neither Thomas, nor anyone else there, actually suggested doing it all online.

Thomas I thought did - something along the lines of (You can put all the content in X and then use social computing tools), however he pulled back very quickly so it may have been a point to challenge, rather than a proposition.

There's an evolutionary biologist called Elisbet Sartouris. She spoke at an event in London a few years ago. She described how there was no difference between a street thug and a corporate thug. Both types exhibit deeply entrenched beliefs about the exercise of power resulting from very different but equally destructive education (or lack of, as the case may be). Because power exercised this way is actually weakness disguised as strength.

Sartouris goes on to describe how the MBA is a significant contributor to the massive corporate failures we've seen in the past few years, with no doubt several more to come even after the credit crunch subsides.

Doc Searls, a Cluetrain Manifesto author said;

“Think of markets as three overlapping circles: Transaction, Conversation and Relationship. Our financial system is Transaction run amok. Metastasized. Optimized at all costs. Impoverished in the Conversation department, and dismissive of Relationship entirely. We’ve been systematically eliminating Relationship for decades, excluding, devaluing and controlling human interaction wherever possible, to maximize efficiency and mechanization.”

I would add one more module and place it at the centre of a new MBA; Whole Systems Thinking around the value of networks and relationships.

MBAs are producing leaders unable to cope with the pace of change or the tectonic shift to a sharing based economy.

Dave, I can see where you're coming from in relation to trans-disciplinary learning. Having been involved in studying MBA in a traditional part time (now called executive) programme, I also think the problem is neither in the teaching structure nor in the lecture room setup as opposed to online. To me, these are all manifestations of one evolving culture. The question is how the ideas are interrogated. Typical examples are term long Stats course on how to calculate CHI2 or ever lasting lectures on positivist’s implementations of quantitative research methodologies recommending best practice questionnaire design. I agree with you, lessons learned from nature, science, etc. should, if not replace, supplement the curriculum and should be coordinated across modules, from corporate strategy, marketing to academic research methodologies.
So…, is it, then, a question of teaching the teachers? This is far more fundamental than methods of delivery in my mind.
One more point. It is after all a means to an end. So long the capital market exist as it is, with managers disparately trying to increase shareholders’ wealth, or even protecting it, (or basically seen to be doing so), the MBA teaching and syllabus will live.

Two non-traditional management education programs:

IMPM: http://www.impm.org/how_it_all_began.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/node/50160/print

Euromed: http://www.worldmediteraneanmba.com/default.aspx?rub=280

The Canadian management scholar Henry Mintzberg makes the same argument as Sartouris, that the MBA education is a bountiful source of business malpractice. In my reading of Mintzberg and of complexity I have found a lot of common ground between them, but neither references the other. Hopefully I can remedy that here.

Mintzberg has actually begun a kind of anti-MBA program called the International Masters of Practicing Management
and wrote about his experiences in a book Managers not MBAs
. They are well worth a look in terms of the pedagogical ideas and the course content. He is more than sympathetic to complexity ideas: the IMPM is designed to only take practising managers and prompt them to interact with the teachers and materials by reflecting on their own experiences. The teachers bring scholarship, the managers bring experience and both should profit from their interaction. The curriculum is based on five different mindsets that managers need and they are explored in different countries, so the 'Worldliness' mindset is taught in Bangalore and 'Collaboration' in Japan, for example.

A brief and free article about it is here
.

The work of Pfeffer an Sutton would be useful:
a) the Knowing-Doing gap has some very caustic remarks about business education and the gap between it and good management (probably jives with Mintzberg from a look at IMPM)
b) the content of their work on evidence-based management aims to answer some of your concerns. 'Hard facts, dangerous half-truths and total nonsense' has lots of good evidence-based material.

Jenny Ambrozek fired up my brain on the topic of MBAs in her AppGap post
100-year anniversary of the MBA

Thomas said that the whole thing could be done using Ecademy. This doesn't mean online as he always points out that one of the main activities of Ecademy is face to face meetings of the members.

I was drawn to this page by Leon; and so naturally I endorse his comments on 'corporate thugs'. However, surely the MBA is just another symptom of our social & corporate malaise, not seriously to be considered a cause? Put another way, we get the management consultants we deserve.

The issue boils down to why the wrong type of organisations are succeeding. In former Imperial Ages, success was decided by the power of the pistol; now it is the power of profit, linked to the ability to raise capital. We must find a wiser metric of success.

My humble suggestion is that this should be democratic: a stakeholder view. Any and all large organisations whould be given fixed licences (say 5 years) to operate in each region.

The people of each region get to vote them back in or out of their region at the end of each 5 years. Success is meeting the needs of the people. Have I missed something?

Mintzberg has been on that path for a while now, and is making some inroads, thank goodness !

Frank, I'm wondering if perchance you may have run across a 2003 book by Zuboff and Maxmin titled "The Support Economy - Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism".

I find myself astonished at the seeming paradox (to me) that some of the key points Zuboff raised in this book (a theory-oriented discussion of the economic use of today's digital infrastructure of communications and the business models and activities it may yet offer, enable or deliver) seem dated today whilst most of the last year has been an unwinding of credit trust, capabilities and markets coupled with rising but camouflaged inflation.

The book is long, and sometimes a bit windy or over-academic, but of course the subject is large and interwoven with philosophic and quasi-religious overtones.

Fixed licenses to operate and a change in laws re: limited corporate liability would be a good beginning .. clearly some sort of "next episode of capitalism" will be necessary before we (or at least I) turn into grumpy old people ;-)

Coming from a traditional undergrad business education focused on a rational world that can be explained & managed through numerical analysis and best practices, a multidisciplinary approach as envisioned in this blog post and comments resonates deeply...Thanks for the discussion.

McGill-HEC Montreal also has an EMBA program (with heavy influence by Mintzberg) starting this fall: http://www.hec.ca/en/programs/emba/index.html

Will be interesting to see other schools begin to offer innovative business education programs.

tonight is an important night for capital markets have decided to give corporate US one last chance. the ensuing US stock bull will either see capital raising shift its focus to microequity & other transparent participation schemes away from corporate monoliths; or the implosion of the US (that is Anglo Saxon) exchange-based capitalist model into a an over-saturated network cluster; aka economic black hole.

interested? say so.