are not novices. An MBA program offers them an opportunity

to share, conceptualize, and better understand workplace experiences; to

build on the skill of working with others; and to open up new career

opportunities. To admit only students with little or no work experience,

as the professions normally do, would be to misunderstand the nature and

purpose of the learning experience.

“职业教育”是将有很少或没有相关知识与经验的人培养成一个合格的从业人员，而“商业教

育”是一种典型的进修（课程），也就是说参与者都不是新手。MBA课程为他们提供了一个机

会来分享、总结、更好地理解工作经验，提高与他人合作的技巧，以及获得新的就业机会。那

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些进行“职业教育”的学生，大多没有什么工作经验，所以难免会误解学习的本质和目的。

A second difference is that although professional education is concerned

exclusively with the individual, a quality business education depends in

a distinctive way on the peer group. Thus no given candidate can be

effectively evaluated independent of all the other candidates.

第二个区别是，由于“职业教育”是针对个人进行的，而高质量的“商业教育”一般会采

取“团队培养”的独特模式，所以没有候选人可以对其他人进行有效而独立的评估。

Suppose you wanted to provide a course in international business. Most

people would probably agree that learning international business is not

about the textbook acquisition of technical knowledge but, rather, about

a concentrated exposure to the breadth of experience and understanding

that helps make someone a better global manager. A prerequisite for

learning is therefore diversity in the classroom—which requires that

the nature of admissions be rethought.

假设你想学习一门“国际商务”课程，大多数人都会认为这其实并不是通过学习教科书掌握一

门技术，而是通过对一些经验和看法的集中讨论，来使大家成为更加优秀的“国际经理人”。

其中在入学时要一再考虑的一个学习的先决条件是，保证课堂（知识或活动）的多样性。

This is particularly a problem for management education in the United

States. A typical class in a top-tier U.S. school might be made up of

70% American students, 20% international students with close ties to the

U.S., and 10% genuine “outsiders.” International business is taught by

means of case studies, which allow students to discuss subjects ranging

from trade relationships with China to cross-cultural management in

Eastern Europe to outsourcing in India. This process, unfortunately but

inevitably, is superficial. It is unrealistic to think that American

students who have had American experiences—even when they have the

benefits of a good textbook and a great professor—can conjure up a

meaningful understanding of international business through class

discussion, however academically gifted they may be.

这是在美国“管理学教育”领域普遍存在的一个问题。在一个典型的美式高级学校的班级里，

一般会有70%的美国学生，20%和美国相关的国际学生，以及10%真正的“外来学生”，“国际

商务”课程采用的是案例教学，学生们所讨论的案例包括中美贸易关系、东欧的跨文化管理以

及印度的外包业务等等。很不幸，又无法避免的是这个过程比较肤浅，让一个毫无经验的美国

学生（他的学习成绩或许会非常出色）仅仅通过课堂讨论就对“国际商务”有深刻的认识，显

然是不切实际的，即便他有一本不错的教科书和一位知识渊博的教授。

Because a student at business school has a direct impact on the learning

of others, the strongest class is likely to be the strongest combination

of individuals. Many graduates recognize the truth of this. Jacklyn

Sing, an alumna of the MIT Sloan School of Management, describes a view

among alumni: “Some of the classes proved useful to their current work

[but] the specifics fade in the memory. It is the people in the program

that shape the experience and make all the difference.”

许多商学院的毕业生都认为，学校里最直接的影响来源于学习别人，一个最棒的班往往是因为

他们由不同的个体完美结合起来的。Jacklyn Sing（麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院校友）描述了

这样一个观点：“有些课程对我们现在工作非常有用，但一些细节可能会慢慢忘掉，正是那些

在授课过程中的人形成了不少经验，从而使每个人都不尽相同。”

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This view will be familiar to anyone who has studied or worked at a

business school. For technical training to fade in the memory would be

alarming in a medical doctor, but it is understandable in business

school alumni. Again, that is because business education is not about

mastering a body of knowledge.

这种观点对于那些在商学院学习过或工作过的人来说非常认同，如果一位医生忘记了一些技术

知识，那将会非常可怕，但对于商学院的学生来说，这完全可以理解。所以“商业教育”并不

要求你去掌握一门知识体系。

The program.

授课方案

Consider the following finding from a formal review of the MBA program

at London Business School: “The corporate leaders we interviewed indeed

produced an extensive list of qualities they desired in future recruits,

but almost none involved functional or technical knowledge. Rather,

virtually all their requirements could be summed up as follows: the need

for more thoughtful, more aware, more sensitive, more flexible, more

adaptive managers, capable of being moulded and developed into global

executives.” LBS summarizes these requirements as attributes rather

than skills. They are intrinsically soft and indefinable. They can

probably be learned, especially in a business school environment, but it

is not obvious that they can be taught, which is what would be expected

from a professional school.

在伦敦商学院MBA授课方案中我们有以下发现，“在接受我们采访的公司领导人中，几乎都是

所在企业的精英，但大部分都没有要求去学习具体的技术知识。相反，他们的要求可以归纳如

下：成为更周到、更清醒、更敏感、更灵活、适应能力更强、更能适应社会发展的‘国际

型’管理人才！” 伦敦商学院将其概括为“特质重于技术”，它们在本质上是软性而难以描

述的，它们很容易被学会，尤其是在商学院的环境里，但它们不像“职业学校”所认为的那样

容易教授。

The exhibit “The Value of the MBA Program” shows some findings from a

survey of approximately 600 MBA alumni of Cambridge University. In terms

of its usefulness in their careers, the alumni valued the learning

environment above the curriculum itself. They ranked learning that took

place outside the business school classroom, and more broadly in the

university, as the most useful. Next came company-based consulting

projects, which are not part of the taught curriculum but are a

component of small-group learning. Within the curriculum itself the

softer skills of strategy and leadership were most prized. Clearly, the

environment within which people learn can be more powerful than the

specific material taught.

在“MBA课程价值展”上，展示了大约600份剑桥大学MBA校友的一些调查结果，就课程对其职

业生涯的作用来说，校友们更加看重学习环境的好坏，他们列举了一些商学院课堂之外的地

方，范围越广，学习效果就越好！接下来是基于公司的咨询项目，虽然这不是所学的课程一部

分，但却是小群体学习的一部分。对于课程本身来说，一些软性技能如战略眼光和领导能力

等，大家的评价都比较高。很显然，大家学习时的环境要比学习的内容重要得多。

None of this is to say that functional areas are unimportant. Rather, we

need to broaden our perspective on business education. Any business

needs effective execution in functional areas, but that is not the role

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of the general manager, of the business leader. The general manager

should have an understanding of these areas, and the combination of

textbook learning and classroom discussion is an effective way to

achieve it. But it would be a mistake to think that business education

stops there. The manager must also acquire the core skill of integration

and decision making across various functional areas, groups of people,

and circumstances.

这并不是说那些“（实用）技能领域”是不重要的，相反，我们需要对“商业教育”的看法进

行扩展。“技能领域”在任何企业都会得到有效地执行，但是这并不是一个总经理作为商业领

袖应该扮演的角色，总经理需要对这些领域有充分的了解，而通过将教科书学习和课堂讨论结

合起来，很容易就能达到这个目的，但千万不要认为“商业教育”仅此而已，经理人还必须能

够通过对不同领域、不同人群和不同环境的综合分析来进行决策。

The skill of integration distinguishes managers and is at the heart of

why business education should differ from professional education. Yet

business schools have always wrestled with how best to help students

acquire this skill. The difficulty is partly structural. Faculty members

almost universally specialize in one functional area and typically lack

the expertise to teach (or sometimes even to cross-reference) material

from others. Case studies, which are typically written from a functional

perspective, reinforce this limitation. The Yale School of Management

has pioneered a curriculum based on the co-teaching of integrated

classes, but this is a challenging model that others are unlikely to

follow.

这种对经理人“综合分析技能”的要求正是“商业教育”与“职业教育”的区别所在，同时，

商学院也在绞尽脑汁来帮助学生们掌握这一技能，难点出在（课程）结构上，教员们几乎都专

注于某一个技能领域，但缺乏可以教授的专业知识，即便他们相互参考各自的材料。而案例教

学也是从技能的角度撰写的，这让其局限性更加明显。耶鲁大学管理学院已率先通过双方合作

来建立进行“综合课程教学”的班级，这将是一个其他人不敢跟随、极具挑战性的（授课）模

型。

The key here is to recognize that integration is not taught but learned.

It takes place in the minds of the students rather than in the content

of program modules. The students themselves link the various elements of

the program. Thus it is vital that business schools understand

themselves primarily as learning environments, where individuals develop

attributes, rather than as teaching environments, where students are

presented with a body of functional and technical content.

这里的关键是要认识到“综合技能”不是被教会的，而是（主动）学会的，它发生在学生的思

想层面上，而不是教科书的固定教学模块里，学生会自觉将教学方案里的各项内容联系起来。

所以商学院必须能够了解学生的需求，首先要考虑的就是能为学生提供一个能让其个性得到自

由发展的学习环境，这比一个让学生学习技术知识的教学环境要重要得多。

First and foremost, business education should be collaborative. Consider

Oxford University’s MBA program, in which a class has about 240

students, each with about six years of work experience, who represent

nearly 50 countries and almost all sectors of the economy. That amounts

to some 1,500 years of experience. The pedagogical opportunities in

sharing it are obvious—and they require an environment in which

students actively work together and learn from one another. This goes

much deeper than networking, the much-cited benefit of business schools.

Networking is important in the professions, too, and doctors and lawyers

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are equally likely to look back on school relationships with a warm

glow. But in a collaborative learning environment the people around you

are more than just colleagues and friends; they are an explicit and

valuable part of your educational experience. It follows from this that

effective business education cannot be delivered exclusively online,

because online delivery is a teaching mechanism, not a learning

environment. Dick Schmalensee, a former dean of MIT Sloan, has

acknowledged, “We’re trying to maximize the quality of what we deliver

and don’t feel going online will help us achieve that.” Implicit is

the recognition that business education is about more than the

acquisition of textbook knowledge.

首先，“商业教育”是需要协作进行的。在牛津大学的MBA课程中，一个班级大约有240人，每

个人有6年左右的工作经验，这相当于1500年的工作经验！同时，他们来自近50个国家的经济

相关部门，所以，这其中的学习机会是显而易见的。他们需要一种可以让大家积极合作，相互

学习的环境，这要比网络交流更加深入，也可以让商学院获得更加丰厚的利润。网络在“职业

领域”也非常重要，医生和律师们都希望通过这种方式和（毕业）学校保持良好的关系。但

在“协作型”的学习环境中，大家并不仅仅把周围的人当成是同事和朋友，他们都会是你学习

过程中极有价值的一部分。由于网络教学只是一种教学方法，而不适合作为学习环境，所以有

效的“商业教育”方式是不会仅通过网络来进行的。麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院前院长Dick

Schmalensee已经说过，“我们正试图最大限度地提高我们的服务，但是我不认为网络能够帮

助我们实现这一点”，这让我们也认识到，“商业教育”所传授给人们的（知识和技能）要多

于一般的课本知识。

Moreover, business education is explicitly not one-size-fits-all. Most

MBA students have prior work experience; each of them is building in a

unique way on a unique foundation and will experience the program

differently, learn different things, and emerge to pursue a different

career. An important implication is that learning needs differ according

to the stage of a student’s career. For example, a younger student

might gain little from studying the responsibilities and functions of

boards of directors but might need precisely that knowledge 15 or 20

years later. In other words, business education is best delivered in

doses throughout a career, rather than in a single shot at the

beginning.

此外，“商业教育”没有一个明确的、适用于所有人模式。大多MBA学员都有工作经验，每个

人都会依据独特的基础来寻找独特的方法，这就会使每个人有不同的学习方案、学到不同的知

识，进而产生不同的职业追求。这里的意义就在于，学生们不同的职业生涯规划决定了他们去

学习不同的知识。举个例子，一位年轻的学生在学习“董事会的责任和功能”时或许会觉得没

什么用，但可能15年或20年后才会用到这些知识。换句话说，“商业教育”所传授的知识会融

入到一个人整个职业生涯之中，而不是仅仅为了找个饭碗而已。

In this regard, the Insead model is exemplary. The one-year MBA program,

which was pioneered by Insead, is successful in part because some of the

fundamental benefits of immersion in a business school environment can

be captured within one year; the second year conveys primarily technical

or functional knowledge. Exposure to the learning environment over time,

however, continues to bring benefits, so Insead also runs one of the

largest executive education programs in the world. It is a lifelong

learning partner, not a one-stop certification shop. That is precisely

what business education should be.

在这方面，欧洲工商管理学院（译者：Institut Européen d'Administration des

Affaires，INSEAD，是欧洲的顶级工商管理院校，本部位于法国塞纳-马恩省的枫丹白露）的

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模型堪称典范。一年制的MBA课程由Insead首创，它成功的地方就在于可以借助学院的环境，

帮助学生在一年之内完成所有的基础课程，第二年主要教授专业知识。Insead一直保持开放

的、可以为学校持续带来利润的学习环境，正因为如此，Insead拥有全球最大规模的高管进修

项目之一。这不是一个“一站式”的认证培训机构，而是一个终身学习的伙伴，真正的“商业

教育”就应该如此。

Assessment.

评估

Evaluation is actually neither problematic nor contentious in technical

and functional areas. It is perfectly possible—and appropriate—for

ability to be measured in finance or accounting, and for students to

compete for the highest grades. But we have seen that business education

is about more than clearly defined subsets of knowledge like these; its

essence is in softer, indefinable attributes and experiences that have

relevance in interpersonal contexts. Thus we should not be surprised

that an academic grading system cannot reliably predict managerial

ability.

对“专业技能教育”领域进行评估是非常简单而且没有争议的，我们可以非常公正地用考试中

获得的分数来评价金融与会计专业的学生。但我们很清楚地知道，对“商业教育”的定义没有

其他学科那么清晰，它的本质是软性的，有许多无法描述的与人际环境相关的特质，所以难怪

一般的学科分级系统无法对管理能力进行准确的评测。

Assessment in these softer areas is problematic in two respects: It is

difficult and thus perhaps arbitrary, and it risks being

counterproductive because it can damage a learning environment. If a

business school is a competitive environment, in which the myth is

maintained that the best future business leaders will score the highest

grades, dysfunctional behavior inevitably results. Why learn

collaboratively if doing so helps your competitors score higher grades?

Why develop attributes of leadership, of interpersonal impact, if you

are graded on individual performance in functional subjects? Why immerse

yourself in the learning environment if you can get better grades by

immersing yourself in a textbook? How can business schools embrace the

diversity of candidates’ prior experiences and learning opportunities

if everything comes down to performance under a homogenized grading

system?

对这些软性（学科）领域进行评估要注意两方面的问题：随机性较高而产生的困难；（评估工

作）可能会适得其反，从而破坏学习环境。如果商学院是也一个竞争性的环境，评价的标准就

是成绩越好，就越能在将来成为最好的商界领袖，那必然结果就是会催生出不正常的行为和想

法：为什么要学习相互协作呢？这样做会帮助你的竞争对手取得更高的分数！如果依靠自己的

努力就能拿到一个不错的学科分数，为什么还要通过人际关系的影响来发掘领导人的特质呢？

如果通过对教科书的学习就能考高分，为什么还要那么看重学习环境呢？如果依照普通的等级

评分制度来对学生的表现进行评价的话，商学院如何才能保证学员工作经验和学习机会的多样

性呢？

Grading is important in technical and functional areas, but the

distinctiveness and vitality of business education require that a

grading culture be downplayed. Students are there to contribute to and

benefit from a rich learning environment; they are there to be empowered

rather than ranked.

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等级制度在技能领域是非常重要的，但出于对独特性与活跃性的要求，在“商业教育”中，所

谓的“等级文化”会被淡化掉，学生们会在一个丰富的学习环境中得到进步和收获，在这个环

境中，只有授权，没有排名！

Management educators need to resist the siren song of professionalism.

Functional and technical knowledge is an important component of business

school curricula, but it is not the essence of management or the

substance of business leadership. Nor is it what makes a business school

like Harvard or Stanford great. Business schools do not uniquely certify

managers, enabling them to practice. Nor do they regulate the conduct of

those managers according to a professional code of practice. What they

do is provide learning environments that consolidate, share, and build

business experience, that accelerate personal development and growth,

and that help equip managers to deal with their diverse working

environments. Business schools are not professional schools. They are

incubators for business leadership.

从事管理学的教育者们要能抵抗得住“职业化”的诱惑，技能知识固然是商学院课程中重要的

组成部分，但它不是管理与商业领导领域的本质内容，也不能将一所商学院发展得像哈佛和斯

坦福那样伟大。商学院不为经理人提供可以让他们实现就业的认证，也不去规范经理人的行为

和职业操守，商学院要做的是为学员们提供一个学习环境，让大家可以分享、获得、整合业务

方面的经验，促进个人发展和成长，从而使经理人可以从容地面对不同的工作环境。商学院不

是职业学校，他们是“商业领袖”的孵化器！

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