Adventures in MBA World
E-Book available:
Adventures in MBA World: How I Came to Love, and Fear, the Planet’s Most Controversial Degree.
Ben Schiller is searching for meaning in MBA World.
What is an MBA? Why do so many people get one? And what is the MBA’s impact on the way we think and live?
Over the past century, the MBA has spread from the US, to Europe, to the post-Communist Bloc, and most recently, to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the process, it has created thousands of credentialed managers who now run not only businesses, but all kinds of other organizations, including hospitals, government departments, and NGOs.
Traveling to Africa, India and Eastern Europe, Ben Schiller takes a measure of this process, looking at the good and bad of management education. On the one hand, he witnesses the enormous capacity for the MBA to fix basic problems. On the other, he finds that MBA World is full of fraudsters, crooks, and bullshitters, preying on middle class aspirations, and pushing their own interests.
Adventures in MBA World is the light-hearted story of a journalist who was thrust into the world of management. From knowing little about b-schools, Ben Schiller becomes fascinated by the reach and scope of management science in today’s world.
Adventures in MBA World explores the actual impact of management education – a question that has been strangely neglected, even by the MBA industry. It maps the multi-billion dollar business of the MBA, and looks at why the degree has spread so relentlessly over the past few decades.
Ben Schiller concludes that the MBA can be a force for good, if properly regulated and scrutinized, but also something dangerous: feeding “credentialism” at the expense of real knowledge, creating unaccountable elites, and spreading irresponsibility on a global scale.
If you have stories to share about MBAs, or MBA programs, please contact me at schiller (at) f2s.com, or use the comments below.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Ben,
I am an MBA student at the University of Michigan. Michigan has put together a terrific program where all first-year students, in lieu of taking classes their spring quarter, travel to companies all over the US and around the world to partake in 7-week consulting engagements. Many teams travel to the developing world to help for- and not-for-profit organizations tackle their biggest business challenges (i.e.: creating a strategy for a company looking to distribute low-cost corrective eyeware to India’s poor). We also have a thriving dual-degree program that attracts many candidates who want to combine their MBA with a deeper focus on sustainable energy, public policy, and other areas where they can have a lasting impact on communities.
If you’re interested in exploring how MBAs are trying to break the typical management mold, then I would encourage you to speak with some of my classmates at U-M and see how a top-ranked school is trying to make a positive difference in business.
Thanks!
Andrew
Hi Andrew – thanks for getting in touch. How do I find out more?
Ben
Hi Ben,
Your article, Are MBAs the Solution to Africa’s Problems? got me thinking. From the African Management Initiative to TEFF, you called out management training as the missing link in Africa’s development. There is another point-of-view that I think can be a valuable resource for your book – transferring MBA skills to those who need it most – the drivers of Africa’s economic growth – small to medium sized businesses.
I’m reaching out to share about a program – MBAs Without Borders (MWB), operated by the NGO, CDC Development Solutions. Through MWB, recent grads from NYU, Thunderbird, UCLA, and other schools work with small – medium size businesses & governments in developing countries on projects that build their capacity – enabling investors like the ones you mentioned who are often blocked by lack of infrastructure to invest.
At the same time, for MBAs, it is like a crash course in years of academic theory. Eleazar Ortiz, a recent NYU grad, for example, is in Mexico right now, working with Buen Manejo del Campo. He is designing department procedures, budgets, and an operations manual, while training a staff for whom these concepts are brand new. I’ve heard the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else – this is Eleazar’s & others MBAs life everyday. The final exam is the day they leave, when Buen Manejo del Campo will use the tools & training he leaves them to scale their business nationally and then, internationally.
I work with MBA Without Borders. If you’d like to learn more either for the book you’re working on or an article, I’m happy to connect you to Eleazar or other MBAs & MWB staff.
Thanks,
Katie
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