In the rapidly evolving business landscape, the value of an MBA degree has been the subject of vigorous debate as B-schools strive to prepare students for an increasingly complex business environment. The ongoing pandemic has added to the debate by bringing into sharp focus the impact that other spheres — public health, education, governance — have on businesses. This is forcing employers into taking a hard look at the ability of B-schools graduates to not only hit the ground running but in also being adaptive and innovative in the face of disruptions to ‘business as usual’.
Management schools have been adaptive institutions. They have survived many crises before. The question, at the moment, is how they will adapt to cope with the COVID-19-induced economic shock. While there are no easy, black-and-white answers, I believe Management programmes must respond along two dimensions — curriculum, (what students learn) and pedagogy (how they learn) and the overall student experience. Changes to curriculum and pedagogy will revolve around teaching the hard skills as well as the more important, soft skills that develop emotional intelligence.
Time for an upgrade
Management education has matured over the past century. All MBA programmes have a core set of courses designed to arm students with hard skills of management — Finance, Accounting, Marketing, Operations, and so on. However, every aspect of the traditional curriculum needs a tech upgrade, whether it is the impact of Fin-Tech on Finance, or Digital Marketing on Marketing, or social/media engagement as employer brands. Traditional courses will have to be infused with new content on emerging technologies for which applications in many sectors may yet be evolving — technologies such as AI, blockchain, 5G, IOT and so on. Because this is uncharted territory, all the necessary tech upgrades might not be readily imaginable. Also, the understanding of technology must extend to its legal, social, and ethical consequences.
The so-called hard skills now represent the floor for anyone aspiring to join the ranks of middle management in an organisation. To rise higher into a leadership role, soft skills and emotional intelligence become crucial necessities — resilience, leadership, curiosity, reflection, learnability, and teamwork. While many B-schools have developed their curricula to include these, there is a chasm that needs to be bridged.
To create effective leaders, it is imperative that B-schools, while helping students retain their individuality, strive to challenge their thinking and behaviour. Graduates must be ready to connect with colleagues, understand the organisational culture and then add value to business and the culture. Many students will find some of their fundamental beliefs being challenged, and their behaviour patterns in need of an overhaul. This is where the second dimension of an MBA programme — the learning experience — comes into play. This experiential learning must extend beyond the classroom.
Experiential learning will be primarily shaped by three factors — quality of the faculty, the peer group, and the pedagogy. To create a transformative learning experience will demand that B-schools aggressively look to develop top teaching talent, either internally or source it from outside. Having a difficult subject being taught by a really good teacher can make a decisive difference in how much students absorb and then put into practice in their organisations.
A diverse student body is not only attractive to recruiters, but also exposes students to a range of world views, experiences, and skill sets. The quality of the student body plays an important part in the learning experience.
Balancing act
The third aspect of the learning experience, the pedagogy, will need to strike the right balance between classroom instruction, project work, industry exposure and free time for students. Industry internships and project work are opportunities for students to further sharpen their ability to put concepts into practice. Achieving the right balance requires careful thinking, some trial and error, and a strong feedback loop.
Several global B-schools are responding to the evolving needs, and Indian B-schools can take a cue from some of them. For instance, the MIT Sloan School of Management has taken MIT’s motto “mens et manus”, which translates from Latin to “mind and hand”, quite literally and developed a series of courses labelled Labs. For example, in the Entrepreneurship Lab course, a student traverses from idea generation to developing a prototype of a product or service, to building a start-up organisation with funding to commercialise the product or service. Other lab courses are focused on leadership, global or regional international markets, fin-tech, and so on.
The Stanford Graduate School of Business has designed a curriculum that is intended to expand the ideas, knowledge, and capabilities of its students with perspective courses such as Ethics in Management and Strategic Leadership, Global Context of Management, Leadership Labs and Managing Groups.
At Harvard Business School, a case-based pedagogy is complemented with hands-on experience in the form of field trips, seminars, and company projects. It is building on the concept of personal leadership and offers courses designed to cultivate intelligent leadership.
For business education to be relevant in the years to come, it is time to think of how educators can work towards developing not just managers, but leaders.
The writer is a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management and on the Governing Council of the BITS School of Management, BITSoM.
