A junior faculty member at Harvard Business School (HBS) is using his popular weblog to sound a warning that the school’s prestige is in jeopardy, but HBS faculty and staff vigorously dispute his claim.

Associate Professor of Business Management Michael D. Watkins says the quality of education at HBS is on the decline due in part to University President Lawrence H. Summers’ increased meddling in the school’s promotion process.

According to a Mass. Hall spokesperson, a 2002 vote by the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers gave Summers veto power over promotions at all of the University’s schools, including HBS.

The boards instructed Summers to use “some variation of the so-called ad hoc system,” in which academics from outside HBS advise the president on promotions, the spokesperson says.

Watkins, who failed to secure a tenured professorship last fall, says the outsiders largely ignore the field-based case studies that lie at the heart of the school’s innovative teaching method.

These field-based studies form the core of HBS’s case method system, which uses real-life examples to spur classroom discussion on management issues.

Field-based studies offer immeasurable advantages over library-centered cases, says Shad Professor of Business Ethics Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.

“It’s the difference between getting inside an organization using your judgement over reading something that’s been filtered through the eyes of journalists,” says Badaracco, who is also Currier House Master.

But Watkins claims the incentives otivating HBS junior faculty to engage in course development—especially labor-intensive field-based studies—are evaporating now that academics from outside the school hold sway over the promotion process.

“Now place yourself in the position of a young tenure track faculty member at HBS,” Watkins says. “As a rational actor playing a high stakes game, how would you respond to a realization that the rules of the game have changed?”

Watkins says on his weblog that junior faculty are focusing on writing for prestigious peer-reviewed publications instead of developing the field-based cases “that outside scholars view as something lower than the lowest-class journal articles.”

But James E. Aisner ’68, director of media relations at HBS, says teaching and course development, including field-based work, still figure prominently in the promotion process.

He says that much of the promotion review process still occurs inside HBS, with the school’s entire senior faculty weighing in before Dean Kim B. Clark ’74 issues a recommendation to Summers.

Fuzzy Math

Watkins’ weblog highlights statistics indicating that junior faculty are devoting less time to field-based studies and more effort to the academic research likely to impress outside experts.