The first MBA program was introduced by Harvard University, over a 100 years ago. The program attempted to prepare business leaders to succeed in the industrializing world. It aimed to teach young managers and entrepreneurs how to improve industrial efficiency. Leaders in business must understand and know how to solve linear, logical problems. For example, a business leader who sells bread must address challenges connected to competition, delivery chain, delivery, and growth.
While selling bread is not necessarily a simple endeavor, complexity theory teaches us that complicated problems can be taken apart and structured clearly. However, a social leader who chooses to address hunger is confronting what we call a wicked problem – an issue that is difficult or even impossible to solve due to its many changing, conflicting and tangled elements.
Unlike selling bread, a leader who chooses to tackle hunger as a social issue must address the issue from a different lens – she must understand hunger in its social, economic, business, and legislative contexts. A social leader must know how to secure resources and implement structures to overcome hunger and poverty and have the knowhow to influence multiple stakeholders and communities to take part in any potential solution. She must take responsibility to recognize what doesn't work in society and be able to conceive, plan, and mobilize solutions to eliminate the social deficits and create sustainable social value for all while continuing to innovate and adopt to the changing universe.
Due to the complex, even wicked nature of social problems, preparing social leaders requires a broad, interdisciplinary, holistic education. Social leaders in training must be provided with challenging, enriching scholarly content, but they also need to develop a leadership skill set to manage complex situations. They need the tools to build community resilience, foster partnerships and inspire innovative social entrepreneurship.
Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel recognized the importance of investing in leaders who have the vision, drive, and talent to tackle society's most pressing, often wicked social issues. Through their own social leadership, they strategically fought for a culture of excellence in the nonprofit world, for a strengthening of vibrant Jewish communal life, and for the commitment to just, inclusive, and democratic societies through their urban engagement programs.
The establishment of the Mandel MBA Program in Social Leadership at Ben Gurion University of the Negev was revolutionary as it was born at a time when the academic field of social leadership and social entrepreneurship was still in its infancy. The Mandel MBA Program in Social Leadership, in the spirit of the Mandel brothers' legacy is at the forefront of unraveling the importance of preparing, supporting, and articulating the role and impact of social leaders.
The Mandel MBA at BGU prepares leaders who strive to solve society's most wicked problems. It prepares the future generation of leaders to think beyond the linear, who go on to transform communities, societies, social agendas, and the nation. It readies leaders who are committed to building a healthier resilient nation that will continue to prosper both socially and economically.
Prof. Moriah Ellen
