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Exam forced into re-think

THE traditionally taught Master of Business Administration (MBA) is today under fire from all sides, and has been forced into a radical re-think of its function.

The heaviest bombardment is coming from its ultimate customers - chief executives of the companies which hire the new graduates.

Corporate complaints about MBA graduates centre on four basic perceptions: They tend to be, or are felt to be, ''arrogant''. The schools emphasise the fine line between arrogance and confidence, while the companies point to the ''crown prince syndrome'' where MBAs behave as if they have the wisdom of Solomon.

They have over-high career expectations and unrealistic salary goals. This appears to be a justified complaint, backed up by research which found that 70 per cent of MBAs believed having the qualification automatically entitled them to higher salaries.

They are difficult to integrate into established company career systems. Employers sometimes view MBAs as disruptive, because they want to do too much, too soon. The schools claim MBAs stand out because there are so few of them in most businesses, and recommend a constant, in-flow of new graduates.

The MBA courses are not relevant to the needs of business. One exceptionally critical assessment of the alleged irrelevance of MBA programmes came from Henry Mitzenberg, professor of management at Canada's McGill University.

He said: ''The Harvard Business School has ruined more companies [in the US] than all of the Japanese companies put together.'' The root of the problem appears to be the sheer pace of change in the business world. This is true, both in terms of the external trading environment and in the internal structuring of companies.

Decentralisation of companies, plus the elimination of middle-management layers, have reduced the chances for direct vertical promotion.

More significantly, when the rate of change was far slower, a set of core skills, once learned and mastered, used to last for many years.

This no longer holds firm with the modern concept of ''life-long learning''.

In their own defence, the business schools justifiably argue that a time lag between the evolution of new business practices and the teaching of them in educational institutions is inevitable.

The Weatherhead School, at Case Western Reserve University in the US, tried to introduce a package of 22 ''soft skills'' courses, such as ethics, leadership and interpersonal skills.

It asked human resource executives, chief executives and the students themselves to group the skills they judged most valuable.

''Ideally, the clusters would have overlapped,'' said Scott Cowen, the school's dean.

''In reality, they barely touched at all.'' All these factors are causing business schools to re-evaluate their courses.

A major reassessment of the primary purposes of the MBA programme is underway.

Higher education courses in all disciplines seek, ultimately, to teach their students how to think, and not what to think.

The goal of the new MBA programmes takes this concept a step further.

In a complex and changing world business environment, the new theory is that there is an increasing need for perceptive judgment, not the mere administration of previously established rules and regulations.

Some of the leading schools, in London, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Calgary, have already carried out extensive surveys and redesigned their courses to embrace the new concerns - such as internationalisation, ethics, and cross-culturalism.

The Hongkong University Business School has borrowed the research techniques and is re-evaluating its own course design in this new context.

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