**3. Some main factors explaining the survival and the difficult overhaul of this mainstream management education model**

The first one must emphasize a strong business issue for most education institutions offering MBAs (or similar management education degrees) as they are usually quite expensive and thus quite profitable [13]. This is clear with the major marketing efforts made by these institutions including a lot of advertising in business and

economic newspapers and magazines, as well as their participation in many educational trade fairs and shows in order to lure candidates.

One can see that this is a very competitive market with major profit stakes for most of the institutions. So as long as the market is there and they can convince enough paying candidates to apply with promises such as "the real booster for your career" or "the best investment to double your salary," they are not eager to change the present winning formula, even if the real outcomes no longer meet the promises and the studies do not match the true real people management and leadership challenges.

The second major factor that prevents the present management education system from changing in depth is linked to the profiles, training, and selection process of the professors. Academic profiles with doctorates are requested with research capabilities (as their academic publications are the major criteria for their selection and nomination) with a strong discipline-based specialization such as finance, marketing, supply chain, accounting, human resources, etc. Their record of publication is considered to be more important than their pedagogical performances. The academic profiles of most professors usually exhibit only a weak or often no business or organizational experience, which is paradoxical to adequately train future "managers-leaders"!

Their main pedagogical function is to deliver specialized discipline management courses to students and to evaluate their results with quizzes and exams.

So the very academic nature and profile of these instructors appear as a major obstacle to broad transformations of the mainstream management education system, as they would need other instructor profiles as we will see further. We can also notice that the students often criticize the overly theoretical courses which are not very useful for their future management responsibilities. They often feel frustrated by the lack of practical and field experience of the pure academic profiles of these professors, and conversely they much appreciate the interventions and testimonies of practitioners who are fewer and fewer in most business schools because of the requirements of the accreditation norms and audits linked to their priority focus on rankings!

In addition to such a discipline-based management education, students tend to believe that to become a high-performing manager, they only need to master tools and techniques in each main management discipline, as they have to demonstrate in their quizzes and exams to get their degree.

But the instrumental approach of the managerial functions derived from this system is not only deceiving but quite inadequate as generally the students have neither learned nor mastered the very human management and leadership competences which are at the very heart of good and praised "manager-leader" roles.

Another major factor of the surprising resistance of the mainstream management education model is tied to its dominant rational and quantitative orientations relying essentially on figures.

This trend has prevailed for approximately 30 years with a strong finance- and profit-based focus of most top corporate management on answering the often greedy and shortsighted shareholders. This trend has been strengthened by digitalization, big data technologies, and the growing use of artificial intelligence. These trends have emphasized a kind of "engineering approach" to management education exemplified by the growing collaboration with engineering schools.

And at the same time, we can notice that the human side of management and leadership has been marginalized in many business schools with even some of them abolishing their human resources courses and human resources department!

As far as we know in France, none of the business schools have tried, for example, to develop some links and joint programs with the Human behavioral sciences department of the specialized universities in order to strengthen the human competences of their future "managers-leaders" despite the major importance recognized today by the corporate recruiters for the human competences or "soft skills" for their executives.

Another powerful brake factor that we will mention about any real far-reaching change in the present mainstream management education model is tied to the ranking and to the international accreditation systems. Because of marketing concerns in a very competitive market, most business schools are very eagerly taking care of their image and their good ranking as they think it is a major criterion for their attractiveness and the choice of the candidates. Most of these rankings are linked to national and international standards defined by the accreditation systems such as AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA. These accreditation labels are supposed to define excellent criteria which are in fact quite aligned with the mainstream management education model and are focusing to a large extent on academic performances with the traditional discipline-based approach.

So this is clearly not an encouragement to experience profound changes and alternative models that will not meet these accreditation requirements. This normative system is in fact not pushing toward major and broad changes in the traditional management education model. Despite the fact that today these changes are necessary to allow managers to better face the real human management and leadership challenges that most corporations and organizations, especially the larger ones, already encounter and are likely to see more of in the future.

These challenges have to be more accurately analyzed and clarified in order to be able to design more adequate management and leadership education systems which can bring about better human, organizational, and leadership competences to the managers-leaders of tomorrow.
