Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads

Description

"Business Schools Face Test of Faith." "Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?" As these headlines make clear, business education is at a major crossroads. For decades, MBA graduates from top-tier schools set the standard for cutting-edge business knowledge and skills. Now the business world has changed, say the authors of Rethinking the MBA, and MBA programs must change with it. Increasingly, managers and recruiters are questioning conventional business education. Their concerns? Among other things, MBA programs aren't giving students the heightened cultural awareness and global perspectives they need. Newly minted MBAs lack essential leadership skills. Creative and critical thinking demand far more attention. In this compelling and authoritative new book, the authors: * Document a rising chorus of concerns about business schools gleaned from extensive interviews with deans and executives, and from a detailed analysis of current curricula and emerging trends in graduate business education * Provide case studies showing how leading MBA programs have begun reinventing themselves for the better * Offer concrete ideas for how business schools can surmount the challenges that come with reinvention, including securing faculty with new skills and experimenting with new pedagogies Rich with examples and thoroughly researched, Rethinking the MBA reveals why and how business schools must define a better pathway for the future.

Srikant M. Datar is the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University. A graduate with distinction from the University of Bombay, he received gold medals upon graduation from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India. David A. Garvin is the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He joined the Business School faculty in 1979 and has since then taught courses in leadership, general management, and operations in the MBA and Advanced Management programs, as well as serving as faculty chair of the School's Teaching and Learning Center. Patrick Cullen is a Research Associate at Harvard Business School.

"Is business education becoming more like the liberal arts? If the question is, 'are we trying to teach more about how to be a well-rounded human being who happens to be practicing business,' the answer is absolutely, 'yes.'" --David Garvin in The Atlantic, July 14, 2010