As the global financial meltdown unfolded in the US and the world moved into yet another bout of recession, fingers were pointed at the inadequacies of management education. After all, the mighty corporations that have collapsed like a pack of cards were all headed by MBAs from top-notch institutions. As Matthew Lynn, a Bloomberg columnist, pointed out: ?Richard Fuld, chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc when it collapsed, has an MBA from New York University. John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch & Co, is a graduate of Harvard Business School. Christopher Cox, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has an MBA from Harvard University. And so does former US President George W Bush.
?Andy Hornby, the CEO of British bank HBOS Plc, is another Harvard Business School alumnus…Peter Wuffli, who as CEO presided over the huge losses that took Zurich-based UBS AG to the brink of disaster, studied management at Switzerland?s University of St. Gallen.?
And Lynn had a simple solution to the problem: ?Let?s close down business schools to get into the spirit of the new financial order?. In the past 20 years, Lynn argued, the MBA factories have created the conditions that helped land the global economy in a mess. ?They legitimised a pseudo-scientific approach to finance that turned out to be bogus; they promoted a management style that was too mechanistic; and they formed a managerial elite more interested in rewards than producing lasting wealth for the economies they operate in.?
Such outbursts against management schools, together with the global clamour for greater Corporate Social Responsibility, have led to a re-orientation of MBA programmes worldwide. Today, MBA programmes are no longer solely about marketing, finances and leadership but also about social responsibility, ethical equity, development management, cross-cultural sensitivity, etc.
IIM Ahmedabad, for instance, says the objective of its flagship Post Graduate Programme Management (PGP), is ?to develop young men and women into competent professional managers… achieving excellence in performance while contributing to the welfare of the larger society. The programme specifically attempts to:
* Equip students with the required conceptual and interpersonal skills and sense of social purpose for managerial decision-making;
* Develop leadership capabilities to act as change agents and be a source of motivation in the organisations they work in;
* Nurture the desire to excel in performance without compromising integrity, honesty and fairness.
While business ethics is now part and parcel of most MBA programmes in India, the country’s oldest IIM, in Calcutta, has a unique course aimed at helping students to develop better insights and understanding of themselves and their interaction with others in the environment. Called ‘Management of Self in Organisations’, the course is based on the premise that an understanding of the “self” will lead to a more effective management of oneself and one’s interaction in the various roles.
As a part of this course, each student is expected to write his autobiography and to write an analysis of himself at the end. “The assignment aims at facilitating the process of self-exploration and self-analysis and encourages the student to examine various themes in his/her life and their causes and consequences?, claims the institute.
Social entrepreneurship is also being taught in the country’s top management schools. Called ‘Marketing to Bottom of Pyramid Consumers’, this course focuses on understanding the commercial and social marketing innovations and practices for subsistence marketplaces, especially in developing countries, including Brazil, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The course helped enhance the understanding about innovative marketing approaches to be used for the underprivileged consumers.
In this course, students are required to read management guru CK Prahlad?s ?The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid?, as also the marketing models of Grameen Bank, ITC e-Choupal and other social entrepreneurship ventures.
Students of Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon are not only taught business ethics in all subjects but also emotional and spiritual intelligence.