India Abroad - June 2009

rate environment, with greater international trade the demand for trained management talent has increased. Furthermore, in the absence of any other general management program for training individuals in skills and competencies, in a risk-free environment, the MBA remains the destination. The numbers bear it out. A recent research conducted by the HBS concluded that B-Schools around the world turn out about 500,000 MBAs a year, with upwards of 150,000 of those in the US alone.

Back to the future
For the foreseeable future — read
decades — the MBA will continue to
provide a significant portion of the
‘raw input’ required for meeting the
management and leadership demands
of enterprises globally. There are sever-
al reasons for this relevance. The criti-
cal ones are:
1. The key proposition of MBA pro-
grams to enterprises often tends not to
be the educational content but the
credible ‘stamp of approval’ or confir-
mation of the highest selection stan-
dards. This is reassuring for the multi-
tudes of new graduates in the current
economic environment. They can and
should take comfort in the fact that
similar to other selections standards or
‘lists’, by virtue of progressing success-
fully through a recognized and well-
placed MBA program, they have
increased their professional profile and
hence — if I use generalities —their
employability.
2. In an increasingly complex and
international operating environment
companies are looking to get their
management bench strength and leader-
ship talent trained in risk-free environ-
ments where lessons are learnt not from
expensive mistakes but from shared
knowledge and experiences. The MBA
programs at most schools provide a rich
portfolio of course content and interac-
tions that enable the keen student to
learn and grow from codified experi-
ences and orchestrated class interactions
— for example, international partici-
pants — that are hard to replicate in
their job or work environments.
Caveat
Having touted the relevance in the
near term, I also believe it is worth high-
lighting some caution for the MBA pro-
gram based on personal experience.
Increasingly administrators, teachers
and participants of the MBA programs
need to ask themselves how they expect
to not only remain relevant but also
more critical to the human capital
required for global enterprise. There are
three considerations I will offer:

plete. When Detroit is run from Washington, DC the implications emanating for MBA programs and their participants are a greater need for appreciating and illuminating the systematic and interplay between government intervention and corporate value creation. Mercantilism and autarkic principles denounced for long are alive and well, though in a different form.

3. If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a
door. Amidst all the uncertainty out
there is some certainty — the traditional
promise of the high-flying financial
sector, consulting and professional
services opportunities emanating from
business schools post an MBA have
vaporized. A research within the busi-
ness idea marketplace concluded that
‘most business schools… have not been
very effective in the creation of useful
business ideas.’ Clearly that statistic,
state and stance will do little to
improve the future well-being of the
MBA participants or the program
itself. In the current economic environ-
ment it behooves schools, administra-
tors and participants to think entrepre-
neurially with regards to each element
of the ‘old proposition’ and entrepre-
neurially explore potential elements of
the future proposition from the MBA
that will ensure they are ‘creating
demand’ for the talent and skills that
the program endows. In a simple man-
ner, this asks participants and schools
to shift focus from enterprise manage-
ment to enterprise creation, from seek-
ing jobs to creating jobs, from thinking
that is left-brain-biased to whole-
brain-balanced. It is these changes that
will enable the current crop of partici-
pants and the MBA schools to create the
environment where the exploration for
building a new door begins. Building the
new door is critical since ability is noth-
ing without the opportunity.

In conclusion, I will add the MBA program has and will continue to have relevance in the medium term as an effective educational and training platform for building the managerial and leadership workforce. Ironically, the seeds of its irrelevance as a moniker or degree are not outside the program but maybe sown in its very fabric. The threat from within being the active growth in continuous learning and executive education programs being offered by the same providers of the MBA.