A Pioneer of Management Research and Education in Japan: Challenges from Kobe University Business School by Norio Kambayashi & Kyohei Hirano & Izumi Mitsui

Author:Norio Kambayashi & Kyohei Hirano & Izumi Mitsui
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789819908684
Publisher: Springer Nature Singapore

The seminar was scheduled monthly, covering an intensive discussion from 8:50 am until 6:30 pm, excluding lunchtime. Approximately 20 students were assigned to one professor and were required to present their research projects. Other teachers in other universities and students in the doctoral course also joined the discussions adding to the repertoire of academic viewpoints driven by differences in logic, theoretical backgrounds, framework for analysis, and research methods. Students would work on their research based on discussions and advice from other students and teachers.

Notably, one month was not enough for the working students. They had less time than the full-time graduate students to form their logic based on large amounts of books and journals. Instead, they solved their case studies using their various experiences and memories of cases from their work and the knowledge and advice from their professors and classmates.

The students sifted through several theories for every presentation. While they were at it, however, they tended to lose track of their own research question by pursuing answers to existing theories. This made it hard for them to develop the ability to find management problems and propose solutions. Naturally, they were criticized and asked the following questions: what do you do with your previous question; why did you change your research question; and is it the problem you genuinely want to resolve. Therefore, this tendency was highly criticized.

Several students constantly sought academic advice and references from their teachers to better understand their case studies’ underlying problems.

This seminar lasted one year until they completed their MBA dissertations. The students took the inductive approach, while their teachers took the deductive approach, resulting in effective discussions.

Most MBA students at Kobe University are candidates for management or middle managerial positions. Many of the case studies they proposed were about the problems usually occurring in the stages between top management and executions at the frontline. The solutions to these problems are typically complicated, even for professional business administration researchers. Both teachers and students approach the core of the problems by discussing them repeatedly. This in-depth discussion fosters middle managers who have the perspective of top managers and are the core human resources for future executives.

In Japan, corporations internally train their top managers. However, it is currently becoming difficult for them to develop “generalists” who can manage the entire company because of the flattening of the hierarchy and the high specialization of jobs. This increases the significance of Kobe University’s MBA program as an external education institution.

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