CEOs and graduate business education

Abstract

Critics questioned whether master of business administration (MBA) education can have long-term impact on one’s career. Focusing on top management positions, the author attempts to assess whether chief executive officers (CEOs) with an MBA perform better by looking at the performance of the firms that the CEOs lead. The empirical results revealed that CEOs with MBA do not perform better, whereas CEOs with another advanced degree outperformed other CEOs. Although the empirical analyses support the critics’ claims, the author does not take a strong view that MBA is not valuable. On the other hand, the author feels that perhaps the contribution of the degree is not well captured in numbers or perhaps adjustments are needed for the curricula.

KEYWORDS:

• Business Education
• CEO
• firm performance
• MBA

JEL Codes:

• I20
• M10
• M21

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Center for Research, Faculty of Economics at Chulalongkorn University.