Does Management Education Make Students Better Actors? A Longitudinal Study of Change in Values and Self Monitoring

The study used a sample of 138 full time MBA students over 3 years to show that management education enhances self monitoring and importance of self-oriented values and reduces the importance of others-oriented values. The effect on both sets of values remains significant even after controlling for self monitoring. (An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, Banff (Alberta), June 2006.) Management education is traditionally seen as a means to facilitate learning of job-related behaviours in order to improve performance. The focus has been on teaching facts, modifying attitudes and behaviours, and developing skills. Attention has been devoted to analysing whether knowledge that is imparted in business schools should focus more on theory or on applications (Huff, 2000). Human values as a component of management education continue to be an ignored domain of investigation. The emphasis of education has generally been more on knowledge production than on value inculcation. Values have been fairly ignored by management education programs, most probably because values in general are relatively more difficult to influence or modify. Values, however, form the core of our personality, and influence the choices we make, the people we trust, the appeals we respond to, and the way we invest our time and energy (Posner and Schmidt, 1992). It is necessary that values be given their due importance within the function of management education. The changing environment that business schools face has made it necessary to have a look at the impact of education on students (Rynes and Trank, 1999). There has however been a shortage of empirical studies in this area, though there is widespread recognition of the importance of strengthening the collegiate business education environment (Pearce II, 1999). Frost and Fukami (1997) in their introduction to the special research forum on teaching effectiveness in the organizational sciences called for more empirical research on the educational process. The study reported in this paper looked at the change in values and self monitoring of full time MBA students over the entire period of two years of the program. It is only by studying how management education currently affects the values and self monitoring of students that we can deliberate upon the objectives of management education in the future. ©Great Lakes Herald Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2008 Page 36 ©Great Lakes Herald Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2008 Page 37 -