Mandel Social Leadership MBA Program
The program trains and promotes leaders for non-profit organizations in Israel.
The program offers a unique curriculum that combines management training, leadership studies and social issues studies, while combining theory and practice.
The program emphasizes the group as a resource and the creation of mutual commitment of the group members in the learning process.
The program accompanies the students and graduates in counseling and guidance.
This program was founded on the initiative of the Mandel-Israel Foundation and is supported by it, thus enabling a connection to the vision, knowledge, and the Mandel community.
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Come meet our program's faculty - social leaders who combine academic knowledge with the joy of mission.
About the program
The program curriculum is divided equally between courses in management, which provide students with the knowledge covered by standard MBA programs, and other courses that focus on the Third Sector. To avoid a sharp dichotomy, courses that bridge the two domains are also an integral part of the program.
The curriculum prepares graduates to hold executive positions in nonprofit organizations as well as to develop careers that combine activity in the Third Sector with for-profit institutions.As proof that the degree is rooted in the nonprofit sector, we should mention that it was initiated and is supported by the Mandel Foundation.The Mandel Foundation views this program as a powerful responseto its mission to produce the agents of social and organizational change who are needed to attain a better world. Unique approach Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and the Mandel Foundation have established a premier MBA program in social leadership at the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business & Management .The objective of this program is to train and develop top leaders for the nonprofit and public sectors in Israel.We believe that social leadership requires the integration of advanced management knowledge and skills and highly developed leadership qualities combined with a deep commitment to social issues.The program is unique in its conception, offering a curriculum that integrates management andleadership approaches and skills, together with the inculcation and development of a deep knowledge and understanding of social issues and of the role of civil society in a modern democratic state, to enable graduates to lead civil society organizations in order to fulfill their goals.
Department Chair - Prof. Moriah Ellen
The first MBA program was introduced by Harvard University, over a 100 years ago. The program attempted to prepare business leaders to succeed in the industrializing world. It aimed to teach young managers and entrepreneurs how to improve industrial efficiency. Leaders in business must understand and know how to solve linear, logical problems. For example, a business leader who sells bread must address challenges connected to competition, delivery chain, delivery, and growth.
While selling bread is not necessarily a simple endeavor, complexity theory teaches us that complicated problems can be taken apart and structured clearly. However, a social leader who chooses to address hunger is confronting what we call a wicked problem – an issue that is difficult or even impossible to solve due to its many changing, conflicting and tangled elements.
Unlike selling bread, a leader who chooses to tackle hunger as a social issue must address the issue from a different lens – she must understand hunger in its social, economic, business, and legislative contexts. A social leader must know how to secure resources and implement structures to overcome hunger and poverty and have the knowhow to influence multiple stakeholders and communities to take part in any potential solution. She must take responsibility to recognize what doesn't work in society and be able to conceive, plan, and mobilize solutions to eliminate the social deficits and create sustainable social value for all while continuing to innovate and adopt to the changing universe.
Due to the complex, even wicked nature of social problems, preparing social leaders requires a broad, interdisciplinary, holistic education. Social leaders in training must be provided with challenging, enriching scholarly content, but they also need to develop a leadership skill set to manage complex situations. They need the tools to build community resilience, foster partnerships and inspire innovative social entrepreneurship.
Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel recognized the importance of investing in leaders who have the vision, drive, and talent to tackle society's most pressing, often wicked social issues. Through their own social leadership, they strategically fought for a culture of excellence in the nonprofit world, for a strengthening of vibrant Jewish communal life, and for the commitment to just, inclusive, and democratic societies through their urban engagement programs.
The establishment of the Mandel MBA Program in Social Leadership at Ben Gurion University of the Negev was revolutionary as it was born at a time when the academic field of social leadership and social entrepreneurship was still in its infancy. The Mandel MBA Program in Social Leadership, in the spirit of the Mandel brothers' legacy is at the forefront of unraveling the importance of preparing, supporting, and articulating the role and impact of social leaders.
The Mandel MBA at BGU prepares leaders who strive to solve society's most wicked problems. It prepares the future generation of leaders to think beyond the linear, who go on to transform communities, societies, social agendas, and the nation. It readies leaders who are committed to building a healthier resilient nation that will continue to prosper both socially and economically.
