Management education: The academic perspective

Abstract

Business graduates, especially from premier institutes of management, have long been wooed by all sectors of industry and business alike. By and large, they have the reputation of being the star performers of their organisations.

Have business graduates lived up to their promise? How far has their education equipped them to face the challenges of the actual business environment? How have they coped with and geared up to the post globalisation and liberalisation scenario? How confident are they of managing organisations creatively, of dealing with tasks as wide ranging as interfacing sensitively with customers and putting processes in place?

Bringing together different perspectives on business education, the incumbent and immediate past directors of the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta share with us their hands-on experience of heading a management institute and ruminate on the larger role of management education in shaping individuals and organisations. Senior professors of IIMB and other institutions articulate their views more specifically on their areas of specialisation. Industry leaders measure their experience against their expectations in evaluating business education and its graduates and alumni of business schools decide for themselves the value added by their education, what the lacunae in the present system are and how best they can be filled.

As pointers to future directions of business education, Henry Mintzberg of McGill and Jonathan Gosling of Lancaster,in a candid discussion, elaborate on their programme for practising managers which could serve as an effective counter point to the 'traditional' MBA programme. V S Mahesh illustrates how the imperatives of service are forcing academics to rethink the conservative pigeon-holing of business education into marketing, operations, HR and other areas and develop instead, a 'holographic' approach to the discipline they deal with