Why The MBA Is Relatively Useless

I realize that I am about to review a book that is a few years old, and one that has come under a lot of criticism by others in what I call the “academic business profession” and in business circles. The reason for this is likely because Henry Mintzberg – the books author – says that a paradigm shift is needed in the way we educate managers. Paradigm shifts, weather in science, philosophy, or communication are always controversial and always attacked, because they challenge the status quo and entrenched interests. Since there has been so little change in the way MBAs are taught over the decades, it is no surprise that some people suggest Mintzberg lost his marbles.

Mintzberg’s basic problem with management education is that it is completely separate from the actual running of a business. Students are generally given a case study to analyze and come up with a solution to the case study’s company’s problem. What should an organization do with a factory that is no longer productive? What should a company do with a particular asset class?  How does a company deal with shrinking profit margins? What does a manager do with such and such employee? These case studies are about 25 pages long – and from the reading the student is supposed to come up with some solution and make a decision. That’s it. That’s what most management professors think management is – and hence what most MBA students think being a manager is.

"The trouble with “management” education is that it is business education, and leaves a distorted impression of management. Management is a practice that has to blend a good deal of craft (experience) with a certain amount of art (insight) and some science (analysis)" (p. 1)

Of course the problem is that this way of teaching management is sterile and void of any actual context. Organizations are – depending on how you want to look at them – intricate systems wherein sensemaking must happen ala Weick, or continuing cultures created and sustained by communication, practices, and performances, or places where power is both sought, fought, and transgressed. (Most organizational communication scholars will tell you it’s a combination of all these.) 

From a cultural perspective – all organizations are different cultures. Think of the differences between Apple and Microsoft. Or Starbucks and McDonalds. Or Coke and Pepsi. Or a Pentecostal church and a Southern Bapitst church. There are, in fact, as many different organizational cultures as there are organizations. As organizational communication scholars have been arguing for thirty or so years, you cannot understand an organizational culture, without studying that culture in-depth: generally through one of he many varieties of ethnographic research. 

Think about this for a moment. MBA students sit in a classroom and ‘study’ an organization on paper and are supposed to come up with a solution to some sort of organizational dilemma. This type of teaching is well-adapted to get students to do only one thing: do case studies in a classroom. Much like k-12 standardized testing, there’s no ‘there’ there. What they learn by analyzing a case study is about a useful in the real world of managing as filling in the little dots on a standardized test are to successfully going on a date. They are supposed to make a contextless decision. This is Mintsberg’s basic critique.

"An education that overemphasizes the science encourages a style of managing I call “calculating” or, if the graduates believe themselves to be artists, as in- creasing numbers now do, a related style I call “heroic.” Enough of them, enough of that. We don’t need heroes in positions of influence any more than technocrats" (p. 1).

However, businesses aren’t like that. Not at all. They are not static, but constantly on the move. They have different systems, different cultures, different values, different employees, etc., etc. etc. Hence the MBA as taught looks nothing like – and doesn’t prepare people – to actually be managers. Supposedly these MBAs with no experience can walk into an organization and just start making major decisions and taking over.

That’s somewhat crazy if you think about it. You would never let a medical student who’s only done ‘the book learnin’ perform open-heart surgery on you. However, this is exactly what MBA students are taught to think and how business teacher teach them to think. Someone without experience is not going to be trusted to make big decisions: like closing a factory or dismantling a department.

"Put differently, trying to teach management to someone who has never managed is like trying to teach psychology to someone who has never met another human being" (p. 9)

A real manager spends copious amount of time on the floor of the factory, talking with the many people that work in various departments – having conversations with both internal and external clients and customers. He might even check out other factories in his own organization to find out why those particular ones run well, while this one does not. He may check out competitor’s businesses to see how they are run differently. In other words, a real manager gets a deep cultural and organizationally significant education and understanding of the business before he makes any decision.

This is the opposite of what MBA programs teach. No ‘book learnin’ via case study is going to help. It’s like teaching. I may have an idea of how I want to teach a class – maybe a technique that’s dialogical – but the demands of, the size of, and the culture of a particular class may determine that this technique does not work. If that technique is the only one I have in my toolbox, my class is going to be a complete disaster. Embedded adaptation is key.

"In the larger organizations especially, success depends not on what the managers themselves do, as allocators of resources and makers of decisions, so much as on what they help others to do" (p. 9)

Mintzberg correctly points out that making decisions is a really small part of a manager’s job. What he doesn’t mention enough for my taste – and this is my communication bias talking here – is, well, communication. Communication takes up the better part of any manager’s job. Getting to know people, watching their performances (not performance appraisals, mind you, but the way in which people work), the stories and narratives people tell and listen too, the people who are considered heroes in the organization, as well as those considered outcasts. Managing, at its heart is all communication, and learning-on-the job, and then using what one has learned to make decisions than must be made.

“To develop a reflective turn of mind, the participants focus on them- selves, their work, and their world, to appreciate how they think, act, and manage; how they cope with the stresses of being a manager; and how they learn from experience to become more discerning—more “critical” in the constructive sense of this word” (p. 300).

So what does Mintzberg suggest? Well, here’s where he gets a lot of push back. Management education should be restricted to practicing managers. The classroom should leverage the managers’ experience. Managers have to be exposed to theories so they can learn to be thoughtful and express themselves. Thoughtful reflection is necessary. Learning is not doing. Learning is reflecting on doing. Move beyond reflection in the classroom to learning from the impact on the organization.    

However, if you consider the art and practice of managing, Mintzberg is on the right track. Which is why I think this would be a great read for #commnerds studying organizational communication. After all, culture and power and performance is what we actually study.