Earlier this week, I discussed signalling, both in the context of the recent trend toward “admitting failure” in development policy and in the context of corporate social responsibility in the business world. Wikipedia describes signalling as
The idea that one party (termed the agent) credibly conveys some information about itself to another party (the principal). For example, in Michael Spence’s job-market signalling model, (potential) employees send a signal about their ability level to the employer by acquiring certain education credentials. The informational value of the credential comes from the fact that the employer assumes it is positively correlated with having greater ability.
Not only that — the agent also has to incur a real cost in order to send the signal, otherwise the signal is simply not credible. Moreover, sending the signal need not involve any productive aim other than signalling. The classic example of signalling among economists is getting an MBA, which is costly both in terms of tuition and forgone wages.
So much for the costliness of getting an MBA. How productive is getting an MBA? Michael Ryall, who teaches at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and who guest-blogs over at orgtheory.net, has written a few excellent posts on how the content of an MBA education has changed in 30 years. Here is a good excerpt from his latest post:
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Oct 11
The Education of an MBA: That Was Then, This Is Now
Earlier this week, I discussed signalling, both in the context of the recent trend toward “admitting failure” in development policy and in the context of corporate social responsibility in the business world. Wikipedia describes signalling as
The idea that one party (termed the agent) credibly conveys some information about itself to another party (the principal). For example, in Michael Spence’s job-market signalling model, (potential) employees send a signal about their ability level to the employer by acquiring certain education credentials. The informational value of the credential comes from the fact that the employer assumes it is positively correlated with having greater ability.
Not only that — the agent also has to incur a real cost in order to send the signal, otherwise the signal is simply not credible. Moreover, sending the signal need not involve any productive aim other than signalling. The classic example of signalling among economists is getting an MBA, which is costly both in terms of tuition and forgone wages.
So much for the costliness of getting an MBA. How productive is getting an MBA? Michael Ryall, who teaches at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and who guest-blogs over at orgtheory.net, has written a few excellent posts on how the content of an MBA education has changed in 30 years. Here is a good excerpt from his latest post:
Continue reading →