Should We Blame Business Schools for our Economic Crisis?

Critics have so far put the blame for this economic downturn mainly on the government's inappropriate regulations, the American consumers' overspending, greedy behaviors in the financial sector, or even economists' incompetent models.

Recently, however, a professor at McGill University has found a new accused: business schools.

Henry Mintzberg in his recent article "America's monumental failure of management" which appeared on The Globe and Mail, argues that the approach of business schools in educating future business leaders has major flaws and has had an important role in the current crisis.

Mintzberg believes the current MBA education system trains managers/leaders to be decisive based on the limited information provided to them in each case study. As a result, MBA graduates could easily undermine the depth of knowledge that a decision maker needs when a high level decision is to be made. He states:

Management is a practice, learned in context. No manager, let alone leader, has ever been created in a classroom. Programs that claim to do so promote hubris instead. And that has been carried from the business schools into corporate America on a massive scale.

I do not agree with all of the author's thoughts. I believe he undermines the usefulness of the skills that the students learn in most MBA programs. Nevertheless, I found the article provocative and very interesting.

Mintzberg talks about his article in an interview with Harvard Business Online. You can listen to this interview by clicking here.

UMASS Boston students and faculty can access the article through e-journal service of the library. First, search for "The Globe and Mail" electronic journal. Then in the LexisNixis database search for the title of the article.