Restructuring MBA

 

It is now 60 years since the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation report of the early 1960’s led to a new model for MBA programmes. This model widely adopted by top universities and still considered the conventional model for most programs today globally, introduced students to functional areas of business in their first year of study, whereas students then specialized in particular areas of interest in their second year. Just as a medical education without some kind of laboratory practice appears to ring hollow, the emerging MBA education model seemed unsatisfactory to the extent that it remained disconnected from real-world experience.

Whenever business schools or Management institutes, as they are more popularly called in India, have felt threatened by the heightened barrage of criticism over their irrelevance, they have taken ad hoc measures to counter this criticism, usually by adding new courses to their MBA curricula. While these types of curricular changes may appear responsive to the criticism that business schools have received of late, the fact remains that an MBA education as most commonly conceived of today fails to equip students with the skills, tools, and mindset that are required for them to succeed in both the current environment and the emergent future. Frequently, institutes have taken the “Social Butterfly” approach, attempting to casually expose students to as many disciplines as possible without spending time to develop deeper knowledge and understanding of the core disciplines. The result has been a widening of curriculum usually compensated by loss of depth in the core disciplines of business.

A study of the educational backgrounds of 2010’s Fortune 500 CEOs showed that only 174 of the 500 CEOs have MBAs, while 59 have law degrees. About 200 of these CEOs have no graduate degree, and 19 of these CEOs have not earned any college degree including 15 who are college dropouts. (D. Bradshaw in Financial Times, 15 November 2009, "The Business of Knowledge"). A  UK Commission for Employment and Skills study estimated that, out of 4.8 million managers in UK, only one out of every five managers had any kind of management education. [B.Burnsed in US News and World Report, 3 January 2011, “Where the Fortune 500 CEOs went to college”]

Most Management Institutes in India have tried to replicate the internal structures of the first set of IIMs which had imitated the then existing structures of their American mentors of the 1960’s. The world has changed over the last 60 years and the Indian Management Institutes have come of age in their own right.

Time has come when business management should become a profession analogous to medicine or law. Such professionalization would be based on a recognized body of knowledge and a wider commitment to the public good.

In short, a new conception of graduate business education is in order, as the current model for MBA programs, in all its different varieties, is widely perceived to be failing to deliver. If Management Institutes fail to renew themselves, then new educational venues will assuredly arise and meet demands that the large number of existing Management Institutes are no longer able to satisfy for students.

COVID-19 crisis provides a good opportunity to Management Institutes to reflect on their internal processes and structures and carry out the ever essential corrections, modifications and redesign in order to remain agile, lean, efficient and effective.

A Core of Academic knowledge which is essential for Conceptual Clarity of Decision Domains in Business Management needs to be inculcated. Management of Business comprises of comprehensive, integrated and entangled decision making encompassing the academic disciplines which are identified as –

• Finance
• Human Resources
• Marketing
• Operations
• Survival, Growth and Sustainability

These are Core Academic Disciplines which a management institute should focus on and in-source the delivery of knowledge.

Since business operates in a context and there are academic disciplines which can improve the efficiency in decision making, Contextual Awareness and some dexterity in Decision making skills may help. These would be Non-Core Academic Disciplines for a management institute though they are, in their own right, large and core academic disciplines elsewhere. Non-Core Academic Disciplines, essential for Contextual Awareness and Decision making skills are identified as –

• Accounting
• Behavioural Sciences
• Data Sciences & Information Systems
• Economics
• Geo-Politics and Socio-cultural Systems
• Language & Communication
• Legal Systems
• Social Entrepreneurship
• Statistical Methods & Operations Research

A management institute should focus on borrowing and outsourcing the best possible knowledge delivery in these disciplines but refrain from the lure of growing its own timber in these domains.

Typically, a 2-year MBA programme attracts younger, inexperienced, fresh from college graduates who have not likely had any prior experience or exposure to the principles and practice of business management. A postgraduate course like the MBA, for such students should follow a BUILD-UP model; wherein, building of context should precede building of concepts of business management.

In general, a 2-year MBA programme can be structured as 960 hours of contact; of which nearly two-thirds should be devoted to Core Academic Disciplines and only one-thirds should be devoted to Non-Core Academic Disciplines. A design template for such a structure is as proposed here.

 

 

Normally, a one-year Executive MBA programme attracts students with 5-7 years of experience at workplace, after a college degree. They come to the MBA courses equipped with direct or indirect experience and exposure to the principles and practice of business management. An MBA for such students should follow a BREAK-DOWN model; wherein, the prior experience is conceptualized and concretised holistically before being broken down to its parts and context. In general, a 1-year Executive MBA programme may be structured as 640 hours of contact.

The MBA as most commonly taught is outdated and does not provide students with the knowledge, skills, experience, and mindset they need to lead organizations through the complexities and demands that largely define twenty-first century life. Hence, it is time for business school faculty, administration, and advisory boards to engage in some necessary soul-searching and self-examination, so that Management Institutes may collectively determine their future direction.

 Management Institutes or B-schools need disruptive innovations in the MBA industry that comprise fundamental, nonlinear changes, something akin to personal computers replacing mainframes or Smartphones replacing personal cameras.

Implementing this new model will not be easy, for it is replete with revolutionary change. Making this or any other new model viable requires dynamic leadership at the level of the management institute and the support of regulators, universities of which the management institute is a constituent, advisory and governing boards, and above all the faculty of the business school. The obstacle to innovation is the unwillingness of business schools to abandon their current programmes and attendant established practices of teaching, systems for rewarding the faculty, and pools of students that an institute attracts. Such change appears frightening to many within the academia.

In fact, the most difficult task would likely involve winning the cooperation of business school faculty, who often are comfortable with the inertia of existing arrangements. Nonetheless, the entrenched traditions related to faculty-department-structures and teaching norms will have to be challenged for the survival and growth of management institutes.

 

(First Published 18.06.2020)

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Preparing B-Schools to Outmatch Covid

 

Ironic as it may appear, like the ‘triple crown’ b-schools, COVID-19 is a ‘triple crisis’—medical, economic, and psychological. The basic coordinates of the everyday lives of millions are getting disintegrating. The coronavirus epidemic itself is clearly not just a biological phenomenon which affects humans. To understand its spread, one has to consider human cultural choices… economy and global trade, the thick network of international relations, ideological mechanisms of fear and panic.

But even horrible events can have unpredictable positive consequences. The pandemic may trigger the emergence of an alternate society, one that promotes global solidarity and cooperation. Countries and b-schools after lockdown can be transformed to be restarted in a new way.

The path to transformation may be found in the answer to an important question – ‘What is wrong with our system that we were caught unprepared by the catastrophe despite scientists warning us about it for years?’

Lockdown due to COVID-19 has brought nearly all educational activities to a standstill in management institutes. The post-lockdown scenario is expected to be different with some of the visible changes focusing on review of –

• compulsory residential requirements
• herding of students in classrooms
• face-to-face teaching
• peer-interactions
• revenues and costs

This stoppage of activities may therefore be the time to prepare for the future. One way forward is to involve faculty members to put on the hats of consultants and prepare plans for the management institute for the post COVID era. Some of the consulting assignments which the management schools could entrust to their faculty teams may focus around (alphabetical listing and not priority based listing) –

• Aggregated and standardized teaching
• Distributed and customized learning
• Economies of scale vs. scope
• Even obligation on students, faculty and staff for living on campus
• Innovations in curriculum and content
• Innovations in models of content delivery and learning 
• Preparation of standard modules of recorded content
• Process re-engineering
• Redesign of classrooms, libraries, Cafeterias and auditoriums
• Redundancy detection and downsizing of bloated staff
• Research track and Tutor Track
• Residential campuses as communities and not just hostels
• Restructuring - new hierarchies in ranks and designation
• Risk Identification, mitigation and Management
• Training of tutors for facilitating learning in small groups
• Use of LEAN, cost measurement, planning and control

The ideas and possibilities are endless; solutions need to be worked out by contextualizing and evaluating the ideas. At the very fundamental level, management institutes need to manage what is called the 4F’s – freshers, faculty, funds and freedom. [see: Gupta, Mukul (1996) ‘Issues for the Managers of Management Schools’ DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16047.36009]

If management schools cannot devise a plan for themselves to outgrow the pandemic, they should not aspire for corporate organizations seeking their advice and consulting services. If management schools cannot survive and outgrow COVID, they will lose their legitimacy to teach management.

 

(First published 01 June 2020)

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Ambedkar on Gandhi and Jinnah and the PR-Spin by Congress

 

[Excerpts from a speech delivered by Ambedkar on 18^th January 1943 in Poona.]

“We have on the horizon of India two great men, so big that they could be identified without being named—Gandhi and Jinnah, What sort of a history they will make may be a matter for posterity to tell. For us it is enough that they do indisputably make headlines for the Press. They hold leading strings. One leads the Hindus, the other leads the Muslims. They are the idols and heroes of the hour. I propose to compare them with Ranade. How do they compare with Ranade? It is necessary to make some observations upon their temperaments and methods with which they have now familiarized us. I can give only my impressions of them, for what they are worth. The first thing that strikes me is that it would be difficult to find two persons who would rival them for their colossal egotism, to whom personal ascendency is everything and the cause of the country a mere counter on the table. They have made Indian politics a matter of personal feud. Consequences have no terror for them; indeed they do not occur to them until they happen. When they do happen they either forget the cause, or if they remember it, they overlook it with a complacency which saves them from any remorse. They choose to stand on a pedestal of splendid isolation. They will themselves off from their equals. They prefer to open themselves to their inferiors. They are very unhappy at and impatient of criticism, but are very happy to be fawned upon by flunkeys. Both have developed a wonderful stagecraft and arrange things in such a way that they are always in the limelight wherever they go. Each of course claims to be supreme. If supremacy was their only claim, it would be a small wonder. In addition to supremacy each claims infallibility for himself. Pius IX during whose sacred regime as Pope the issue of infallibility was raging said— “Before I was Pope I believed in Papal infallibility, now I feel it.” This is exactly the attitude of the two leaders whom Providence—may I say in his unguarded moments—has appointed to lead us. This feeling of supremacy and infallibility is strengthened by the Press.”

“Never has the interest of country been sacrificed so senselessly for the propagation of hero-worship. Never has hero-worship become so blind as we see it in India today. There are, I am glad to say, honourable exceptions. But they are too few and their voice is never heard. Entrenched behind the plaudits of the Press, the spirit of domination exhibited by these two great men has transgressed all limits. By their domination they have demoralised their followers and demoralized politics. By their domination they have made half their followers fools and the other half hypocrites. In establishing their supremacy they have taken the aid of “big business” and money magnates. For the first time in our country money is taking the field as an organised power.”

“For the present, Indian politics, at any rate the Hindu part of it, instead of being spiritualized has become grossly commercialized, so much so that it has become a byword for corruption. Many men of culture are refusing to concern themselves in this cesspool. Politics has become a kind of sewage system intolerably unsavoury and insanitary. To become a politician is like going to work in the drain.

Politics in the hands of these two great men have become a competition in extravaganza. If Mr. Gandhi is known as Mahatma, Mr. Jinnah must be known as Qaid-i-Azim. If Gandhi has the Congress, Mr. Jinnah must have the Muslim League. If the Congress has a Working Committee and the All-India Congress Committee, the Muslim League must have its Working Committee and its Council. The session of the Congress must be followed by a session of the League. II the Congress issues a statement the League must also follow suit. If the Congress passes a Resolution of 17,000 words, the Muslim League’s Resolution must exceed it by at least a thousand words. If the Congress President has a Press Conference, the Muslim League President must have his. If the Congress must address an appeal to the United Nations, the Muslim League must not allow itself to be outbidden. When is all this to end? When is there to be a settlement? There are no near prospects. They will not meet, except on preposterous conditions. Jinnah insists that Gandhi should admit that he is a Hindu. Gandhi insists that Jinnah should admit that he is one of the leaders of the Muslims. Never has there been such a deplorable state of bankruptcy of statesmanship as one sees in these two leaders of India. They are making long and interminable speeches, like lawyers whose trade it is to contest everything, concede nothing and talk by the hour. Suggest anything by way of solution for the deadlock to either of them, and it is met by an everlasting “Nay”. Neither will consider a solution of the problems which is not eternal. Between them Indian politics has become “frozen” to use a well-known Banking phrase and no political action is possible.”

[Excerpts from the preface to the above speech written by Ambedkar on 15 March 1943 at Delhi.]

“I am condemned because I criticized Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Jinnah for the mess they have made of Indian politics, and that in doing so I am alleged to have shown towards them hatred and disrespect. In reply to this charge what I have to say is that I have been a critic and I must continue to be such. It may be I am making mistakes, but I have always felt that it is better to make mistakes than to accept guidance and direction from others or to sit silent and allow things to deteriorate. Those who have accused me of having been actuated by feelings of hatred forget two things. In the first place this alleged hatred is not born of anything that can be called personal. If I am against them, it is because I want a settlement. I want a settlement of some sort, and I am not prepared to wait for an ideal settlement. Nor can I tolerate [for] anyone on whose will and consent settlement depends, to stand on [his] dignity and play the Grand Moghul. In the second place, no one can hope to make any effective mark upon his time, and bring the aid that is worth bringing to great principles and struggling causes, if he is not strong in his love and his hatred. I hate injustice, tyranny, pompousness and humbug, and my hatred embraces all those who are guilty of them. I want to tell my critics that I regard my feelings of hatred as a real force. They are only the reflex of the love I bear for the causes I believe in, and I am in no wise ashamed of it. For these reasons I tender no apology for my criticism of Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Jinnah, the two men who have brought India's political progress to a standstill.

The condemnation is by the Congress Press. I know the Congress Press well. I attach no value to its criticism. It has never refuted my arguments. It knows only [how] to criticise, rebuke and revile me for everything I do; and to misreport, misrepresent and pervert everything I say. Nothing that I do pleases the Congress Press. This animosity of the Congress Press towards me can to my mind, not unfairly, be explained as a reflex of the hatred of the Hindus for the Untouchables. That their animosity has become personal is clear from the fact that the Congress Press feels offended for my having criticised Mr. Jinnah, who has been the butt and the target of the Congress for the last several years.

However strong and however filthy be the abuses which the Congress Press chooses to shower on me, I must do my duty. I am no worshipper of idols. I believe in breaking them. I insist that if I hate Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Jinnah—I dislike them, I do not hate them—it is because I love India more. That is the true faith of a nationalist. I have hopes that my countrymen will some day learn that the country is greater than the men, that the worship of Mr. Gandhi or Mr. Jinnah and service to India are two very different things and may even be contradictory of each other.”

See:

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, Vol. 1,  

Publisher: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India (First Edition by Education Department, Govt. of Maharashtra: 14 April, 1979, Re-printed by Dr. Ambedkar Foundation: January, 2014 - from where the attached images have been extracted)

Additional details: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_ranade.html

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