| |9 December 2020HIGHERReviewIn India, MBA education has come to stay and occupy a very important position in the academic calendar of students who are in search of good career opportunitiesnesses, but also front ranking thinkers, who have devel-oped a huge body of knowledge in management thinking, to support the growth of industry. The one big difference that prevails between USA and all other countries is that the American MBA system is a great blend of the here and now, graduates who can run businesses just after graduating, and the far and the future, producing graduates who go on to become great manage-ment thinkers. In the footsteps of Peter Drucker, we have illustrious American Management thinkers like Clayton Christensen, James Womack, David Garvin, Philip Kotler, Michael Porter and many others, who have provided the theoretical base for continuous evolution in management practices, the adoption of which improved competitive-ness, breadth and depth of American products, services and companies producing both of these. No wonder, American companies have dominated the Fortune 500 lists. In India, the curriculum of most B Schools has to be approved by the AICTE, which is the nodal government body for establishing standards. There are many `autono-mous' MBA institutes in India, of late, and the government is now pursuing this policy vigorously, to `liberate' MBA education. In the last few years, there have been many de-velopments that have brought the Indian MBA at par with others in the world. Beginning with the traditional two year Post Graduate Programme in Management, equiva-lent to an MBA, part time MBA, executive MBA, one year MBA (pioneered at the highest level by ISB, Hyderabad and Mohali), followed, in quick succession. More recent-ly, specialized one year MBA courses have also sprung up. The latest areas include Mass Communication, Human Re-sources Management, Real Estate Management, Big Data Analytics. In view of the impending `digital economy', many institutes have started shorter specialization cours-es in data analytics, IoT, AI, machine learning and so on. Many MBA degree programmes have started including one or two courses in all the above areas in their curricula. Some institutes have branched off into `experiential learning'. This is in response to the perception that busi-nesses expect new recruits to be `ready to hit the ground running', meaning, become productive from day one of joining their positions. This is clearly an unreasonable position to adopt, as it leads to many institutes spending larger and larger amounts of valuable time on `unstruc-tured' experiential activities, like, `live projects', `on the job' projects, even before they acquire enough knowl-edge in the field. In the long run, this could become counterproductive, unless such experiential learning is well planned, designed and run with committed and experienced faculty. Design thinking is becoming very popular, as is `dig-ital' thinking. Industry 4.0 is a soon expected develop-ment, and is likely to affect current manufacturing prac-tices significantly, however, due to lack of well-developed courses; this topic is yet to find its way into MBA curricu-la. Owing to the clarion call given by the PM to take GDP to 5 trillion USD by 2024, and popularise `Make in India', this topic has to be taken up speedily. Sustainability is the next frontier, along with water and renewable energy management. While renewable en-ergy management is being taught in a few places, however, none of the other subjects are being included in the MBA curriculum in any significant manner. Overall, the Indian MBA system has developed, in keeping with the times, and has been able to meet the demands of the Industry. However, one serious gap is the lack of management thinking and development of theories and practices to suit Indian conditions, as well as univer-sally applicable methodologies. Only such work will earn the Indian MBA faculty a degree of respect and recogni-tion in the world at large. Research in management is the need of the hour and should be taken up speedily, to catch up with the long neglect.
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