Business schools: still in the dark during the ‘Age of enlightenment’

Résumé 0

With the establishment of emotional intelligence (EI) and EI testing, psychology has offered the business world a powerful and invaluable tool capable of predicting success in the workplace. The most progressive organizations are already employing such tests in their HR selection/promotion processes. The business school industry maintains a vital interface with the various industry sectors, providing companies with their ‘senior executives of the future’. However, even given the highly competitive environment in which business schools operate; attracting top MBA candidates, and later placing their graduates with prestigious companies, they continue utilizing an outdated, IQ-based, standardized test (the GMAT) as a critical, and often times deciding criterion within their graduate selection processes. The recognized limitations of IQ, as well as its failure to predict professional success, remain a catalyst for the popularization of EI. The author proposes that, in conjunction with top recruiting organizations, business schools initiate an EI-based ‘soft skills’ admission test that would compliment, or even subsume the existing Graduate Management Admission Test.