If, on this day after Thanksgiving, you awoke from your turkey-induced coma to eat some leftovers and ponder the popular question about how to fix MBA programs, then you’ll want to check out this Economist.com article “Different Strokes for Similar Folks.”
The article states that, despite MBA programs’ emphasis on bringing in more female and ethnically diverse students, most of these scholars bring with them the same skill sets: “At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior academic and career performance, analytical and problem solving abilities and numeracy.”
In order to achieve true diversity, the Economist argues, MBAs must create classes with varieties of “attitude and approach,” recruiting not only the usual bankers, consultants and industry climbers, but also students with backgrounds in the creative arts, philosophy, history and political science. The article explains:
Unless at least some students on a program have this sort of grounding — and the open mind that hopefully goes with it — then the increasingly fashionable focus on ethics and social responsibility is unlikely to have a significant effect in the long term.
This reminded me of my post last week, covering Roger Martin’s view that MBA programs should integrate other fields of study, which many readers responding to the polling question agreed with. Whether it’s diverse course offerings or students with dissimilar educational backgrounds, it seems like many people are drawing the conclusion that MBAs need to incorporate a bit of non-business thinking for their continued success.
Sandwich image courtesy of Flickr user avlxyz, CC 2.0
