Managerial Skills and Attitude of MBA and Non-MBA Employees

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to assess the perceptions of the hiring managers about the managerial skills and attitude of the MBA employees in comparison to the non-MBA employees. A sample of 100 hiring managers, who have been involved in the placement of MBAs, was taken for the purpose of the study. The hiring managers have been found agreeing that employees with MBA degree are better in 'communication skills', 'decision making', 'leadership qualities', 'handle job related tasks and responsibilities', 'learning' and 'adapting to changing situations' than non-MBA employees. The hiring managers have also been found agreeing that MBA employees 'demand higher pay', 'change jobs more frequently', 'are more authoritarian', 'have unrealistic expectations', 'are more loyal to their careers than to their jobs and organizations' than non-MBA employees. The discriminant analytical approach has been applied to examine the impact of the 'profile' and 'attributes' examined in the study which clearly differentiate hiring managers who agree with the good managerial skills of MBAs and negative attitude of MBAs from those who disagree with these. In case of 'profile' the managers with MBA qualification and regarding the various attributes of MBAs considered in the present study; 'MBAs are more adaptive to changing situations' and 'MBAs change jobs more frequently than non-MBA employees' have been found evoking significant differences among hiring managers. The findings of the present study can be useful for various stakeholders like, monitoring agencies and education policy makers, faculty and governing bodies of various management institutes for developing required management skills and attitudes among the students.

MBAs and career development: a literature review from the human capital perspective

“…Soft skills Sturges et al, 2003;Zhao et al, 2006;Kang and Sharma, 2012;Gupta and Bennett, 2014;Prince et al, 2015.…”

“…The results indicate that MBA graduates consider themselves more effective than their non-MBA peers in the areas of problem solving and team collaboration. Kang and Sharma (2012) conducted a study to assess recruiters' perceptions of the managerial skills of MBA graduates compared to employees who have not completed an MBA. This was a qualitative study, based on interviews with recruiters involved in hiring MBA professionals from several universities in India.…”

“…In short, studies that have analyzed the impact of the MBA on the soft skills of its graduates have found significant improvements in competencies related to human resources management, teamwork, communication, problem-solving, innovation, learning, adaptation to new situations and management of ambiguity (Gupta and Bennett, 2014;Kang and Sharma, 2012;Prince et al, 2015;Sturges et al, 2003;Zhao et al, 2006).…”

“…While the use of self-reported data is common in studies with alumni (Dreher and Cox, 2000;Dreher and Chargois, 1998), future research could investigate the perception of third parties about the skills developed by MBA graduates. This would reduce common method bias, as has done, for example, the work developed by Kang and Sharma (2012), which incorporated the perspective of recruiters into the analysis of the phenomenon.…”