Paradigm Shift in Management Education

Changing face of MBA

Management is always treated as a blend of science and arts. Management education started its journey artistically with a partial touch of science. Discussions and deliveries were more focused on human resource management, consumer behavior, physiological aspects involved in business, ethics, and morals in business. As the time progressed and globalization took over nationalization, management education started feeling a drift. The economy moved faster than one expected and travelled from socialist to capitalist. Business started revolving around revenue, profit, and cost rather than moral, ethics, and humanity. As per need, science started taking over artistic style of management. The overall scenario has changed from being artistic manager to scientific manager.

The most often and vital task of a manager ‘decision making’, has not remained artistic any more. Scientific decision making implanted its feet strongly. Inception of computers brought revolution in management holistically. Management decision making is no longer a job of a thinker or an experience holder only.

Data base management decisions strongly emerged. Success of data base management decisions compelled companies to adopt it. The manager these days must have skill-set to analyze and interpret data to make effective decisions.

The other challenge is that data is piling up each passing minute. Abundant availability of data put a challenge to make smart decisions on the basis of specific data mining and analysis. It also pushed faculties involved in management teaching on the edge.

Paradigm shift has taken place in management teaching. Not only the content but the overall pedagogy of teaching is curved. Introduction of new analytical software packages each passing day, made the task even more challenging. Started from calculators, to scientific calculators, to MS Excel, to SPSS, to MINITAB, to MATLAB, to PYTHON to R data analysis has become the most fluid and conversational subject in Management. The beauty of data analytics is that it is applied effectively in all functions of management.

The whole dynamics has changed from opinion discussions to data output discussions. The scope of opinion is squeezed while analytical discussions made their place. Data speaks its own language if operated smartly. Now days practicing management, is a function of listing alternatives from data mining and applying experience to pick the best alternative. The future of management education lies in disseminating strong data analytical techniques along with artistic way of presenting it. Hence the students, faculty mentors, and institutions involved in management education shall focus on smart scientific decision making tools and effective ways of analyzing the output, by doing so the excellent future managers can be produced. At Jagan Institute of Management we craft analytical skills into the aspirant in such a way that overall orientation of a graduate fits perfectly to meet contemporary and futuristic business requirements. 

[This article is sponsored by JIMS, Rohini]

About The Author: Dr. Bhupender Kumar Som, Associate Professor - Management, JIMS Rohini, is a PhD from Department of Statistics and Operational Research, Kurukshetra University. His area of expertise includes, Stochastic Queuing Models and Statistical Data Analysis. He is on the board of reviewers for Journal of Business Theory and Practice, LA, USA and ICTACT Journal of Management. He is also the editor-in-chief of v3 Journal of Management.