Hi Shaveta,

If I understand your question correctly, the underlying question is about the rigor vs. relevance debate. See for example the articles below.

Bennis, W. and J. O‟Toole 2005. How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 83(5) 96-124

Besancenot, D.& Faria, J. R. 2010. Good research and bad teaching? A business school tale. Research in Economics, 64: 67-72.

Gulati, R. 2007. Tent poles, tribalism, and boundary spanning: The Rigor-Relevance Debate in Management Research. Academy of Management Journal, 50: 775-782.

Hambrick, D. 2007. The field of management’s devotion to theory: Too much of a good thing? Academy of Management Journal, 50(6): 1346-1352.

If you are looking at the rigor vs. relevance debate I can provide you with a literature list, but this depends on what you want to do with it.

Best regards,

Herman

Thanks Herman and Nabil.

I am looking at an academic debate on this topic and would like experts to discuss and debate over the new methodology(ies) of structuring and delivering management education, if need be.

Nabil, I went through your paper and found it good.I want to dig even deeper and find more gold though.

In MBA education, it is important to integrate an experiential learning component in industry so the creativity skills can be developed. For instance, the MBA student can be placed at an organization to work on solving a particular problem e.g. commercialise a new technology or develop an innovative new service. In this way, their studies can help them in the development of their creativity skills through experience based learning within their studies.

http://www.apjce.org/files/APJCE_15_1_1_11.pdf

yeah sure management  education is restricting the mind of a student. We are providing a glass of water from the sea of management to our students. we can see the variation in the risk taking capacities, business ideas, potentials and way of approach to the different situation  of a management candidate and  a non management candidate. 

I believe that management education programmes the world over have one overriding objective: and that is "to sharpen the skills of students to make them competitive on the job market"  These ghamot of skills are inculcated in students through a diverse array of learning activities (simulations, group work, tasks, industrial internships etc. The models learned during these programmes are not to be swallowed hook-line and sinker! they are just to serve as a guide. Industries will accept very brilliant innovative alternatives for competitivity: cost cutting alternatives without compromising on quality. What I believe can be done is fashion out training to enhance students' innovative skills.This is my take on the issue, thanks

Increasingly in this Knowledge economy Universities will not own Knowledge.(even though many think they do). Whether they are called MBA's or whatever, what we will need is for the "teachers" or "facilitators" (whether online, on DVD or occasionally face to face to have substantial and recent (within 3-5 yrs max) real full time Business experience (where your job survival is related to business realities) so as to take us forward towards relevant, useable theoretical understandings. 

Even more important will be that universities who are currently dominated by publishing in academic journals (rather than utilising the real brains of their staff), accept that knowledge comes in many forms, and even more so with the web enabled knowledge economy, and that the ability of Managers and executives to take data, knowledge and insights from numerous sources and put it together in a useable way will be critical. (and that means published academic research is just one competing source of knowledge along with many others plus real life experience). The public don't even trust a lot of science now, let alone medical research-so business research is way down on these !

This is very true Dr. Cowley! . Cynicism about university programmes is growing. The point is, what alternatives do we have?

Mgmt education does not restrict creativity If a person is creative then it will reflect in all his works. Either his MBA or any degree does not kill his creativity.

This is a fascinating conversation. In terms of alternative approaches, we have tried to integrate direct connections to and collaborations with real business in our MBA program. With this in mind, we include a capstone "business consulting project" over 3 months at the end of our program. Our marketing class partners with real non-profit organizations to help them build business plans and our governance and ethics class partners with the RCMP to develop ethical corporate social responsibility and legal risk management frameworks for real business clients. We have two courses (electives) that focus on visiting high performance organizations (one focuses on Canadian companies in the Ottawa/Toronto/Montreal triangle and the other focuses on leading edge companies (large and small) in France and Belgium) with discussions with their managers around strategy development and implementation. It takes a LOT more work by the profs (and the students) to engage this way but the results are dramatic - students leave the program on much firmer practical ground. You will note that I don't mention pure academic research here. We focus on applied research with the output represented by reports by the students to the companies on what they learned and suggested improvements in their strategies. The academic researchers in the Faculty don't particularly appreciate us but both the students and the business with whom we interact like the approach a lot!!! There are alternatives.

Mike Miles, Telfer School of Management (Ottawa, Canada)

Is management education limiting the creativity of MBAs in organizations? That is the question. And it is an interesting one.

I taught an MBA course in creative management** for about 9 years and I have to regretfully say that I would think that the ability to think outside the box, or call it lateral thinking if you will,  was  generally curbed by templates, by inventories, by models, and of course by theories based on  studies involving small-sized samples of size N = 50 to 250 undertaken in one or perhaps contiguous countries, at a particular point in time. Time has moved on, and what appeared to be the case then is not true later or today. I would say that about 95% of the students  doing the course showed no creative ability. [What they could have learnt or were supposed to have learnt was how to recognize creative individuals and how to create an environment where the creativity of scientists, engineers or even ordinary workers was not prematurely curbed  by bureaucratic  procedure, where such individuals were free to experiment, to make mistakes, and then to pick themselves up, and continue, unfazed...]  I would be remiss if I attributed this seeming lack of creativity to the MBA courses per se, students undertake or have undertaken. Perhaps, they were inherently not creative, or perhaps did not have open minds, or were not prepared to be more open-minded,  but perhaps were looking for formulaic solutions, or quick-and-easy solutions, all invariably under the need to look at the bottom-line, to be efficient, to reduce costs, etc. The  formula   applied by Tom when used  this time by Jack will invariably produce the same results for Jack, or  Jill if she applied that formula.

Now, consider or think of all those entrepreneurs who have not been to college or to university or dropped out of college, who using their creativity have started enterprises, which are now capitalized at billions of dollars. These successful entrepreneurs have not been straight-jacketed or corseted by what they could have  learnt on their MBA courses, if they did undertake MBA courses. In making that statement, I realize I am going to take some flak, but  debate is a good thing and a clash of ideas would exactly  be what John Henry Newman was pleading for in his treatise,  “The Idea of a University”.

** There were other courses, and the university possibly recognized that the other MBA level courses were not really concerned with the notion of creativity.

Some of the similar issues raised in the attached article.  Coming back to the question, past literature mostly critic the theories, models, pedagogies in management education, albeit in a post modernist fashion, just like in any other field. However, the content or the pedagogy are the good or bad fruits. The root of this tree is the worldview that guides the management education:- 6 Qns

1. Etiology :- Where have we come from ? - scarce resourced environment, evolutionary, perpetual upgrade, control systems, industrial paradigms 

2. Explanation:- Who we are ? evolving systems going through rationalization 

3. Futurology:- Where are we heading ? towards a superior ordered system

4. Epistemology:- How do we know the reality ? positivist, symbolic interpretivist, post modernist

5. Axiology:- Whats good , whats bad? rationalization towards larger material good

6. Praxeology:- How should we do things? maximization of larger material good, perpetual upgrade, planned obsolescence

The bird of management education is flying with one wing - materialism. Materialism is not at all bad, but with only that , the flight may not be possible.

_______________________________________________________

The alternative worldview:-  some food for thought for management thinkers to look at creativity from a diffeent perspective

Shukla Krishnakant (2013), "Dialogues with divinity, and their relationship to creativity, in the Hindu tradition", Conference - Beads on one string, Andalusia, Spain. (synopsis and audio recording of the talk - http://bit.ly/1sQ5KKu

http://www.krishnakantshukla.org/?p=551

Article Indispensible Research - Integrate various disciplines into ...

Probably, the follow-up of somehow defined educational processes improves the efficiency of our brain from the point of view of the consumption of energy but , at the same time, it hardens our thinking in terms of innovation.  

I think what really counts is the way you teach( how)  rather than what you teach.

I am not sure, if we can generalize. We always tell students to use these models and frameworks to analyze, at the same time, stand on them to use intelligence and creativity. 

Perhaps the problem with theories and models is that they create an hegemony of strategies that are all about ' knowing that' as opposed to 'knowing how'. It's an old distinction. I think it was Gilbert Ryle who mooted that 'knowing how' preceded 'knowing that'. I lot of theory in management and the social sciences, arguably, works on the basis that ' knowing that' precedes 'knowing how'

donald

In fact, I agree to the old distinction stated by our colleague Donald.   "knowing that' as opposed to 'knowing how'. 

MBA pedagogy is structured as per syllabus and the examination system tends to judge the knowledge by the information extraction and presentation ability of the students. MBA education must recognize both affective and cognitive state of learner and  must be able to develop the logical reasoning, analytical ability & problem solving skill of the students. MBA pedagogy  concentrates on transfer of  knowledge through various knowledge  transfer mechanism which  tend to put more stress on cognitive skills of the students, where as non- cognitive skills, which are outcome of behavioral traits like sociability, cooperativeness, perseverance, trustworthiness etc. are equally  important, if not more, are also the essential requirement of organizational management . Since the creative potential of an individual depends on both affective and cognitive state , creativity will tend to get restricted within the structured parameters of MBA syllabus, and will tend to limit their efficacy. Now, debate is going on regarding the effectiveness and ability of MBAs in business organizations.

Practically, MBA education is most liked in the business field. Although no data is available, but to my experience, when student goes for oversees education, they mostly choose management education for their career. In my view, it open the diversity in education rather then limiting or confining them to the subjects.

This is a very good question and a most debatable one as well. Many parameters are involved as it depends on the type of education received and the contribution of the same towards opening up the mind instead of closing it with too many courses that invlove mostly cramming - one of the main drawbacks of the curriculum....otherwise on the organisational performance side if people are given enough leeway to take initiatives and implement them, if their views are properly taken into consideration, then possiblities exist for sure.......

Please refer Henry Mintzberg’s book “Managers not MBAs”, where he criticizes that in the conventional MBA education the art and science of management is not properly emphasized. According to Mintzberg, the curriculum degrades the craft of management and its practice. Henry Mintzberg says “We need to get back to a more engaging style of management, to build stronger organizations, not bloated share prices. This calls for another approach to management education, whereby practicing mangers learn from their own experience. We need to build the art and the craft back into management education, and into management itself.”

How many has seen a balanced BSC system? My experience is that most organizations get caught up in measuring the quantitative stuff that doesn't really count and behavioral measures of employee performance that most often is not perceived as fair at all. A recent study by Sutton et al. (2013) found a meta-analytical correlation between rater liking of the ratee and ratee performance of .77. 

Typical MBA education is just a test of endurance. This obviously does tell something about the person who successfully passed the test, but that's it.

There is a certain basic body of knowledge that universities COULD teach that would really help managers to perform. Legal stuff, some basic theories about human behavior, but mostly to use your brain when problems arise.

But, actually, even if universities do it, I think they devalue their education because they emphasize how great they are and how well they prepare their students, and THIS kills the basic qualities managers should have like "try to understand before you decide", "be open-minded" or just "be yourself, do not follow stupid rules". Ah, and "remain modest even if they tell you how great you are because of your diploma, even if they throw a lot of money and you".

One major problem is that MBAs hire MBAs because they really believe that they learned a lot. And you cannot blame them because universities try to justify their existence by propagating the greatness of the education they supply. So, while there is a lot of ignorance (in the sense of not knowing) in you after you left university, you are told you know a lot. And this does sometimes prevents you from learning afterwards because you think you know most of it or do not have to know it.

There is a reason that engineers often say "We need more easily comprehensible stuff in that presentation. It is meant for the board of directors. So, we need it kindergarten-feasible." I am not an engineer, but the sad thing is: These engineers are right on that one.

Hi Shaveta Arora Ji, management education does not limiting the creativity of MBA's in organizations in my opinion. It may be tight comprtmentation during the study time but creativity is such a thing which goes with individuals. Thanks