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The Vanishing MBA
How business schools have lost relevance
First a confession: I’m a recovering MBA. I got mine back in 1992 from a top European business school yet even as I was doing the coursework I was quite skeptical of the approach taken. Nearly thirty years later I’m even more skeptical, and history seems to be on my side.
The origins of the MBA (Master of Business Administration, for the three people out there who aren’t familiar with the acronym) go all the way back to 1908 when the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration created the very first academic approach to management. The idea was to create a quasi-scientific academic discipline that would go some way to meeting the needs of the increasingly large commercial organizations that were shaping the world of commerce.
As times have changed so too have MBA courses changed, at least in terms of curriculum. Marketing became increasingly important as ad agencies and others pioneered market segmentation techniques. Operations management adapted to new trends in manufacturing and logistics. As technology became more important, MBA courses have attempted to cover at a very high level some salient aspects of how computer technologies impact the business of business. Most recently there’s been an attempt to add “entrepreneurship” into the mix.
