Management Education

A recent discussion in the Wharton School of Business, on the financial crisis threw up some very interesting points. Two of these have a great bearing on Management Education.

a) That we seem to be fixated with free markets . Until it fails, we are content believing that markets control businesses better than the Government does. And it is probably important to revisit this. Regulation is one area that management schools focus little on. Probably it is time that we give it the coverage it deserves.

b) that it is increasingly clear that market models that we use do not accurately represent the actions of Individuals. In our need to simplify what is essentially complex and in our need to structure thought processes and have predictable results, we build models that work within very small limits. A lot of current thinking seems to be on understanding human psychology. Hope - Greed and Fear are probably the most important reasons for this crisis and all other crises. Human behavioral traits - greed, envy, herding, fear, loss aversion, fairness etc must be moved from the shadows of electives, final weeks of courses and final minutes of classes to the forefront of managerial education and research.

Living , thriving and leading with Uncertainty are probably the most important things that we need managers to have.