Maths, Stats and Victorian Literature: What to Teach Business Undergraduates

Despite undergraduate education being the major part of the business of business schools (and I point to some evidence for this later), it is not treated as such. The MBA, executive education, and even Doctoral training all receive more analysis and attention, especially in the way of reflective pieces like this one. This imbalance is slowly being addressed as business schools act to protect their income from undergraduate education.

In this short paper I argue for two things. First, we have to think more seriously about how to educate undergraduates in business and management. We need to move away from using the MBA as a default expression of content. In particular, a foundation degree, a BA or a BSc should be a well-rounded programme that prepares students for a multitude of potential futures. Second, we have to embrace fundamental societal knowledge as part of our curricula, and in so doing realise that business education should not be functional. We need to broaden our approach so as to open up those potential futures for our students.

In the next section I briefly review previous and current criticisms of functional business education, and the impact that functional perspectives have had on undergraduate education. The arguments here are well worn; I am more concerned with what we do about our current situation than adding to the criticisms. I then suggest how we might address our common situation, and what this means for us as educators. Finally, I consider an idealised view of business education that is unlikely to be realised, but may help us edge our current undergraduate curricula towards something that is more useful to businesses, and far more useful to our students.

The MBA and it’s shadow

In the 1950s, the Ford and Carnegie foundations invested in uplifting the academic credibility of business academics in the United States, as outlined in Khurana (2010). This was accompanied by a formalisation of functional areas. Thus, for example, the growth of marketing as an academic discipline became aligned with marketing as a functional component in MBA programmes (rather than, say, advertising or sales). Similar developments happened for finance and eventually strategy (which until the 1980s was in many schools still taught as policy).

Criticisms of the functional MBA now abound. Pfeffer and Fong (2002) and Mintzberg (2004) cover the bases, arguing that a functional MBA does not match what most managers actually do. Most of what might be called ‘top’ MBAs have in fact moved away from a functional model by focusing on required outcomes rather than separate topics. For example, combining organisation theory, operations management, law and information technology into a set of activities called something like ‘managing the organisation’. Innovation and entrepreneurship is again delivered as an outcome focused activity, rather than a set of inputs drawn from marketing and strategy. And post the 2008 financial crash, most MBAs have scrambled to increase student exposure to ethical behaviour. Further, the amount of basic skills training (personal development, teamwork, leadership, etc.) has grown; although some MBA schools have emphasised this since inception.

In the 1950s undergraduate education in business was rare, even in the United States. Some schools such as Wharton had expanded quite early into undergraduate provision; others such as Harvard never have. Yet the past 20 years has seen an explosion in undergraduate provision. The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB 2012) estimate that only 15% of business school activity is now generic Masters’ degrees, of which perhaps half is MBA provision. The Association of Business Schools has shown that one in eight undergraduates and one in five postgraduates in the UK undertake some form of business education (ABS 2013). In the UK, business vies with English, Psychology and Law as the most popular undergraduate programme. While graduate-only MBA schools hold the limelight, undergraduate schools generate the money.

It is no surprise that undergraduate degrees across the globe have tended to copy the functional nature of the MBA. Where the MBA taught finance, marketing, human resource management, etc., many undergraduate programmes spread this out a bit thinner (finance I, finance II, marketing I, marketing II, etc.), front it with some core skills (statistics, psychology, etc.) and then back end it with some integrative work. The MBA has cast a dark shadow over the undergraduate programme. (An interesting consequence is that many graduates with a BA or BSc in business management do not see the MBA as adding any value to their education, and tend to select a specialist Masters’ programme should they do graduate work.)

Education as arts and science

Undergraduate education in Europe has a somewhat similar genesis to the MBA. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries universities provided a practical education that produced medics, administrators and clerics, largely to run their country’s empires. It is only later that a liberal tradition emerged in Europe; by the time the colonies that became the United States started higher education they fully emphasised arts, humanities and natural sciences as the core curricula, with students studying across the curricula in at least the first half of their degree. This curricula still persists in American liberal arts colleges, such as Smith, Vassar and Williams, and in the state universities that adopted this model, such as UCLA. In the UK, institutions such as mine were created on this model, but the selective curricula of UK schools (where humanities or sciences is emphasised post-16) has forced universities to adopt a similarly separatist model.

Bachelors’ degrees in business fit poorly into the liberal arts model, since a business degree is itself an integration cross the humanities and science in that maths, statistics and finance sit aside organisational behaviour and ethics. However, the degree is bound by its context (the need to return students to the goal of running a business) and it is thus no surprise that many liberal arts colleges do not fully engage in business education.

Edging us towards a liberal conscience

Stepping into the analysis gap associated with undergraduate business education has come Colby et al. (2011), based on research funded by a number of foundations including Carnegie, Kauffman and Skoll. It has been well received by the liberal arts community and has attracted attention in the business school community. While it is always hugely reductionist to reduce a book to a few sentences, my read of it is as follows.

First, a lot of current undergraduate business education is functional and boring. The book demonstrates this, I think, by being positive in its attempts to provide examples where business education is exciting, integrative and broad. (Some of these will be familiar to business school professionals, especially entrepreneurship teaching at Babson.) The rest is damned by faint praise. Second, these attempts to provide education that is broad, outcome based and skills oriented can be viewed as efforts to return to some element of the liberal arts. Argumentation, rhetoric and analysis are all key components of the humanities and sciences; we try to get there with team work and PowerPoint, but it is not the same (in my opinion).

Third, and more importantly, the book really questions what a business education should provide to students. It concludes that to answer this we must know ‘what should a college education provide?’ The answer? Civic leaders, not just business leaders. Graduates that contribute to society, not just their serial employers. Students should engage in a ‘liberal learning’ that allows them to approach their opportunities as purposeful members of society, not just future accountants, marketers or entrepreneurs.

While I personally find the arguments in the book compelling, the book’s prescription is rather weak, suggesting mutual benefits for combining business and liberal arts education. I think there is actually an argument for replacing some functional education with liberal arts. Here’s my reasoning.

When I studied management science (my undergraduate and PhD areas of study), I was taught a lot about how to run a factory. I did not set foot in one until well after I had graduated, but nevertheless, my curriculum covered inventory control, batch sizes, scheduling, etc. Now that much manufacturing is done elsewhere in the world (unless you’re a student in China or Germany) we teach students about supply chains.

But what do you actually need to know to engage with a global supply chain? In no particular order, some geography so you can understand global logistics, some politics to understand other countries, some international law so that you know about how to move goods and services, and a lot about local cultures. Plus negotiation and communication skills, and if possible, some language skills. These are things that get taught in a liberal arts education, not in operations management I or management science I.

My view here is diametrically opposed to what might be called the alignment model, as articulated by David et al. (2011) and others. That is, student outcomes are aligned with the immediate demands of first jobs in business. However, I personally think that business has a better sense of what it requires than it needs. Business requires staff to join a sales force, for example, but they need staff who understand the world and its cultures to be able to sell. We must focus on what is needed, not simple requirements.

What to teach?

So what should we teach undergraduates? If we want to move away from functional content, provide a liberal education and boost the skills that employers want, here is my starting position:

1. Human geography, politics and sociology delivered in an integrative way. Students should be able to understand the world we live in, the others that live in it, and how it changes. (I might also argue for history to have a role in this.)

2. Organisations, institutions and law. Students should be able to understand the world they work in, and how that world is structured.

3. Psychology and consumer culture. Students should be able to understand how people work, and what this means for cultures beyond simplistic views of supply and demand.

4. Maths, statistics and Victorian literature. Students must have the basics in maths, and be able to read and analyse texts. (George Elliot and Charles Dickens tell us more about commerce and human nature than the aggregate of current airport shop business texts.)

5. Economics, finance and accounting. The fundamentals of markets, agents, money and counting money. Understanding Economics to a point where it is actually useful turns out to be not very easy; but it is very worthwhile.

6. Ethical leadership, innovation and social entrepreneurship. Students must be able to contribute to society. The ability to form and implement solutions to social problems develops leadership and social skills.

7. Language skills, particularly the basics of some combination of Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic and Urdu in English-speaking programmes (and English in non-English speaking programmes). A language is a way into a culture.

I think such a programme would allow students to explore the world, different cultures, markets and businesses in an integrative way. It is liberal but business focused; it would aim to produce purposeful leaders.

Conclusion

This is the point where I would love to say that we are doing this at Royal Holloway. The fact is: we are not. The reasons are numerous, but the most important one is this: we provide what the market wants. Students opt to come into business programmes because they have done their ‘business studies’ course at school and they enjoyed it and did well. They want more of it. They did not much like their exposure to geography, politics, etc., and want less of it. Similarly, employers have an eye on the first job, in some cases pushing the alignment model mentioned earlier. Our horizon only extends to students’ first employment.

So like a business we respond to the market – we launch a BA programme, foundation degrees and anything else we can think of in the shadow of the functional MBA. Our employers wish to fill entry level positions. Our students, the businesses they work in, and society, miss an opportunity to proposer from liberal purposeful education.

And so we move on, making curriculum changes, but slowly. I would bet that if any director of an undergraduate programme took the list above (point one through to point seven) they would say that, for most of these suggestions, their programme has moved along an axis towards the suggested integrated topics rather than away from it. Points two, five and six would certainly be recognised as directions of travel. Unfortunately I doubt that any would claim to have introduced their students to Victorian literature.