New MBA : Skill Sets needed for Industry 4.0
Ever since the birth of MBA programs, a little over a century back in the US, it has enjoyed rising respectability in academia and growing prestige in the business world. However, in the last five decades, businesses have evolved in greater complexity and scale. Today, business requires ethical, skilled, well-educated, creative leaders who are global in outlook. Sadly, B-schools didn’t bother to transform with the changing times, in terms of how it is being conducted and what its content currently focuses on. This was because admissions to premier schools were ever more selective and the pay packages of graduates ever more dazzling.
Today, the MBA programs are severely criticized for not being able to impart useful skills, their inability to develop leaders and failing in instilling norms of ethical behavior. Students, employees, media and even academicians of Business schools voice their concern over these issues. The actual reason of today’s crisis in management education is far broader in scope. This is because, there is a thinking that the decline is not due to less-than-relevant MBA curriculum which is merely a symptom of a deeper malady that ails the modern business school.
Many leading schools, for several years, have increasingly adopted an inappropriate model of academic excellence. Instead of measuring themselves in terms of the competence of their graduates, they measure themselves almost solely by the rigor of their research. They have adopted a methodology that uses abstract financial and economic analysis, statistical multiple regressions, and highfalutin psychology. Some of the research produced is excellent, but so little of it is grounded in actual business practices. Therefore, the focus of graduate business education has become increasingly convoluted — and less and less relevant to practitioners.
As mentioned, b-schools lags far behind with what today’s technologies make possible in terms of virtual learning and individualized, customized instruction. The business education hence required to be evolved by revisiting their aim to educate the future leaders who have a new set of skills: sustainable global thinking, entrepreneurial and innovative talents, and decision-making based on pragmatism.
The original model of b-schools was ingrained with concepts of the earlier industrial revolution but with the advent of fourth industrial revolution, skills sets that the MBA program should inculcate are summarized in the graphic below:
Skill sets needed in the world of 4th Industrial Revolution
The skills that the modern leaders need are trans-disciplinary in nature with emphasis on cognitive and adaptive learning, design intent, collaborative working in an increasingly technology aided workplace.
Role of Liberal Studies in rejuvenating MBA with cognitive and collaborative skill sets
Traditionally, a well rounded foundation has been a major inadequacy of MBA programs which can be built through selective liberal studies courses. A carefully curated liberal studies foundation comprising of critical thinking, cognitive learning, seminal historic events, fine arts can equip learners with a foundation consisting of linguistic abilities and provide them with innate sense of design, social intelligence and new media literacy. To handle the challenges of an ambitious global career, future MBA professionals will need self-confidence, strong character and a multi-dimensional personality. It is thought that liberal studies foundation builds these attributes in the students.
However, restructuring business education implies more than building liberal studies foundation. The entire MBA curriculum should be infused with multidisciplinary enquiry, resolution of ethical dilemma and data oriented analysis of complex challenges business leaders face.
Augmenting MBA curriculum with cutting-edge technology
The disruptive power of technology is very much evident with the ushering in fourth industrial revolution. It is important that the future generation of leaders should have adequate appreciation of technology. The future businesses are mostly technology enabled or built around emerging technologies.
A management graduate is not expected to do an engineer’s job, but in a world where automation is fast disrupting businesses, anyone in leadership position must have adequate knowledge of technology as they would have to grapple with difficult decisions about the trade-offs between increasing automation and re-skilling those workers whose current skills are no longer useful.
Business managers and leaders need to understand and comprehend the advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and automation and their transformational impact. The modern MBA program should have courses which provide over view of the latest developments in robotics, automation and advances in information technology, and their effect on our current way of life and work.
Conclusion
A recent trend shows that most premier schools are gradually introducing in their MBA programs courses providing over-arching view of artificial intelligence, robotics, genomics et al through coursework, case studies, seminars and conferences. It is believed that high technology has to be a part of business school curriculum. The goal of such courses is to help students learn about what these technologies can deliver and the challenges and opportunities for a company that utilizes them.
The new approach of creating a liberal studies foundation and technology focused courses in most MBA programs can offer valuable perspectives. The business schools and MBAs both will need to be ready to adapt traditional rules of business to a brave new world of the fourth industrial revolution and the skills that it needs. How well they handle this transition might just determine whether the rise of technology will represent a boon or a burden for society in the 21st century and beyond.
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References:
Article on “ How Business Schools Lost their way” by Warren Bennis and James O’Toole, Harvard Business Review, May 2005 issue