Who Should Go to Business School?

BY DEAN ROBERT JOSS

February, 2003

AMONG THE MANY QUESTIONS that get asked of a business school dean, the one I often hear is, “Why should someone go back to school and get an MBA?” People seem to have a much clearer idea about why students would return for graduate studies in medicine (to practice medicine and heal the sick), in education (to gain a teaching certificate and help shape young minds), or in law (to pass the bar exam and advocate for justice). Unlike the other professions, there is no license required to practice management—so why pursue an MBA?

My answer starts with the observation that our society relies on managed institutions to produce and deliver nearly all our goods and services—public and private. How well those institutions perform their economic and social roles—that is, how well they are managed—has a very large impact on the quality of people’s lives. It is the managers of those institutions, from front-line supervisors to the most senior executives, who work together to determine and deliver the performance of each institution. Management is a tough job, requiring one to work with and through others to accomplish the mission of the organization in an ever-changing environment. It is a noble calling—just as is the work in other professions. You can impact the world significantly when your organization performs well. Society benefits from a job well done, and employees benefit from a positive work life. It takes a lot of practice to become a good manager since there is a huge component of what we now call “learning by doing.”

But in addition to practice, good management also takes a lot of knowledge—knowledge about how economies work, how markets function, how competitors are likely to behave, how organizations function, how resources should be allocated, how people might react to certain situations, and what it takes to make yourself effective as a manager and leader. The purpose of the Stanford Graduate School of Business is to promote learning about management. As a school, we are largely in the knowledge business, and it is our primary duty to create and disseminate the body of knowledge relevant to the practice of management. Students pursue graduate education in management at a place like the GSB to acquire that body of knowledge. While there are always notable examples of successful managers who never went to business school, experience (and logic) tells us that someone is a lot better off undertaking a management career with that body of knowledge than without it.

Bottom line: Someone who wants to undertake a professional career making organizations perform better ought to consider going to business school. If a prospective student is passionate about management as a career, graduate study in management can be a great investment. This education equips you with a way of thinking about the world of management and managerial challenges that is career-lasting and invaluable.

When should someone think about going to business school? Prospective managers are ready whenever they decide that management is the career for them, and they seriously want to learn about the knowledge base an MBA program offers. The challenge for us in reading applications is to determine how serious and well-founded the applicant’s decision is. This is why, in addition to looking at their capacity to handle the rigor of the academic work, we look at how much and what kind of work experience they have. The daily challenges of real-world organizational life offer the type of experiential learning that is an essential complement to an intellectual understanding of management. A decision to commit one’s professional life to a career in management is often more sincere when based on doing managerial and operational tasks—like calling on customers and prospects, feeling rejection from a sales call, managing a team of people, giving and receiving feedback, hiring and firing people, making tough choices within limited resources, living with and learning from your mistakes, following up on the details—than when it is based just on knowing what management is about.

When we attract and admit people who are passionate about management as a career because they want to change the world through the leverage of organizational performance and who have acquired enough knowledge and experience about management to feel confident this is their calling, then we have an exceptional student population that is an integral part of the GSB learning experience. This has been a hallmark of Stanford for many years and is our objective every year as we prepare to admit a new class.

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