In context of recent Industry 4.0 Trends, IMC focussed on Themes of MBA Curriculum and Pedagogy in 2017 and 2018 respectively. It’s heartening that the two Conclaves were successful in generating a wider debate and many initiatives have been taken on these two themes.

While this attention on Curriculum and Pedagogy is desired, the need to focus on the Central Figure – the Faculty and Teaching Excellence – is perhaps the need of the hour. For unless the Faculty has both the mindset and skills to update Curriculum and Teach effectively, the true value of MBA education will not be realized.

In this context, the Theme for 10th IMC 2019 is ‘Effective MBA Faculty for the 21st Century Management Education’.

How last five IMC Themes have evolved:

Warren Bennis and James O’Toole in their seminal 2005 HBR article titled “How Business Schools Lost Their Way” write,“Employers are noticing that freshly minted MBAs, even those from the best schools—in some cases, especially those from the best schools—lack skills their organizations need. At first, employers were confused about the source of this problem, but they seem to be realizing that the people who taught their new hires had spent little time in organizations as managers or consultants and that younger faculty members may not even know many businesspeople.”

What was true in 2005 in US rings alarm bell in India today. With the rapid changes in new technology and the existence of global economies, business needs people who can deal with change and uncertainty.

Four Roles of Faculty
MBA Faculty is expected to perform four roles, namely, Teacher, Researcher, Consultant and Trainer. These roles are intertwined. They are expected to be complimentary towards the main goal of being in business of professional MBA education.

Then
In the initial stage of business education, the concentration was on teaching or making others learn after being learned oneself. Since subjects and contents were getting evolved it was emphasized to prepare technical/academic notes to prove that one clearly understood what content we are talking about. It was not possible to write these notes without interdisciplinary understanding of business. Nor it could be made rich without clear understanding of business practice. This necessitated studying management practices in various firms, discussion with business executives and delving into various sciences to develop clear understanding and equipping learners with right meanings.

It was realized that to make MBA a professional qualification, we need to have different pedagogies. First concentration came on Case Method as the most important pedagogy as against scholarly Lecture-cum-discussion Method. It was expected that Faculty would be invited in problem-solving faced by organization given their exposure to various management practices. Faculty in turn started putting them as Cases to improve decision-making ability of future managers and authors started sharpening their consulting ability by discussing it with more minds. Some Faculty started researching the problem aimed to diagnose and evaluate the decision taken. The Research was still carried out with the organization. It was meant to bring Practice to the Classroom and use of it enhancing various skills of the learners. Organizations started using the Faculty to share this knowledge and improve skills of their Managers. The role of Consultant, Researcher, Trainer and Teacher still remained intertwined.

Now
Liberalization of the economy in 1990s created massive demand for managers and led to mushrooming of growth of MBA education in the country. First concern of B-schools was to get Teachers who can engage the Classes. Soon we had Scholars from single disciplines drafted as MBA Faculty who understood their job like that of their Post graduate teacher. It was basically putting long hours of teaching their subject as it is taught in universities. B schools hardly had time to develop them as faculty for professional education.The industry connects came down to inviting business professional for Talks in the
name of Industry Interactions or putting them into various forums for getting industry advice to improve the processes to make MBA education professional.It also extended to visits to Industry like school kids being taken for a visit to a museum.

MBA education meant to prepare General Manager shifted to get Functional Managers or Technicians with business sense. In turn MBA professional education drifted to teaching tools and techniques for job positions and business sense got into the back seat. Faculty got engaged in equipping themselves in technical aspects of tools and techniques.For applications they depended uponPractitioners invited as Guest Faculty. Overtime Faculty started taking academic teaching and industry exposure as two separate functions.

Management Consultancy firms with their professional approach knocked out MBA Faculty from Consulting on business problems and deeper understanding of business practices. Large number of the Faculty consultancy got restricted to look a problems of only Government or at best PSU firms.

Faculty of Practice
The disconnect with industry grew over a period of time. It was thought that it can get corrected by employing faculty with professional experience or visiting faculty from industry. This faculty drawn from practice was taken to be “Mr. Know All” irrespective of his background and Faculty Development was left to oneself. It was forgotten that due to Competition and Technology,Management Practices in Industry aredramatically changing. Story telling of past can’t make them develop students as business professional fit for the day. Large number of them were from PSUs since they couldgenerate revenue viaExecutive DevelopmentPrograms.