Are we ready to reshape our curriculum to make it in line with changing expectations?

MBA Curriculum for Future
Let’s first define the term – MBA Curriculum. In his book, Rethinking the MBA, Dr Srikant Datar defines Curriculum as “an assemblage of classes and materials that collectively constitute and educational program,” and outline Content, Pedagogy, Architecture or Program Design, and Purpose as the key aspects of a MBA Curriculum (Datar, Garvin and Cullen, 2010).

Global context
Even before we take note of recent Fourth Industrial Revolution led disruptions, there has been a considerable discussion on the relevance of MBA Curriculum over the last decade or so. Critics have argued that MBA program needs to build greater alignment between curriculum and managerial responsibilities.

Research by Rubin &Dierdorff (2009)makes this amply clear. “Relying on an empirically derived competency model from 8,633 incumbent managers across 52 managerial occupations, our results showed that behavioural competencies indicated by managers to be most critical are the very competencies least represented in required MBA curricula,” says the paper.

Authors add, “If MBA programs are truly concerned with being relevant and want to make an immediate impact on the development of future managers, they might be well served to build greater alignment between required curriculum and requisite managerial responsibilities.”

Based on detailed analysis of the 2006 and 2007 curricula of eleven leading MBA programs: Carnegie Mellon (Tepper), Chicago Booth, Dartmouth (Tuck), Harvard, INSEAD, MIT (Sloan), NYU (Stern), Northwestern (Kellogg), Stanford, Wharton, and Yale, Dr Datar and others came to following conclusions:

Similar Content: “At the level of content-particularly the core curriculum and the subjects covered –we found programs to the much alike. Schools offer the same basic mix of requirements, with coverage of many of the same topics.”

Diverse Pedagogy: “At the level of pedagogy-particularly the use of cases, exercises, and problem sets-schools are diverse. Some schools vest heavily in a single teaching technique such as lectures or the case method, whereas at the other extreme are schools that rely on a wide mix of alternative pedagogies. These differences vary somewhat depending on the course and the maturity of the field.”

Highly Differentiated Architecture/Program Design: “At the level of architecture-particularly regarding issues of structure, sequence, and requirements-we found a large number of highly differentiated approaches are distinguished along relatively few dimensions of choice… These dimensions are combined in many different ways, leading to considerable differences among programs.”

Common Purpose, some differentiations: “At the level of purpose-the animating ideas or educational goals of the program-we found both commonality and differences.”

Calling for greater emphasis on developing managerial skills and capabilities in MBA Curriculum, Dr Datar concluded as “The core of our conclusion is that business schools need to do two things if they are to develop effective leaders and entrepreneurs, as opposed to individuals trained primarily in analysis: reassess the facts, frameworks, and theories that they teach (the “knowing” component), while at the same time rebalancing their curricula so that more attention is paid to developing the skills, capabilities, and techniques that lie at the heart of the practice of management (the “doing” component) and the values, attitudes, and beliefs that form managers’ worldviews and professional identities (the “being” component).”

So what skills must MBA Curriculum focus on in the Digital Era? US based research and reports are putting greater emphasis on Social Skills and Creative Problem Solving.

According to the Bloomberg Job Skills Report (2016), prepared based on interviews with 1,251 job recruiters at 547 companies in US, the most desired skills from MBAs was Communications skills (67.3%). Contrary to general opinion, Decision-making (19.8%) scored amongst the lowest in terms of demand by recruiters.
Recruiters also didn’t seem to value work-experience much. The ‘sweet spot’ skills, namely the ones that are most desired, yet hardest to find are Leadership skills, Strategic Thinking, Communications skills and Creative
Problem Solving (Figure 3).