COURSES FOR HORSES*

The media space that gets consumed reporting about the MBA degree or its analogues is an indicator of the increasing interest amongst general public about MBA programmes. One could look at it as an indicator of the success of these programmes as compared to other academic qualifications. The downside is the possibility that MBA would soon suffer from this perception of a success.

The 'suffering from success' is the expression because different expectations that the various stakeholders of this degree have from it will get hardened and there is little evidence that these expectations do not have a serious mis-match.

As a generalization, intending students want that in their MBA programmes they should be taught by big names amongst teachers, the likes of a Philip Kotler or a Michael Porter, that their schools should enjoy the status of big brands like a Wharton or a LBS. Their schools should have big prospects in job markets so that they get recruited by the likes of Levers or McKinseys or Lehman Brothers and that they should get big returns on their investments in time and money by getting million dollar starting salaries.

The prospective employers are all very keen to hire these young MBAs but they expect that the recruits should deliver practical applications out of all the grand ideas and theories that they learnt in their b-school, that they should have a realistic expectations on compensation and organizational culture that these recruits should be bright, bubbly and willing to soil their hands and that they should be able to provide leadership both to the people on their teams and for the ideas that these teams bring forth.

B-schools would normally teach what they wish to teach and what they think is necessary to be taught without much reference to the needs of current business. They would possibly teach courses but what the business wants are horses. B-schools would seek institutional growth through scale growth and scope growth without controlling the processes they adopt. They would also not like someone else to monitor their processes. B-schools would seek relationships with big prospects in the employment market and at times even without actually earning it, they would want to be respected by one and all for what they do.

The prospective employers wish that the b-schools should initiate changes in the ideas that they propagate to their students, change the experience that is delivered to the students, change the levels of knowledge that is imparted and change the motivational drivers that set the course of performance of their students. Employers seek these changes to possibly get the new MBA recruits to master, manage and lead the change for their businesses.

The students wish their b-schools should change the pace of their delivery of programme, change the levels at which the courses are pitched, possibly change the courses that are taught and even change the rewards that students get both as transcripts and as placements. They seek these changes for a change in the satisfaction that they derive from pursuing an MBA.

Everything around an MBA degree yearns for a change yet the MBA by itself is not changing. The fundamental platform for design that comprises of core or fundamental courses, decision tools and skills courses, functional courses and integrative courses continue to be the building blocks of any MBA programme. These hardening and mis-matched expectations raise the question of relevance of the degree. The response to the debate on its relevance or irrelevance is coming from b-schools in terms of the focus of their MBA - as a general MBA, a functional MBA or a sectored MBA.

This debate about the focus in an MBA programme is also not very new. MBA education in its early years had a general orientation. The argument for the MBA qualification was in terms of its benefit for those in positions in business and management, especially those in executive and managerial positions. The foundations for the success of the degree were laid on business knowledge, leadership ability and networking. The orientation towards general management rather than any functional specialisation continues to drive a set of world leaders in MBA like the Harvard Business School even today.

As the MBA education matured, academia and industry started looking for functional specialisations (in functions of business like marketing or finance). Thus MBA with concentration or specialisation or even specific functional MBA degrees evolved. This trend was driven by the need to hire younger people in supervisory roles and reduce their induction time in organisations. The functional orientation is supported by schools like Kellogg and Wharton. Single stream specialisations have evolved into dual specialisations wherein students pursue combinations of functional domains now.

Some recent trends have seen emergence of sector specific MBAs. The focus is around specific sectors of economy. Fuqua's Health Sector Management program at Duke is a case in point. MBAs in Retail, Banking, insurance, tourism, real estate and energy are all evolving. A recent one added to this growing list is an MBA in disaster management.

If the reality of business and the power houses of economies of the 21st century are so different from the ones of the last century, can the MBA still survive by incremental mutation or we need a radical innovation in the MBA programme? I don't have an answer.

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*This is the text of my 10 year old article that was carried by the Economic Times in June 2007.

In June of 2007, The Economic Times, New Delhi had approached me to write on MBA programmes. At that time, I was serving as Professor & the Chair of Marketing Area and Dean – Strategic Planning & Research at Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon. I was also a Visiting Professor and Chair of the Global Advisory Council of Wits Business School (WBS) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in South Africa.  

I wrote the following and titled it as "MBA Education At Cross-roads". The editor carried it in one of their issues without any modification except changing the title to - COURSES FOR HORSES and adding a highlighted box on the page stating – "When all they wanted was Horses, the MBA Institutes gave them Courses" Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of the printed page.

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