Giving Credits Where Credit's not Due?

Abstract:     
For those who are overly enamored of the MBA credential, this book is an overly lengthy but important wakeup call. Mintzberg is right that it is wrong to put a newly minted MBA, without prior management experience, directly into a significant management position. But this is not nearly as common a happenstance nor as large a threat to humanity as Mintzberg's drawn-out attack on it implies. Moreover, the IMPM, and his admittedly biased portrayal of it, serves as a great case study of an alternative means of providing management training to well-experienced managers, but it is neither an effective replacement for the analytical training in the conventional MBA, nor is it salvation for our "society of meanness" (p. 153), wherein we have "antisocial behavior below the surface of public awareness yet above the letter of the law" (p. 152). It is just an exciting but yet unproven way to develop experienced managers from those firms that can afford it, to be provided by those schools that can support it. Let's not read too much more into it just yet.

Keywords: book review essay, MBA, education

JEL Classifications: A20

Accepted Paper Series