Noam Schieber argues that one of the reasons American businesses have a tough time competing is because American business schools focus too heavily on finance:

It’s not obvious that you would. Since 1965, the percentage of graduates of highly-ranked business schools who go into consulting and financial services has doubled, from about one-third to about two-thirds. And while some of these consultants and financiers end up in the manufacturing sector, in some respects that’s the problem. Harvard business professor Rakesh Khurana, with whom I discussed these questions at length, observes that most of GM’s top executives in recent decades hailed from a finance rather than an operations background. (Outgoing GM CEO Fritz Henderson and his failed predecessor, Rick Wagoner, both worked their way up from the company’s vaunted Treasurer’s office.) But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost. As Khurana quips, “That’s how you end up with GM rather than Toyota.”

Read the whole thing. I think there might be some confusion of cause and effect in Schieber’s analysis, but the emphasis on finance does, I think, hamper operational efficiency today. Additionally, I think another problem is that we see management too much as a generic skill set. To use a sports analogy — there are similar skill sets to being a successful baseball coach and a successful football coach, but that doesn’t mean you hire a baseball coach for your football team–there are fundamental differences in the game. But I’ve often seen in my life companies hire people with “management experience” who have no idea about the industry they’ve been hired into. It often doesn’t go well.

(link via BoingBoing)