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ENGINEERS BUILD THE WORLD, MBAS run it!” read a poster at one of the campus events I attended. Thought that was an interesting take on the perceived dominance of these two qualifi­cation streams. While we know it takes a lot more than the engineers and MBAs to build and run, one cannot deny the charm and promises these two streams have held for decades. From inspiring blockbusters to bestsellers, these streams have never failed to catch the imagination of many in real life and in fiction. While all things good and old get validated for relevance, guess it’s fine to put MBA under the lens for the rest of this piece.

The most credible answer to the origin of MBA sits within the history of the Industrial Revolution. It’s the Second Indus­trial Revolution of the late 1800s that recognised MBA as a formal academic stream and qualification. The golden age of inventions and advanced machinery put man and machine in an intricate interplay. Large-scale, multi-function enterprises with complex systems flagged the need for an orchestrating presence. At a time when skill specialisation was still the game, finding one who can work across and hold functions and divisions together was a unicorn hunt.

MBA programmes emerged in the US in the 1880s, when globalisation and new fast-paced businesses drew focus on the science of business management. While Business Stud­ies had been around since decades earlier, the popular belief was that management can’t be taught in a classroom. Harvard University led the way with the first formal MBA programme in 1908 to satiate the need for the cross-functional manager. The perception of management education changed eventu­ally as corporations grew and began to search for more effec­tive managers with skills across human resources, statistics, technology, and information systems.

Time has always been a luxury for fast-growing companies and the urgency to create managers and leaders is a byproduct. In-house development of talent with a natural absorption of functions and departments meant years of cost and effort. Shortening pathways for creating business managers meant onboarding talent with a functional familiarity. The urgency of enterprises to onboard such talent drove, and continues to drive, the demand for MBAs.

However, the charm of MBA led to overcrowding with an uncontrolled academic oversupply and a talent quality crisis. Academia and industry continue to tackle this difficult bal­ance of quality, quantity and time for generating MBA talent.

B-Schools, like every other part of the talent ecosystem, are in a constant chase to stay in vogue. The MBA curriculum regularly undergoes calibrations to keep up with the new and emerging talent needs of businesses. From offering niche specialisation streams to industry-aligned and tailor-made programmes to semesters at global economic centres. Fur­ther institutions are now providing niche MBA courses with learning flexibility to aide their students parallel professional growth. MBA schools are leaving no stone unturned in their pursuit of relevance.

INDIA’S HISTORY WITH its own business schools began in the late-1940s with the establishment of XLRI in 1949. The other institutes etched in Indian business educa­tion are Indian Institute of Social Welfare & Business Man­agement (IISWBM), Kolkata-1953, Faculty of Management Studies, New Delhi-1954, Indian Institute of Management (IIMC), Kolkata-1961, Indian Institute of Management (IIMA), Ahmedabad-1961. The country has since seen many B-Schools being established and become marquees with international repute. The current count of over 3,150 B-Schools in operation stand proof of the demand and popularity of business educa­tion in India.

The MBA talent output in India has seen some interesting swings over the last decade. The popularity of MBA was driven by heightened enterprise consumption in the early 2000s. As it peaked in the middle of the last decade, a tipping point was breached. The uncontrolled mushrooming of institutes and programmes across India had triggered oversupply and a quality crisis. Curricula got narrow and theoretical, with little to no exposure to application of learning on the field. With excess supply and lowering consumption, B-Schools came under pressure of low patronage.

The notable clean-up that happened in 2013-14 with del­isting and shutting down of institutes across states reset the counter of enrolment and output. The organic growth of MBA output that followed the clean-up has ushered in a new gen­eration of MBAs since 2016.

B-Schools have found a solution by offering specialised MBAs that have become widely available. The Indian insti­tutes now offer specialisations like MBA in Logistics and Supply Chain Management, MBA in Rural Development Management, MBA in Healthcare and Hospital Manage­ment, and several other niche domains. Most importantly, flexible options are available today for MBA students, thanks to changes in the curriculum and modes of instruction during the pandemic.

Further, the recent trend of layoffs and adjustment of the hiring needle of enterprises has put more talent into the market. As they seek upskilling, B-Schools can expect a rise in enrolment—amidst layoffs, young professionals from key sectors are seen weighing the option to go back to school and get a professional top-up with an MBA.

The total number of MBA graduates who are part of the active workforce is over 3.9 million in India. With 32 per cent of the workforce holding experience above 10 years, the Indian MBA talent pool holds a rich collective profes­sional experience.

Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Pune are the hotspots for MBA talent. The top five locations account for over 48 per cent of the professionals with an MBA in India. Being the hub of startups and offshore units of international financial services and consulting firms, these locations have consistently been the top recruiters of B-School graduates.

Top industries hiring MBA talent are Information Tech­nology Services, Banking, Computer Software, Account­ing, and Management and Consulting. The tech industry consumes the lion’s share of the MBA talent every year, as the IT Services sector has a huge demand for the MBA talent cohort with business acumen.

Post-MBA paths can be varied, going from product man­agers and operations experts to analytics professionals and brand managers. However, the business development func­tion has the biggest influx of the MBA talent pool. Irrespec­tive of the specialisation that an MBA graduate holds, the highest volume openings and lowest entry barrier are in the Business Development and Sales functions, respectively. The much sought-after Consulting function offers options for just a little over 2 per cent of the talent in engagement.

THE MBA JOURNEY that began in the Second In­dustrial Revolution is due for revamp and refresh after weathering a decade of Industry 4.0. With hyperconnectivi­ty, virtualisation and boundaryless workspaces, the demand on the business managers and leaders is getting complex by the day. Two years of the pandemic and remote work has derailed many known pathways of managers. The forced unlearning of old ways of management is now set to reverse with the return to work from office. No business education had visualised, leave alone preparing talent for such a global change in the context of careers and workplace. Accepting VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) as the new world of work would mean the difference between success and failure for business managers.

There is an undeniable need to rethink curricula to equip students with the important skills to keep up with the trans­formed industry demands. The talent needs of the future call for MBAs with specialised skills. MBA programmes need to transform with the changing business landscape to produce talent with higher relevance. The most employable MBAs would be the ones with future-proof skills to effectively lead the technology-driven global business world.

MBA is due for a makeover in the emerging context of Industry 4.0 and a metaverse future. The term “Business Administration” has aged well and could well be due for a facelift or a sharper definition. Is it time for a rephrasing and retitling that better suits the sophistication of the current world of work? The evolved future of work now demands specialists in Business Engineering, Business Integration and Business Expansion, built on the cornerstones of people, process and technology. Specialists and specialisations are the future fit for Industry 4.0 and the journey can begin with specialist identities for our MBAs.

Taking a bit of creative freedom here. Would MBA be game for bifurcation into specialist streams as MBE (Master of Business Engineering), MBI (Master of Business Integra­tion) and MBEx (Master of Business Expansion). Am sure the academics can do a better job than me on renaming for relevance. Until then we’ll let engineers build the world and MBAs run it!

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