Postgraduate Management Education in the UK: Lessons from or Lessons for the U.S. Model?

Abstract

This article comments on a book on management education, titled Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development, by Henry Mintzberg. In Part I of his book, Mintzberg provides a detailed critique of many issues surrounding management education. Because Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs cater for young people with little or no managerial experience, he argues that students are unable to use art or craft, and so they become spoon-fed with analysis and technique to emphasize the scientific aspects of management. This, he argues, results in MBA graduates who engage in too much analysis, reducing managing to decision making through analysis and technique. Assertions like these are repeated, throughout many of the early chapters. People with MBAs are referred to as being obsessed with facts, risk-averse, numbers-oriented, and favouring industries that rely on hard data and management: are left with the impression that management technique over knowledge of company context. In Part II of Managers not MBA, the practice of management development is covered in some detail before consideration of how management education can be reconceived and the emergent principles used to take management education and development to new dimensions. The ultimate goal is a shift from business to management education, and Mintzberg rightly draws a sharp distinction between these terms. He believes this shift can only be made by marrying the educational experience to the working environment, with management education being reserved for full-time practicing managers wishing to study on a part-time basis. He recommends blocked modules designed to encourage connections between managers' experiences and classroom concepts.