MBAs are strange products. Although the market may be saturated, there is always place for more offers. Although the products might be fairly similar, the deliveries are vastly different. Some business schools may require individual work, others may require no formal examination, some focus on action learning, others on e-learning.
The market dictates. And that market is the employer and the employee. Ultimately the power of the MBA is in the use of it and its value to the individual who spent one, two, maybe three years obtaining it.
As an information academic, I have spent my time determining — sometimes forcing — value from information. The value of information is difficult to determine. Information may be deemed highly valuable or it may be deemed worthless — especially with the growing notion of information as an essential product and valuable resource. Value through information is difficult to describe, sometimes it is calculable and other times not.
Broadly, it can be contended that the calculable value of information has two dimensions:
- There is value in the exchange of information. Essentially, value in exchange is calculated, or known, by the amount of money for which the commodity information exchanges hands; or
It would therefore seem that the value of information lies more in the cost the customer may incur in not buying or, more to the point, not having access to the information, or intelligence, about the product — in this instance knowledge about MBAs.
Moreover, one may value information according to these three dimensions:
How does all this relate to the regular MBA surveys, the results of which are reported in the media? MBA surveys are no different in that the goal is to present up to date, viable information to customers such as corporations, students and academics. One kind of survey evaluates business schools and summarises their offerings in terms of one quantitative factor. Indeed the survey also conveys tacit information according to less distinct or measurable variables.
Are these the most appropriate ones? Here is my list of criteria for business schools or the MBAs they offer.
It is our right to create our own models, beliefs and leaders for problems and situations that are uniquely African and that only we have the deep understanding to make work. And it is the developed world’s privilege to assist us in this, but to let us develop our own leaders and forms of leadership and of masters to manage and sustain Africa.
Successful academics at business schools have the ability to change profiles like chameleons. They are a little bit of this and a little bit of that. They are strange masters of academic excellence and theory and innovators of success stories. Remember, modern corporations have not read the casebooks and react according to market stimuli — economic changes, new legislation, rules, customers — and technologies. They would not know how to conform to the spirits described in the scenarios we read.
The decision to enrol for this prestigious degree has far-reaching implications for the individual and his/her immediate environment. It should change your very soul. It should change the ways you act and interact; the mental models you develop in your own life, of the places of work you will encounter, of the places you inhabit, the countries you live in. It will empower you to personal mastery.
Professor Rene Pellissier is executive and academic director of De Montfort Southern Africa