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Having an MBA myself (nowhere near from a top-10 school, although friends who have gone to better schools report similar curricula) I don't see B-Schools teachi

Having an MBA myself (nowhere near from a top-10 school, although friends who have gone to better schools report similar curricula) I don't see B-Schools teaching/reinforcing what it is to be a "manager". I think the MBA does a disservice because it often either doesn't teach "people management" at all or (worse?) reinforces hard-core Taylorism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management#Taylor.27s_view_of_workers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management#Taylor.27...). We get disastrous manage-by-the-numbers and "us vs. them" mentality, ultimately devaluing the role of the manager! If all you need to manage is a report that says how many widgets employee X made relative to compensation you can automate away most management. Yes, under that definition (not all MBA programs are like that, but it seems the majority are), I think the MBA is bad for the US economy. It promotes underperformance, lack of innovation, and sucks up resources that could better be spent elsewhere. Instead, they should teach Drucker-ism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker) and Organizational Systems Theory (http://managementhelp.org/organizations/systems.htm http://managementhelp.org/organizations/systems.htm). Managers can and do amazing things by enabling their coworkers to scale better by: * Removing roadblocks that get in their way * Listen to, and allow employees to change and shape the culture * Coach coworkers to improve skills and develop flow * Help mentor and guide the organization as it scales up Though, we need far fewer of them if we leave it to stuff like this. It allows organizations to be a lot flatter and scale better without dedicated managers, putting causing downward demand on managers so it seems something most MBA programs won't adopt. Still, it would prevent wholesale manager-bankruptcy that I envision is the future for the "managing" class in most businesses.

marblar 14y ago
An aside: As of this comment, that wikipedia article on scientific management needs some serious work.
- jewbacca 14y ago
  Continuing off-topic: It's vandalism. I just did an hour of procrastinatory cyberstalking, it's the work of a high schooler in Ohio. Probably vandalizing articles they read for class. Speculation: if not just out of frustration, perhaps sabotage against classmates reading later? Is that a thing now? ---- Last good revision: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scientific_management&oldid=521213480 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scientific_managem...
  - eitland 14y ago
    While working as a teacher I came to the conclusion that links to wikipedia should in most cases include a known good revision number in the url.
    - edanm 14y ago
      That's actually a great idea. Wonder if this can/should be made more well-known through the wiki software? For example, maybe all Wiki article paths should redirect to a specific version? E.g. if I go to "wiki/tree" I'll get "wiki/tree/1101" which is the version number. Then, every page can have a message at the top saying "to get to the latest revision, click here". (Just an off-the-top-of-my-head idea of how to do this).
johnrgrace 14y ago
I agree 100%, MBA programs are giving people the building blocks to be an executive decision maker. The building blocks to be a manager, not really. Far too many people walk away with the idea that management by the numbers is the secret to sucess.
pinaceae 14y ago
There is a big Drucker fan over here in Europe, Fredmund Malik. He is hit and miss in his observations, but his riff on Drucker's insight into 'learning' management fits my personal observations. - MBA... Master of Business ADMINISTRATION. For some reason this morphed into management material, which it isn't. the whole thing teaches you about the administrative side of running a company. awesome, useful. it does NOT teach anything about making a company successful or how to make people within it successful. it is NOT a management course. so where can one learn management then? 1., the product success side you can't learn anywhere. hence all these shitty companies with shitty products and services. the product side is sort of covered in engineering. technical founders, for example, understand the core principle of what works and what will be an issue down the line. what is right and what is wrong. a generic 'manager' armed with an MBA and technical background of 5 years of XBox Live just doesn't. the concept of 'wrong' or 'down the line' does not exist. excel has no formula for that. 2., the people success part is very much a soft skill which needs to be learned through practice in an enforced learning environment. current organisations that do this are the various Armed Forces (NCO and Officers) and similar orgs like the Boy Scouts. some companies emulate this through trainee programs - Siemens has a structured way of giving you a team early on, then giving you challenges. which include firing 2 people from that team after you have worked with them for a while. for real. but now you KNOW first hand how a layoff looks like. not just a spreadsheet anymore. the armed forces gradually give you more responsibility, group, platoon, etc. you have constant feedback loops focusing on your leadership abilities, not just the pure outcome of a task. after action reviews, the whole spiel. nothing grounds you like hearing in an AAR that your team had no clue what you told them, etc. in austria we have technology and crafts-oriented higher colleges, which have an interesting concept. i completed one for constructional engineering. not only do you learn how to calculate a large construction project (both from a structural and a economic side). you actually learn to build it with your own hands. now you KNOW how much work it is to build 1m of brick wall. so shaving off a few minutes per 1m to make a project 'viable' to build 1000m of wall in a week with 5 men doesn't come so easily anymore, because you know that the workers will simply get exhausted and produce errors and accidents. no MBA on earth teaches you this insight. backache and blisters on your hands do. humans are stupid in that way.

marblar 14y ago

An aside: As of this comment, that wikipedia article on scientific management needs some serious work.

jewbacca 14y ago
Continuing off-topic: It's vandalism. I just did an hour of procrastinatory cyberstalking, it's the work of a high schooler in Ohio. Probably vandalizing articles they read for class. Speculation: if not just out of frustration, perhaps sabotage against classmates reading later? Is that a thing now? ---- Last good revision: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scientific_management&oldid=521213480 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scientific_managem...
- eitland 14y ago
  While working as a teacher I came to the conclusion that links to wikipedia should in most cases include a known good revision number in the url.
  - edanm 14y ago
    That's actually a great idea. Wonder if this can/should be made more well-known through the wiki software? For example, maybe all Wiki article paths should redirect to a specific version? E.g. if I go to "wiki/tree" I'll get "wiki/tree/1101" which is the version number. Then, every page can have a message at the top saying "to get to the latest revision, click here". (Just an off-the-top-of-my-head idea of how to do this).

johnrgrace 14y ago

I agree 100%, MBA programs are giving people the building blocks to be an executive decision maker. The building blocks to be a manager, not really. Far too many people walk away with the idea that management by the numbers is the secret to sucess.

pinaceae 14y ago

There is a big Drucker fan over here in Europe, Fredmund Malik. He is hit and miss in his observations, but his riff on Drucker's insight into 'learning' management fits my personal observations. - MBA... Master of Business ADMINISTRATION. For some reason this morphed into management material, which it isn't. the whole thing teaches you about the administrative side of running a company. awesome, useful. it does NOT teach anything about making a company successful or how to make people within it successful. it is NOT a management course. so where can one learn management then? 1., the product success side you can't learn anywhere. hence all these shitty companies with shitty products and services. the product side is sort of covered in engineering. technical founders, for example, understand the core principle of what works and what will be an issue down the line. what is right and what is wrong. a generic 'manager' armed with an MBA and technical background of 5 years of XBox Live just doesn't. the concept of 'wrong' or 'down the line' does not exist. excel has no formula for that. 2., the people success part is very much a soft skill which needs to be learned through practice in an enforced learning environment. current organisations that do this are the various Armed Forces (NCO and Officers) and similar orgs like the Boy Scouts. some companies emulate this through trainee programs - Siemens has a structured way of giving you a team early on, then giving you challenges. which include firing 2 people from that team after you have worked with them for a while. for real. but now you KNOW first hand how a layoff looks like. not just a spreadsheet anymore. the armed forces gradually give you more responsibility, group, platoon, etc. you have constant feedback loops focusing on your leadership abilities, not just the pure outcome of a task. after action reviews, the whole spiel. nothing grounds you like hearing in an AAR that your team had no clue what you told them, etc. in austria we have technology and crafts-oriented higher colleges, which have an interesting concept. i completed one for constructional engineering. not only do you learn how to calculate a large construction project (both from a structural and a economic side). you actually learn to build it with your own hands. now you KNOW how much work it is to build 1m of brick wall. so shaving off a few minutes per 1m to make a project 'viable' to build 1000m of wall in a week with 5 men doesn't come so easily anymore, because you know that the workers will simply get exhausted and produce errors and accidents. no MBA on earth teaches you this insight. backache and blisters on your hands do. humans are stupid in that way.