MBAs with conscience are new poster boys
The MBA programme has, for years, shaped the manner in which business is conducted. Assertive leadership, aggressive marketing, audacious planning, sharp strategizing and pumping-up profits were considered the best practices of successful conglomerates that hogged case studies on B-school campuses. Now, something inherent in the courseware is changing.
Management schools are blunting the spiky approach. The MBA is becoming temperate. Leadership, for instance, was always just a function of winning; not anymore. Management schools are reworking their pitch. Being a leader is also about understanding human values and about being socially sensitive, say B-school faculty. The need to rebalance the programme has been long felt, said deans and senior faculty members who participated in a day-long workshop ‘Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroad’ at the S P Jain Institute of Management Research (SPJIMR) on Friday.
Srikant Datar, Arthur Lowes Dickinson professor of accounting at the Harvard Business School, said, “It is imperative to understand the purpose of business and responsibilities of leadership. It is essential for leaders to understand values like the behaviour that exemplify integrity, honesty and fairness.” So, XLRI, Jamshedpur, prides in, putting its students through a two-week-long stint in rural India. At the School of Inspired Learning (SOIL), students are not admitted through any of the mind-numbing competitive exams like the CAT or the GMAT, but through Princeton’s Caliper test. “Emotional intelligence cannot be taught in a classroom through psychometrics. Now, research is showing that emotional intelligence is more important than analytical intelligence. We test both of them during our admission process,” said Anil Sachdev, founder and CEO of SOIL.
The B-school’s students who worked in Gurgaon have set up galli schools. SPJIMR pupils adopt students of Std VII and mentor them for four hours every month. The B-school works with 60 civic corporation schools.
However, sceptics feel that it’s still only about business. They add that the weaker sector is being eyed since “that is where the future markets lie”. But, whatever the reason, the MBA is couching its aspirants’ ambitions and teaching them that the unequal world needs “caretaker managers”.
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