Guiding MBA Students to Credible Research
While reading probably the best analysis of Toyota’s fall from grace and the challenges it now faces, what impressed me most was the research Robert Cole used to make his convincing arguments. Much of it was public information, with a high probability of being available on the Internet. Describing his research for What Really Happened to Toyota in the Summer 2011 MIT Sloan Management Review, Cole explains that he monitored the media, print and online, and gained access to publicly available data, such as “internal Toyota documents related to vehicle safety and defects submitted in response to congressional subpoenas” (Cole, 2011, p. 31).
I must confess that it was an epiphany. Not only is raw data such as this available to us all, think of the plethora of research funded by local, state, and federal governments – research that explores virtually every aspect of social, scientific, and economic inquiry into not only our society but much of the world.
According to the policies of the universities for which I teach management and leadership, the use of Wikipedia as a source is explicitly discouraged. The best students comply; the better-to-average students do so begrudgingly, pushing back with “universities need to come out of the stone age.” They argue that the Internet has opened the world to a wealth of information. Why should they be restricted to university-provided libraries of peer-reviewed articles, and heaven forbid, the texts!
Cole’s brilliant work and research reveals a strategy that business school instructors can apply to winning from both sides of the Wikipedia argument. The information is out there. We have to do a better job of guiding our students to quality information.
I, personally, get a rush when I find a gem at the Bureau of Labor Statistics or discovering an innovating community planning process as the NACCHO.org site (National Association of City and County Health Officials). It’s certainly more exciting to explore the web than some of the material and sources recommended to my students, so I feel their frustration. But my suggestion to not stop at Wikipedia is further supported by this increased awareness of the information we really do have at our fingertips.
What I find is that even though I give out links like http://www.webmd.com which is excellent for the average user, people google the topic and get directed to sites that are filled with misinformation. Not only is Wikipedia unreliable but search engines direct you to unreliable sites. I had a good friend who decided to just stop taking remeron. I pointed her to sites I trust where it was stated this was not a great idea. Instead she googled and found several sites and blogs that supported her decision. This is not as simple as getting the definition of ROI wrong, this is a question of a person’s health.