Once considered an unassailable programme, the MBA is being shaken from its roots. Several colleges are closing down MBA programmes for want of students, the chief reason for this being shrinking job opportunities.
Of course, there is also the issue of unemployable MBA graduates. There appears to be a disconnect between the needs of industry and what is taught in an MBA. While industry is in 4G mode, using IOT and automation to manage in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, academics are in a 2G world, unaware of even SMAC (social media, mobile, analytics and cloud). It’s time to confront the problems haunting the MBA and look for strategies to re-imagine the programme.
East-West conflict
There is no denying that the MBA as it is offered today, modelled largely on the Western curriculum and taught using Western case studies, is on the decline. This may still be relevant for the top quartile of students in the top 10 per cent of business schools in India, who get placed with global multinationals. The rest of the MBAs need a culture-specific and contextual curriculum.
Though engineering and science education may be copied, management education has to be culture-specific. According to management guru Jagdish Sheth: “In management, most knowledge is contextual for the times, ecosystem and circumstances. As times change, we need to discover, synthesise and create new theories which are relevant to the changed circumstances.” At best, the analytical tools may be universally applicable. However, strategy, HR and marketing will have to be context-specific.
My recommendation is that we should not borrow more than 50 per cent from the West. Japan is respected for the Japanese management concepts that got exported to the West. The Chinese have their own models – be it guanxi or chi. The Art of War by Sun Tzu is a classic on strategy that China gave the world.
We will be fighting a losing battle if we chase the American model of accreditation, diversity, internationalisation and publication, if we fail to develop our own models. The problem with Indian researchers is their slave mentality. Unless a theory comes from West, they are not going to respect it.
Some original thinkers like Subhash Sharma or SK Charavarthy are often ridiculed by the intellectuals at premier management institutes. Just like yoga was rediscovered by the West to gain acceptance back in India, we still seem to need Western researchers to study Indian models and sell them back to us. Harvard is doing just that — be it a case study on Narayana Hridayalaya or the Dabbawallahs or the India Way.
Declining value
The second reason for the decline of the MBA is that it hardly offers value for money, either to the students or the recruiters. Students do not get value as the fee has gone up multi-fold and companies get no value as they have to pay a very high salary for the meagre contribution the MBAs make.
MBAs recruited in the 1970s and 1980s brought in professionalism to companies by building systems, models and processes. Today all these are in place in most organisations; thanks to ERP and other IT applications. Typically, the middle-level positions that MBAs occupied have also vanished. For example, sales force automation has made sales managers redundant. And it is so with most other managerial jobs.
Interestingly, it is not just manufacturing industries that were hit by robotisation and other automation tools. Even the IT industry has been affected by the kind of automation that will make coding and testing obsolete. Mechanisation reduced manual labor and automation is reducing many ‘thinking’ jobs.
In today’s environment, we need more doers, such as sales people, data analysts and call-centre operators rather than only thinkers. In this changed scenario, a BBA may be a better option for those wanting to do a basic degree and then an MBA. But remember that other degree holders, such as B.Com, BSc Statistics and BSc (Computer Science) will also compete with BBAs.
Technology Factor
Technology is the third factor affecting the MBA and, in fact, much of higher education. Blended learning and flipped class-room models have been found more effective than the traditional lecture method. We have to move away from chalk and talk in order to be relevant to the smart-phone generation. When you can Google and find answers to most of your problems, the role of the teacher too has to change.
There are already multiple delivery channels being put in place for higher education. What is forecast is that blended learning and online models will eventually overtake classroom learning, especially as the latter will out-price itself.
Those who are sceptical about this approach need only look at the banking industry. Currently, we have a multi-channel model for banking: branch-banking, ATM, online banking and mobile banking. The dominant banking mode has shifted from branch banking to ATM and online/mobile. The same is sure to happen soon in the education industry too. Workplace reimagination is the big buzzword now. And the same is applicable to education too. So, more classroom reimagination is warranted for the MBA to stay relevant in this digital era to churn out Gen Y business leaders.
Just-in-Time Learning
Technology has also paved the way for what I call just-in-time learning. Traditionally, we had a knowledge acquisition phase (maybe up to 25 years of age) and a knowledge utilisation phase (22 to 60 years of age). In this model a teacher can get away with teaching any theory, relevant or irrelevant. The typical justification given is that whatever is taught will be useful at a later point of time in life.
Now the learning concept has changed. With the dramatic changes happening in the VUCA world, learning has to be continuous. Educational institutions only need to introduce the students to the subjects. Advanced concepts can be learnt as and when needed. Online models and the Internet provide avenues for self-learning as and when needed. This is what I call just-in-time learning. This is the reason why the duration of programmes are shrinking.
The engineering course was five years, then became four years and now one can even complete it in three years. The MBA is shrinking from two years to one year.
(To be concluded)