Dec 7, 2005

A relook at MBA in HR?



Someone asked me if the traditional way of teaching Human Resource Management needed to be looked at. In the last 6.5 years that I recieved my MBA in HR, I've also thought about it quite often so this is what I wrote in my email to him:
My thoughts about HR education are as follows:

  • 90% of what we are taught is not necessary to be taught.
  • Knowledge is not what matters, but skills are....and therefore if MBA colleges and academia focus on building skills (based on filtering people for attitudes - that's another issue - what are the desired attitude levels of HR people?)
  • Skill building focusses a huge focus on practice...industry would need to work with academia to blend in more practice areas.
  • Competencies would need to be taught more on practice areas than functional areas, a model could be Dave Ulrich's model of HR Champions in which he views four kinds of HR roles.
  • Change Agent
  • Business Partner
  • Employee Champion
  • Administrative expert
  • Some competencies would evolve through industry specialisation...HR in a BPO industry is different from HR in a sales driven organization.
  • Of course, there would be core 'subjects' like Organizational Behavior, Labour Laws of the relevant country, Marketing, Finance, IT and Operations.
  • New practice areas like HR Outsourcing, Human Capital Accounting would also need to be offered as electives.
What do you think?
Posted by at 14:47
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5 comments:

  1. GG Here's my take on MBA.

    Why do we need MBA?

    Any professional course has a dual objective to be achieved, a blend of academic rigour with practical real life exposure to business and work environment.

    Now whether this model helps in developing skills is a matter or great debate, but few thoughts on success at work and MBA.

    Do a survey of all Top 50 Business leaders in Indian or Global market hardly 25% of them would have the MBA tag to begin with.

    Ask few successful entrepreneurs do they subscribe to any business journal or magazines. You’ll have shocking response.70% of them will say they are too preoccupied to read about others.

    Effective job performance depends on initiating competencies and differentiating competencies for superior performance can only be developed by job performance not by studying text book.

    I am a votary for academic rigour as I firmly believe that it helps you to analyze, co-ordinate and structure your activities better and gives you a holistic perspective but it can never beat the spirit of entrepreneurship.

    The debate is unending so I’ll finally quote the Man who is considered to be the Father of HR practices in India, he said it really amazes me that despite all the fancy degrees you have your top Boss may only be concerned about your contribution to the bottom line. So let’s keep things simple and don’t worry about MBA if you are good enough to contribute for your organization they’ll ensure that you end up having some fancy MBA tag.

    GG I guess Madhukar’s article on MBA also highlighted that the whole concept of this degree/certificate has undergone a change so it high time we have an objective assessment of things.
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  2. In general, I don't think MBA's are really that necessary, nor do I think that the degree in and of itself is that useful. There is much debate here in the U.S. about how valuable an MBA is depending on which school you got it from. Different schools will teach vastly different curricula - some theory based, others practical based, still others just data.

    I have long thought that even and undergraduate degree is an indication not of what a person knows, but what a person has gone through. The willingness and eventual ability just to get the degree says something about the individual. (unfortunately, it also sometimes says something about economic means). The same goes for an MBA. How many working adults are actually in the position to pay for the additional degree? How many people actually want to?

    To your point that different skills are needed depending on the specific application of HR or industry, maybe these skills are best taught with internal corporate learning programs. Unfortunately, then these skills are not easily transferrable without a formal educational institution to acknowledge the work. Perhaps this is why the degrees are necessary, not to prove that we know anything, but to allow employers to better understand the person they are interviewing.
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  3. I wrote about MBAs back in early Dec 2004 (http://resourcingstrategies.com/2004/12/02/on-mbas/) and much of that would apply here.

    There are some things that the MBA experience can provide:

    * Wider reading in business
    * Structured problem solving techniques
    * Good network.

    All of these can also be provided in other ways. All of these are useful in HR.

    Is the MBA useful? Not in itself as a title but some of the experiences provided might be.

    As recruiters we should of course select on the skills not the title & should not infer that the title means the skills are present.


    Andrew Marritt
    http://www.resourcingstrategies.com
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