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Global Edition | Today Is Friday, March 19, 2010 |
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Global Edition | Today Is Friday, March 19, 2010 |
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| The MBA: Economic Killer Virus Still Spreading | « Scan Content In The Order It Was Published » | Magic Words — A Definition | |
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The MBA -- What Responsibility To Society?
I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.
Student-Proposed MBA Oath
Our nation’s best colleges and universities promote and sell their MBA programs through hyperbole, jargon and fuzzy language that obscures reality in favor of an illusion of saying something meaningful. Is it right that business schools are no longer independent academic institutions, but intertwined with the businesses for whom they have become employee training agents?
Some have wondered when business schools shifted away from being ethical and scholarly educators to advocates for anything goes ethics, anti-social behavior and personal gain values? Is it possible that our MBA programs have run afoul of common decency? Is there any truth to claims that today’s top business schools are largely training programs for crooks and thieves? Or is the public kerfuffle over the MBA bankers and deal makers who brought down international finance somehow over stated?
The answers one hears along Main Street are very different from those one might hear on Wall Street. Those who have bankrupted our banks, turned our insurance companies into high-risk speculation and made of finance a derivatives riddled nightmare argue that the attacks on MBA programs and managerial style are irrelevant, or pointless, or both.
Disclosure?
Are You Kidding?In the era before American colleges and universities were invaded and conquered by business values and ethics there was little reason for disclosure for there is very little about Robert Browning, calculus, electrical engineering, world history, philosophy, or school teaching that might represent a threat to our freedoms or culture.
What do you think? Or do you know enough to have an opinion? Have America’s most prestigious colleges and universities created a Frankenstein that threatens your freedoms, financial stability and national security? Or is MBA style management, accounting and finance all that it ought to be — just as it is?
Unless you’re a faculty member or recently earned an MBA degree you may not know what these immensely popular and profitable degree programs are all about.
What if, we wondered, MBA programs were required to disclose their curriculum, values and standards with the same degree of openness required of prescription drug advertising? Drug advertisers are required to disclosure the risks, limits, side effects, bad outcomes and possible benefits of use. There is no similar requirement for higher education.
What if MBA programs had to define their terms of reference? For example, nearly every business school promotes itself as an excellent source of learning about how to enhance value. What this terms means in the MBA context is clear, single dimensional and narrow: wealth enhancement. Why not come out and say what this really means?
We will train the student to disregard societal norms of behavior, abdicate traditional standards of decency, develop ethical work-arounds and avoid responsibility and accountability to optimize short-term wealth enhancement.
No college believes they are doing anything wrong. To the contrary, most colleges rely, in part, on their online presence to reach potential students, parents and prospective employers with warm and glowing generalities. Some MBA students have spoken out about the single-dimensional nature of their MBA education. Other, including Peter Escher, the 29 year old Harvard MBA Student who authored the MBA Oath quoted at the top of this article, seems to sense there is something wrong.
Mr. Escher’s intentions are clear, but the internal failures within today’s massively profitable MBA programs are systemic and entrenched well beyond the reach of good intentions or student awareness. Those failures begin with the hows, whys and ways in which MBA programs are conceived and rewarded. It’s all about the money — not just for the student, but equally for the professoriate and their highly competitive colleges. At every business school website examined for this article, there is a systemic bias toward advertising slickness, general platitudes and good sounding but undefined terms and claims.
Our best business schools sell educational reputation and academic quality with the zeal of prescription drugs, but without any warnings, limitations or contra-indications. For those seeking to know something of substance about a college, or MBA program of study, there is very little substance. Some institutions provide little or no substantive information about MBA curricular structure, values or worst of all, definitions of the sales speak and jargon. Instead, even the most prestigious colleges describe their programs in terms such as depth, intensive, and other general and superlative terminology.
Wharton’s MBA curriculum offers depth, breadth, and options. The curriculum emphasizes an intensive core in general management, plus the depth of 20 majors and breadth of nearly 200 electives.
Dartmouth’s Tuck School MBA program is promoted to prospective students based on its personal gain potential. Like Wharton and Harvard, Tuck is able to sell reputation without offering substance or clarity to prospective students.
Tuck’s curriculum is comprehensive and specific. The focus is on leadership. Through rigorous coursework you will acquire the knowledge you need to lead—in finance, strategy, marketing, general management, and more. You will be ready. Not just for your next great job, but for your career. For your future.
Pursuing a Tuck MBA is a wise investment in yourself and in your future.
Further west, at the Fisher School of Business at The Ohio State University, their online information promotes their MBA program by suggesting personalization as if a valuable element of study.
What if you could build your own curriculum . . .one that enabled you to balance your personal strengths and interests with your unique vision of the future?
Among all the sites we visited, only Harvard provided a curricular description of its MBA program — both required courses and a very rich set of supporting electives. Although the advertising energy, superlatives, obscure terminology and sometimes painfully poor writing may not meet Harvard’s overall standards, the ir two term MBA curriculum is open to all who care to examine it.
We found Harvard’s openings refreshing, if not entirely clear.
Below is a transcript of the MBA curriculum page from Harvard University, one of this nation’s most prestigious business schools. Whether it is evidence of incomplete thinking, purposeful sales jargon, intentional obscuration, unclear terminology, or writing well below that taught Harvard undergraduates, it describes a cult-like theme of self over community, and value building absent any understadning consequences.
If you’ve not recently examined a college syllabus or an MBA program of study, you will find Harvard’s to be relevatory of a fine institution swept up in a highly competitive field of higher education. If you’re a English reader we recommend that you click on the link below to read this material on the Harvard Business School website.
Term I Courses
The following first-term required courses use the point of view of the general manager to focus on the internal functional operations of business enterprises.
Finance I
This course examines the role of finance in supporting the functional areas of a firm, and fosters an understanding of how financial decisions themselves can create value.
Topics covered include:
* Basic analytical skills and principles of corporate finance.
* Functions of modern capital markets and financial institutions.
* Standard techniques of analysis, including capital budgeting, discounted cash flow valuation, and risk analysis.Financial Reporting and Control (FRC)
Recognizing that accounting is the primary channel for communicating information about the economics of a business, this course provides a broad view of how accounting contributes to an organization.
Students will gain:
* An understanding of the concepts and language of accounting so it can be used as an effective tool for communication, monitoring, and resource allocation.
* Mastery of the vocabulary of financial statements and accounting reports.
* Familiarity with how modern accounting and control theory is used in evaluating economic conditions and making organizational decisions.Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD)
This course focuses on how managers become effective leaders by addressing the human side of enterprise.
The first modules examine teams, individuals, and networks in the context of:
* The determinants of group culture.
* Managing the performance of individual subordinates.
* Establishing productive relationships with peers and seniors over whom the manager has no formal authority.The intermediate modules look at successful leaders in action to see how they:
* Develop a vision of the future.
* Align the organization behind that vision.
* Motivate people to achieve the vision.
* Design effective organizations and change them to achieve superior performance.The final module introduces a model for strategic career management.
MarketingThe objectives of this course are to demonstrate the role of marketing in the company; to explore the relationship of marketing to other functions; and to show how effective marketing builds on a thorough understanding of buyer behavior to create value for customers.
Students learn how to:
* Make marketing decisions in the context of general management.
* Control the elements of the marketing mix—product policy, channels of distribution, communication, and pricing—to satisfy customer needs profitably.
* Use this knowledge in a brand management simulation. The course culminates in an examination of the evolution of marketing, particularly focusing on opportunities presented by the Internet.Technology and Operations Management (TOM)
This course enables students to develop the skills and concepts needed to ensure the ongoing contribution of a firm’s operations to its competitive position. It helps them to understand the complex processes underlying the development and manufacture of products as well as the creation and delivery of services.
Topics encompass:
* Process analysis
* Cross-functional and cross-firm integration
* Product development
* Information technology
* Technology and operations strategy
Term II Courses
The following second-term Required Courses build on the curriculum of the first term, and cover the relationship of the organization to larger economic, governmental, and social environments.
Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE)
This course introduces tools for studying the economic environment of business to help managers understand the implications for their companies.
Students will learn the impact of:
* National income and balance of payment accounting
* Exchange rate theory
* Political regimesAn examination of both the gains and problems arising from regional global integration covers:
* International trade
* Foreign direct investment
* Portfolio capital
* Global environmental issuesStrategy
The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy. It provides an understanding of:
* A firm’s operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage.
* How to generate superior value for customers by designing the optimum configuration of the product mix and functional activities.
* How to balance the opportunities and risks associated with dynamic and uncertain changes in industry attractiveness and competitive position.Students learn to:
* Develop a mastery of a body of analytical tools and the ability to take an integrative point of view.
* Use these tools to perform in-depth analyses of industries and competitors, predict competitive behavior, and analyze how firms develop and sustain competitive advantage over time.Particular attention is paid to competitive positioning; understanding comparative costs; and addressing issues such as cannibalization, network externalities, and globalization.
The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM)
This course addresses the issues faced by managers who wish to turn opportunity into viable organizations that create value, and empowers students to develop their own approaches, guidelines, and skills for being entrepreneurial managers.
The course teaches students how to:
* Identify potentially valuable opportunities.
* Obtain the resources necessary to pursue an opportunity and to create an entrepreneurial organization.
* Manage the entrepreneurial organization once it has been established.
* Grow the business into a sustainable enterprise.
* Create and harvest value for the organization’s stakeholders.Finance II
This course builds on the foundation developed in Finance I, focusing on three sets of managerial decisions:
* How to evaluate complex investments.
* How to set and execute financial policies within a firm.
* How to integrate the many financial decisions faced by firms.The Finance II course is divided into four blocks of material:
* Tools of financial analysis (credit market analysis, option pricing, valuation of interest tax shields, weighted average cost of capital)
* Financial policy choices of firms (whether to finance with debt or equity, distributing cash to shareholders)
* Financial market imperfections (costs of financial distress, transaction costs, information asymmetries, taxes, agency conflicts)
* Deals and transactions (mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, hostile takeovers, initial public offerings)Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA)
In this course, students learn about the complex responsibilities facing business leaders today. Through cases about difficult managerial decisions, the course examines the legal, ethical, and economic responsibilities of corporate leaders. It also teaches students about management and governance systems leaders can use to promote responsible conduct by companies and their employees, and shows how personal values can play a critical role in effective leadership.
