MBA Attitudes Toward Business: What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us or Help Us

Abstract

MBA students are often treated as a blank sheet of paper on which the MBA program and its faculty etch and imprint the knowledge and philosophy of business success. Implicit in this thinking is that students are willing neophytes in this ritualistic process without a perceptual screen shaping and molding the content being espoused by legions of business philosophers-both academic and professional. The author sheds light on the attitudinal states of the MBA students who occupy those many seats, engage in class discussions, analyze cases, and finally are knighted as Masters of the Universe. Quite surprisingly, MBA students have diverse attitudes toward the business community. In a sample of 866 MBA students representing 27 MBA programs around the United States, the research suggests that these students do not embrace all aspects of business practices. Students are biased, skeptical and, on certain issues, downright critical of the community they are about to join.As business academics and practitioners, researchers should be concerned with inputs (student achievement levels and attitudes), processes (program content and delivery), and outputs (quality of student knowledge and skills) of professional, educational programs. If MBA programs were similar to manufacturing or service industries, each of these elements would be given equal emphasis in providing a quality product or service offering. Unfortunately, as the results of this research study suggest, much of the emphasis in MBA programs focuses on the latter two-process and outputs. The vast majority of the research in the academic literature focuses on the process and content of the program. The business press and institutional organizations examine outputs such as final GPA, placement, rankings, perceived quality of the program, recruiters' evaluation of program graduates, and starting salaries among other measures of outcomes. This is not to say that input factors have been totally overlooked, but most input measures place an emphasis on predictors of program performance-undergraduate GPA, amount of work experience, ethnicity, public or private education, undergraduate major, and GMAT scores.A key ingredient of any process-oriented organization (MBA programs included) needs to know about the qualities of the inputs into the process. Likewise, a customer-driven organization should, and would, know a great deal about its customer base, how and what they think, and the basis for their decisions. Without such knowledge, the manager (or program director) is simply putting together ingredients that may, or may not, lead to a quality, customer-satisfying product or service. Thus, insight into the attitudes and beliefs of the inputs (students) in the process provides a valuable and worthwhile first step in developing programmatic content that shapes the output in alignment with customer attitudes, or conversely, change attitudes that are out of alignment and a barrier to learning.The research presented is an exploratory study. From my four decades of experience as a ...

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