Are MBAs Meeting Business's Needs?

Abstract

Over recent years the Master in Business Administration program has been increasingly criticised as less in touch with the needs of the business community, becoming overly theoretical, delivering the wrong content and using the wrong teaching methodologies (Schlegelmilch & Thomas, 2011; Gosling and Mintzberg 2004; Walz 2006). Surveys of European and American MBA programs reveals that the majority have very similar structures and content with an emphasis on functional business knowledge such as marketing, accounting, economics, finance and strategy and lacking in interpersonal, presentation skills, ethics and change management (Matten and Moon 2004; Christensen, Peirce Hartman, Hoffman & Carrier, 2007). This paper presents a review of literature relating to MBA programs regarding content and structure and then aligns this to results of a survey of practicing managers to verify or refute these criticisms. A desk audit of the top 10 Australian MBAs is then presented in the light of these findings. It is the author's contention that this research demonstrates that Australian MBAs are not meeting business needs.

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