MBA Degrees Cause Corruption ... What The Bleep?

I respect the Economist. I am on totally on its side on this article. But I don't understand why it is an article at all. The article leads off ...

"SEVERAL of the corporate scandals that took place in the early years of this decade are currently being replayed in courtrooms from New York to Alabama. The trials of top executives at HealthSouth, Tyco International and WorldCom are reminding the public how unethical was the behaviour of some of the nation's top managers only a few short years ago.

The finger of blame for this behaviour is sometimes pointed at the MBA ..."

In my mind, an MBA provides a number of things:

• training on latest, best practice management and business theories
• frameworks for tackling business problems
• in some disciplines, explicit trade skills (areas like finance and accounting)
• a language for dealing with other business people (just like French is a language)
• networks of contacts
• a brand and degree reflecting committment to business in of its own right.

The MBA is not a substitute for real-world experience.

It does not provide training in corruption.

That said (and perhaps I will weaken my case here a bit), and MBA can teach one how to recognize corruption or at least recognize where financial numbers are being played with.

To blame the MBA on corruption in the business world is ridiculous. This is somewhat like blaming those who have pursued engineering or science degrees on the atrocities of war and the machines and mechanisms used by governments to conduct war.

The reponsibility of proper behavior ultimately lies with the individual.

In the case of corruption during the bubble era, I think the problems lie in people's appetite and greed. I am appalled by how some CEOs in that era could have received total compensation in the top 20 of all CEOs (we're talking $50M+ per year) and destroyed shareholder value by 10x+.

Steve Shu
Managing Director, S4 Management Group

Comments

[Ivan Chong]

I've asked a number of Hardvard and Stanford MBA's to indentify the true value of their b-school degree. Most touch upon the bullets listed in your post. Another common response I hear is that b-school teaches you how to *think* about solving business problems. The notion is similar to the approach some schools take in teaching engineering. At MIT, CS classes use LISP and CLU -- programming languages not commonly found in industry. The profs tell us that the point is not to learn the programming language, but rather to learn how to *think* about solving software engineering problems.