蜜桃传媒

Indeed, Edison believed that the best learning was diverse learning, and he wanted all of his collaborators to know a lot of different things. All prospective employees took a written test of 150 questions geared toward different jobs and classifications. College graduates were asked a raft of questions like 鈥淲hat is the first line in the Aeneid? Who composed Il Trovatore? What voltage is used on streetcars?鈥� Cabinet makers were asked: 鈥淲hich countries supply the most mahogany? Who was the Roman emperor when Jesus Christ was born?鈥� Edison demanded scores of 90 percent or better for those who would enter into what became known as his 鈥渋nvention factory鈥� in Menlo Park, New Jersey. The message: People need to think elastically and creatively no matter what job they鈥檙e doing; an engineer could learn a thing or two from Shakespeare.

Roughly a century and a half later, the worlds of management鈥攁nd management education鈥攁re slowly catching up with Edison and other iconic figures. Leaders in industry and management education have begun to grasp (at least in principle) the value of widely diverse learning, along with the need to create and employ professionals who think broadly, creatively, analytically. Such ways of thinking may be lagging in some organizations, but they鈥檙e essential to a management education at a liberal arts university, notably a Jesuit one. Which is why, at the Carroll School, we have spent much of the past decade or so building a bridge to the arts and sciences. In fact, it is not uncommon for our undergraduates to take a majority of their courses in the humanities and natural sciences.

All that raises a bracing question: Is management a liberal art?

Consider Warren Buffett. He would have to be considered I-shaped in the sense that he鈥檚 all about finding better ways to invest money. As biographer Roger Lowenstein notes, 鈥淗is talent lay not in his range鈥攚hich was narrowly focused on investing鈥攂ut in his intensity.鈥� True, but Buffett did make a point of seeking out sources of ideas that were unfrequented by other investors. In the past, most of his colleagues were primarily interested in the mechanics of the stock market. Buffett, however, searched for information about the intrinsic value of a given company. This led him beyond a narrow cluster of familiar sources.

In 1963, Buffett was closely studying American Express. At the time the company boasted a million cardholders, but things quickly began to unravel. A New Jersey subsidiary of the company imploded in a scandal involving fraud (by a third party), and American Express stock plunged by nearly 50 percent. Amid this crisis, Buffett continued to study the company鈥攂ut in unusual ways, like an anthropologist conducting ethnographic research, or perhaps a journalist doing in-depth reporting, rather than a purely I-shaped investor.

He went to Ross鈥� Steak House in Omaha, not to chowdown but to sit near the cashier and talk to the owner. He observed that patrons were still using American Express cards to pay for their dinners, and assumed that the same would be true in other cities. The next day, he dropped in on banks and travel agencies that use American Express traveler鈥檚 checks, before turning up at supermarkets and drug stores that sold the company鈥檚 money orders. At all stops the American Express trade was brisk. Using his communication skills, Buffett also interviewed the company鈥檚 competitors. As Lowenstein summarizes in Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist:

His sleuthing led to two conclusions, both at odds with prevailing wisdom:

1. American Express was not going down the tubes.
2. Its name was one of the great franchises in the world.
   

Along the way, we have made sure that traffic on the multidisciplinary bridge is chugging in both directions. We鈥檝e done that partly by creating seven new minors in management disciplines exclusively for non-management majors, who nonetheless take these classes together with Carroll School students, enriching the perspectives of both student populations. Still another lane of that bridge is the Summer Management Catalyst Program, which introduces management to non-management majors.

The results: 58 percent of our 527-strong class of 鈥�23 graduated with a major or minor from the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences; these students and many others are now taking more credits in the arts and sciences than in management disciplines. Coming from the other side of the bridge, more than 1,300 Morrissey students are minoring at the Carroll School.

One of our newest courses, Coding for Business, throws light on the bold assertion by Steve Jobs that even computerscience is a liberal art. The course is part of our management core curriculum, and we are taking what Jobs would call a liberal arts perspective on coding鈥攚hich, in our understanding, is about much more than writing code. It鈥檚 about thinking. We鈥檙e teaching students how to specify a problem, identify the variables and how these relate as pieces of the solution, and then figure out how to use the precise syntax of the language (Python, with a dash of SQL) to formulate the solution. This is an exercise in logical, disciplined problem-solving; students will be able to apply that learning to wide-ranging situations as managers in a T-shaped world.

In the final analysis, the best leaders and managers make wise choices for their organizations and stakeholders. And the wisdom they need comes from combining technical expertise and competence with an astute sense of their various contexts, including cultural, social, historical, and other vantage points. When a management education integrates these different realms of knowledge, creating pathways to the arts and sciences, our students gain wisdom.

At Boston College, management is truly a liberal art.