The realm of Management and the perceptions surrounding it

Management is an oft abused word. And if I am not wrong, this has been the case ever since the term was coined or ,may be, even before that. I have heard a gamut of opinions relating to management - starting from "It is a necessary eveil" to "Study Philosophy instead of Management". I have to accept, and this is an outsider's view, that managers have not really made any discernible effort to dispel any negative opinions about their utility. Important is to understand here is that when I say MANAGER, I mean the ones with the MBAs. Not to say that the ones who develop their managerial skills are any less, on the contrary, they are the ones who exhibit the indispensible characteristics of empathy, discretion, and decisiveness - the very things that I find missing in the made to order MBAs.

It has been often cited that MBA courses turn a student into a polished glib talker who can take a few good decisions too but they do not inculcate the sense of risk-taking, decision making and other "humane" skills needed to succeed in the business of life. In fact, they make it all the more difficult for a person to try and inculcate the above cited characteristics outside and after the MBA course.

This problem of disconnect manifests itself in many ways - lack of respect towards EXPERIENCE because of the misconception that an MBA is an elixir for all management problems; the missing passion towards one's job replaced by the objective manner in which one treat's one's job.

I, myself, am at a crossroad: whether to go for management education or not, when do I join an MBA course, which subjects should I select !!