Anybody or anything that escalates to high levels of popularity inevitably attracts criticism and so did management education when it became the ultimate goal for many students across the country. As management education reached its peak of popularity, critics went rampant attacking the ?superficiality? and even unethicality of some management subjects. Some of it is true, but the rest emanated from either ignorance or a mind-block, or plain envy and contempt!
One must appreciate a couple of things. One, there exist the most respectable basic social sciences like psychology, philosophy and economics which give theories that can explain everything in their domain. But those theories cannot be applied directly to real-world situations. So we need the bridge of management education that renders these pure theories useful for human development, which indeed depends on the productive capacity and efficiency of the industry. Managers ensure this for everybody?s benefit and need to be equipped with ready-made solutions for ground-level problems. Even though management education may appear ?superficial? at times, it?s an applied science, based on pure sciences that have endless depth, breadth and clarity. What?s wrong if we construct ?organisational behaviour? and marketing on the shoulders of psychology; ?business ethics? from philosophy and finance from mathematics and economics, the ?mother-science?? Management education must be accepted with the same dignity as engineering sciences are accepted, which are essentially ?applied?, but based on solid foundations of physics, chemistry and maths.
Second, we must respect the fact that management education has evolved tremendously over the last half a century, incorporating critics? views, industry requirements, societal needs, deeper analytical understanding and feasibility. If industry says that the MBAs don?t know anything, why does it recruit MBAs? Because there is much value-add. But management education is generalised, and hence may not cater to a particular organisation?s requirements. For that, there are those customised MDPs.
Third, a word of caution. Some over-enthusiasts, in an attempt to ?improvise? management education, tweak the management course structures and syllabi at free will and create something that is irrelevant. Those running business schools must be careful to get their syllabi made strictly by those who understand the needs of management. Here I will take the example of managerial economics.
Managerial economics is an applied science, based on the pure science of microeconomics. In microeconomics, the law of diminishing marginal utility says that the incremental satisfaction derived from successive units of a commodity diminishes. Perfect. But what?s the use of this depressing law to the manager? So, managerial economics must tell the manager how to circumvent the law by challenging its assumptions, thereby maintaining customer?s satisfaction. Similarly, law of demand in microeconomics says that demand will fall at higher prices, ceteris paribus. So, if the manager wants to earn more at higher prices, how about changing the elasticity? That?s managerial economics. The same can be applied to all microeconomic theories by professors, although I have not come across such an approach in any managerial economics text books. So, managerial economics helps managerial decision-making by enlivening the otherwise stale and dead science of microeconomics.
Instead, imagine a theoretical economist, preparing the managerial economics syllabus. Such can be his ignorance about management requirements that he copies concepts from management functional areas and pastes them into managerial economics syllabus, thinking economics has now become ?managerial?. For example, inserting the Porter?s Five Forces model in managerial economics is ridiculous, because not only it is taught in marketing but it?s just a by-product of understanding competition in depth throughout managerial economics. Copy-pasting ?M&A? into managerial economics syllabus is also useless, because it?s taught in both finance and HR, and managerial economics anyway refers to it in the dynamics of market structures.
?Advertising? can?t be an explicit part of managerial economics syllabus, since this ?marketing? concept is discussed in side-lines under managerial economics.
?Procedures? too have no place in managerial economics.
Let managerial economics support other management sciences, not beg/borrow/steal from them.
It?s this ?wiseman? who despite being an ?outsider? interferes in management education and contributes towards making it a hotchpotch. Business schools must take care to save management education from these outsiders, especially those who are contemptuous towards management education. Also, not too much interference by the ?corporates? must be allowed, since what?s suitable for the industry may not always be desirable for the whole economy or society. The ?corporate? requiring certain changes in management education is bound to be profit-oriented, power-seeking, wanting to push ever more and more into the market, kill competition at all costs and so on. But the fallacy of composition says that what?s good for micro may not be good for the macro.
Fortunately, laudable trends are visible in management education. In my college, we give students 30 hours of ground-level CSR work, thus exposing them to the brutal reality of their glamorous world?poverty, deprivation, handicaps and other socio-economic ills. All good universities have compulsory ?macroeconomics? which gives students deeper and broader understanding of the economy and government role; while ?business environment? narrates hard facts of the economy, society and polity around. So, management education has matured a great deal and is destined to reach a level where it will create generations of responsible and sensitive citizens who can efficiently manage society?s productive assets on the way to inclusive growth. And there are brilliant heads, directors and teachers working passionately towards this end. How else will India?s demographic dividend become an asset and not a liability?
The author is professor of economics in SIMS, Symbiosis
International University, Pune
shubhadasabade@hotmail.com