Lift for Leadership at Michigan Ross and Other MBA News Snippets

US$20M donation to Michigan Ross

The former CEO of Fortune 500 food firm, General Mills, has pledged US$20 million to help fund an expansion of Michigan Ross’s leadership development programs, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press.

Stephen Sanger, an MBA alumnus of Michigan Ross, is said to be enthusiastic about recent developments taking place through the school’s Leadership Initiative, believing that his MBA left him with a unique combination of leadership skills and humility. 

It is expected that Michigan Ross will announce the creation of a Sanger Leadership Center in view of the donation.

Meanwhile, 100 current part-time and full-time MBA students at the school will begin a 24-hour leadership challenge that focuses on dealing with a simulated crisis today, January 15.

The action-based challenge is an example of Michigan Ross’s current leadership development offerings through its Leadership Initiative. Last year’s crisis saw teams of MBA students deal with a doomed ecotourism development and the ensuing media attention caused by terminating one of its employees.

Auto-show industry seeks talents of MBA graduates

You might not expect to find MBA graduates draped over the bonnet of the latest high-end sports car, but it seems the auto-show industry has come a long way since its initial fixation with placing pretty faces next to their new products.

Hedy Popson, president at events-based recruitment company, Productions Plus, talked through some of the changes seen in the auto-show market in a video for the Wall Street Journal.

Popson explains that, today, firms want representatives on site who are credible product specialists. They also want people who have sales, marketing, and even psychology, backgrounds – people who can extract valuable feedback from the consumers they encounter and pass this along to the company’s strategists. And that’s where the auto-show’s interest in MBA graduates comes in:

“We have several MBA graduates on the auto-show floor,” Popson confirmed.

Archbishop of Canterbury sending bishops to INSEAD

In April, 36 Church of England bishops will be enrolling in an INSEAD course, dubbed a “mini MBA”, as part of the archbishop of Canterbury’s belief that senior clergy will benefit from its leadership and management training.

The INSEAD news follows the publication of a report last month which recommended MBA-style training as a means of generating a new culture of management within the Church of England. 

Reaction to the report, entitled ‘Talent Management for Future Leaders and Leadership Development for Bishops and Deans: A New Approach’, has already included its fair share of criticism:

“The report expects to see all senior leaders equipped with a standard toolkit of MBA-type organizational skills. But it does not say how this might connect with the primary calling of bishops,” Martyn Percy wrote in the Church Times.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who worked as an executive in the oil industry before studying theology and becoming ordained, has defended the report’s approach as a necessary change for the Church of England. Before news broke that INSEAD would host this first training course, it had been thought its location would be Cambridge Judge.

Too many MBAs graduating from business schools in India?

The difficulty MBA graduates of second-tier business schools in India have had in finding jobs has come back into the spotlight after one business school professor said that only 10% of the country’s MBA graduates were employable.

At a business school conference, J Philip - a former director of IIM Bangalore and now president at Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship – expressed his belief that the supply of MBA graduates far outweighed the demand and questioned their quality:

“Today, the requirement of managerial candidates in the Indian market is between 35,000 and 40,000 every year. There are two reasons for unemployment: Lack of global skills and excess supply,” he said.

If the 35,000 figure is accurate, this represents only 10% of the 350,000 MBA graduates produced by over 3,000 institutions across India in 2014, according to statistics from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Years of unchecked expansion to management institutes and business schools in India that vary widely in the quality of their education is thought to be the underlying problem. AICTE figures suggest that their number grew by 29% to reach a total of 3,364 between the academic years of 2006-7 and 2013-14.  However, in the past two years there have also been closures numbering just under 200.

Government plans to add more business schools in India to rival the quality found at its leading, and highly selective, IIMs were announced last year.