B-schools just teach 'theory'

In today's rapidly changing global economy, upper management in most companies are becoming increasingly dependent on junior managers to take "complete ownership" in their areas of activity.

In fact, asking them to function more or less as entrepreneurs themselves! That can be exciting. But are most of our MBA graduates ready?

A tremendous amount of learning happens both inside and outside the classroom. While the breadth of material covered does not leave room for as much depth, the degree definitely leaves the graduating student confident of the theoretical exposure that he has acquired, coupled with the urge to try it out in practice.

But B-schools seldom provide the intermediary layer between theory and practice, especially in the context of running a business unit as a whole - as an entrepreneur.

I felt this strongly when I faced the first major crisis in my company and the core team of MBAs that we had were unable to step up.

Finally, it was an engineer with no formal management education who rose to take charge and helped me bring the company out of the crisis. I had then seen it more as an aberration but in later years, as we recruited and mentored more MBAs, I realised most B-schools were not emphasising enough on the transition from "management education" to "business management".

Greater emphasis on business case studies - which means a lot more hours devoted to such discussions, closer modelling and simulation of business scenarios, and higher weightage assigned to these activities in the overall academic grading - can help in bridging this critical chasm.

However, they would need to be designed and developed with considerable effort and interaction with the industry to capture the vagaries, imponderables, conflicts, time constraints and complexities of today's business life.

S Sam Santosh is managing director and CEO, California Software Company. He graduated from IIM Kolkata in 1987

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