晨讀英語(yǔ)美文60篇29 MBA
[00:00.00]MBA
[00:04.04]The Masters of Business Administration (MBA),
[00:11.67]the best-known business school label,
[00:13.97]is an introduction to general management.
[00:16.92]The traditional MBA, Harvard style,
[00:19.98]has remained largely unaltered since the 1950s,
[00:23.92]and seeks to provide at thorough knowledge of business functions through the casestudy—
[00:30.04]a feature incidentally borrowed from law school.
[00:33.22]In a similar fashion to law school,
[00:36.17]the graduate management programs train students to think in a particular way,
[00:41.42]ultimately teaching future business leaders how to analyze problems quickly
[00:46.77]and come up with concise solutions.
[00:49.17]However, business comprises more than merely manipulating numbers
[00:54.55]or sourcing rational answers to problems.
[00:57.29]Today, both companies and schools are increasingly aware that business is a human activity;
[01:03.85]it is ultimately by and about people.
[01:07.24]John Quelch is a business school insider
[01:10.72]who detects the limitations of the traditional syllabus.
[01:14.44]According to Quelch,
[01:16.41]leadership is an area that schools have not fully addressed.
[01:20.34]“The basic technical training managers need is more widespread.
[01:25.27]But leadership skills are in short supply.
[01:28.00]This could become a major constraint on the speed with which multinational companies can expand,”he says.
[01:35.58]Leadership is notoriously hard to teach,
[01:38.86]but programs do have the capacity to provide a grounding in non-business areas and personal growth.
[01:46.51]“You want to produce graduates who will be effective.
[01:50.45]To do this, they need to know their own skills.
[01:53.51]Our job is not only to cram finance down their throats,
[01:57.89]but help develop them as people,”
[02:00.30]explains Leo Murray,
[02:02.81]director of Cranfield School of Management in the U.K.
[02:06.52]Cranfield uses philosophy in its core,
[02:10.02]which since 1997 has offered an evening lecture series on both Aristotelian and present day thinking.
[02:18.12]Self-awareness is crucial at the school,
[02:20.85]which will grant the theme even more space.
[02:23.91]“These issues help people think,” states Murray.
[02:27.30]The better you understand yourself, goes the logic,
[02:30.58]the better you can manage others.
[02:33.09]The Said Business School (SBS) at Oxford University champions a more integrated approach.
[02:39.99]John Kay, SBS director, is keen to leverage the intellectual might of the wider university.
[02:47.42]Access to faculty from other disciplines including philosophy, politics and economics,
[02:53.88]he believes, could give SBS an edge over other school.
[02:58.47]These are surely steps in the right direction.
[03:02.09]But there is more.
[03:03.50]In future, developing a gut instinct for business may be as important as understanding the figures.
[03:10.06]To create an MBA to meet the challenges of the 21st century business schools will have to try harder.
