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Systems approach: Buzzword
or Reality in Management Education ?
Swen Mehta
Businesses across the world are trying to become more competitive and
profitable due to various external forces working on them.
But how do these
businesses cope and adapt to the changes? Thanks to the talented
employees of the organization who sense and develop the abilities
required to meet those challenges. We can say that in present world
knowledge is power and human capital is supreme. But how does a
business get this capital? Most of this talent pool is generated by
technical and management education in a country.
We see in the last decade Indian businesses have also been facing these
changes and are looking towards management institutions in the country
to provide quality manpower. And to fill the gap between demand and
supply, country has been flooded with management institutions.
Incomparable in nature and their operational style, the quality of
management education dished out at each of these institutes vary to a
larger extent. So when it comes to selecting a management institute for
pursuing a MBA course one needs to look beyond the popular measures
like magazine surveys, alumni speak and most importantly placements.
Systems approach
What one needs to look at is the approach taken by B-school in
developing their students. There are good old approaches for mentoring
like the case study approach adopted by Harvard business school and
emulated in India by some of the IIM’s. Some follow the approach of
developing corporate citizenship through internships, but the question
that needs to be asked is whether these approaches are still valid in
today’s rapidly changing and dynamic world. The answer can be very well
judged by the fact that industry is complaining that education is
distancing itself from practice and also there is not much difference
in curricula of different institutes, so why some institutions are
continuously growing and proving themselves while others are not able
to do so?.
One possible answer lies in their adopting systems approach. While
Traditional management education continues to focus on functional areas
viz Marketing, Finance, HR etc, the systems approach inculcates the
ability to rise above functional barriers and take a holistic view of
value chain. The systems approach integrates the analytic and the
synthetic method, encompassing both holism and reductionism. Take for
instance a company may have certain production problems, but this
problem may be specifically due to technology factor, or personnel, or
quality, or raw material or it could be combination of all these
factors, systems approach helps managers to analyze problems from a
system point view not mere functional point of view and he will be able
to solve problem quickly and permanently. Systems approach imparts
flexibility to adjust to the requirements of the industry. In fact
systems approach covers all other approaches and puts more emphasis on
“Learning by doing”.
One could infer that it is high time that management education and
educational institutes understand this reality and adopt systems
approach for their curricula otherwise they will find themselves in the
band of “Rest” as shown below.
SWEN MEHTA (Student, PGDIM VIII, NITIE, MUMBAI)
swen_mehta@im8.nitie.edu |
