In course of time

Back in the seventies ACCA was the most coveted degree in business education. It was obtainable from the UK as there was no such degree awarding authority in the country. The courses in business education at the university were weak draws in terms of student demand. Economics and Physics ruled supreme. Business education had to wait a long time to get the attention as now.

The credit for this transformation goes to Harvard University that came out with a deviant design for business education in the early twentieth century. The new design under the title MBA took a while to cross the Atlantic. London Business School was born in the mid-sixties. Notable schools in Europe were born about the same time. In human terms that would be Gen-X.

The launch of the MBA program coincided with the rise of Ford as the vehicle  'democratized' automobiles according to Henry Ford. The corporate world was going through quick changes due to successive industrial revolutions. Yet, it was a relatively calm period in the business world. This timidity of first half of the century got the first jolt with the arrival of Edward Deming and his team in Japan. They transformed the former rice-cooker maker Toyota with a re-designed Quality. Other Japanese companies such as Honda were close behind challenging the American hegemony in business at the time.

It took a while for these efforts to make visible impact on the environment of business. Seventies was a breakthrough period beginning with the liberation of computer  from the mainframe closet. The world saw the emergence of a breed of entrepreneurs powered by a new factor of production called Knowledge. Knowledge helped Microsoft rise and shine. 'Disruptive Innovation' was the name of the game as traditional businesses turned vulnerable to the newer methods of  business engagement. Kodak fell to digital imaging, as did many other. Disruption itself was not a new phenomenon. There had been disruptions in the earlier times such as the fire replaced by microwaves. But such disruptions were tame in comparison, having a slow pace of bringing conveniences to life where the older practices could comfortably perform alongside. And then, there were other forms of disruption such as  the Middle Eastern embargo on oil prices. The price of oil sky rocketed creating chaos in the daily life. As the shock was gradually absorbed the following decade saw another form of disruption in terms of economic engagement, called Deregulation. The cost of production dropped dramatically through adoption of  newer practices such as outsourcing and globalization. The increased business activity created a frenzy in the stock market. That was in the nineties. That was also a bad period  as the natural processes were tempered by human greed.  The stock market rose high and then crashed. Alan Greenspan called it the 'irrational exuberance' of investors.

The new millennium was a period of Internet that turned the globe 'flat' as per Alan Friedman. Location lost its advantages as a competitive tool. Competitors could show up from unlikely places. Ability to perform better was what mattered irrespective of where one was located. India rose alongside China. Some companies such as General Motors reached celestial heights. Leadership as a charisma was reborn. Jack Welch became a legend in his lifetime. At the same time there were 'rogue' leaders  who violated the norms of business under the garb of entrepreneurship. Consequently, the responsibility of business towards the society surfaced as a major concern. The role of Leadership was reemphasized forcing us to draw back on role models of earlier days such as Shackleton. As a result, 'Training and Development' turned into a core function of the Human Resources. A new genre of books was created focusing on moral, ethics and leadership that in turn, became essential reads in the Business Schools.

The consequent changes in business education were enormous. For example, the courses on Change, Strategy, Ethics and Corporate Governance became distinct areas of teaching in the MBA program and the like. There were some teething problems such as  Peter Drucker not being allowed by his publisher to use the title Strategy for a 1958 book, as it was considered an area of warfare than business. In this process some of the earlier courses had to be reworked such as Production Management changed into Operations Management and Personnel Management changed to Human Resources Management. It was not the courses alone; the student profile also changed from nervous youths to mature adults. Pedagogical changes had to be introduced to adapt the pedagogy to the  profiles of these entrants, such as the case methods and weekend programs. The teacher profile also changed from the sages of yesteryears who could be oblivious of their surroundings outside basic text books, such as my reverend Professor who would start the class saluting Benham's basic book on Economics. The changes initiated by the Business Schools soon touched other areas of education such as Theoretical Physics and Astronomy. Stephen Hawkins and Carl Sagan were the torch bearers of changes in the two areas.

Well into the new millennium there were wounds to soothe created by corporate excesses of the eighties onwards and a redirection was necessary - how to grow without harming the society at personal, community and environment level. That was the concern of new ages despite  so much wealth created. An added concern was the widening gap in wealth between and within nations. Increased wealth is poverty when the neighbour is in distress - this can be a footnote to Maslow's Laws on Hierarchy of Needs. The new economic order has to tie up much disorder as we move ahead in time. That is Sustainable Development Goal or SDG as it is now known.