Action Learning for International Business Students: The Role of Global Consulting Projects in the MBA Curriculum

The number of MBA programmes worldwide has expanded rapidly in the past 50 years. Once the preserve of elite universities in the developed world, graduate schools of business offering the MBA qualification are now found throughout the world and are increasingly competing on a global basis for MBA candidates. However, there has recently been criticism, widely reported in the media, of the role of business schools in training managers. Some commentators (e.g. Pfeffer & Fong, 2002) have questioned whether business schools do in fact prepare students to be effective managers, while others (e.g. Mintzberg, 2004) have suggested that the concept of business school training should change, to focus more on building upon the experience that MBA students have gained as managers before entering an MBA programme. A common theme in these criticisms is that MBA programmes currently lack the kind of practical training that allows students to apply the skills and knowledge that they learn, and that conventional MBA programmes do a poor job of evaluating whether they are providing students with the right tools to help them become effective managers:

Although business school enrollments have soared and business education has become big business, surprisingly little evaluation of the impact of business schools on either their graduates or the profession of management exists.

(Pfeffer & Fong, 2002: 78)