Importance of Interdisciplinary Learning

In Conversation with  Mark Taylor, dean, Warwick Business School on importance of interdisciplinary learning in management education 


Q- Can you tell us about what changes you plan to introduce to strengthen Warwick in the eyes of students, academicians and the corporate world? 


Our ambition is to make WBS the leading university-based business school in Europe. The strategy we have developed in order to achieve this ambition involves designing and implementing a range of innovations which break new ground for business schools, as well as demanding excellence in all of the usual, more traditional business school areas. For example, the establishment at WBS of a new teaching and research group in behavioural science. This is an explicitly interdisciplinary area which brings together economics, finance, psychology, sociology, management science and neuroscience in an attempt to understand the hidden causes of human behaviour, and we believe this approach will lie at the centre of business school research and teaching for the next generation. Indeed, WBS has already made a number of high-level appointments to establish the first behavioural science group in a European Business School, although some US schools - notably Chicago Booth - have already gone down this route. Prior to becoming Dean at Warwick, I ran a large investment fund as a Managing Director atBarclays and it became clear to me then that we need to look across the academic silos if we are to understand the real world. 


Q- Give us your views on the global economic scenario and its effect on how students are considering MBA qualification? Have you noticed any change in the quality and the number of applications to the school's full-time MBA programme? 


Applications for the Warwick full-time MBA have been challenging over the past few years. To some extent, this is in line with previous experience over the business cycle as well as consistent with the current experience of other business schools. In particular, experience suggests that during times of high uncertainty, full-time MBA candidates postpone application until a later stage of the recruitment cycle (and possibly the business cycle) while their personal circumstances clarify. 


Interestingly, demand for other modes of the WBS MBA study (executive, corporate and distance learning) remains robust to the cycle, while applications for our specialist MSc programmes (such as the top-rated WBS MSc in Finance) and to the WBS MSc in Management can only be described as extremely buoyant. 


Q- Are there any new courses Warwick plans to introduce for the undergraduate programmes? 


There are no firm plans at present, but it is an area we will watch carefully. We're a market leader for undergraduate programmes in Europe, but at present UK institutions are restricted by the government on the number of students we can admit. So we could only launch a non-European Union course at present and we feel this would damage the diversity of the Warwick campus by not being able to admit any student from the UK/ EU. 


Q- Most premier institutes opening campuses across the world, do you plan to follow suit? 


It's an emerging area for Warwick and something we will continue to consider. Yes, I'm aware that many institutes have opened campuses, but it'll be interesting to see their relative success. For Warwick, it'd have to be the right fit with our commitment to academic excellence, be a research active operation and mirror our culture and values.