Does MBA education benefit women more than men? A longitudinal study

Purpose The purpose of this study is to see if women value power less than men do and if MBA education reduces this gender difference in power value. Design/methodology/approach The impact of a two-year residential full-time MBA program on students’ values was studied using a longitudinal design and data collected over two years from a business school in India. Values were measured when students entered the program and again when they graduated. The sample consisted of 230 students (90 women and 140 men). Findings While entering the MBA program, female students considered power less important than male students did. Results of matched sample t-tests show that power, hedonism, stimulation and tradition become more important and benevolence, universalism, conformity and security become less important over two years of MBA education. The increase in the importance of power value is significantly higher for women than for men. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to show that women’s value ratings for power value increase much more than that of men over two years of management education.

Employability and skill gap among MBA graduates in India: a literature review

Purpose The purpose of this study is to review scholarly research on employability and skill gap in the context of the Master of Business Administration (MBA) education in India. This paper provides an overview of the critical themes and identifies research gaps for future investigations. Design/methodology/approach Published empirical studies were reviewed and thematically analysed using NVivo 11 Pro. Findings In addition to technical aptitudes and skills, organisations also seek other attributes that are associated with employability, such as communication, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, problem-solving skills and interpersonal skills. Communication is an important skill frequently cited in the literature. Additionally, themes related to reasons for skill gaps are identified. Practical implications Soft skills and non-technical aptitudes should be emphasised in MBA education. Furthermore, significant reforms in MBA education programmes should be implemented in India to make graduates industry-ready. Originality/value Several studies have been carried out to verify the existence of and reasons for skill gaps amongst MBA graduates in India. Through integrative literature review, the issue of skill gap is discussed. Future research directions are also recommended in this paper.

MBA education: new insights on enablers of managerial performance

PurposeSeveral authors have proposed various factors/enablers that enhance managerial performance of MBA students. However, there is little research on how to prioritise these enablers or how each enabler in the system of enablers influences each other. This paper aims to address this gap.Design/methodology/approachThis paper integrates the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and Multiplication Appliquée á un Classement (MICMAC) techniques to arrive at the conclusions.FindingsThe “help achieve” power of each enabler, determined by ISM, is limited or accentuated by its “driving power and its dependence” determined by MICMAC. Out of the 14 enablers used in the study, this paper identifies five enablers that can enhance the performance of MBA students.Research limitations/implicationsWhen ISM and MICMAC are integrated, one can arrive at a better way to prioritise enablers in a system of enablers.Practical implicationsThe implication of the study findings is that all stakeholders can now systematically prioritise the enablers that can lead to performance and also save resources during the process. A related implication is that this method can be used in a wide variety of situations.Originality/valueThis paper highlights how an integrated use of ISM-MICMAC can improve decision-making and resource optimisation.

Learning Not to Diversify: The Transformation of Graduate Business Education and the Decline of Diversifying Acquisitions

Once a preferred strategy, corporate diversification into disparate lines of business has gradually declined in the U.S. over the past several decades. We argue that changes that occurred in a closely related domain—graduate business education—are important in understanding variation in de-diversification across firms. Building on a historical account of the transformation of business education, we explain how the rise of financial economics and agency-theoretic logic in business education changed students’ views about diversification. Nearly 20 years later, these MBA graduates rose to top decision-making positions and put the brakes on diversification. Using data on CEOs who ran 640 large U.S. corporations from 1985 to 2015, we show that CEOs who earned an MBA before the 1970s actively pursued diversification, whereas the next cohort of CEOs, who had been exposed to agency-theoretic logic in financial economics, refrained from it. We also demonstrate that the degree of managerial discretion moderated the effect of the CEO’s MBA education. Our study shows that institutional change in one domain (i.e., business education) contributed to change in another domain (i.e., corporate diversification), albeit with a considerable time lag.

Management Background, Intellectual Capital and Financial Performance of Indonesian Bank

This research aims to determine the effect of management background which proxy by accounting education background, MBA education background, Chinese ethnicity and intellectual capital (VAIC) on conventional banks’ financial performance (ROA) in Indonesia. The Population consists of all conventional banks listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange period of 2012 to 2015. Using purposive sampling method to screen the data, the final sample for this research is 140 data that consists of 39 banking companies. This research used Eviews7 software to conduct panel data regression analysis. The results showed that accounting education background and Chinese ethnicity are not significantly affect financial performance. Meanwhile MBA education background and VAIC are significantly affecting financial performance (ROA).Keywords: management background, VAIC, ROA, banking.