Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog

There is widespread usage of the term “MBA” as shorthand for the validation, if not exactly the legitimacy, of the title ‘manager’, so this a logical question to ask. When one then considers that worldwide only a small percentage of those who work as managers will ever enrol on one, then not just the phenomenon but also the idea and nature of the MBA becomes very important to understand (or becomes a huge red herring).

There are whole communities of academics who are ready to invest entire careers in supplying “content” for use on MBA curricula. But then browse any good bookstore and it’s obvious that this is matched by equal numbers of pundits ready to extrapolate, summarise or regurgitate all that peer-reviewed content into snappily-dressed bite-sized nuggets of know-how, or alternatively undermine and debunk all that bunkum and over-priced smoke and mirrors in the MBA. It is likely that the fact of the university business school permits a shadow punditry offering alternative recipes and remedies directed at those who might otherwise be foolish enough to want to part with their hard-earned cash for cachet.

But this led me to wonder, can one really capture the experience of the MBA, or even substitute it, in print? Hence the title of the post. Actually, I think this is an intriguing question. Of what does the MBA consist? Does it make any sense to claim that you can replicate what an MBA does or is without attending a Business School? I would propose starting with management at its most basic.

In 1968 the theatre director Peter Brook wrote a classic short book about acting. It was called “The Empty Space”. Here is an extract:

“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. Yet when we talk about theatre this is not quite what we mean. Red curtains, spotlights, blank verse, laughter, darkness, these are all confusedly superimposed in a messy image covered by one all-purpose word.” (Brook, 1990, p. 11)

Brook’s intention was to strip the concept of ‘theatre’ to its essential, minimum components of:

i) empty space, ii) actor and iii) audience.

According to Brook, nothing should be added to these unless it improves it. This last points seems fairly crucial, since the temptation to keep adding ornament to management is what drives the peer-reviewed journal and airport business book alike.

My question:

“Stripped to its basics, what are the absolute minimum requirements necessary for management?”

Using Brook’s logic, I wonder whether it is these three elements:

1. The “empty space” for the business (i.e. a space that must be both conceivable and socially/morally acceptable)

2. The act of deliberate management of that space (i.e. creation of organisation, and by implication an organisation)

3. The experience of that (managed) space by a consumer of the business

(As an aside, simultaneously, the school logically occupies an “empty space” too, and the three levels which form the focus of study are also embodied in the fact of the school.)

What makes an MBA an MBA is the possibility to stand back from those three levels and examine them rigorously. It would be great if this could be achieved in print as well.

(As another aside, crucially if there were no mechanism by which these three levels could be differentiated, then the MBA would be completely redundant, as would all speculation about management or leadership. Such a mechanism is what conveys the meta-message “this is the business”, or “this is the management of the business”).

This may be a rather too complicated way to answer the question, of course.