How B-schools could offer Mass Education Customization and teach evidence-based management at the same time.

Terri Griffith, who teaches Executive MBA students at Santa Clara University, wrote an excellent post Is Management without Evidence like Building on Sand? Does a Culture and Tool Kit of Evidence Provide us with a Better Foundation? I got a bit carried away writing comments and thinking about how MBA programs could use mass customization to do a better job of preparing students to be evidence-based managers. At the risk of over-generalizing, my informal research shows that many MBA students graduate with a general understanding of how businesses work, but without deep knowledge of how to gather and evaluate evidence in any particular area ...which I guess is fair, since the 'B' and the 'A'  stand for Business Administration.

But I don't think a general curriculum is in the best interest of students. I'd much rather hire graduates who had applied themselves at something in-depth (rather than skimmed over a lot of topics)... that way, I could expect more analytical & data maturity (which are highly relevant to evidence-based management). Here's an excerpt from my comments to Griffith's post: "[I]n my opinion, MBA programs aren't providing enough hands-on experience and toolkits to students, so they can better know how to develop and evaluate evidence (and I still see some professors act -- perhaps unintentionally -- as if scholarly journals contain the only real "evidence"... but I'll save that rant for another day).... Since we don't want to simply hit students with a firehose /smattering of topics, I'd like to see more MBA schools let students select a specific implementation and evaluation area (e.g., tactical marketing and outcomes measurement), and really dig into that, rather than learn a little of everything. (Gasp! This might mean messing around with the curriculum. As a practical matter, a school might develop, say, 4 or 5 subject matter areas or tracks that students could pursue after completing a base of fundamental courses on HR management, finance, etc.)

"I know lots of folks who say they went through their MBA programs picking up just enough to be a mile wide and 1/2" deep. This is at odds with trends in the workplace, where -- whether we like it or not -- specialization is the thing. Allowing each student to focus on what interests him or her, and play to their strengths, would (again, IMO) make the degree program more attractive and marketable -- think of it as an opportunity [for] a B-school to offer mass education customization. It also would help your school contribute more evidence-based managers to the business world."

But wait, there's more. In response, Griffith reminded me that many MBA programs offer areas of concentration. I knew that, but didn't do a good job of saying what I meant. What I meant was that perhaps students should be able to truly customize their research, whether they're in a lock-step cohort or a standard MBA program. This mass customization approach would be highly individualized -- sort of like "sub-concentrations". Here's a rough sketch of what I have in mind with mass MBA customization (and thoughts on how not to create an administrative nightmare):

• Each new student would submit a proposal to focus on a narrowly defined area of study throughout their degree program. For example, if they were enrolled in a Technology and Innovation concentration, they might choose technology talent development or enterprise software marketing.
• Then the student would pursue some aspect of that common thread during each course -- such as when they wrote papers or completed final projects.
• Each deliverable would continue work the student had done previously, improving cumulative learning, research skill, and data maturity. The students would gain more in-depth understanding of the various evidence-based management and evaluation tools they're exposed to during their coursework.

How to avoid a faculty revolt. It's unlikely there would be a faculty member with deep expertise in each topic the students proposed, and you couldn't make the advisor responsible for getting up to speed. But this was the situation when I did both my Master's and PhD -- and it worked out because the burden of defining my specialty was on me (my research interests were quite distinct from those of my advisors, which was never a problem as long as I could align what I was doing with the body of knowledge in my research discipline). Another way to resolve this, at least for Executive MBAs, is to encourage (or require) each student to engage an outside advisor to review proposed topics and evaluate the final research --  these individuals could really benefit the school by introducing students and faculty to hands-on evaluation techniques for inclusion in the school's methodology toolkit.

What am I missing? Are there MBA programs -or other business programs- already doing this? If so, set me straight: tracy[AT]evidencesoup[DOT]com or leave a comment below.

BTW, here's a link to a pdf by Robert Freund about some of the cost-efficiency challenges of mass customization in education.

Comments

[2000_XMBA]

Tracy - Really like your idea of offering more customized MBA programs. I graduated with an Executive MBA (cohort) in 2000, and found some parts of the program interesting and insightful. Overall the material was too general and, frankly, too light. Instead of rushing through one (sometimes meaningless) class project after another, I would have preferred to do things relevant to my career. For example, I could have focused my HR-related papers and projects on sales team management since that's what I do. I wish some customization had been available or encouraged.