IMPM - Masters in Practicing Management: Alternative to MBA+DBA

The MBA degree has been heavily criticised for many years for teaching a set of tools divorced from the realities of Management. It's been hard to introduce an alternative form of Management Training at the graduate level. Some observers blame the dead hand of AACSB.

It appears the DBA will follow the MBA into a steep decline in prestige as the DBA is rapidly becomes a Vanity Degree, pursued doggedly, credit after credit, often on-line, by people with poor undergraduate preparation, no talent for Management, with not a prayer of entering into Executive slots of business corporations. This debasement is accelerated by the necessity is slicing the current MBA and DBA curricula into disjointed pieces - Marketing, Accounting, Finance, etc, to accomodate the modular nature of on-line MBA studies. The Case Study Method is very difficult to implement on-line.

About ten years ago, prestigious McGill University, in Canada, in concert with four other universities, including the world-class INSEAD of France, developed a new Master's Degree in Management - the IMPM - (International) Masters in Practicing Management. The IMPM's paradigm involves grouping high-level Management Practice into five "domains". The concept is explained in www.impm.org/pdf/practmgrs.pdf. The degree is taught in five residential "modules" of two weeks each, with on-line DL study in-between modules, papers at the end of each module, and a final Major Paper at the end.

The IMPM is offered as a Master's program to replace the MBA - but the advanced nature of the study is often appropriate for senior level managers who already have an MBA. Thus the IMPM can be a substitute for Managers who might otherwise take a DBA.

In the article above above, the participants are supposed to be high-flyers nominated and sponsored by their employers. Today, individual applicants are also accepted. See www.impm.org.

The degree is in its eleventh year. It's not clear whether the concept will catch on. It appears no other school after the original five, has adopted a similar paradigm. While the jury is still out, this IMPM degree is a useful and interesting part-DL alternative to the MBA+DBA.