Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA program, management-related doctoral programs, and many executive education programs. It owns Harvard Business Publishing, which publishes business books, leadership articles, case studies, and the monthly Harvard Business Review. It is also home to the Baker Library/Bloomberg Center.

History

The school was established in 1908. Initially established by the humanities faculty, it received independent status in 1910, and became a separate administrative unit in 1913. The first dean was historian Edwin Francis Gay (1867–1946).

The business school pioneered the development of the case method of teaching, drawing inspiration from this approach to legal education at Harvard. Cases are typically descriptions of real events in organizations. Students are positioned as managers and are presented with problems which they need to analyze and provide recommendations on.

From the start the school enjoyed a close relationship with the corporate world. Within a few years of its founding many business leaders were its alumni and were hiring other alumni for starting positions in their firms.

At its founding, the school accepted only male students. The Training Course in Personnel Administration, founded at Radcliffe College in 1937, was the beginning of business training for women at Harvard. HBS took over administration of that program from Radcliffe in 1954. In 1959, alumnae of the one-year program (by then known as the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration) were permitted to apply to join the HBS MBA program as second-years. In December 1962, the faculty voted to allow women to enter the MBA program directly. The first women to apply directly to the MBA program matriculated in September 1963.

In 2012–2013, HBS administration implemented new programs and practices to improve the experience of female students and recruit more female professors.