Report - How relevant is the MBA?

From an article of the Financial Times, August 3 2007 (See also post on GradPortal.org, August 8th)

A report looking at the relevance of MBA programmes suggests that criticisms that the curricula falls short of what today’s global managers need, may be justified.

The report - How relevant is the MBA? Assessing the alignment of MBA curricula and managerial competencies - finds that although essential managerial skills are being taught, there are nevertheless “significant gaps”, specifically in the area of so-called soft skills.

...The authors had access to a US Department of Labor database of surveys of more than 8,600 managers, across a broad spectrum of occupations. Using the data the authors identified six behavioural competencies that “best described the essential requirements for all managers”; managing human capital, managing logistics and technology, managing decision-making processes, managing administration and control, managing strategy and innovation and managing the task environment.

The authors then examined how these competencies compared with the course requirements of 373 MBA programmes and the perceptions of 118 business school admininstrators...

..the report will be presented at next week’s (August 3-8) annual Academy of Management meeting in Philadelphia.