Harvard Business School

"Of all assistant professors hired since the 1960s," wrote Dean John McArthur in his 1982-83 report to Harvard's president, "one-third received their graduate training at HBS (Masters or Doctorate) and two-thirds received their training elsewhere.  Furthermore, the proportion of 'outsiders' has been growing over recent years.  In some fields and areas, in fact, virtually everybody we hire comes to us from outside without any prior training at the School. . . .

"I think that hiring people almost exclusively by and into traditional and often narrow academic fields presents real and unnecessary problems.  Those doing the hiring, in this context, often have little feel for the quality available and dynamics associated with other narrow specialties or the market as a whole.  So, their evolving standard can tend to become a reflection of what is available to them.

"This approach is, of course, traditional in the academy.  In business education, most of the widely recognized schools do the bulk of their hiring within a very small number of widely 'accepted' academic specialties.  This approach is not in any real sense required or even indicated for HBS.  Our faculty has in the past and should in the future continue to come from a wider range of academic and professional fields and backgrounds.  The broad and changing range of activities and needs being served that comprise our School even demand that we maintain a uniquely heterogeneous faculty.

"This fundamental difference in our manning requirements, and hence in our faculty recruiting and development options, but mirrors the profound and growing difference between our mission and those being pursued by almost all the other business schools.  We must have the self-confidence necessary for us to hire and promote the people we really need, given our mission, and not just those around whom a broad consensus of support exists in the academy.  It's not easy to do!"