Sunday was Henry Mintzburg day at the AoM with two sessions involving the master. The AoM organising committee really deserve a slating for the location of the sessions. People were sat on the floor and in the corridor outside the room. It doesn't take much intelligence to realise that a session involving such a major figure needs a bigger room. The error is compounded by the first sentence of p32 of the summary guide which says: Encounter an overflow crowd at an Academy of Management annual meeting, and the chances are good that the session in question will include Henry Mintzberg. It is bad enough to be caught our by unexpected demand, but to fail to plan for expected demand strikes me as a poor advert for management science.
Rant over, the main subject was the role and purpose of management education. Now there were some angels on the heads of pins discussions about whether you should be a business school or a management school. However the essence was a debate over management as a practice or as theory. On one side (and the Dean of UCL represents an extreme here) was the argument that you could rehearse people through simulation and case studies to prepare them for practice. Opposing that was Henry who argued that management was a practice. We had a supporting cast of presenters that included a sociologist arguing to some effect that we should teach multiple forms of organisation including collectives etc. You knew he was a sociologist by the way as everything was interpreted in terms of power, its an unhealthy obsession of the discipline to my way of thinking.
There was one very memorable quote from Henry (he used it in all three sessions I attended but it was still good), who said that George Bush treated Iraq like it was a case study except he didn't read the case. He is of course the only President with an MBA.
Filtering through the various ideas, examples and rhetoric, by take would be:
- No one should really do an MBA until they have management experience , practice needs to inform the learning. I remember on my own MBA (many years ago) everyone was a manager, and we managed during the three year part time course. The whole think was a lot better as a result.
- The basics of finance, law, OR etc. need to be taught on the basis of providing a common body of knowledge, and ideally there should be considerable overlap between business schools.
- Cases are vastly overrated
- Statistical techniques are vastly overrated
- The net effect of cases and statistics is to create a cadre of anally retentive analytical types with no practical wisdom
- We need to give people a broad education in ideas and how to find more - that means teaching anthropology, philosophy and other humanities to increase the diversity of material that the managers will have in their future lives
- I still like the use of a real thesis as part of the final year
- Full time MBAs are a bad thing, periods of study or part time work would keep people rooted in practice.
- Management consultants should not be allowed by law to employ people with a BA in business studies followed by an MBA, much of the evil of consultancy practice would be avoided in consequence
- Management scientists need to reflect on Warren Bennis's famous suggestion that they all suffer from Physics Envy.
If we can get really combine practice and theory it will be a good thing, but with some honorable exceptions I didn't see many signs.
Comments (5)
Yes, yes, yes, theory should not be allowed to go for practice. For that reason I advocate "you may only preach (and publish) what you have practiced" as a guiding rule for academic researchers instead of "practice what you preach" which seems to lead to more preaching than practicing.
Posted by Harold van Garderen | August 10, 2010 7:44 PM
Posted on August 10, 2010 19:44
Hi Dave
My story of my Management Education - which actually has yet to be bettered by any of the academic institutions which have given me various certificates that purport to state 'I know what I'm doing' in various fields - but probably wouln't go down too well at the conference
My grounding in the practice of management is down to my late father (the owner/operator of a small family business in West Yorkshire in the 60s/70s and 80s)
As my present for my 11th birthday I was given 12 chickens and two sacks of corn. My Dad also rented (payment in eggs!) me a small parcel of his land and helped me build a chicken coop (no cost).
On the basis of this 'pump priming' I was to (and did) learn quite a bit about management - providing the family (at discounted rate) with eggs; re-investment of surplus (to buy feed and additional production units (point-of lay pullets - chickens)replacements at the end of produtivity cycle (when they stopped laying); diversification (selling oven ready boiling fowl - when they stopped laying). In addition, the skills of sales and marketing - when the surplus allowed expansion.
In the words of the Monty Python 'Four Yorkshireman' sketch, 'Never did me any harm' (though at any point on a bitterly cold, wet dark December morning I would probably have disagreed). Probably in modern times it would be called emotional abuse!!
Best Wishes
Dave
Posted by Dave Hoyle | August 11, 2010 12:51 PM
Posted on August 11, 2010 12:51
Thanks for these observations and thoughts. Particularly I like your point about a broad education in ideas, finding more of them, using different perspectives to increase diversity of materials etc.. MBA courses could be "interventions" where people learn to think using various approaches, disciplines and techniques. Sadly I see very little of that. While MBA participants may have a diversity of backgrounds, the courses often demand compliance with "MBA" thinking rather than fully utilizing the wealth of diversity in the classroom. Mintzberg is a welcome exception. I would also like to suggest that MBA participants should be the teachers. Faculty should be facilitators and resources available to those who are hungry to learn. Those who teach learn the most. It is time we turn management education upside down!
Posted by Boudewijn Bertsch | August 11, 2010 1:11 PM
Posted on August 11, 2010 13:11
As you have often stated in your podcasts management and MBA abuse of case studies (too much inductive reasoning) and confusing correlation with causation are the most egregious outcomes of management education applied in the real world. I ruled out a MBA early in my search for a suitable graduate degree. While a Master's in KM meant I was dipped in the DIKW and tacit-to-explicit ruts from 1999 it also afforded me the opportunity to explore Cynefin (the future of KM IMO) in depth in my Master's Capstone and subsequent conference presentation.
I see on a regular basis a real danger in the obsession with a 'MBA to save us' mentality and the associated SIMPLE (KNOWN KNOWN) techniques being misapplied in the COMPLEX realm (e.g., 3M destroying their R&D capability due to 'Sick Stigma' and the 'belts').
Other pieces question the value of an MBA:
Those desiring the MBA knowledge without the $100,000 bill (or the formal degree) may wish to explore The Personal MBA.
Posted by Mike Sivertsen | August 11, 2010 10:06 PM
Posted on August 11, 2010 22:06
Much of the "education" given in these courses could be classed as "training" - focussing on convergent thinking encouraged by case studies, best practices and compliance needs.
Cross domain study units need to be re-introduced to encourage divergent thinking so re-framing can occur.
Posted by Peter Chomley | August 16, 2010 6:36 AM
Posted on August 16, 2010 06:36