Let business schools evolve
Successful leaders will be notable for holistic thinking, global perspective and adaptability
MANAGEMENT education’s capacity to transform society is only as great as the business schools that train its future leaders. So writes Paresh Soni, an associate director for research at the Graduate School of Business, Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa), in his personal capacity.
This demands that business schools reform their vision to promote values of serving society in order for graduates to see leadership and management as a calling, rather than simply a career.
In the aftermath of the state capture debacle, the KPMG and McKinsey auditing fiasco, the shambles in state parastatals, and the more recent Steinhoff chaos, management educators are asking some difficult questions: Do our curricula reinforce, or even encourage, models of organisational behaviour that are actually inimical to society today?
Do our programmes fail to reflect how future managers lead people to achieve high performance and embrace ethical conduct? How can we train leaders to value social responsibility and the public good? How can scholarly research be made relevant to real world experience? How can we put the “public” back into the centre stage of management education for good governance? What skill sets should we emphasise to produce the next generation of leaders?
Added to these dilemmas are questions that touch on issues of the “Africa rising” phenomenon, globalisation and the fourth industrial revolution.
How will we prepare leaders to realise the African youth democratic dividend? How can 21st century innovations transform management education to better reflect and address the needs of a more globalised society? How will we integrate matters of sustainability, poverty, inequality, corruption, governance and inclusive development in our management education curriculum?
Adding to our sorry state of national affairs are the more recent questions of the poor state of our economy and the slide of the rand. To answer these questions, we must acknowledge that we need to transform the curriculum to teach students that leadership comes with power, and with that power comes responsibility.
Management education has to change. Too much emphasis is placed on theory rather than practice, ensuring that graduates are unprepared to deal with problems. They lack meaningful, relevant management education that teaches them cross-disciplinary thinking, broad familiarity with trends, and the practical wisdom to make decisions based on what is best for their community.
As teachers, what can we do to improve the curriculum? It must reflect the new context in which business schools are engaged and should focus on developing the whole manager – one who both exerts a powerful influence on society and is a member of that society.
Coming up with one great idea is not enough. The solutions created today won’t be the ones needed for tomorrow. This means not focusing on quick fixes, but on building the capacity to learn, change and constantly find new solutions to challenges. In fact, many students can already see the changes that their education does not address, and they are very receptive to the idea of a vocation motivating their professional and personal lives. It is management education and the curriculum that are not keeping pace. The leaders who will succeed will be notable for their holistic thinking, global perspectives, international experience, multilingual capabilities, technological familiarity, entrepreneurial mindset, creativity, and ability to deal with complexity and chaos.
Business schools are obliged to educate a new generation of renaissance leaders for a country beset with all the problems and challenges of an emerging economy. We owe it to the future.