Just how useful is management education? Can managers be trained – can you learn to be a leader? Or is management training a waste of time, because running a company is no more than common sense?

The value of management education is the subject of a debate run jointly by the Association of MBAs and the Oxford Union at the world-famous debating chamber, on Tuesday May 31st. The debate is entitled ‘Management Education is Not Worth a Bean!’

Agreeing with the idea that management education is worthless will be the entrepreneur and BBC-TV ‘Dragon’ Simon Woodroffe.

Simon and the other ‘dragons’ on BBC-2’s Dragons Den were a Stalinesque-type panel assessing the people and business plans presented to them. Simon himself left school at 16, started his career in the entertainment industry staging concerts for many artists including Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder and George Michael.

More recently, Simon is known for the YO! Sushi chain of Japanese-style restaurants. When the first YO! Sushi opened in London’s Poland Street in 1997, the queues went round the corner. Sushi, new to the UK, was served on a conveyor belt and a robotics drinks trolley circled the restaurant. Guests pressed airline-style service buttons that signalled staff with a loud “YO!” YO! Sushi has 17 outlets in the UK, three overseas franchises and is now planning its expansion in the USA.

Speaking against the idea that management training is ‘not worth a bean’ is Sir Martin Sorrell, a member of the Association of MBAs, who has been the leader of one of the world’s most successful advertising businesses, WPP, for nearly 20 years.

At the age of 21, immediately after his Cambridge economics degree, Sir Martin headed off to Boston as the second youngest out of 700 in the Harvard Business School class of 1966.

Sorrell’s career has taken him to the top of the advertising industry. His company, WPP, is responsible for the best-known names in advertising, such as J Walter Thompson and Ogilvy and Mather, and is behind more advertising, public relations and marketing than any other company. His group has an annual turnover of some £18 billion and employs some 69,000 people around the world.

For Sorrell, an MBA is a crucial factor in recruitment. ‘If I have two people in the room who are exactly equal and one had an MBA and the other didn’t, I would take the MBA,’ said Sorrell.

Simon Woodroffe and Sir Martin Sorrell have a debating partner each. Accompanying Simon will be the Management Editor of the Financial Times, Michael Skapinker.

Michael has spoken on management and business issues to audiences in the US, Europe and Japan. He was a consultant to the BBC series The Secrets of Leadership, which was broadcast in 2003. In the same year, he was awarded the Work Foundation’s Members’ Award for his contribution to the understanding of working life.

Alongside Sir Martin will be Dr Meredith Belbin, well-known to students of management theory ever since his ‘Belbin Teams’ methodology became an accepted way of understanding why some teams work well together, and others come apart at the seams!

Dr Belbin graduated in Classics and Psychology at Clare College, Cambridge. After further training at the Institute of Engineering Production at Birmingham and tenure of a Research Fellowship at Cranfield, he became an independent management consultant, advising the OECD, the US Department of Labor, the World Bank and many manufacturing companies and public service organisations.

When it was first introduced, the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) was seen as the passport to global success and individual riches. Others were always more sceptical about its value, saying that experience counts for far more than academic training when it comes to running businesses.

You can make up your own mind at the Association of MBAs/Oxford Union Business Debate at the Oxford Union on Tuesday May 31st, 2005. AMBA members and guests will be meeting at the Oxford Union at 6.30pm, and the debate starts at 7.30pm in the debating chamber. To register online, please visit

www.mbaworld.com/events

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