Beyond the Impact of Business School Research for MBA Students
Integration of academic studies and real world experience for a successful MBA learning experience
Factors to decide which business school to enroll in their MBA courses vary and the academic excellence of the business school is arguably becoming more considerate. Fame and reputation of the school is an essential factor that is also the result of the school’s academic performance. The rising importance of academic studies and research has changed over the years. In the past, research from business schools was limited to publications in credited journals. However, professors are now expected to exhibit over the mere article but an impact on the real-world business.
Don Moore, associate dean for academic affairs at the Berkeley’s Haas School of Business says “School’s reputation and influence affect the power of graduate’s MBA degree in the market. Thus the reputation is the result from the school’s academic and scholarly performance.” He claims that the students are able to forecast what school offers and teaches in their MBA curriculum through the scholarly research from the faculty. This could range from finance, marketing, decision making, leadership, or other disciplines from their research.
Moore continues “It is important to acknowledge what is required to succeed. Being ahead of others in a competitive industry is essential to accomplish your career ambition. Therefore, it is beneficial for everyone to identify what is required to succeed. And being at the right institution with highly focused scholarly will help and guide you to identify.”
Reformation for recognition and roles of business research
It is now easier to observe and witness the work of scholars which is an indication of the higher standard required than in the past with research in business. With high tolerance towards the public and away from previous opaqueness, it is becoming more feasible in terms of reliability and replicable with published results. These include data, materials, and analysis code within the research to be publicly posted for anyone to see.
Attention to the benefits that will occur from the research for the real world like governments, businesses, and individuals is becoming more prominent. Simple academic purpose research is losing its influence over the field of business school research. It now requires both an academic footprint and its real impact on our society.
This enhances the integration across the disciplines. The ideal models with rationality-based studies develop into more realistic theories that are accurate when compared to the real-world business in consideration of human behavior. One of the growing examples is behavioral economics by emerging economic principles with human behavioral decisions for the actions that occurred in real-world society.
Vincent Mak, vice-dean for programs and research at Cambridge Judge Business School claims that this trend has occurred with the presence of new technology and tools that allows us to actually able to take measures in the age of digital. He continues “It advocates the reinforced ESG (environmental, social and governance) guidelines. It will assist organizations and individuals to understand and respond more efficiently for the demand from the society rather than simply produce better managers.”
He adds that it is important to observe and seek academic research because it will help identify MBA students to seek what areas are being taken into account and where the focus is at among the areas like cooperates, non-profit organizations, government and etc. It is important to acknowledge these factors as a motive for a student’s future career. This is currently practiced in Cambridge Judge Business School where students analyze past events and determine success and failures with various topics for successful career ambitions.
Andrew Hoffman, professor of sustainable enterprise at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business understands the difficulty of identifying the impact in practice. “We quantify influence in the research community through credited articles, citation counts, and the H-index,”. However, he claims the importance to include sources from the everyday world like TV, prints, radio, government sources, books, social media, and professional articles.
Hoffman believes that for a successful MBA learning experience, students must understand the importance of academic scholar. “Good business schools mean good professors. And this means you are learning from the depth of their study, work, and experience. Therefore, your syllabus is the work from a professor’s academic articles and work.”
To decide on the best MBA School, Hoffman suggests having a close insight into the academic research from their school. If the up-to-date research is being delivered to the classrooms, you know you are receiving the leading knowledge in the field and that is what you want to become most competent in when you graduate.
“Prospective students must be aware of how the faculty is doing with its academic output. It will significantly determine the level of information that you will be able to obtain in the business school,” says George Andrews, associate dean of degree programs at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “For example, forming a fundamental background of the certain topic through the published research by their professors could benefit their career path such as financial modeling.”
Academic research in the MBA curriculum
Markus Perkmann, academic director of the Imperial College Business School MBA program, emphasized the importance of students being exposed to top-level scholar research. Regardless of the topic that the research is specialized in, it will reinforce students’ ability to critical thinking and skills to analyze information and evidence in the way that is portrayed in the business school research. This can be shown in the form of various contexts such as tackling systematic challenges in our society. Perkmann believes that the business school shows competency not only in the business fields but also in teaching and communicating with students.
