AACSB latest edition of BizEd

A Return to Reality
Jeffrey Garten—International and Annual Meeting keynote speaker—discusses the lessons of Lehman Brothers, the importance of public policy, and the need for a three-year MBA.

Well worth downloading PDF (1MB)

Comments

[Nilay Yajnik]

Dear Prof Garten
Thank you for your very insightful views.A few of my humble comments on this are as follows:
1.Your point that B-Schools must also have Business History as a part of their curriculum is very interesting.It would be good if students study history so that they do not repeat the mistakes of the past.
2.One of the reasons why my country India has not been affected too much by this global crisis is due to strong regulatory systems.In fact our legal and banking systems are much stronger than China's.
3.A 3 year full time MBA may not have , as you yourself have pointed out , too many takers.Law and Medicine are 3-5 year courses but that is after school(at least in India).An MBA , on the other hand is a Graduate degree (in India we call it Post Graduate degree), so the student already has spent 3-5 years earning an undergraduate degree.
4.One of the basic reasons for this global debacle , in my opinion,has to do with culture.The culture of success being equated to vertical movement and personal financial gain only is a typical western mindset , which unfortunatley is also finding itself in the Indian mindset now.The traditional Indian mindset and definition of success is not just in vertical promotions or personal financial gains , but in actually doing your Duty.In fact the Hindu religious text the Bhagvad Gita , says that every human should focus on doing their duty - without any attachment to the fruits of that task.Rudyard Kipling also mentions in his poem "IF" (which I learnt as a school boy) that "If you can treat Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same ....you will be a Man my son"

I guess a lot of such problems can be addressed if we look at life more philosphically as mentioned above.But the challenge is - how do we teach all this in a B-School?

These are just some of my thoughts on your very thought provoking article.
Regards
Nilay

Dr.Nilay Yajnik
Professor of Information Systems
School of Business Management
NMIMS University , Mumbai , India
www.nmims.edu/ourteam/nilay.htm
Emails:nilayyajnik@hotmail.com
nilayy@nmims.edu