On Improving Management Education

Business Line dated April 5,2010 carried an article “Management without an MBA” by A.V.Ram Mohan. The author’s intention is to advise industry to carry on without depending on MBAs for the conduct of business, which he has been successful to put firmly, nothing emerges from the article regarding how to improve the MBA education and making them more useful to the industry.

To me there are a few basic flaws that affect the way the MBA education is currently imparted.
One is that business schools teach only management; no business is taught at or learnt from an MBA institution. Unfortunately lot of people(including the recruiters) wrongly assume that the so-called MBAs, after their two-year course, is well versed in business. They are only taught about how to manage the organization that does business rather than manage the business itself. A number of MBAs from some of the best institutes will be talking at length about what strategic tool they use for success or what type of leadership model they follow etc but will not be able to say what brings money for the company. They don’t know who their customers are; have never dug to find out what needs of the users they satisfy. They might use all kinds of jargons like B2B or B2C etc but really don’t know where their products are finding their use. For example, a solvent extraction company says that its customers are bakeries whereas their real customers are the end users who buy bakery products and consume. Most of the MBAs in marketing don’t try to find out what the customers need; they try push the company’s products down the throat of the customer even if his needs are different.

Two, the MBAs usually don’t want to dirty their hands; they want only armchair jobs. Industry also(unfortunately) give them such considerations. This puts a severe limitation on the learning of the MBAs. People just forget that MBA is just another educational qualification and simply by having it, no one can claim to be a business man. I remember my first job as a management trainee in a heavy construction firm. After about 6 months of familiarizing the various departments and functions at the head office, the MD made it very clear to us that we will have to work at the construction sites of the company to get the real feeling of the business. Out of about 6/7 management trainees who were recruited, only two of us remained after this .I was one of those fortunate who took the plunge and worked at the construction site, which I would remember as the best part of my working life. Tight completion schedules, inclement weather conditions, very risky working conditions, accidents and deaths of even close friends , almost no opportunities for entertainment(especially for a teetotaler like me!) , job was difficult ,but I enjoyed. I enjoyed because most of these were opportunities to learn about life’s lessons.

And three, the unfortunate hype created around the three letter degree, MBA. There have been lots of brighter students in Economics, Science, and many other streams of learning. But nobody talks about them or their achievements and rewards. Nobody recruits them as a practice from the campuses. Nobody writes about the salaries they get after their graduation. It is not clear how a company benefits from an employee if the company offers him a package of Rs.10 million in the first year. The hype has actually been created by the industry who recruits such MBA from high-profile schools. Many recruiters have been complaining about the star-status these graduates aspire but how many have courage to stop recruiting from ivy league business schools?
The industry has to take serious steps to improve the utility of MBAs in industry.They have to interact closely with the institutions in order to enable the institutions bring out MBAs who will be more useful to the industry.The present practices don't help them achieve this. I have been doing some research on this and will post the findings once the research gets completed.
P.S. I also happen to be an MBA.