The MBA in Britain Joanne Workman, University of Sussex (Joworkman@btopenworld.com) Supervisors: Professor Pat Thane and Dr. Richard Roberts American style business schools and their Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) were introduced in Britain in 1965 amid concern with the British economy‟s apparent inability to keep pace with the economic achievements of its major competitors. The popular equation of managerial capability with economic performance generated a consensus regarding the need to develop Britain‟s managers. However disagreement arose over the best methods of doing so. A bias towards formal qualifications among educationalists, and among those that believed the solution lay in following the example of Britain‟s most successful competitor, America, flowed against a tide of opinion that emphasised the importance of experiential learning and the practical application of academic knowledge. Nick Tiratsoo and Terry Gourvish have correctly qualified the argument that American technical assistance programmes had a major influence on the development of management education in Britain. They argue that rather than being a straightforward example of the post WWII Americanisation of Britain, British business schools evolved due to a host of diverse and at times conflicting interests. Tiratsoo emphasizes the persistence of industrial scepticism towards formal education for management, and the comparatively small number of management education enthusiasts in Britain, as evidence of the limitations of American influence. However, as they both allow, the retention of the MBA as the centrepiece of British management education signifies the extent to which the American model of management education was 1[1] endorsed and followed. The success of the German and Japanese economies, particularly of the latter during the 1980s, encouraged a new focus upon the cultural specificities of management. Although the two most influential reports of the decade identified the requirement of management education initiatives to adapt to different national contexts, the authors continued to position the American-inspired MBA degree at the 2[2] pinnacle of their educational solutions to British management weakness. This paper briefly summarises the persistent and consistent criticisms that have been levelled at post-graduate management education in Britain, and specifically its Masters courses, since the inception of business schools in 1965. It argues that the insistence upon post-graduate courses by a “British Management Movement” enamoured with the American example, and motivated by considerations of status befitting a profession, conflicted with the cultural specificities of management in Britain. As a result British business schools developed as hybrid institutions attempting to appease the divergent interests of the academic culture of the universities in which they were placed and of a diverse consumer market. The paper highlights the very real support that existed within British industry for the shorter, practically focused, unexamined post-experience courses which were well established in Britain and offered by the independent colleges Henley and Ashridge, and university business schools alike – an area often neglected in discourses on management education – and considers the extent to which business schools might have developed in a different direction. At the foundation of the schools in 1965 discussion concerning the example set by the Harvard Business School in America often referred to the School‟s thirteen-week advanced management course rather than its two-year MBA programme. Management educationalists were split between those who supported the notion of formal education for management and those who went further to insist that such education must conform to externally verifiable standards of rigour in order to ensure the credibility of management qualifications. This paper concludes that given the specificities of the British management context it is difficult to imagine how an educational approach to the development of British management could have evolved in any other way than the path it has taken. The class assumptions of British management combined with a social and economic environment conducive to ideas perceived as “progressive” to establish the principle that management education should be university-based at postgraduate level. The conflicting interests of the academic culture of the host universities and a diverse, often empirically minded, consumer group of businessmen ensured that British business schools were caught in a tug-of-war between practical and academic approaches to management education. The dominance of the American MBA model has limited the extent to which business schools have been able to innovate in response to criticisms. This accounts for the consistency evident of critiques of university-level post-graduate management education. Since the establishment of American style business schools in 1965 academic approaches to management education, as represented by the MBA, have conflicted with the cultural specificities of
1[1]
Gourvish T.R. and Tiratsoo N., Missionaries and managers: American influences on European management education, 1945-60, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998. 2[2] Charles Handy, The Making of Managers. A report on management education, training and development in the USA, West Germany, France, Japan and the UK, National Economic Development Office, London, 1987. John Constable and Roger McCormick, The Making of British Managers: A Report for the BIM and CBI into management training, education and development, British Institute of Management, Corby, April, 1987.
management in Britain. British industry, with its apprenticeship tradition, preferred initiatives that stressed the importance of knowledge of specific industries or organisations. Scepticism about the MBA centred upon concerns that theoretical approaches to management education disregarded the practical day-to-day issues that managers faced. Industrial unease was shared by some sympathetic academics. The support that existed for the shorter, practically focused and unexamined post-experience courses is an area often neglected within discourses on management education. Published in 1971, Business School Programmes: the requirements of British manufacturing 3[3] industry, or The Owen Report, as it became known, was specifically focused upon the views of the manufacturing industry precisely because, the authors noted, it was from that sector that the majority of views on management education were being expressed. Three senior industrialists were released by their companies to conduct the survey; David Casey of Reed International, Norman Huskisson of BP and Trevor Owen of ICI. In total 53 „enterprises‟ were surveyed, which represented 47 large and medium-sized firms and three nationalised industries, three of the firms having been split into two independent parts for the purposes of the survey. Although in practice interviewees commented upon the entire spectrum of management education provision, the research had been conducted with a focus upon business schools, the definition of which included management centres and departments of business studies at universities but excluded the independent colleges. Post-graduate courses were defined as those courses of at least one year‟s duration that led to an MBA, MSc or equivalent and post-experience as non-qualification courses of at least three weeks‟ duration. Because the Diploma in Management Studies (DMS) was not offered at universities it was also effectively excluded from the parameters of the study. Anticipating reservations that were subsequently raised concerning the representative character of the sample, the authors noted that, despite the existence of „great disparity, and often confusion of opinion‟, they were struck by „the strength and basic uniformity of view on major issues‟. They therefore felt confident to conclude that the report represented „a true consensus of opinion among those surveyed‟, and further, would enjoy „substantial 4[4] support‟ from industry generally. The Owen Report has consistently been identified as evidence of a generic industrial antagonism towards management education. In his history of the Foundation for Management Education (FME), an organisation extremely influential in the establishment of business schools in Britain, Philip Nind has written that „industry‟s anxieties and frustrations were canalised through the 1971 Owen Survey of large firms in 5[5] 6[6] manufacturing industry‟. Nind, like commentators writing both before and after him, described the reports‟ criticisms of the quality of management education teachers and of post-graduate qualifications such as the MBA, particularly in relation to the quality of the student body, the perceived relevance of courses and the lack of strong links between industry and business schools. Oft-quoted phrases of the report appeared to paint a dismal picture of the views of industry. The authors, for example, remarked upon the extent to 7[7] which most business respondents were „perplexed, worried or angry about post-graduate education‟. However, allowing that the views expressed in the report may at times reflect more the desires of the authors than of their informants, it is important to emphasise the qualified nature of the criticisms. The Owen Report in fact made a clear distinction between the disappointment of businessmen with post-graduate courses and their general support for post-experience management education. The authors found that „the question of post-experience education found [respondents] much more relaxed … and 8[8] criticisms of these courses were neither substantial nor frequent‟. Ashridge, an independent college offering post-experience programmes, was noted for the difficulty applicants had in getting onto its courses 9[9] and was reported as „almost universally well regarded‟. Stating that there was a demand for greater diversity within post-experience offerings, the authors nevertheless concluded that „in short, industry is fairly 10[10] satisfied with the business schools‟ contribution to post-experience education in terms of formal courses‟. Manufacturing industrialists wished to see business schools experiment in this area and, if a choice was required, 89 per cent favoured targeting resources to the shorter post-experience rather than post-graduate 11[11] courses.
3[3]
Advisory Panel on Management Education, Business School Programmes. The Requirements of British Manufacturing Industry, British Institute of Management and Council of Industry for Management Education, London, 1971. 4[4] Ibid., pp.3-4. 5[5] Philip F. Nind, A Firm Foundation. The Story of the FME, Foundation for Management Education, Oxford, 1985, p.40. 6[6] For example: Nancy Foy, The Missing Links. British Management Education in the Eighties, Foundation for Management Education, September 1978. Robert Locke, The Collapse of the American Management Mystique, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996. 7[7] Advisory Panel on Management Education, p.12. 8[8] Ibid., p.12. 9[9] Ibid., p.15. 10[10] Ibid., p.13. 11[11] Ibid., p.24.
At the heart of the debate was the familiar tension between theoretical and practical approaches to management education. One of the main criticisms of post-graduate education was the emphasis upon academic qualifying criteria. Industrialists felt that a minimum of three years business experience should be a pre-requisite for candidates for Masters courses in management. Displaying an understanding of management as a hybrid between arts and sciences, respondents believed that by building on business experience, industry could select further development managers who had demonstrated leadership potential. The failure of business schools to strike this perceived balance between experience and academic attainments ensured, in the eyes of industrialists, that successful applicants were generally of lower calibre. In order to justify both the courses and investment in individuals, industrialists expected business graduates to out-perform those who had not had such training. The problem was that respondents generally felt that this was too often not the case. Of those firms that recruited business graduates as a matter of policy (just 7 out of the 53 enterprises consulted), 4 restricted their intake to graduates from American business schools 12[12] on grounds of quality. Clearly there was hostility towards business schools and their post-graduate product and this was the sentiment most emphasised by commentators on the report. However throughout the report the authors were careful to intersperse negative views with more congratulatory sentiments. Given the newness of the business schools and the requirement for them to come to maturity from the moment of their inception, without the support of the undergraduate base common in the United States, the authors stated that „the miracle is that they exist and flourish to such an extent‟. They asserted that, „industry recognises the 13[13] schools‟ strength‟, it simply wished them to be stronger. In the foreword to the report the Chairman of the CIME, Sir John Partridge, noted that „there is some ignorance and prejudice within industry, as this report 14[14] frankly and rightly admits‟. Similarly, the authors concluded that, There is a danger that a report of this sort will leave an impression of carping criticism and that everything is wrong with the schools. If we have left that impression, then we have failed. The schools have done a magnificent job in getting so far so fast, and this is widely recognised in industry … Although they have yet to produce a recognisable UK ethos and still have a long way to go before they can match the highest American standards, industry respects the progress they have made in such a short time and would like to extend a 15[15] sympathetic hand in partnership, rather than offer destructive criticism. Support for post-experience courses ensured that they far outnumbered post-graduate courses by the date of the Owen Report. In 1970 the Business Graduates Association (BGA) judged that, including polytechnic and technical college provision, post-graduate courses accounted for less than a third of management 16[16] education. In the wake of the Owen Report, and in response to subsequent criticism, business schools attempted to revise their offerings in line with the interests of industry. Part-time or modular MBA programmes and MBA courses for specific industries or organisations aided the practical application of learning in the workplace and thus represented a response to demands for greater relevance. Rising demand ensured that, at least at the best business schools, average levels of work experience prior to the commencement of the MBA increased. However such shifts in emphasis have caused dissension. Following the Owen Report, London Business School modified its selection criteria for applicants to its Masters course to place greater emphasis upon their level of business experience. Previously business experience had been desired but not established as a pre-requisite equivalent to a good first degree or professional qualification. Nevertheless, applications for admission that did not appear to have suitable academic qualifications continued to be 17[17] questioned. At Manchester Business School (MBS) the strength and reputation of post-experience courses, particularly its Joint Development Activities (JDA), which were six-month programmes jointly administered by the business school and sponsoring organisations and constructed around project work conducted inside the firm, also had negative internal outcomes. By the early 1980s research grants had fallen to just 6 per cent of the school's income and the number of research staff more than halved. As post-experience courses increasingly dominated the annual accounts and consumed more staff time the research reputation of the
12[12] 13[13]
Ibid., pp.8-10. Ibid., p.14. 14[14] Ibid., p.1. 15[15] Ibid., p.18. 16[16] The BGA Guide to Selected Business Schools, The Business Graduates Association Ltd., London, 1970, p.4. 17[17] Richard Whitley et. al., Masters of Business? Business schools and business graduates in Britain and France, Tavistock Publications, London, 1981, pp.111-12.
school declined drastically. In 1983 the University moved to limit the relative autonomy previously enjoyed by the business school. The fundamental characteristics of the MBS approach had been a nondepartmental structure and emphasis upon practical learning. A tightening of the structure and financial accounting of the chool was undertaken to bring it more in line with university practices and a postexperience course advisory committee was established to bring what was regarded as a greater degree of intellectual rigour to the courses. A statement of the schools aims published in 1983 by the new School Policy Group signalled the reaffirmation of academic excellence and the down-playing of academic-industrial 19[19] collaboration. Post-experience courses or an emphasis upon the incorporation of practical and participatory teaching methods (such as the case study, role-playing and project work) were by no means dropped from the agenda. Efforts to increase the perceived relevance of management education continued. By the late 20[20] 1980s company-specific programmes accounted for approximately 40 per cent of teaching time at MBS, and the provision of part-time courses for the diploma and MSc in 1981 was followed by the foundation of a 21[21] part-time MBA in 1987. However the extent to which concessions to the empiricist demands of its marketplace were qualified by the academic culture from which they sprang can be seen in the schools attempt to introduce participatory teaching methods. Projects were constructed by the university that involved role-playing rather than placements in companies where, as the historian of MBS John Wilson 22[22] explained, „matters of confidentiality might compromise the validity of the exercise‟. The tug-of-war between post-experience and post-graduate courses at MBS, between stereotypes of practical and theoretical approaches to the development of managers, was evident in business schools and university management departments throughout Britain. The conflict displayed the tensions inherent in attempting to maintain a rather uncomfortable equilibrium between the interests of an academic host culture and a diverse consumer group. The inevitability of such hybrid institutions emerging from the specificities of British culture is open to debate. Richard Whitley, a Professor at MBS and co-author of a study investigating the impact French and British cultural contexts have upon elite formation processes surrounding the MBA, suggests that a post-graduate solution to the weaknesses of British management was never the intention of industrialists sympathetic to a formal approach to management development. He contends that, those businessmen who had been fired with enthusiasm for a British Harvard had never really envisaged it as a post-graduate, degree-awarding institution. Discussions in the press on the topic in the early 1960s spoke not of Harvard‟s two-year MBA course but of its thirteen-week 23[23] Advanced Management Programme. Thus a „high-level‟ business school was envisaged as one that would cater to „high-level‟ managers rather than one that would exact „high-level‟ academic standards. Given the specificities of the British context it is difficult to imagine how, once the principle was established, an educational approach to the development of British management could have evolved in any other way. The class assumptions of British management ensured that the quest for formal qualifications would be conducted within prestigious institutions. Although the independent colleges satisfied the status requirements of managers their syndicate teaching methods, which relied upon managers sharing their personal experience rather than an engagement with management theory, appeared to some advocates of management education too closely aligned to the traditional apprenticeship approach to development that had earned British managers a reputation as amateurs. These men (as they predominantly were) had developed a belief in the value of management theory, typically through associations with management consultancies, multi-national firms or direct experience of the American management system. For example, as part of his distinguished career Lieutenant Colonel Lynall F. Urwick, a pioneer of formal management education, was Director of the International Management Institute in Geneva, leader of the British Management Consultants‟ Association, the first chairman of the British Institute of Management and chairman of the Anglo-American Productivity 24[24] Team on Education for Management in 1951. Similarly, the American model heavily influenced membership of the FME; its two main spearheads, (Sir) Keith Joseph and John Bolton, respectively visited 25[25] the US as a guest of the Ford Foundation and graduated from Harvard. Seeking to establish
18[18]
18[18]
John F. Wilson, The Manchester Experiment A History of Manchester Business School, 1965-1990, Manchester Business School, Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd., London, 1992, p.108. 19[19] Ibid., pp.111-13. 20[20] Ibid., p.177. 21[21] Ibid., p.54. 22[22] Ibid., p.66. 23[23] Richard Whitley et. al., p.57. 24[24] Rosamund M Thomas, ‘Lyndall Fownes Urwick’, Dictionary of Business Biography, Volume 5, Butterworths, London, 1986, pp.599-603. 25[25] Philip F. Nind, pp.8-10.
management as a fully-fledged profession, these men believed a more „rigorous‟, „scientific‟ approach, subject to academic accreditation, was required. Once management educationalists had focused their attention upon the university sector it was probable that management education would have to mask the vocational characteristics of management that British universities steeped in a liberal arts tradition would not tolerate. Academic designations of excellence that revolved around the duration of study, engagement with theory, and the production of specific, written outputs, conflicted with the empirical tastes of British industrialists. Concessions to consumer pleas for more practical approaches had to be made within host institutions whose reputation and standing were reliant upon the maintenance of quite different values. Reluctance on the part of advocates of university-level management education to consider seriously the value of post-experience courses, or the empirical concerns of those who endorsed them, led to conflict between practical and academic approaches to management education. Innovation has been more easily accommodated within the short, unexamined post-experience courses of universities and business schools (such as the JDA programmes at MBS) than in their more formally academic post-graduate offerings. Management educationalists such as Philip Nind trumpeted the dissatisfaction with management education evident in the Owen Report as proof of the conservative forces at play in British industry, impeding progressive solutions to the nations problems. However rarely, if at all, has the support that existed for postexperience courses been recognised and acknowledged. Too often reference to the demand for postexperience courses has been little more than a footnote to a discussion of a generic scepticism in British 26[26] industry towards business education. The empirical preferences of British industrialists ensured their embrace of management education would be predicated on a requirement to satisfy demands for relevance to the day-to-day issues managers faced. The development of management education in Britain needs to be considered both in terms of the limited support many initiatives enjoyed but also the extent to which postgraduate management education failed to seriously consider the concerns of its critics.
26[26]
Nick Tiratsoo, ‘Management education in postwar Britain’, Lars Engwall and Vera Zamagni (eds.), Management education in historical perspective, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998.