Globalizing Management Education

Abstract

Many employers and academics in the West and in India have been critical of education in management. The programme has become outdated and the research is esoteric. They have become irrelevant. Recent traumatic experience of economic meltdown and globalization has heightened the criticism. Many of the highly rated business schools in USA and Europe have responded to the criticism and met the demands of the emerging environment by near total reorientation of their academic inputs, teaching schedules and methodology. This article reflects on the nature of requirements of global operations and the implications of these for management education. Globalization of management education has to be based on different conceptual base than the one underlying in most existing programmes in Indian and many other developing countries. The subject titles of many courses may be the same as before, but the inputs and learning methodology needs near total reorientation. Merely adding a course in a subject with international title, as done in many institutions, does not make education global. There has to be greater and deeper study of macro environment, creativity, individual and collective leadership capabilities and personal competence on the part of individuals who enter work organizations. Based on research in India, the article identified the essential inputs required to develop a learning climate among students.