COMMENTARY Business school strategy and the metrics for success Howard Thomas Warwick Business School, Coventry, UK Abstract Purpose – The paper aims to present a framework for a systems perspective for business schools to formulate strategy, assess performance and adapt to change resulting from performance, environmental and learning feedbacks. Design/methodology/approach – The paper focuses on the balanced scorecard as a means of measuring performance and modifying business school strategies over time. Findings – The paper provides a range of metrics for business schools from financial lenses to innovation and learning lenses, and adapts the scorecard framework to strategic processes from business planning to feedback and learning. Originality/value – The paper links strategy formulation to key performance indicators and strategic change for business schools. Keywords Knowledge management, Balanced scorecard, Learning organizations, Strategic change, Business schools Paper type Literature review Introduction Business schools have gained strong recognition over the last 100 years. Despite the fact that US schools continue to dominate the global business school landscape (Pfeffer and Fong, 2002), formidable competitors sensitive to local market needs now exist in Europe, Asia and Latin America (Antunes and Thomas, 2006). However, with the increasing competition in the business school environment recently, there has been a parallel and quite critical discussion about the nature, value and relevance of business schools. Critics have simultaneously accused the business schools, inter alia, of: . doing irrelevant research; . being too market-driven and pandering to the ratings; . failing to ask important questions; . pursuing curricular fads; . “dumbing down” course content; and . focussing more on specialist, analytical rather than professional managerial skills (e.g. Ghoshal, 2005, Mintzberg, 2004). Given this increased criticism and competition, it is important for business schools, and their deans, to be clear about their strategy, strategic positioning and alignment to the The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0262-1711.htm The author wishes to thank his colleagues, John McGee and David Wilson, who have influenced his thinking and writing on this topic. The author gratefully acknowledges their ideas and insights about strategic management and their important contributions to this paper. Business school strategy 33 Journal of Management Development Vol. 26 No. 1, 2007 pp. 33-42 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0262-1711 DOI 10.1108/02621710710720068