Business school curricula must adapt more quickly to real-world priorities

For at least two decades, people have been worried that business schools were on the wrong track. A 2005 article in the Harvard Business Review argued that despite selective admission processes and dazzling pay packages, they were failing, among other thing, to impart useful skills, prepare leaders or instil norms of ethical behaviour.

Over the years, via numerous conferences, summits and dialogues, the MBA curriculum has been revised and re-revised almost ad infinitum. Yet, in 2023, we are still discussing what an appropriate business curriculum would be.

A few business schools claim to have cracked the code: they are making future leaders or have future-proofed their MBA degrees (while half their graduates do not even get decent jobs in the current economic climate). Some of this is about a change in teaching style. There is an increasing emphasis on experiential learning and hands-on experience. Interdisciplinary learning is also being embraced, as businesses increasingly operate in a global and interconnected environment – even as programmes become more tailored to specific industries or areas of business.

However, the shelf life of these programmes is often short. Courses on ethics, entrepreneurship, mergers, environment, sustainability, green finance and new technology have been added to programmes en masse as they come into fashion – often as a result of external factors such as a corporate scandal, a big merger, a runaway success, a financial meltdown, a new technology, and so on.

To give an example, Enron, the biggest corporate bankruptcy in the world at that time, brought a sudden rush of ethics courses. But as memories of the scandal faded, those courses quickly withered on the vine at many institutions, replaced by others with even more contemporary shimmers. Unless they are part of a business school’s larger vision, bought into by all external stakeholders and incorporated into all internal processes, these “impromptu” courses inevitably have limited outcomes and, hence, short shelf lives – especially as business needs evolve at an ever greater rate.

Unlike in many other countries, MBA students in India typically come to us without any prior work experience and join immediately after their graduation from different streams, such as engineering, sciences, commerce and humanities. Hence, they follow a foundation course in year one that gives them a basic understanding of various functional areas, such as finance, marketing, human resource management, accounting and operations. They then do a two-month corporate internship and specialise in year two.

However, once they start working, they realise there is so much they did not learn at college, and a lot they did learn that they end up never really using. They look for some form of mentorship: someone to tell them how to navigate enormous data sets, negotiate office politics and react sensibly to all manner of situations for which they feel ill-prepared. But often they have to learn the hard way by making mistakes, losing opportunities and switching jobs.

So can business schools do better? In our opinion, while three-quarters of programmes and courses should be kept the way they are, half of the rest could be dedicated to addressing issues that are top of the business agenda at that point in time. Because these issues are continuously evolving, it would be practically impossible to teach clear, distinct theories and concepts around them. Hence, there should not be any courses specifically to teach about them, but there should be interventions to address them in a flexible way, both inside and outside the classroom. For instance, industry managers dealing with these issues could be invited to participate in talks and discussions to facilitate the co-creation of solutions with researchers, students (future managers) and other relevant stakeholders.

Examples of topics that a contemporary programme might address in this way include how to practise real sustainability, how to manage gig workers, how to remain relevant in your job and how to manage technology and work with AI. Business schools could collate the suggestions and ideas and share them among all participants in the discussion to make best use of the wide spectrum of views. They could even create platforms to connect all stakeholders with each other and co-develop content if required. This would also help students learn how to identify and solve problems.

The balance of the business curriculum should be dedicated to the workshop-based development of skills such as large data management, presentation skills, report writing, cross-cultural management, confidence-building, critical thinking, self-reflection, teamwork, social awareness, conflict resolution and emotional intelligence. This would help students manage themselves not just to survive in the corporate world but to have a meaningful life.

While some of these things may be less relevant to MBA programmes that enrol experienced candidates, even those programmes need to remain constantly vigilant to ensure that their curricula remain relevant.

To stay relevant as leaders, future managers must keep learning from the environment around them. Unless we keep our curriculum – or at least parts of it – dynamic, they may continue to study things they will never get to use and will not know about things that are important for business.

Kakoli Sen is Cass Sunstein dean of the School of Business and Hamid Bouchikhi professor of managerial innovation at Woxsen University. Anindo Bhattacharjee is Hannes Zacher Chair Professor of business at Woxsen.