Inside the Shadowy World of Business Schools - Assignment Example

Gravy Training: Inside the Shadowy World of Business Schools Many young graduates wonder whether todays top business schools really delivere cutting-edge theory and management expertise. The even question if some of business schools are purely cash cows for universities and educators alike. I this essay I would like to shed some light on main advantages, disadvantage, take a critical stance and will try to identify particular areas of praise or fault. After reading Gravy Training your will be able to uncover the inner workings of the worlds top business schools, where the primary focus lies on generating huge enrollment fees and big-time consulting contracts for faculty. The book comprises a fascinating mix of stories and hard data, manages to show how many of our most respected business schools have reached a critical turning point in their development. The authors Crainer and Dearlove are unsure of their role or business schools and facing extreme competition, moreover, they are stating in the book that these schools must change dramatically if they are to continue to exist. By asking the hard questions these schools, the authors hope to point out the weak spots and highlight the possible scenarios, they provide an analysis and expose the business schools and their flaws, with a recommendations for directions that they should seize. Amusingly written, without excessive hype and the final chapter on directions for the future contains useful suggestions.  This book is a study of the way in which business schools have emerged from the the backwoods of academic world that they inhabited 20 years ago, into the enchanting global industry position they occupy today. The book is based on interviews with those who run, use, work for and despise business schools. The main thesis is that business schools have lost their way as educators or contributors to the art of management, while continuing to run a profitable, though often inefficient business. The main beneficiaries are the alumni who are able to wave the icon of an MBA to attract large rewards, although there is little evidence that they perform as managers better than those without the label. They in turn support the business schools with contributions, thereby completing a mutually beneficial reinforcing loop. Much of the book is taken up with exploring this symbiosis and its benefits for the schools, identifying the rewards of becoming a great name and casting a sceptical eye over the activities of these great names, their ghost writers, and the networks that are so central a part of the benefit of attending a business school (both to the individuals and to the schools). There is a lengthy discussion of the tension between the desire of the business schools to gain academic respectability by getting management accepted as a science, and the desire of business people for simple and instant solutions to complex and often messy human problems. One result is that business schools have tended to ignore the human side of business in favour of giving attention to the financial and strategic mechanics, which should be more susceptible to the scientific approach. In this the business schools are following the primrose path of economics, which gained tenuous acceptance as a science at the expense of abstracting so far from reality that its predictive power is minimal. Management has even less chance of becoming a true science because the management art has to be practical and tied to the real world if it is to be anything - and the real world of business is the messy and unpredictable world of people. The authors also go into some length on the fallacies of the case study method, which remains the favoured teaching method. Among the critical fallacies are: the fallacy that there is a right answer the fallacy that the sorts of financial and analytical data typically provided give a sufficiently complete insight into the dynamics of the issue (the neglect of the human element) the fallacy that the professor knows and the student learns an issue that is discussed at great length and with great pungency (Vaill, 1996) the fallacy that working with a series of case studies has much to do with the critical skill of preparing for life-long learning (Cunningham, 1999) The authors argue that the end result is that top managers are notably dysfunctional when it comes to personal skills and that many are notably poor at learning. Despite Argyris work and insights, business schools have nurtured a faith in problem solving. Interesting and often entertaining though the analysis is, the most important substance in the book is in the last two chapters, which look to the future. The authors argue that the advance of technology (including the capacity for various forms of distance learning and electronic integration of learning with work), plus the turbulence that is forcing business to recognize the centrality of continuous learning and knowledge acquisition, provide two powerful drivers of change. Business schools must stop regarding themselves as the sole preserve of knowledge and learning and must become part of networks of learning. They quote Ray Wild of Henley Management College: Business schools have been too concerned with content - what they deliver in their courses. In future, their effectiveness will be...a function of...how well and how appropriately do they deliver their services to busy, mobile, preoccupied managers working in turbulent organizations. They suggest that a three-tier system of business schools will emerge with a small international elite, a group of national competitors and small niche providers of local services, with the majors franchising and networking their programs on a world-wide basis - it seems to me that the process is already well advanced. They argue that the value of the traditional MBA, as a stand alone training ground for people inexperienced in business, is already in decline as the value of qualifications as passports declines. In an integrative world, silo based and silo taught skills are no longer appropriate. The last chapter is a series of prescriptions for change. Among the more important are: Instead of conveying information to recipients, they must work back up the supply chain to design and provide learning opportunities to their markets and provide direct access to relevant information. They must become revolutionaries, which involves directly learning from outside their boundaries and being prepared to destroy that which is currently successful. They must clarify the business they are in - too many, the authors claim, are simply going where the current money is. This includes a genuine commitment to learning, to investment in intellectual capital, to innovative teaching (I would prefer the word learning) methods and to genuine evaluation of their impact. The faculty make-up and structure, the student mix, the program content and the types of program offered, all need to change substantially (Thurow, 1999). The real "business" of business schools must cover the part-time and undergraduate programs. There are transparent inconsistencies: The authors blame business schools for promoting a cult of gurus, only the authors quote and promote gurus repeatedly. They use the same gurus to criticize the very schools that hire and promote the supposed "guru". Crainer and Dearlove disparage one-liners, but than at the same time they summarize their work with a cliché of their own: "Management is pocket science, not rocket science." The authors state that schools should be customer-friendly but not cater about the needs or accommodation interests of their clients. They purport to do a global study when this is at best a modest revision of a study of the few, elite European business schools, which are generally unlike the American business school system. Crainer and Dearlove imply (p. 186) that the major business school accrediting body – the AACSB – only changed its name to International Association of Management Education outside the U.S., and this is not true. They criticize business deans for lacking vision, while not realizing that the "independent subcontractor" mode of business faculty is inconsistent with "academic leadership" creating a vision for such independent experts. Business schools have been successful because they produce what businesses clearly prefer to hire: knowledge workers, managers and leaders for the global economy. Business students at all levels – undergraduate, graduate and executive – are learning the new culture and language of the new world economy. The fact that innovation and leadership is absent from the "top" schools is a phenomenon in all industries: the top schools become rich and self-satisfied and the real change bubbles up from those struggling, niche-building programs competing for the new customers dollar. A well-trained manager need not be a rocket scientist, but if there are design flaws in his education, Challenger-like disasters are in the making. The authors state that business schools have been successful because they produce what businesses clearly prefer to hire: knowledge workers, managers and leaders for the global economy. Business students at all levels -- undergraduate, graduate and executive -- are learning the new culture and language of the new world economy. If business schools were not the cash cows for universities that universities make them to be, or if as much were spent on training top business students as is spent on the colleges star quarterback, we might have even more effective business schools. Bibliography: 1. Crainer, S. and Dearlove, D. Gravy Training: Inside the Shadowy World of Business Schools.Capstone, 1998. 2. Vaill, Peter B. Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for survival in a World of Permanent White Water. Jossey-Bass,1996  3. Cunningham, Ian .The Wisdom of Strategic Learning: The Self Managed Learning solution.  Gower, 1999. 4. Thurow, Lester.Creating Wealth: The New Rules for Individuals, Companies and Countries in a Knowledge-based Economy. Nicholas, 1999.   Read More