It seems b-schools are waking up to the realities of the world around them.
"Critical thinking" is crucial to business education?!
Business success depends on "problem framing", not problem solving?!
Real-world problems rarely have an "either/or" solution?!
Oh my! You don't say! And by the way, if anybody figures where in this article "multicultural theory" is actually discussed, drop me a note, please.
It took 10 yrs into the 21st century for b-schools to figure that out.
When I was starting my undergrad in the humanities , just a few sessions (and that's at a mediocre university in a socialist state nonetheless) were sufficient to convey the message that clear-cut, either/or, disciplinary-oriented approaches to real world problems are simplistic at best, and dangerous at worst. And I'm not referring to heavy-duty special topics courses; Intro to Poetry 101, Intro to Linguistics 101, or any old Intro to Literature 101, taught responsibly, can get students questioning the either/or dichotomies in their mental models of the world.
Actually, any humanities course in high school could have done that just as well but still.
My guess is that most b-majors have been exposed to at least 1 liberal arts course. Why then is it so hard for b-schools ,b-majors, and MBAs to think beyond the simplistic approaches taught in the b-school courses?
The proposed changes discussed in this article revolve around integrating liberal arts thinking/ideas into the b-curriculum. A good thought, except that I've been hearing this ever since my first MBA class at Michigan in 2002. 8 yrs later and we're still at the same place. Does nothing ever change?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10mba.html?em
