Does the MBA course content require a revision now?
Venkatesh Krishnamurthy
Sovereign IT; Co-Founder; Creator of IT Products, Fintech Platforms; Head of Engineering, Product Management and Program Management; Tech Business Author; University Teacher
Welcome back, dear subscribers and readers.
As you are aware, I #teach a few #courses at many B-Schools, the latest at my tenth #IIM viz., Indian Institute of Management Amritsar . I hope to publish my #Punjab #travelogue soon.
Many MBA variants
In #India, there are a variety of #MBA courses (and #PGDM courses due to some regulatory requirements) offered by many institutes and #universities. School of Management and Entrepreneurship, IIT Jodhpur offers three viz., MBA, MBA Tech, MBA Fintech & Cyber Security. Indian Institute of Management Bangalore offers many. Indian Institute of Management Kashipur has MBA, MBA Analytics and more. I had read that one local B-school even offers MBA in Family Business! There are B-schools that offer MBA in #healthcare and in #sports, #tourism #management. Then there are variants - online, hybrid, one year course for working professionals and more. The list is practically endless. I have noticed similar variety of choices in universities abroad as well. With so many courses / programs / variants, it is chaotic to choose from.
Recently, I was thinking "Is the MBA curriculum too old and less relevant now?". I tossed this question to the students of my #ECommerce elective course at IIM Kashipur. A few active #students concurred.
What is generally taught across B-Schools now?
Typically, in the first year, the students are taught compulsory courses in #Statistics, #Operations, #HROB, #Marketing, #Finance and #MIS (Management Information Systems). In the second year, the students choose elective courses, a few taught by in-house faculty and the remainder by experts from the industry. #Law is a very essential requirement of #business. Unfortunately, many B-Schools do not teach.
The need to revise the course content now
In the post-#Covid-19 world, HR seems to be lost, groping in the dark. Employees may prefer working from home or hybrid. Many #Recruitment, HR and Organizational Behaviour theories have already lost their relevance, with a few orthodox still desperately clinging on. #Banks have been facing fierce competition from new age #fintechs. Smokestack #industries are making way for #automated and on-demand custom #manufacturing. Still, the courses are taught in a traditional way. It seems that theorists have built safeguards to keep themselves in demand in #academia, on the pretext of holistic education, research and such.
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So, what's new to teach in MBA?
In the recent two decades, countries have grown more and more protectionist. This creates requirements for new digital policies, new digital supply chains and more. As an extension, automation is affecting many industries. These need to be included in the course content.
AI is making strides in many areas. AI has serious effects on all the areas that it is applied to. There may be a few positive outcomes and several negative, from the use of AI. So, AI policies for business, management of AI tools and such need to be taught, before it is too late.
MBA is mostly a #capitalist course. So, it is important it remains true to its objectives. Companies are still exploring (only a few have implemented) ways to become eco-friendly and adapt to new green requirements. It is high time that they realize that they have to align their #goals of #shareholder #wealth maximization with #sustainability of #environment. I have not seen elective courses offered in this yet. This is a requirement.
A few B-schools offer courses in management of #luxury #products and #services. I have yet to come across MBA in alternate #asset management (art, luxury, private wealth management for #HNIs and the like, but excluding #cryptocurrency and #NFT which may not be real assets).
Many B-Schools teach content in silos. There is a real need for inter-disciplinary courses. I teach IT #Product #Management, #Marketing of Information Technology (including products, services and #IP), IT Contracts, IT Consulting and a few more. The demand for my courses (which frequently are subscribed by over 100 students) shows that the students find such inter-disciplinary courses useful.
I never heard any successful manager of reading and using a #research paper and a "peer-reviewed" one is further alien! That speaks volumes about the need for application oriented literature. I suppose there is enough new age business #literature in the new areas that the professors can use to teach.
Do you have any thoughts on new courses that can be taught in MBA? Comment right away!
Bye till I write next!
Senior Consultant at Sandtab
11 个月MBA is a borrowed curriculum from multiple streams: military, psychology, business maths, economics, accounting etc. Ironically, it has not been able to integrate even the fundamental IT platform (say MS-Excel) in practical usage for simulating consulting ecosystem. On top of that boastful specialization in Analytics do injustice to standard MBAs who otherwise must have been trained with application based logic building and usage in consulting simulations. I met faculties from reputed central universities and presented such a platform to be integrated with each subject independently while being integrated to simulate real world business process of any industry, much like a consulting company engagement (Deloitte, PWC, E&Y etc). But to my dismay faculties do not understand the need of technological integration as most of them had little visibility of integrated platform in action in real world. It becomes more sickening when I saw their reluctance to even attempt to consider and try to envision the future needs. Primary objective is placements even with outdated pedagogy, while capacity building and quality consulting acumen for future managers has been masqueraded by the AI glamour. MBA must have a Consulting Ecosystem.
Founder - Ultitude Consulting, Best-selling author of "The Speed of Time" and "Journey to the Edge of the Universe" books.
1 年Hi Venkatesh - Very timely article, especially when big transitions are happening in the industry. I agree with several courses you recommended that need to be introduced urgently. Yes, AI is quite relevant now, especially the tech of Emotional AI is evolving so rapidly today. I see many start-ups offering AI solutions that blend customer emotions/expressions into the products to establish a kind of a dialogue between the users and the product whose features adjust to the moods of the customers. Last week I gave a talk at a Microsoft event and they found it fascinating. Definitely, MBA schools have a catch-up game to play here. Thanks for prompting with such an important topic! Cheers, Sharad
Chief Provocateur at Luckfogic.com
1 年Absolutely without a shred of doubt...
Healthcare and Hospital Transformation Consultant and Chief Quality Officer, Shree Hindu Mandal Hospital, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
1 年Excellent thoughts. The need for change must be a spark from within. The spark often gets ignited by external exposure. Therefore, external faculty with work experience must be welcomed. Old fashioned thoughts such as PhD prerequisites are barriers to change.
Chairperson placement Committee, Associate Professor, JIML| Recipient of Jagdish N Sheth award for best doctoral thesis | Former Senior Statistical Officer, Government of India
1 年Data Analytics machine learning and AI is must for all the courses, however these should be aligned with real life scenario.