A recent Harvard Business School survey of deans, executives, and recruiters that examines not only the value of MBA programs but also the mismatches between the skills learning of the MBA students vis-a-vis the realities of their workplaces has sparked fresh debate on the added value of MBA programs here and abroad. The HBS finding is also being echoed by local business executives, business school deans, and recruiters who see the need to introduce some solid changes into the MBA content and delivery in order to make them more effective.
The study decried the MBA graduates’ lack of leadership development, a global mind-set, and skill in navigating organizational realities to make them more effective in their work. The respondents suggested that a “rebalancing” and a “rethinking of many cherished assumptions” must occur for a more solid and more effective matching of expectations and realities. They suggested self-awareness and self-reflection skills, innovativeness and creativity, and a balanced focus between “knowing” (analytical knowledge) and “doing” and “being” (a sense of purpose and identity).
Some local deans and business executives also complain that the standard format in which the MBA is being offered does not help. It is so traditionally and functionally segregated (i.e., into marketing, finance, operations, human resource, etc.) that even if capped by an integrating course at the end, skills development is not effectively achieved.
These are all very good information coming as they do from well-researched findings and empirical phenomena. But let me join the discourse and toss in my one cent’s worth as an educational and business professional and share some insights that I think are being skirted away in the frenzy of the debate.
There are two very important issues that must also be ventilated in this discourse. The first is the reality of who the MBA students are, where they are coming from, what their work and professional experiences are, and what their roles in their organizations are. Generally, MBA intakes are required to have meaningful workplace-based experiences so they can be more effective in the classroom engagements. They are adult learners and come to the classroom with knowledge and skills that are already significant learning resources both for their classmates’ and their professors’ benefit if effectively and interactively facilitated.
Thus, the degree to which the MBA delivery is effectively managed in a facilitative mode spells more potently the level of achievement of adult learning. Skills in leadership, self-awareness, reflection and introspection, global mind-sets, and innovativeness are better imbibed in the form of practical experiences of the students shared in an interactive and integrative manner rather than through the “supply driven,” “faculty-to-student” delivery.
Gone are the days when knowledge and skills about business flow from the academic classrooms to the workplaces through theory because the actual business is in the classroom — live. Gone, too, are greenhorn business students without business and information technology backgrounds. Business schools are now peopled by business-practitioner faculty and workplace-based students. They are a perfect match. The traditional learning trajectory of business schools has been reversed. More and more, knowledge and skills are being shared between and among the adult students themselves back to the classroom and through various online and social media networks.
The MBA program must not only “rebalance” curriculum to match business realities or “rethink” assumptions in terms of program content. It must focus on the student-learner and how best such knowledge and skills may be shared equitably and retained permanently to make the student adept at managing organizational realities.
This shift has long been recognized by the Ateneo Graduate School of Business in crafting and offering MBA programs to its practitioner-students. By pitting practitioner-faculty with workplace-based students, the knowledge and skills have become more solid, more creative, more long-lasting, and more practical. Through its ongoing partnership with Regis University of Denver, Colorado (the Jesuit university that pioneered the adult learning methodology in the United States), this learning methodology has been imbedded as one of its best features making it the leading business school based on Commission on Higher Education (CHED) assessment.
The second and I think most important issue that has not been addressed by this debate is this: Even if we rebalance and rethink MBA programs to cater to the needs and objectives of business, how can an improved and reformatted MBA education contribute to poverty awareness, institution building, and nationhood?
Business cannot operate in isolation from its surroundings and environment. It should be a partaker in national development efforts and not leave this task to government or NGOs alone. That is why any discussion on improving business must be contextualized in the interest of reducing poverty, building capacity, and love of country. After all, innovations unleashed by business ironically might not result in long-term efficiency, growth and equity.
On the part of AGSB, this issue is very crucial in its mission and vision to “help bridge the gaps between our communities and our country so that our people may achieve just and good lives.” On its 40th anniversary five years ago, AGSB launched its value proposition, “Our country is our business.” It is premised on the call for each to act on the shackling effects of poverty and for the business school to contribute to poverty alleviation by helping build individual and institutional capacities.
Today, this value proposition determines the school’s way of proceeding. It is imbedded in the MBA curriculum so that faculty and students integrate these matters in the very way all the courses are tackled. Apart from this, students are encouraged to initiate and participate in projects, individually or through the different school programs, that help their communities in livelihood development and entrepreneurship, provide support and advice to charity institutions, NGOs and MSMEs, or simply join efforts of others in building capacity, such as Gawad Kalinga.
By all means, MBAs with critical thinking and leadership skills in a global world are in demand. But MBAs energized by to how they can help alleviate poverty, help build capacity, and help build the nation should even be more wanted.
Cesar A. Mansibang, PhD, MBA, teaches in the Ateneo Graduate School of Business and is also the registrar of the Ateneo Professional Schools.
The Poverty, Capacity, Nation series is an initiative of the Ateneo Professional Schools to connect to readers and invite them to share the stories of their own struggles and efforts of building capacity to attack poverty. We seek to inform, inspire and move people to action, whatever their circumstances, offering our value proposition as their handle to help build the nation. For inquiries, please e-mail: 150.ateneo.edu. –Poverty, Capacity, Nation — By Cesar A. Mansibang
#WearMask #WashHands
#Distancing
#TakePicturesVideos
