The shift “sounds the death knell for [the school’s] delicate experiment in bridging theory and practice,” Watkins says.

But HBS officials strongly reject Watkins’ argument that the school’s junior faculty have shirked their course development duties.

HBS’s own analysis, according to Aisner, casts doubt on the data Watkins uses to bolster his arguments.

Watkins writes in an e-mail that field-based studies accounted for 74 percent of all HBS cases two years ago—but only 57 percent of cases developed in recent months. Instead, he says, an increasing percentage of new cases come from less labor-intensive library research.

But a study by Michael J. Roberts ’79, the executive director for case development at HBS, reveals that the percentage of field-based cases has remained constant at roughly 73 percent for the last decade.

Watkins uses data directly from the HBS website, which displays cases that are for sale to other business schools.

The school keeps some of its most recent field-based cases off the market until they have been test-run through HBS classrooms, so online data from recent months show artificially low numbers of field-based cases, Aisner says.

Badaracco says he has seen no decline in the development of field-based cases at HBS in recent years.

“If I look at my colleagues, they’re running around writing tons of field- based studies,” he says.

Breaking Convention

Though Watkins is a specialist on diplomacy, fellow HBS faculty say he is burning bridges at the school that has employed him since 1996.

“This may well cost me some future options, but I’m willing to take that risk,” Watkins says. “Someone has to be willing to do it.”

Junior faculty at HBS declined to speak on the record with The Crimson.

“The fact that untenured faculty are so reluctant to talk is, I think, significant in its own right,” Watkins says. “Even if they are denied tenure, they are dependent on recommendations and other good offices from faculty at HBS to secure another position, ”

But assistant and associate professors who spoke to The Crimson on background say they are dubious of Watkins’ conclusions.