Learning to Challenge Unlearn And Innovate on What is Taught in Your MBA Classrooms
Except for some fundamental time tested quantitative techniques used at application level in management (operations research, optimisation, statistical analysis, forecasting, business mathematics), most management concepts taught in business schools are borrowings from the western world, with decades of lag, overwritten, disowned, criticised or conceded as misplaced and irrelevant, by theorists celebrated as management gurus, in a different era.
Most theories originated in military application during the 2nd world war and were adopted in business management for their utility. Management is application oriented; an amalgam of borrowed concepts. MBA students are victims of a double lag: teachers carrying outdated knowledge, lacking practical experience and students becoming victims of survival needs of outdated MBA teaching community. Syllabi under the university system is a creation and preservation of faculty whose primary interest is safeguarding their employment, leading to graduates not finding relevant employment commensurate with their degree and expectations.
MBA students, to safeguard their interests, should embrace classroom concepts with caution, recognising these are subject to change driven by environmental changes or even their own innovation, use them with care and caution.
So as an MBA, you have to believe that you don’t have to think like others, including your teachers, to be right. You can be right in your own way. But have a logic of your own to support your conviction of being right