MBA Culture and the Value of Loyalty

Extract

At a large Midwestern US medical center, when clinical laboratory scientists earn promotion to section supervisor they are required to accept a two year seniority rollback. Often the raise comes to $0.05/hour. The laboratory manager bragged she saved $500,000 over three years and has since earned a promotion to associate hospital administrator. In the same institution, new laboratory scientists with sign-on bonuses are paid more than ten year specialists.

At another prestigious university in the Midwest, the dean of the college of health professions closes a self-supporting clinical laboratory science program graduating 30 students a year. “Doesn't fit with our mission.”

What is going on? It's the MBA culture. Without developing core competencies, people in master's of business administration (MBA) or health services administration (HSA) programs are indoctrinated in bottom-line thinking. Many MBA/HSA programs select against health professional applicants – we are inflexible. Those who slip in, nurses or clinical laboratory scientists, don't last in any one position. Too direct, simplistic, too responsive to their employees; can't “rally the troops”.

This quote appears in the 6/12/06 New York Times: “‘MBA programs train the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences,’ said Henry Mintzberg, a management professor at McGill University in Montreal. ‘You can't create a manager in a classroom. If you give people who aren't managers the impression that you turned them into one, you've created hubris.’”

The dean of the school of allied health in a modest Southern university is determined to upgrade the medical imaging…