ARTICLE 2 – PART 2 A FRAMEWORK FOR RE-EVALUATING PARADIGMS OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION -sudhanshu

ARTICLE 2 – PART 2

A FRAMEWORK FOR RE-EVALUATING PARADIGMS OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

BROADENING THE MARKET AND THE MISSION: THE STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVE

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In our view, the long-term survival and growth of business and management education are only possible if it gains society’s respect and relevance. In other words, what can we do to make business education respected and loved by society’s stakeholders? It will require a fundamental shift on two dimensions. First, it must broaden its monolithic philosophy of the mission of management education as creating value for the shareholder. It must broaden its belief system to include creating value for all of its stakeholders. The latter includes not only investors but also employees, customers, suppliers and the community. It means balancing the often-conflicting interests of different stakeholders and developing a balanced scorecard that includes financial performance and profit but expands to include people and the planet or the ‘triple bottom line’ metaphor. Unfortunately, business disciplines are anchored to trade-offs and win–loss theories and beliefs. It is the dominant ‘either–or’ mindset and it needs to change to an ‘and–and’ mindset or what we call oxymoron management.

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The research has shown ?that there is no need to settle for either profits or growth – both can easily be achieved together resulting in ‘and–and’ outcomes. It is too easy to deliver shareholder value at the expense of customers, employees, suppliers and community. But it is a lot harder for business leaders to create a win–win value creation across all of its stakeholders. I would like to point out that the discussion of the philosophy of the IDEAL MODEL in previous article ?states that - Business schools must lead in teaching both ‘know-what’ and ‘know-how’ to students and create insightful research about shared value.

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In fact, I have found that companies delivering multiple-stakeholder value consistently outperformed the stock market by four times Second, we should broaden our target market to include both public and private sectors as well as civic non-government organisations (NGOs). All sectors are interrelated today and this premise must be accepted in understanding management. As the market for private sector businesses becomes very competitive and global, it will become increasingly necessary to grow the total market by extending management education and research to other sectors of the economy. This includes government and NGOs. For example, billions of dollars are now spent on advertising and social media in political elections. Also, large foundations are investing billions of dollars in global health and education issues. In degree programmes this means offering management education that is equally appropriate for-profit as well as non- profit sectors and for private as well as public sectors.

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The two largest non-profit sectors where management education is becoming increasingly relevant and respected are education and healthcare. So, for instance, in many Executive MBA programmes students include medical doctors and hospital administrators. In fact, many schools of public health offer management specialisations in public health. And, of course, there are separate schools of public administration at major universities.

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The risk of too narrow an approach can be real. However, it is the examination of the interplay between the private and public sectors that is urgently required. There might be a similar growing need for business education in the government sector, including the defence sector. Managers in large government agencies, as well as regulatory bodies, may have little or no formal business education. Many countries such as India and China have civil service entrance examinations such as the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) or Indian Foreign Service (IFS) tests but regrettably with no formal business education requirement. In many advanced as well as emerging economies, most infrastructure industries are government owned and operated. They may be managed by professionals with non-business education. So there should be little wonder that since economics drives politics and policy there is increasing interest in the government sector for formal business education. It should be pointed out, however, that when Yale University launched its management school, the specific aim of the school was to educate its students in both public and private business, as was also reflected in the name of the school. Only after several years did Yale drop the word ‘public’ from its name. So general market perceptions may not (yet) open up for specific recognition of the term ‘public’.

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Finally, with the growth of large foundations and NGOs, as well as the increasing prevalence of public/private partnerships, there is a growing awareness of formal management education in civic societies and organisations. Business schools, therefore, must actively target students who are interested in working for non- business entities.

This will require a more holistic and integrative curriculum between liberal arts, sciences and business. While this is more common at the undergraduate level in the US and in four-year programmes in countries such as Singapore (e.g. Singapore Management University [SMU]), it is not prevalent in the traditional vocational programmes such as the Bachelor of Commerce (B Com) with specialisations in accounting or personnel management more common in the UK and other countries. In addition, it is extremely uncommon in any MBA degree programme; we are not aware of any MBA programme with strong liberal arts and science in its core curriculum.

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In our view, integrative education is similar to integrative medicine. More and more medical colleges are educating their students in alternative medical therapies such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture, and herbal and homeopathic medicine. Similarly, business schools need to require of their students, as part of their non-elective core programme, a significant addition of humanistic sciences as well as natural sciences in their business curriculum. This is, of course, more do-able with the four-year time horizon of undergraduate business degrees and possibly in a five-year hybrid model of combined bachelors’ and MBA degrees. It is only with this integrative education that we are likely to develop ‘deep generalists’ in place of experts for hire. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School – the only ‘Ivy League’ institution that offers an undergraduate degree programme in business – there are clear requirements that students must take significant course loads in both the arts and sciences in addition to their business-focused courses.

A final aspect of integrated education is the fusion of cognitive and experiential learning. This is similar to the laboratory as part of the course offerings in engineering colleges; clinical practice as part of the course offerings in medical schools; fieldwork in public health; and extension services in agriculture. In other words, we need both the ‘theory of knowledge’ and ‘theory in use’ not as two separate complementary parts of the curriculum but as an integral part of each course in business.

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Most business schools have summer internships and field studies and especially study-abroad programmes. However, they are generally supplemental to the core curriculum, which is predominantly cognitive and disciplinary in nature. To involve the participants in what might be seen as ‘consulting-type’ team activities might serve this purpose.

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The above discussion is summarised in FIGURE 2, which shows the need to embrace the public, private and voluntary sectors as well as an overarching stakeholder perspective.

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Beyond stakeholder and wider management sector perspectives, another major area of market expansion is the rapid economic growth of emerging markets. The demand for business education in global and emerging markets is exploding. For example, India today graduates as many MBA students as the US, and China is not far behind. This is also likely to be the case for undergraduate business degrees as well as for evening and weekend programmes. However, this will be a challenging task because management education in emerging markets has to be affordable.

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?FIGURE 2 Broadening the market and the mission of business schools

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It should be noted that business schools in India often align with local banks to offer student loans that make attendance at one ?or two-year MBA programmes more attainable. And, there are grants from the government and non-profit foundations to support and subsidize management education if it is targeted toward public-sector enterprises and non-profit professionals.

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The third way of broadening the market is through the wider development of online business education. It is simply a matter of time before the tablet becomes the backpack and all teaching materials including textbooks are downloaded as e-books. As the internet becomes universal and mobile computing becomes very affordable, online education for both degree and non-degree programmes will transform from a peripheral to a primary medium of education. The internet is a very rich medium capable of converging voice, video and data. It also has global reach. This will provide unprecedented access for well-established business schools with high reputation rankings. In other words, the down- market image of distance learning associated with correspondence schools and satellite-based education will transform to make it perhaps the preferred medium supplemented by periodic campus visits. The sooner schools participate in this opportunity, the better.

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