The people who force you to change are not peers! The transformation and transformation of artificial intelligence for business school professors

The power to change business school professors does not come from within the business school, not from the peers of business school professors, not from the upper management of business school professors, but from a completely external force - new technology GPT.

As the three functions of business school professors in the past, the connotations of "teaching", "service" and "research" will all undergo major changes. The functions of the "new business school professor" will be "the discusser of course content, the leader of practical activities, the shaper of business value, and the thinker of management thinking."

Source: Manager Magazine, a subsidiary of Manager Media, text / Wei Hang

Questions and reflections

At the first Global Forum on Chinese Management Models at Chinese University in 2018, Professor Xu Shuying delivered a speech that shocked business school professors, "Business school professors, don't hide in the ivory tower", which shocked Chinese business school professors.

In her speech, Professor Xu Shuying said that the scientific rigor of the current business research has actually regressed, because it is ivory tower research, do not deal with enterprises, do not interview enterprises, and the practical linkage is more and more regressive. Professor Xu Shuying put forward that "we should really understand the enterprise, go to the enterprise to study what difficulties it faces, and then extract their logic, put forward a core theory, and then verify this theory, repeatedly verify this theory, overturn it if it is not right, and stay and continue to verify what is right, so that it is a scientific method." In addition, Chen Fangruo, Dean of Antai Business School of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, promoted the establishment of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Industry Research Institute on December 8, 2018, and the new model of industry research established by the Industry Research Institute will re-establish the understanding of academia, study the internal laws and future trends of industry development by using the industry as a carrier, break the division between disciplines, and establish a diversified value system.

From Professor Xu Shuying's speech and Dean Chen Fangruo's promotion, we can see that everyone is worried about the current development of business, business research is divorced from practice.

Why are business school professors increasingly detached from practice? Many scholars have done a lot of research on this and proposed various explanations. The more mainstream ones are as Professor Xu Shuying said: "The salary and title employment of scholars depend on their academic publications, and whether they have created knowledge that helps enterprises grow or benefit enterprises is not the most important", "The reputation or accreditation indicators of the school also depend on the number of academic publications, depending on the number of articles published in a series of journals, and what aspects of research and contributions the school has made are also secondary." In this way, "academic publishing" has become the core task of business school professors, and the person who decides whether to publish is also a business school professor. Since then, business school professors have formed an "independent", "closed", and "self-appreciative" closed loop of academic publication, which does not consider the reaction of society, the attitude of entrepreneurs, and the usefulness of practice.

GPT makes a difference

Although Professor Xu Shuying and Dean Chen Fangruo have either spoken out or taken active actions in promoting practice since 2018, it can be said that they have achieved little in fact. Traditional evaluation indicators, discipline evaluation, talent hats, etc., all point to "academic publication" explicitly or implicitly, and there is a trend of intensification and volume. However, I personally believe that the force to change this situation has arrived, and that is "GPT". The power to change business school professors does not come from within the business school, not from the peers of business school professors, not from the superior management department of business school professors (such as breaking the five only), but from a completely external force - new technology GPT.

"GPT-4, take off!" On March 14, 2023, OpenAI officially launched the GPT-4 text generation AI system. GPT-4 is a multimodal large-scale language model, that is, it supports image and text input and output in text form; Enhanced expandability, can handle text of more than 25,000 words; More creative and able to handle more nuanced instructions. Geoffrey Hinton, the father of deep learning, said, "Just as caterpillars draw nutrients, GPT-4 condenses the essence of human natural language understanding and turns into butterflies."

GPT will transform business education. Generally speaking, traditional business is mainly based on "professional functional education". Business education is a type of education aimed at cultivating the basic quality of business management talents, which covers a wide range and involves majors represented by FAME (finance, accounting, management, economics) four major categories. However, the current business education seriously lacks practical scenarios and applications, so that business school professors speak head-on, and business school students listen to the clouds. The GPT+Meta model will completely change the problem of lack of practical scenarios and changeable practical scenarios in business education, and business schools will be able to actively use the "GPT+Meta model" to develop relevant courses with business theory, and conduct business education in a scenario-based, immersive and game-based manner.

Under such a "GPT+Meta model", students will face real company scenarios, learn business theories, methods and technologies, and apply these theories, methods and technologies to the real scenarios of the company in a timely manner. Such a "GPT+Meta mode" learning method will make theoretical knowledge segmented, standardized and customized, and timely feedback on the learning effect according to each student's learning situation, diagnose, and further design customized learning programs for learning reinforcement.

GPT will transform business research. Generally speaking, traditional business research takes solving "practical problems" as the starting point, from Taylor's era of scientific management, to the era of social people who pay attention to the role of "people" in management, and then to modern management management theory, most of them are based on solving practical problems, such as: the familiar Taylor's "pig iron handling experiment", Harvard University Professor Mayo's "Hawthorne experiment", etc., are management research based on practical problems in real enterprises. However, as Professor Xu Shuying said, "Since 1990, the research of business schools has changed again, becoming more and more rigorous, retreating into the ivory tower, starting to do very grand theoretical research, and slowly moving further and further away from practice." Many professors and scholars have explained this, including evaluation, evaluation methods, and the lack of confidence in management in science.

However, GPT will gradually have a certain ability of repeated, analog, trial-and-error research in the future, and business research, whether it is the current empirical research, optimization research, experimental research, simulation research and other research paradigms, will gradually be mastered by GPT, and will be faster than human researchers, trial and error ability, simulation more situations. So where is the irreplaceable thing that human research can't replace? This requires further thinking by current business professors. Perhaps, the professors' future work is to "think about valuable research questions", because many valuable research problems may have just appeared some phenomena that only humans can capture; It is "thinking about how to value the results of the research", because artificial intelligence has done a lot of research, but how many results are used is valuable, and it may require human judgment, and so on. Of course, these are still assumptions. But either way, it will change business professors, and it will require business school professors to be closer to practice.

Obviously, GPT will gradually have the teaching and research capabilities that business school professors had in the past, and it is precisely because GPT has these capabilities that business school professors will be forced to change. Such a change is to "get close to practice, embrace practice, and love practice". Only with practice at their core can business school professors continue to possess teaching and research capabilities that GPT cannot have. In this regard, the core principle will be "from practice, above practice, and for practice".

● Born from practice. Scientific research comes from practice, and curriculum design needs to come from practice. Go deep into practice, observe phenomena, and ask questions. When practice is ongoing, problems coexist. However, how to keenly find problems, raise problems, and condense problems from practice may be the first thing that future researchers need to do. At the same time, in-depth practice and observation of practice can apply the practice scenarios to course design and teaching practice, so that students can understand and know the business practices of front-line enterprises as soon as possible, and enable students to quickly understand enterprise practices after graduation without being disjointed.

● Above practice. Scientific research is higher than practice, and curriculum design needs to be higher than practice. Only by going deep into practice, observing problems in practice, and raising questions can we conduct research. Such research needs to be condensed and refined, and summarized into a relatively standardized theoretical system, which needs to be "higher than practice". Similarly, such a normative theoretical system can be applied to course teaching and become a "higher than practice" course content, which can provide a framework knowledge structure for students to face practical problems in the future.

● For practice. Scientific research is used for practice, and course knowledge needs to be used for practice. "Practice is the only criterion for testing truth", as an applied discipline, business knowledge and business research are no exception. For the problems found in "from practice", the problems raised, and the theoretical research results formed under the standard of "above practice", they all need to be "used in practice" at the end, and can be used to guide the development of practice in practice, and only by creating value in practice can it be shown that both the research work done and the teaching work carried out are valuable.

In the face of business school professors staying in high-end, decent and shiny business schools, although there have been a large number of scholars and experts, calling on business school professors to "step out of the ivory tower and into practice". However, the realistic comfort and evaluation system have left business school professors indifferent.

However, the future has come, and it is not our famous experts, not our deans, nor our authorities who will change the future direction of business school professors, but from "technology" that is completely outside the field of business education and research, and such new technologies will push us to a situation that we must change without emotion. For business school professors, there is not much time left for everyone, embrace technology, embrace practice, and be able to embrace tomorrow.

Although Professor Xu Shuying and Dean Chen Fangruo have either spoken out or taken active action in promoting practice since 2018, it can be said that they have achieved little in fact. However, GPT technology will gradually have the teaching and research capabilities of business school professors in the past, and it is precisely because GPT has these capabilities that business school professors will be forced to change. Such a change is to be close to practice, embrace practice, and love practice. Only with practice at their core can business school professors continue to possess teaching and research capabilities that GPT cannot have. In this regard, the core principle will be "from practice, above practice, and for practice".

The future has come, and it is not our famous experts, not our deans, nor our authorities who will change the future direction of business school professors, but from "technology" that is completely outside the field of business education and research, and such new technologies will push us to a situation where we must change without emotion. For business school professors, there is not much time left for everyone, embrace technology, embrace practice, and be able to embrace tomorrow. So how can business school professors "embrace technology and embrace practice"? How should business school professors further "embrace technology and embrace practice" teaching and research? "New business school professors" should be the designers and discussants of course content, leaders of practical activities, shapers of business value, and thinkers of management ideas.

Designers and discussants of course content. Because of artificial intelligence, most courses "no longer require teachers to teach courses in real time." However, the content of the standard version does not guarantee that students will fully grasp it, and there are also shortcomings in diversity. On the one hand, because management is a science, the models, techniques and methods of the scientific part can be trained through course learning; However, on the other hand, management is still an art, and the communication, coordination, and organization of the art part cannot be completely mastered through course learning.

Therefore, "new business school professors" should have the opportunity and time to have in-depth course content discussions with students, and at the same time, they need to be specially designed for this purpose, and such "new discussion courses" should have the following characteristics: (1) take the core management knowledge points as the center, and deeply discuss the application scenarios and application methods of the core knowledge points; (2) Focusing on the diversity of management theories, discuss the differences between different management theories, discuss the original logic of different management theories, and discuss the characteristics of different management theories. Therefore, how to design a complementary "new type of discussion course" in addition to the "standard version of course content" based on artificial intelligence will be the first core task of the future "new business school professor".

Leader of hands-on activities. Because of artificial intelligence, the traditional case teaching must be changed, embedded in the corresponding course content, combined with "virtual scene" for practical application, and let students apply the theory, method and technology of learning in the "virtual scene" in a game-like way. However, the application of "virtual scenes" cannot replace "real practice scenarios" after all. Therefore, how to design "real practice scenarios" in addition to "virtual practice scenarios", conduct experiments in real business scenarios, and test existing business theories will be the second core task of "new business school professors" in the future.

Shapers of business value. Because of artificial intelligence, business school professors and students do not need to be confined to classrooms, not confined to a simple space. Through artificial intelligence and virtual reality, business school professors and students can learn, communicate and interact in different "time and space". At the same time, the "standard version of course content" frees up a lot of teaching time for business school professors. Especially at present, mankind is facing major changes unprecedented in a century and the world is facing multiple crises, so how to understand the relationship between man and nature, man and society, and man and man, shape a new business value system, business school professors and students have become a new mission. Therefore, how to design complementary "management value ethics" in addition to "professional knowledge" will be the third core task of the future "new business school professors".

Thinker of management thinking. Because of artificial intelligence, business school professors free up a lot of teaching time for business school professors. Therefore, business school professors can spend more time on research work, and at the same time, business school professors are forced to learn that GPT may have more existing professional knowledge and professional ability than ordinary business school professors. Then, the professors of the business school should have "unknown" knowledge, "exploring" knowledge, and "future-type" knowledge prospects. These "unknown", "exploring" and "futuristic" knowledge require business school professors to combine practice and in-depth research to understand the "unknown" in research, "exploration" in research, and "future" in research. At the same time, management theory is not only a pile of simple knowledge, but also a kind of "wisdom". This requires professors from business schools to refine existing knowledge and form management "wisdom". Therefore, how to explore "unknown knowledge" and refine "management wisdom" in addition to "existing knowledge" will be the fourth core task of "new business school professors" in the future.

Obviously, as the three functions of business school professors in the past, the connotations of "teaching", "service" and "research" will all develop major changes. The functions of the "new business school professor" will be "the discusser of course content, the leader of practical activities, the shaper of business value, and the thinker of management thinking." The traditional "teaching" function will be greatly weakened, and the coupling, complementary, and multi-style "new discussion courses" will need to be heavily developed to couple and complement the "standard version of course content".

The traditional "service" function will be greatly changed, and a large number of new "real practice scenarios" will appear in large numbers to couple with the theory, method and technology of the "standard version of course content" to form the interaction and confirmation of theory, method, technology and practice, and form positive feedback. The traditional "research" function will be greatly strengthened, because GPT has a huge amount of existing knowledge integration, the research of "unknown", "exploring" and "future" knowledge will be the core competitiveness of business school professors, such "unknown" knowledge and known knowledge between thinking collision, speculative discussion, will be a core work of business school professors in the future. In particular, in the face of the "multiple crises" facing the world today, reshaping values conducive to long-term healthy development will become a core proposition in the future, and it is also a literacy that business school professors should actively strengthen and improve.

Correspondingly, there will be significant changes in the assessment of "new business school professors". Such assessment content may be social "discussion class", field-style "practical activities", cutting-edge "exploration and research" and speculative "value discussion". In this process, GPT-based theoretical learning is an important part of it, and how "new business school professors" design GPT-based "discussion classes", "practical activities", "exploration research" and "value exploration" will be new propositions. Of course, how to couple and collaborate, how to evolve and iterate, may require gradual exploration, gradual change, and gradual experimentation. In the face of the new situation that has come in the future, we need to do and see, and do and work hard.

* The author, Wei Hang, is the Secretary of the Party Committee of the Business School of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics