Is Brand MBA overrated? Shyam G. Menon
Trying to understand the aura around B-Schools is akin to exploring a mischievous conspiracy. It stays forever a step beyond your grasp! This, despite the apparent mismatch between specification and product in the MBA market, and broadening of visited campuses by employers such as Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), who include good colleges as well in their head hunt.
At least two leading corporates, regular recruiters from top B-Schools, cited disconnect, ranging from faculties considering themselves best placed to frame curriculum, to the redressal mechanism of business schools' shortcomings being slow.
"It is certainly very different from airline feedback, where correction is overnight," jokes a senior corporate official, adding charitably, "but they do try."
Arun Maira, Chairman of Boston Consulting Group says, "I agree that corporates should provide inputs to B-Schools. But are schools open to the idea?"
Bijay Sahoo, Vice-President (Human Resources), Wipro Technologies, feels that the "interface between industry and academia has to be stronger. There are new challenges in corporate governance and business concepts. B-Schools must keep pace by including them in the curriculum".
Yet few employers are really complaining. Beyond a point, regret seems abandoned to a Bob Dylan-ish mode. The answer is `blowing in the wind' and with that, brand MBA is returned to protected status. Even inadequacies highlighted by corporates seem to conflict. These include a desire to see B-Schools discuss more case studies, make their graduates more relevant to corporate needs, at the same time retaining their intellectual versatility.
Maybe it is the ever-changing profile of an MBA and the challenge of welding together seemingly irreconcilable traits that makes the pursuit absorbing.
Take, for example, Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), widely seen as a company powered by the spirit of doing, yet conscious of the power of thought.
The FMCG major recruits about 100 managers a year. Of these, 40 to 45 are recruits in the Business Leadership Trainee category, essentially from B-Schools, CAs, IITs and a few general colleges. The rest join as direct recruits and promotees from HLL's non-management ranks.
According to Prem Kamath, Head (Management Resources), HLL, there are no fixed ratios in intake mix, save an aspiration to increase business and sustain innovative thought. "We believe very strongly in diversity in management because if you only recruit clones there will be convergent thinking in the organisation," he says.
Hemalatha Santhanam, former director, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), Mumbai, cites innovative thinking as the benefit accruing from an academic streak in management studies, even though subsequent employment has more to do with surviving in corporates.
Less thrust on substantive and rigorous knowledge of management science and its underlying disciplines is an area B-Schools could improve upon, says Satish Pradhan, Executive Vice-President (Group HR), Tata Sons.
"Somehow it has become unfashionable to think that theoretical knowledge is a virtue. The industry should ask for it. The quality of thoughtful pragmatism has to be there," he says.
Last year, the Tatas made offers to roughly 2,500 graduates at top engineering and management institutes. By any yardstick, this is a big number.
Why then are Business Schools not responding fast enough to the various suggestions give by the corporates?
More important, how do you measure the effectiveness of MBA graduates and endorse, thereby, the right curriculum or training process?
Sectorally, there is worry at companies, more at faculties, on the recent explosion in B-School numbers. Where focussed attention counted, commoditisation set in. As in the case of IITs, the IIMs stay a class apart; those lower in the pecking order have a tough time balancing quality and cost.
But the dent to overall image of Business schools spares none. Strangely, even as an MBA retains a halo amidst the decline in the stature of general education, there is little audit of MBAs' capability beyond the publicised paradigm of alumni positions and salaries. Like a merchant banker selling an IPO, it helped build brand MBA and brand B-School.
But what about real worth? The sort that is measured in terms of great ideas and leadership during tough times or turnaround. At HLL, after the management recruits complete training or probation, they start off on an equal footing in the race within HLL's steep management pyramid. Once inside a company your B-School fades into the distance. HLL has had directors who worked their way up from the bottom, and with no MBA to their credit.
"We are interested in and judge people entirely on their merit," Kamath quipped at a recent seminar. The Tatas created their own method of assessing B-Schools, based on parameters such as course design, faculty, recruitment process and post-recruitment performance. "Nobody gets catapulted up," says Pradhan.
A senior finance manager in Mumbai says he prefers CAs in his department, not MBAs in finance. "What happens here is number crunching with a need for immediate results. MBAs lack the appetite for such work," he feels.
Considering all this, why should the community still put a halo around MBAs?
The answer lies in the selection process at top B-Schools. Hemalatha concedes to respecting IIT-ians who reach their institutes after a tough entrance test. It is this sieving process which fuels corporates' love for MBAs as well.
This brings one to the question of the industry's "affection" doubling when the candidate wears the tags of both IIT and IIM. This is because the twin experience drills in greater knowledge, higher bandwidth of comprehension and the capacity to execute faster than the next person.
"You pay for all of these," says Pradhan of high MBA salaries.
Says Santrupt Mishra, President (Corporate HR), Aditya Birla Group, "A person's brilliance is established in two ways. One is through the job, the other is by a filtering mechanism as in the case of MBA students. There is tough competition at the B-School level."
Atop this is the MBA's familiarity with business jargon and matters corporate. At the starting block, it gives him an edge over the purely brilliant from other streams, ensuring prominence on company shopping lists.
Hemalatha cites case studies introduced by corporates, as a route for early seeding. The Tatas have a case study authored by Harvard professors that is then debated by B-School students vying for the Tata Business Leadership Award. Besides nurturing and rewarding quality, it gives early insight into the Tata way at B-Schools.
But clearly, what companies seek to recruit is filtered brain power, its prior acquaintance with matters corporate being a bonus. The faculty acknowledges that familiarity pays and Hemalatha admits an MBA brings to the table soft skills like networking, which, along with other skills, contribute to a corporate survival kit.
Argues a chartered account, now well placed in a pharma MNC, "The pass percentage in CA, as opposed to finance MBAs, is still conservative. But unlike B-Schools, the CA institute is poor at marketing itself." Networking and sustaining brand value, is a lesson even IITs have begun picking up from MBAs.
Kamath says it is also a question of money's worth. Since there is a cost attached to the recruitment effort, HLL wants to give due importance to the time spent in the activity by it directors and senior managers. There are direct costs (travel, hotels) and even placement fee paid to the B-Schols. The company naturally wants the maximum bang for its buck. MBAs or anyone else who has bothered to prepare along these lines, do manage to score.
One senior corporate official, who did not wish to be named, painted an interesting picture — scary for its simplicity against the claimed sophistication of MBAs — of how recruitments work. In applicants, you look for an alive and inquiring mind, gauge energy levels and creativity, examine preparedness to get down to delivery, weigh people skills and assess motivation levels from outstanding work already done.
"In 10 minutes, you know if the applicant is your company type or not," he says. Years of study for an employer's 10 minute-attention!
Standing taller with an MBA to your credit, helps. But then, at the end of the day, is a typical MBA just a corporate survivor, more building maintenance crew, less its visionary architect?
The broad sweep in judgement points to this. Yet, as in any field of study, there are issues of human brilliance that crave a different approach. There is a love-hate attitude towards MBA toppers and their preference for consultancy jobs.
"It gives the right to do many things and not take responsibilty for any," says a manager. On the other hand, Hemalatha sees it as a natural fall-out of brilliance — the need for variety in one's work.
The Tatas have positioned TAS to take advantage of this. According to Pradhan, salary is a major pull for top notch MBAs, but "tracking of the TAS brand has shown that variety is an attraction for the best minds."
TAS personnel shift from one Tata company to another.
"To move to a different industry you don't have to quit," says Pradhan. But positioning MBA as a route to business thought spawns its own questions. One natural question is: Is it not better to study after 10-15 years of work experience?
One industry expert says that two to three years of work experience is insufficient as "nothing meaty gets done early in one's career." On the other hand, this qualified CA is amused by the MBA course he is attending at a top B-School now."
"I am now doing double entry book keeping, which I have been doing for the last 15 years", he chuckles.
At the very least, it promises an elusive chase to those trying to pin down the true worth of an MBA.
With inputs from Latha Venkatraman and Nathalia Jones.
Trying to understand the aura around B-Schools is akin to exploring a mischievous conspiracy. It stays forever a step beyond your grasp! This, despite the apparent mismatch between specification and product in the MBA market, and broadening of visited campuses by employers such as Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), who include good colleges as well in their head hunt.
At least two leading corporates, regular recruiters from top B-Schools, cited disconnect, ranging from faculties considering themselves best placed to frame curriculum, to the redressal mechanism of business schools' shortcomings being slow.
"It is certainly very different from airline feedback, where correction is overnight," jokes a senior corporate official, adding charitably, "but they do try."
Arun Maira, Chairman of Boston Consulting Group says, "I agree that corporates should provide inputs to B-Schools. But are schools open to the idea?"
Bijay Sahoo, Vice-President (Human Resources), Wipro Technologies, feels that the "interface between industry and academia has to be stronger. There are new challenges in corporate governance and business concepts. B-Schools must keep pace by including them in the curriculum".
Yet few employers are really complaining. Beyond a point, regret seems abandoned to a Bob Dylan-ish mode. The answer is `blowing in the wind' and with that, brand MBA is returned to protected status. Even inadequacies highlighted by corporates seem to conflict. These include a desire to see B-Schools discuss more case studies, make their graduates more relevant to corporate needs, at the same time retaining their intellectual versatility.
Maybe it is the ever-changing profile of an MBA and the challenge of welding together seemingly irreconcilable traits that makes the pursuit absorbing.
Take, for example, Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), widely seen as a company powered by the spirit of doing, yet conscious of the power of thought.
The FMCG major recruits about 100 managers a year. Of these, 40 to 45 are recruits in the Business Leadership Trainee category, essentially from B-Schools, CAs, IITs and a few general colleges. The rest join as direct recruits and promotees from HLL's non-management ranks.
According to Prem Kamath, Head (Management Resources), HLL, there are no fixed ratios in intake mix, save an aspiration to increase business and sustain innovative thought. "We believe very strongly in diversity in management because if you only recruit clones there will be convergent thinking in the organisation," he says.
Hemalatha Santhanam, former director, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), Mumbai, cites innovative thinking as the benefit accruing from an academic streak in management studies, even though subsequent employment has more to do with surviving in corporates.
Less thrust on substantive and rigorous knowledge of management science and its underlying disciplines is an area B-Schools could improve upon, says Satish Pradhan, Executive Vice-President (Group HR), Tata Sons.
"Somehow it has become unfashionable to think that theoretical knowledge is a virtue. The industry should ask for it. The quality of thoughtful pragmatism has to be there," he says.
Last year, the Tatas made offers to roughly 2,500 graduates at top engineering and management institutes. By any yardstick, this is a big number.
Why then are Business Schools not responding fast enough to the various suggestions give by the corporates?
More important, how do you measure the effectiveness of MBA graduates and endorse, thereby, the right curriculum or training process?
Sectorally, there is worry at companies, more at faculties, on the recent explosion in B-School numbers. Where focussed attention counted, commoditisation set in. As in the case of IITs, the IIMs stay a class apart; those lower in the pecking order have a tough time balancing quality and cost.
But the dent to overall image of Business schools spares none. Strangely, even as an MBA retains a halo amidst the decline in the stature of general education, there is little audit of MBAs' capability beyond the publicised paradigm of alumni positions and salaries. Like a merchant banker selling an IPO, it helped build brand MBA and brand B-School.
But what about real worth? The sort that is measured in terms of great ideas and leadership during tough times or turnaround. At HLL, after the management recruits complete training or probation, they start off on an equal footing in the race within HLL's steep management pyramid. Once inside a company your B-School fades into the distance. HLL has had directors who worked their way up from the bottom, and with no MBA to their credit.
"We are interested in and judge people entirely on their merit," Kamath quipped at a recent seminar. The Tatas created their own method of assessing B-Schools, based on parameters such as course design, faculty, recruitment process and post-recruitment performance. "Nobody gets catapulted up," says Pradhan.
A senior finance manager in Mumbai says he prefers CAs in his department, not MBAs in finance. "What happens here is number crunching with a need for immediate results. MBAs lack the appetite for such work," he feels.
Considering all this, why should the community still put a halo around MBAs?
The answer lies in the selection process at top B-Schools. Hemalatha concedes to respecting IIT-ians who reach their institutes after a tough entrance test. It is this sieving process which fuels corporates' love for MBAs as well.
This brings one to the question of the industry's "affection" doubling when the candidate wears the tags of both IIT and IIM. This is because the twin experience drills in greater knowledge, higher bandwidth of comprehension and the capacity to execute faster than the next person.
"You pay for all of these," says Pradhan of high MBA salaries.
Says Santrupt Mishra, President (Corporate HR), Aditya Birla Group, "A person's brilliance is established in two ways. One is through the job, the other is by a filtering mechanism as in the case of MBA students. There is tough competition at the B-School level."
Atop this is the MBA's familiarity with business jargon and matters corporate. At the starting block, it gives him an edge over the purely brilliant from other streams, ensuring prominence on company shopping lists.
Hemalatha cites case studies introduced by corporates, as a route for early seeding. The Tatas have a case study authored by Harvard professors that is then debated by B-School students vying for the Tata Business Leadership Award. Besides nurturing and rewarding quality, it gives early insight into the Tata way at B-Schools.
But clearly, what companies seek to recruit is filtered brain power, its prior acquaintance with matters corporate being a bonus. The faculty acknowledges that familiarity pays and Hemalatha admits an MBA brings to the table soft skills like networking, which, along with other skills, contribute to a corporate survival kit.
Argues a chartered account, now well placed in a pharma MNC, "The pass percentage in CA, as opposed to finance MBAs, is still conservative. But unlike B-Schools, the CA institute is poor at marketing itself." Networking and sustaining brand value, is a lesson even IITs have begun picking up from MBAs.
Kamath says it is also a question of money's worth. Since there is a cost attached to the recruitment effort, HLL wants to give due importance to the time spent in the activity by it directors and senior managers. There are direct costs (travel, hotels) and even placement fee paid to the B-Schols. The company naturally wants the maximum bang for its buck. MBAs or anyone else who has bothered to prepare along these lines, do manage to score.
One senior corporate official, who did not wish to be named, painted an interesting picture — scary for its simplicity against the claimed sophistication of MBAs — of how recruitments work. In applicants, you look for an alive and inquiring mind, gauge energy levels and creativity, examine preparedness to get down to delivery, weigh people skills and assess motivation levels from outstanding work already done.
"In 10 minutes, you know if the applicant is your company type or not," he says. Years of study for an employer's 10 minute-attention!
Standing taller with an MBA to your credit, helps. But then, at the end of the day, is a typical MBA just a corporate survivor, more building maintenance crew, less its visionary architect?
The broad sweep in judgement points to this. Yet, as in any field of study, there are issues of human brilliance that crave a different approach. There is a love-hate attitude towards MBA toppers and their preference for consultancy jobs.
"It gives the right to do many things and not take responsibilty for any," says a manager. On the other hand, Hemalatha sees it as a natural fall-out of brilliance — the need for variety in one's work.
The Tatas have positioned TAS to take advantage of this. According to Pradhan, salary is a major pull for top notch MBAs, but "tracking of the TAS brand has shown that variety is an attraction for the best minds."
TAS personnel shift from one Tata company to another.
"To move to a different industry you don't have to quit," says Pradhan. But positioning MBA as a route to business thought spawns its own questions. One natural question is: Is it not better to study after 10-15 years of work experience?
One industry expert says that two to three years of work experience is insufficient as "nothing meaty gets done early in one's career." On the other hand, this qualified CA is amused by the MBA course he is attending at a top B-School now."
"I am now doing double entry book keeping, which I have been doing for the last 15 years", he chuckles.
At the very least, it promises an elusive chase to those trying to pin down the true worth of an MBA.
With inputs from Latha Venkatraman and Nathalia Jones.