Are CEOs who have MBAs more likely to fail?: Globe

McGill University Management Professor Henry Mintzberg argues that there is significant evidence showing that CEOs who hold MBAs are not as effective as those without the degree. Mitzberg recently worked with Joseph Lampel of Manchester Business School to study 19 Harvard Business School MBA alumni, and found that a majority of them or their companies failed according to the study’s criteria. The Globe and Mail cites another study that looked at 444 CEOs who had been celebrated on the covers of Business Week, Fortune, and Forbes from 1970 to 2008. The study compared the subsequent performance of those companies that were headed by MBAs with those that were not, and found that the ones headed by MBAs declined more quickly and the performance gap remained significant even seven years after the cover story. Globe and Mail