Part‐time MBA education in Japan

One of the characteristics of the Japanese management education has been the near absence of domestic MBA programmes on the one hand and the prevalence of in‐company education on the other. Yet many large companies have increasingly been sending their employees to overseas MBA programmes. The sudden emergence of part‐time MBA programmes in the late 1980s, which might have appeared to go some way to addressing this seeming paradox, has not in fact been the answer, since the benefits the businesses seek from the overseas MBA programmes are those which the domestic MBA programmes cannot provide. There is also a big gap between the aspirations of the MBAs and the corporate HRM reality. Examines the reasons behind the recent development, and explores the more general issues which the domestic MBA education is likely to encounter for some time, through the findings of the recent research and the experience of the Kobe University in this area.