An American B-School student posed a question to one InternationalAdvisory Board of a well known European B-School: "Whether B-Schools had caused the economic mess that America and the world was in?"
This refers to the editorial opinion by Arun Maira titled “Reorienting Business Leadership” (ET, 19 March 2009, Thu). He says: "The global economic meltdown and erosion of trust require business schools to examine the fundamentals of the education they provide". Access the following link for the complete article: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Editorial/Reorienting-business-leadership/articleshow/4284491.cms
We certainly need to do something in our own respective B-Schools and examine the values we are imparting to our students. The existing curriculum regulated by AICTE is highly domain specific (locked within self-centred functional areas) and is driven towards the goal of "making more money using other people's money". As Maira says: "The financial services industry ballooning into a world of exotic derivatives.......unfortunately bringing the global economy down...".
Courses like Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility are important subjects that need to be over-emphasized. And, if I may suggest once again, we need to do something about de-emphasizing the role of specializations in B-Schools. However, a balanced "value-oriented" core course foundation is an absolute must for the MBA program.
Holistic measures of goodness are needed to counter the media hype surrounding wealth-oriented “lifestyle statements”. This requires B-Schools reengineering their academic and placement processes. Here is another related link written long ago (I wish timely steps had been taken by the stakeholders): Corporate Governance.
