Why MBA?

The Master's in Business Administration is one of the most sought after degrees in the world. The degree originated in the great capitalist country, USA and has now spread its wings far across the entire world. The course brings knowledge, experience, value and above all a good take off point to a career.

The business world some 50 years back was not as complicated as it now. Most of the best managers "climbed up the ladder" and there were no "lateral entries" back then. In fact Managers itself was not a common term among many of the biggest corporations. One of the most professionally managed big business of that time, General Motors was built by managers like Alfred P. Sloan and so was General Electric but they were seldom called 'managers'.

In fact Management as a discipline was invented by Peter Drucker by the way of his seminal study of General Motors in the "Concept of the Corporation". This was the first book which explained what management was and how it was creating the biggest change in society by creating and managing large organisations. Drucker went on to provide the benchmark of Management and management or business books by the publication of "The Practice of Management". He then took a step forward a wrote about the Manager or as he later changed the much abused word to "Executive" in "The Effective Executive".

Through time the schools of Harvard, Columbia (where Buffet graduated from) and later Stanford etc began to define the study of management and the skills need for the manager.

The need to better create change in the society through organisations has become the major tools of the 21st century. The concept of management, which until the 1970s was restricted to large businesses, has started flowing downstream to small and medium enterprises. This was best explained by Drucker in his book Innovation and entrepreneurship. The definitive guide to entrepreneurship and its main tool - Innovation.

The concept of management went through another major change when it was started applying to as varied institutions as the hospital, the university, the community center, the church, the government. Every institution is now in the ambit of management which in effect would mean the entire society.

Due to the rapid growth of population, resources and requirements we have created varied institutions to effectively manage ourselves. The way to accomplish this is the organisation and the tool - Management.

From where I see, I do not see an MBA as an education to manage a business but a "set of codified knowledge" which will help me to create, run and manage varied institutions which will help to bring about change in the society.

Books mentioned or related to topics in the post :