What average B-schools don't teach …..?



The following suggestions / comments to upgrade management institutes have been listed out based on opinions  of experts from academic and industry background:-

• Ordinary B-school teaches a lot about goals, strategy, mission, numbers, methods, profits, so on and so forth... but not how to deal people with passion to help them grow and compassion to understand & appreciate them.

• The B-schools use the lecture-cum-case studies as a dominant method for transmission of knowledge. They rely heavily on American or Harvard cases that only provide students with past stories and scenarios and this may hinder the students' critical and lateral thinking in dealing with unstructured business situations.

• Effective teaching not only implies pedagogic achievements, but also means sensitization in many areas for enlarging vision that is critical for attaining effectiveness. Self-learning is very important and an instructor would know how to motivate a student for self-learning.

• Instead of imbibing a spirit of idealism and developing a strong desire to change the world for the better, students leave their B-school after graduation totally obsessed with making money and progressing in their career

• Typically, management students are fiercely competitive and self-focused. But business organisations require a high degree of interdependence among workers.  Working in an organisation requires the willingness to help others to succeed, even without any tangible gain to oneself. However, the question "What is in it for me?" comes to most people's minds. 
• Real life situations operate under higher uncertainty than what classroom discussions or cases can generate. In times of uncertainty, students would look for perfect data to eliminate the uncertainty, but while they would be still searching, the situation would change, requiring new data. Such situations can be frustrating.
• From certain quarters, it is also argued that the teaching approach of many Indian B-schools give students a compartmentalized view of management by function — finance, marketing, human resource development, production, and so on — and only a few give them an integrative approach to management education. In actual practice, all of them in one way or another are related.
• With so much stress on analysis the most important characteristic of profession of management, action, is missed out on. Action requires interpersonal skills, teamwork skills, negotiating skills and political skills. Unfortunately the B-schools do not do a good job of teaching such skills. The mastery of these skills requires a lot of practice and most B-schools are designed without practice fields.

• Global perspectives for both faculty and students are missing. Foreign exchange programme needs to be given priority.