Does the public sector need a special MBA?

FOR business schools it seemed like a good marketing move. The public sector was expanding, salary levels competing with the private sector, and there were calls to make the public sector more businesslike. The Professional Skills for Government programme was introduced to “enable staff to develop the skills and experience needed to design and deliver 21st-century services”. Surely the time was right to sell these organisations a public sector MBA? A handful of business schools offer specialised MBA programmes for the public sector, including Birmingham, Nottingham and Warwick. But Jeanette Purcell, chief executive of the Association of MBAs, says that this specialist market is static. “They were established some years ago in response to the market, but demand isn’t growing.”

Joan Munro, national adviser on workforce strategy for the Improvement and Development Agency, says that some specialised MBAs did not meet customer expectations. “Local authorities sponsored staff on specialist MBAs but felt they weren’t getting an appropriate education.”

However, there is still a demand for public sector MBAs, and in response, Royal Holloway School of Management is about to launch a programme.

Other business schools question whether a specialist MBA is a contradiction in terms. Sean Rickard, the director of MBA recruitment at Cranfield Management School, says the MBA’s strength is that it is a general management degree which gives a basic grounding in business functions.

“We are training students to operate at a senior level, whether in a charity, public sector organisation or football club. You couldn’t produce one management problem from the public sector which doesn’t have a hundred similar ones in the private sector.”

Chris Bones, the principal of Henley Management College, agrees: “Most management problems are remarkable in their similarity. Putting anyone in a dedicated MBA ghetto is not a good educational process. Learning should take place in as wide a cross-section of participants as possible, with different cultures, nationalities and sectors.”

But Bones refrains from dismissing all public sector elements. Henley has designed a programme for the National School of Government. “It includes specific electives and additional material that plays to the public sector audience as part of our open MBA programme looking at the complexity of stakeholder relationships and the role of politics in stakeholder relationships.”

There is a new kid on the block too, the Master of Public Administration (MPA). Manchester Business School launches a programme this month. Professor Colin Talbot, professor of public policy in management, says: “In the US there are 200 MPA programmes running parallel to MBAs, but they are suddenly mushrooming around the globe, particularly in China, Eastern Europe and South America. Five years ago there were only two programmes in the UK, now there are 14 and still growing.”

Clearly the death of the public sector MBA has been greatly exaggerated and it is adapting to the times. Some parts of the market demand a specialist programme, others are going for the new-style MPA while the attraction of the standard MBA, sometimes with public sector add-ons, continues to grow.

CASESTUDY
Robert Whitehead, strategy manager, London Development Agency

“I was project manager for ActionAid, then ran a business unit in a small consultancy. I thought I might go into the public sector but did a general MBA at Cranfield School of Management to keep my options open. I met a cross-section of people and developed a broad network of contacts, including people from the public sector. There are advantages in doing a public sector MBA if you’re going to stay in the sector and need specialised knowledge, such as policy process. Otherwise, pick the best MBA available, then you can move into any sector and change career direction.”