EFMD Global Focus Vol. 14, Issue 02 - Real learning, real impact by EFMD Global

The EFMD Business Magazine | Iss.2 Vol.14 | www.efmdglobal.org

Real learning, Real impact Exploring the effects of the EFMD Business School Impact System on an international business school

Life or death Making the toughest decisions

Hard work Can business schools survive growing complexity?

Crash course Exploring the effects of impact

Strategy class Strategy education under siege

Brain waves Making the best use of scholars and academics

Workers uptight? keeping employees on board during a crisis

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In focus | Global Focus

In focus Global Focus Iss.2 Vol.14 | 2020

ear Colleagues, Dear friends, More ways to read Global Focus

I sincerely hope you are all well and that you and your families are safe in these very challenging times. All our organisations are suffering at the moment, and EFMD is trying to help as much as possible. We are receiving more and more contributions from our member schools, L&D providers, organisations and individuals who wish to share their experiences, examples of best practice and resources they would like to circulate within the EFMD community. We continue to proactively contact schools to encourage them to share their experiences. Keeping in touch at this very moment is critical. Since the start of the lockdown, we have focused many of our activities on sharing thought leadership pieces and articles that are interesting and relevant for the network. May it be an article from the Global Focus (current and past issues) or articles from outside sources. Additionally, we are focusing on promoting our online activities, enaging in webinars and supporting the membership is the very best way we can. As a network and association, these are times that we have never seen before. Still, the spirit of the network is strong and resilient, and we will undoubtedly come through these dark days with renewed vigour and hopefully an increased sense of community and purpose. We all at EFMD and EFMD Global Network warmly thank you for your continued support and trust. I hope you enjoy this issue of Global Focus which shows the reach, diversity and pride in the network and community that we support.

You can read Global Focus in print, online and on the move, in English, Chinese or Spanish

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Your say We are always pleased to hear your thoughts on Global Focus, and ideas on what you would like to see in future issues.

Warmest and kind regards, Eric Cornuel EFMD President

Please address comments and ideas to Matthew Wood at EFMD: matthew.wood@efmdglobal.org

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Contents

Global Focus The EFMD Business Magazine Iss.2 Vol.14 | 2020

Executive Editor Matthew Wood / matthew.wood@efmdglobal.org Advisory Board Eric Cornuel Howard Thomas John Peters Consultant Editor George Bickerstaffe / georgebickerstaffe@gmail.com Contributing Editors Smaranda Boros, Anita Bosch Paul Carlile, Atish Chattopadhyay Harivansh Chaturvedi, Steven Davidson Ajoy K Dey, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink Peter Lee, Florencia Librizzi Martin Lockett, Jean-François Manzoni Martin Moehrle, Hayley Pearson Kai Peters, Johan Roos Jonathan Scott, Yuliya Shymko Nimisha Singh, Richard Smith Jawad Syed, Howard Thomas Alain Tord, Tam Kar Yan Design & Art Direction Jebens Design / www.jebensdesign.co.uk Photographs & Illustrations Jebens Design Ltd / EFMD unless otherwise stated

Editorial & Advertising Matthew Wood / matthew.wood@efmdglobal.org Telephone: +32 2 629 0810 www.globalfocusmagazine.com www.efmdglobal.org ©

EFMD

Rue Gachard 88 – Box 3, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

Real learning, real impact Jean-François Manzoni explores an international business school’s experience with the EFMD Business School Impact System

COVID-19 : crisis, lessons and opportunities Business education has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Martin Lockett looks at the challenges and opportunities

Deciding life or death Peter Lee discusses decision making when lives are on the line

The complexity of business schools Kai Peters and Howard Thomas wonder how long business schools can survive the growing complexity of their industry

The case for teaching integrated strategy Strategy education is under siege. Jeroen Kraaijenbrink makes the case for teaching integrative strategy methods

Ready for disruptive changes in education How a leading Hong Kong business school responded to both social and health crises. By Tam Kar Yan

How to develop collaborative projects that drive innovation An innovative approach to identifying co-operative ways to improve business education. By Paul Carlile, Steven Davidson and Howard Thomas

Contents | Global Focus

The Sustainable Business and agriculture Jonathan Scott describes a project designed to reduce costs, increase revenues and create jobs in agriculture

Corporate learning as an accelerator of digital transformation The COVID-19 experience will accelerate digital transformation even further says Martin Moehrle

Intellectuals of the world unite! Johan Roos on making best use of academics and scholars to recover from an unprecedented pandemic

Ensuring employee engagement amid a pandemic Jawad Syed suggests 15 steps to enable or sustain employee engagement

Sustainable education Florencia Librizzi on the SDG Academy, a global initiative to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals

An African MBA fit for purpose Hayley Pearson explains the rationale behind a major re-thinking of one of South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading MBA programmes

Curriculum 4.0 for Industry 4.0 Educational institutions globally are facing major challenges, a function of tectonic shifts in the techno-socio-economic landscape and the digital revolution occurring in Industry 4.0. Atish Chattopadhyay explains what might be in store

A business school disrupted: a view from Singapore The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed our world. And though the preparation, rapid response and early vigilance of the universities and the government in Singapore was admirable Richard Smith looks at the challenges still ahead

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Higher Education A new global roadmap for public policies. Alain Tord explains

North meets South: A call for inclusive global research The COVID-19 is laying bare some undeniable truths in societies worldwide. By Smaranda Boros, Anita Bosch and Yuliya Shymko

Coping with COVID-19 The experience of Birla Institute of Management Technology in facing COVID-19. By Harivansh Chaturvedi, Ajoy K Dey and Nimisha Singh

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Real learning, Real impact Jean-FranĂ§ois Manzoni explores an international business schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience with the EFMD Business School Impact System

Real learning, Real impact | Jean-François Manzoni

n 2017, IMD adopted the tagline “Real Learning, Real Impact,” reflecting the institution’s orientation towards having a significant and sustainable impact on individuals, organisations and society. Around the same time, we were introduced to the EFMD Business School Impact System (BSIS), a systematic set of procedures for conducting an impact assessment. The presence of the word “impact” in the name initially caught our attention but that is not why we adopted the BSIS. IMD committed to the BSIS for five main reasons. • First, it was an opportunity to get done something we knew we ought to do but didn’t necessarily find the time for. Understanding one’s impact is important but not super urgent. Registering for BSIS was a way for us to put a deadline on the calendar and commit • Second, we had some ideas on how to measure impact but honestly no one at IMD was a world-class expert in measuring all dimensions of impact. Some of us understood economic impact others academic impact, but none of us had thought about impact systemically for higher-education institutions. The BSIS folks had, so we said to ourselves: “Why reinvent the wheel if smart and dedicated experts have already spent a lot of time figuring this out?” • Third, we figured that our assessment might be even more credible to our stakeholders if it was somehow “accredited” by an external, objective and expert party • Fourth, our previous experience with accreditations suggested that comments of the peer review team are often very insightful and value creating. We hoped this would be true again • Last, but not least, we thought that this BSIS assessment would give us a base line that we would be able to work with for years to come. This was a way for us to develop assessment skills that we could use again in the future, including to measure progress in key selected areas.

IMD began the BSIS data gathering in early 2019 and concluded the BSIS project with the release of a public-facing Impact Report in early 2020

Let us cut to the chase: IMD began the BSIS data gathering in early 2019 and concluded the BSIS project with the release of a public-facing Impact Report in early 2020. Our five objectives/ hopes were all fulfilled. We also received the BSIS label in the process. We look back on this journey as an extremely helpful one. We wanted to share our experience and outcomes, as it may help you decide whether engaging in the BSIS process is right for you. Global reach Following the end of the second world war in Europe, multinational companies were rapidly expanding and it was in this wave of globalisation that IMD’s two predecessor management training schools were founded – IMEDE in Lausanne in 1956 and IMI in Geneva in 1947. They came together to form IMD three decades ago. They were internationally diverse from day one, drawing faculty from North America and participants from across Europe. The language of instruction was English. Since those founding periods, international diversity, global travel experiences and crosscultural learning have come to define IMD. They are key to the transformative power of our learning experiences. In 2018, EFMD EQUIS peer reviewers visiting the campus singled out internationalisation as a defining and distinguishing feature of the school. 5

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Swiss Roots While we continue to work hard at ensuring our “global reach,” we are also very mindful – and proud – of our “Swiss roots”. These roots come in part from our founders – IMEDE was founded by Nestlé and IMI was strongly connected with Swiss companies. Over the years, IMD and its predecessors have been fortunate to have the support of many Swiss companies, several of whom are world leaders. In addition to corporate connections, partnerships with world-class Swiss academic institutions have become a vital element of our educational offerings. Here, we have been plain lucky that we are surrounded by world-class institutions such as the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), ranked among the best universities in the world, and ECAL (Lausanne University of Art and Design), often ranked among the world’s best design and art schools. In particular, we partner with EPFL to offer TransformTECH, a five-day tech-infused bootcamp for executives. In the research area, we are fortunate to have the support of several Swiss benefactors. IMD is also deeply engaged in the Swiss innovation economy. Since 1998, more than 400 Swiss start-ups have benefitted from the support of MBAs and EMBAs engaged in experiential learning Start-up Projects. Finally, our Alumni Community for Entrepreneurship Lausanne Chapter facilitates “Start-up Nights” where local alumni learn about Swiss start-ups and how to invest in them. New learnings on local impact Through the BSIS process, we improved our understanding of IMD’s impact overall and particularly in the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland. The 120 prompts comprising the BSIS assessment scaffolded our explorations. Here’s a sampling of what we learned: • Economic Impact: IMD contributed SF360 million to the economy in Vaud in 2018, as calculated using the EFMD BSIS methodology • Overnight Accommodations: IMD was responsible for an estimated 40,000 overnight stays in Vaud in 2018 6

400

Since 1998, more than 400 Swiss start-ups have benefitted from the support of IMD's MBAs and EMBAs engaged in experiential learning Start-up Projects

Of Switzerland’s Top 100 Start-Ups, as ranked by the website startup.ch; 32 had previously worked with IMD MBAs and/or EMBAs. Also, 13 of the 24 Vaud firms designated as “scale-ups” by a prominent start-up accelerator have been past participants in the Start-up Projects

Real learning, Real impact | Jean-François Manzoni

• Start-Up Support: Of Switzerland’s Top 100 Start-Ups, as ranked by the website startup.ch; 32 had previously worked with IMD MBAs and/or EMBAs. Also, 13 of the 24 Vaud firms designated as “scale-ups” by a prominent start-up accelerator have been past participants in the Start-up Projects. • Corporate Connections: IMD led custom executive education programmes for nine of Switzerland’s top 25 companies by sales over a three-year period • Executive Education Enrolments: In 2019, 26% of open programme participants were from Switzerland • MBAs: About 25% of MBA graduates have historically stayed in Switzerland after graduation • EMBAs: Of our EMBAs, nearly half live in Switzerland, with about half of that cohort being Swiss nationals. As part of the BSIS process, we asked external stakeholders for their perceptions of IMD. A letter from the cantonal administration volunteered: “IMD plays a major role in the academic landscape of our canton;” A senior executive from MindMaze, Switzerland’s first unicorn, described IMD’s global reach and reputation as adding to the “internationalisation” of the canton; the director of the canton’s economic development agency added his commendation: “The school’s alumni are a large and influential community of positive ambassadors”. These words of praise were gratifying, of course, but, maybe more importantly, they were also eye-opening for us. Indeed, one of the points highlighted by the BSIS journey is how little we knew about certain dimensions of our impact.. In fact, one of the insightful questions asked by the BSIS expert visitors was “why is IMD so modest about its impact?” Well, one reason is that we didn’t really know how much impact we had. Another, and again an important insight for us, is IMD’s internalising of Swiss values. The culture of enterprises in Switzerland is not to boast. Organisations go about their activities without spending too much time self-congratulating .

The BSIS process helped us realise that this Swiss discretion should not prevent us from objectively and calmly communicating our achievements and impact to external parties, including governments, of course, but also our own alumni. Strengthening ecosystem partnerships Another thoughtful suggestion from the BSIS peer review team was to intensify our interactions and co-operation with neighbouring academic institutions. As mentioned above we had started to do so. Their encouragement was hence timely and helpful. Since their visit we launched a new tri-partite collaboration with EPFL and the University of Lausanne (UNIL). The new centre, called Enterprise for Society (E4S), will focus on the challenges and opportunities of technologybased innovation and promote dialogue between researchers and practitioners working with technology and those focusing on socioeconomic issues to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. The second pillar of E4S will be a more cohesive and synergistic approach of the three partners toward the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, which already features numerous successful start-ups but could do even more. Last but not least, we will be launching a joint pre-experience master’s degree in sustainable management and technology. Learning from the BSIS experts When we began the BSIS process, we had clear intentions to share our findings with the cantonal and local government. We had not really thought about what form this communication would take but I think we all assumed it would be like everything we do at IMD – in English. The BSIS expert visitors helped us realise that while IMD works internationally and almost exclusively in English, the language of the canton in which our main campus is French, one of Switzerland’s four national languages. Yes, we know, we knew that, but somehow, we had never realised how annoying our language policy must have been for local politicians 7

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During a recent meeting, the mayor of Lausanne expressed his pleasant surprise at the size of IMD’s local financial impact. He had simply no idea it was that high. Since then we have continued to take the language and the local connection lesson to heart and we have been communicating more of our research, thought leadership and campus news in French

The penny had never dropped. It finally did when the expert visitors challenged us on it. In January 2020, we released our BSIS findings in a 44-page Impact Report that was published in both English and French (Rapport d’Impact). The publication date coincided with the announcement by EFMD of the awarding of the BSIS label. The report piqued the interest of several local stakeholders. One top Canton de Vaud official commented: “The BSIS project demonstrates the positive impact of IMD and the school’s integration into the Vaud economic fabric”. During a recent meeting, the mayor of Lausanne expressed his pleasant surprise at the size of IMD’s local financial impact. He had simply no idea it was that high. Since then we have continued to take the language and the local connection lesson to heart and we have been communicating more of our research, thought leadership and campus news in French. We are also working on a regular French language newsletter. This is an important development because positive relations with various levels of governments and other local stakeholders are critical to IMD’s long-term aspirations in areas such as national accreditation, land use, fundraising and research support. 8

Extending our impact One lesson of IMD’s BSIS experience is that in the balance between localisation and globalisation in business schools, it does not have to be one way or the other; it can be both. International business schools, no matter how globally diverse their faculty, students and programmes, have numerous local interdependencies and are inherently local institutions. At IMD our educational activities forge a path that draws from both the local ecosystem and from international diversity. Such an approach has been transformative for all participants — those from Switzerland and those from abroad. Even as many face-to-face programmes have transitioned to remote learning during the COVID-19 crisis, we are still a “global meeting place” – just that the meeting place can also be on Canvas and Zoom. The BSIS experience showed us that measuring and assessing one’s local impact can be a catalyst for fortifying local collaborations. IMD’s BSIS experience has been unequivocally positive. We entered into this process with a few hopes, described at the start of this article, all of which were fulfilled. The process also led us to a few key realisations, which are already having a non-trivial impact on the way we approach some topics. In particular, it helped us to understand better the need to balance local and international impact. We are grateful to Michel Kalika and his colleague on the review team Robert Galliers for their supportive challenges and insights.

About the Author Jean-François Manzoni is President of IMD Anne-France Borgeaud Pierazzi is Institutional Research and Accreditations Partner Eric Neutuch is Accreditation and Institutional Projects Officer

44pp

In January 2020, IMD released its BSIS findings in a 44 page Impact Report that was published in both English and French (Rapport d’Impact). The publication date coincided with the announcement by EFMD of the awarding of the BSIS label

Fondation Nationale pour lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Enseignement de la Gestion des Entreprises

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COVID-19 : crisis, lessons and opportunities Business education worldwide has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Martin Lockett looks at the challenges faced by business schools and the opportunities that are now emerging

At first, measures such shutting cinemas seemed like an over-reaction but they were not. It soon became clear that much more action was needed and, alongside wider government-imposed restrictions, a university virus prevention and control team were set up

COVID-19 : crisis, lessons and opportunities | Martin Lockett

o one imagined that 2020 would be a year of massive disruption in business schools. But as the year started, the first cases of COVID-19 were becoming public in Wuhan but attracted little attention. In under three months, though, most business schools had shut down for face-to-face teaching and were looked forward an uncertain time ahead. At Nottingham University Business School China (NUBS China), part of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), we were one of the first international business schools to face this crisis. Now, we hope, NUBS China is coming out the other side as our students return to campus. Our experience may be a guide for others in learning the lessons from the COVID-19 crisis and looking for opportunities that it has created. Meeting the COVID-19 challenge It first became clear that China faced a public health emergency just after almost all our students and many faculty members had left for their Chinese New Year vacation. Virus cases were growing fast and were being reported more accurately after an initial â&#x20AC;&#x153;cover-upâ&#x20AC;? by local officials in Wuhan. And there was a growing realisation that the mass annual migration of Chinese people to their hometowns and other locations at New Year had created an incredibly effective way of spreading a virus. At first, measures such shutting cinemas seemed like an over-reaction but they were not. It soon became clear that much more action was needed and, alongside wider governmentimposed restrictions, a university virus prevention and control team were set up. Plans were prepared including converting the on-campus hotel to an isolation centre for staff or students with virus-like symptoms as well as their close contacts. Students were not allowed to return while international students staying on campus in the vacation remained on-site. 11

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After an initial postponement of the new semester for a week, it became clear that life would not be back to normal soon, so a clear decision was made to go online for at least a month after a two-week delay to the semester to give time to prepare. Planning was based on “prepare for the worst, hope for the best” rather than assuming that everything would go well. Scenarios ranged from a re-opening in a few weeks through to staff and students being unable to return at all. So a first lesson is not only to be prepared for a wide range of scenarios but also to make fast decisions that make sense in best and worst cases A second lesson is the need to develop specific plans rapidly and test whether they work in practice, especially for international online learning Anticipated travel restrictions meant that it was unlikely that many students or staff could return to campus. It was obvious that we had to assess if online learning was feasible at a scale we had never attempted before. As it was Chinese New Year, students were distributed across China and the world, as were faculty members. In the business school we had 3,000 students ranging from undergraduates through master’s students to a doctoral programme for 100 students. An internal 12

team rapidly reviewed our existing platforms and whether they could work at full scale. In parallel we worked on teaching patterns for up to a semester of online teaching as well as for a full or partial return to campus. These prioritised our final year undergraduates so that we maximised their chances of continuing to postgraduate study and employment without disruption. The EFMD Deans Conference in Milan, Italy, was an opportunity to share experience with other business schools just as the virus began to spread into Europe and emphasising how flexibility in admissions would be vital to both students and recruiters. It turned out that we would need to have online learning for at least most international students for the full semester. Other important plans needed to be developed for our international exchange students, initially allowing those from overseas to transfer to study in China but then, as business schools outside China went online, recommending them to stay with their international exchange school even if they had returned to China. In China, we had to work in an environment of government-controlled access to many internet resources which are taken for granted elsewhere in the world.

At the time of lockdown, in the business school we had 3,000 students ranging from undergraduates through master’s students to a doctoral programme for 100 students

COVID-19 : crisis, lessons and opportunities | Martin Lockett

In addition, some solutions that had been developed in the UK did not work reliably in China. We also had solutions that we thought would work well, which were launched to all faculty members within two weeks and students within a month. Day one of full use revealed further problems in our virtual learning environment that were rapidly solved by a dedicated IT team. We also shifted rapidly from one video recording platform to another that required less international bandwidth. So a third lesson is that business schools delivering online learning need to pay attention to both accessibility and performance of underlying IT platforms for students located anywhere in the world, especially in China Once we were reasonably confident that online learning would work, the next challenge was to get our faculty members up to speed. A majority were not familiar with either online learning or specific platforms they would need to use. Hence, in addition to the normal teaching leadership group, NUBS China appointed a junior faculty member as digital learning lead and encouraged others with past virtual learning experience to share tips and techniques with their colleagues. Together they produced a series of videos on what to do, as well as live training using the Zoom platform, which is being used for a wide range of interactive learning as well as internal meetings. Our approach was to make it clear what was expected of faculty members to ensure delivery to students and then to allow them freedom to innovate in their own courses rather than dictate a single way of doing things. This is important especially when delivering interactive teaching online. While the process of rapid learning and live delivery was not always smooth, every course went online on time with very few student complaints. Without the COVID-19 crisis, there would have been long debate about online learning and a lack of belief that it could be done within a few years, let alone a few weeks. The fourth lesson is therefore that change within business school faculty is possible much faster than is normally imagined, though in this case it took the COVID-19 to prove it. 13

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A fifth lesson is the critical role of effective two-way communication Often too much focus is on broadcasting general messages about policies and decisions and not enough on answering the questions that are most important for staff and students. An early and effective mechanism was to establish a staff email address to which questions could be addressed. Two examples of such questions were whether staff could access their offices on campus and the preventative measures being taken on campus including supply of face masks to staff. This gave deans and other leaders the opportunity to know what staff were asking and to reply to their questions. This turned into a “Staff Q&A”, which was updated every two to three days with advice and information targeted at concerns raised by staff, with a similar “Student Q&A”. These complemented a more formal university update once a week. One major challenge was to decide when to ask faculty to return to China and how to communicate this. Those in Ningbo could see the rapid progress in tackling the spread of COVID-19 , with new cases inside the city down to a handful and then to zero. However, this was not clear to those still overseas, especially as strict measures were still in place. For a time, those living in off-campus apartments were only able to leave their home once every two days to get food and could not enter the campus due to “lockdown” regulations. In this context, quite a few staff who were overseas reacted negatively to a general university message that they should return to China in mid-March. They felt that such communication did not recognise their concerns or clearly explain the logic of the decision to ask them to return. Deans took the lead in explaining that Ningbo was now relatively safer than Europe and other countries, working with each faculty member to get them back. Personally, I stressed that our number one priority was always staff and student safety; number two was student learning; and number three was everything else that we would normally do as a business school. We ensured that all returning staff members would get a direct car transfer from local airports 14

to their home rather than using public transport; financial assistance if flight prices had increased; and support if they needed to enter government quarantine or self-isolation. As a result, 90% of business school faculty were able to return safely to Ningbo by the end of March 2020 when China imposed a temporary ban on returning foreigners. From crisis management to opportunities While the future is still unclear, as of early May 2020, NUBS China is prepared for an ongoing combination of online and face-to-face teaching. To date, we have no known virus cases among staff or students though, of course, the risk remains. Now our attention is also shifting towards looking at the opportunities that the COVID-19 crisis and our response have made possible. A first opportunity is extending the use of digital learning With faculty members much more confident and capable in online learning, more teaching innovation is possible. This includes the benefits for students of having pre-recorded lectures that they can view again and use for exam revision. It opens the door to “flipped classrooms” and other forms of blended learning as well as the potential for greater cross-campus collaboration between Nottingham campuses in the UK and China and Malaysia. A second opportunity is innovation in assessment Handwritten exams are increasingly anachronistic as few people sit down for two to three hours handwriting under time pressure. Online exams are being introduced as well as other assessment methods. These will be more resilient to disruption and bring other benefits, for example monitoring of students individually via webcams and the ability to mark papers offsite. A third opportunity is in research and external engagement Some faculty members have been using time in greater isolation to finish or revise research articles more quickly. Others have been undertaking research around business response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And others have been analysing developments to provide insights to business and government.

14k

We switched marketing resources to be completely online with new initiatives: a university online open day featuring NUBS China attracted 14,000 visitors compared with the 4,000 at a typical physical open day!

COVID-19 : crisis, lessons and opportunities | Martin Lockett

They have found that relevant articles have been easy to publish in top national media outlets on topics such as virtual working, how the tourism industry will change, and strategies for small and medium enterprises. A fourth opportunity is to review the use of resources As part of a UNNC-wide initiative, we realised that reduced spending on areas such as travel and research fieldwork gave us the opportunity to undertake one-off projects that had not been prioritised but had significant benefits. At the same time, we switched marketing resources to be completely online with new initiatives: a university online open day featuring NUBS China attracted 14,000 visitors compared with the 4,000 at a typical physical open day!

While the future is still unclear, as of early May 2020, NUBS China is prepared for an ongoing combination of online and face-to-face teaching. To date, we have no known virus cases among staff or students though, of course, the risk remains. Now our attention is also shifting towards looking at the opportunities that the COVID-19 crisis and our response have made possible

Last but my no means least is the opportunity to challenge bureaucratic internal processes. I wrote internal flexible working deadlines for the business school in one day when in the UK and by the next morning they had been accepted by the whole university during the day in China and published to all academic staff. I wonder how long such far-reaching-agreement would have taken in normal circumstances. Conclusion The faculty members as well as professional and support staff in NUBS China have done amazing work in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. We have focused on staff and student safety as our top priority, then found new ways to enable student learning with staff and students distributed across the world in a school that has been centred on face-to-face learning. Hopefully the lessons learned are of use to others. And we encourage others to start thinking about future opportunities while tackling todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urgent challenges.

About the Author Martin Lockett is Dean and Professor in Strategic Management at Nottingham University Business School (China).

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Peter Lee discusses decision making when lives are on the line

Deciding life or death

Deciding life or death | Peter Lee

s it ever right to kill or to let someone die? These are questions I have wrestled with over the past two decades and philosophers have argued about for millennia. For most of that time I was safely tucked away in a lecture theatre, indulging myself and my students – some military, some civilian – as we discussed impossible choices and how to make them. Cold, calm judgements in the making. At least in theory. It is easy to be an expert in hypothetical situations where there is no physical, mental or ethical risk. When there is no emotional engagement, no psychological bias, no adrenaline surge and no gut-wrenching anxiety to distort rational thinking. As a result, there are no actual, real-word consequences and therefore no psychological harm or guilt. No sleepless nights as my choices replay on a loop in my head. As an ethicist I am interested in how we make decisions, in any field, but especially under sufficient pressure to induce intense psychological and physiological responses. I thought I understood ethical choices and making difficult decisions until I joined three military drone crew members as they flew a Reaper MQ-9 mission over Syria against ISIS. I watched as they calmly discussed the most effective way to kill the six people on the screens in front of us, using either a 100-pound Hellfire missile or a 500-pound laser-guided bomb. The consequences of their choices were discussed in detail. Life or death was calculated in the geometry of attack angles and blast radius. Simple arithmetic – counting the dead – followed after the bomb strike, as the bodies were taken away for burial. I wrote about the experiences of these Reaper operators. Common themes emerged around the things they witnessed and the decisions they made: who to kill; when not to shoot; the impact of their choices on themselves and on distant enemies. Physical and psychological challenges facing the operators included but were not limited to: inbuilt bias in the face of uncertainty; cognitive

I thought I understood ethical choices and making difficult decisions until I joined three military drone crew members as they flew a Reaper MQ-9 mission over Syria against ISIS. I watched as they calmly discussed the most effective way to kill the six people on the screens in front of us, using either a 100-pound Hellfire missile or a 500-pound laser-guided bomb

dissonance, where the brain experiences simultaneous but contradictory information or values; ethical dilemmas; and mental harms brought on by witnessing extreme violence and deaths that they were powerless to stop. At the beginning of 2020 these ethical, psychological and practical aspects of life-or-death decision making by military drone operators seemed impossibly distant from the experiences of wider society. Then COVID-19 arrived and the world changed in a few weeks. Life-or-death decisions are played out daily on television screens and in news reports. Four factors from the life-or-death decisions of military drone operators illustrate the current and future challenges facing those leading the response to the COVID-19 pandemic: bias; dissonance; ethics; and moral injury. Israeli-American academics Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have shown how bias in the way people imagine the unknown shapes our perception of risk: The risk involved in an adventurous expedition, for example, is evaluated by imagining contingencies with which the expedition is not equipped to cope. If many such difficulties are vividly portrayed, the expedition can be made to appear exceedingly dangerous. Conversely, the risk involved in an undertaking may be grossly underestimated if some possible dangers are either difficult to conceive or simply do not come to mind. 17

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Take two responses to COVID-19 on the same day, 9 March 2020. President Donald Trump downplayed the threat from COVID-19 and compared it to the common flu. Meanwhile, Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced a national lockdown. Despite data being shared around the world by government scientific experts, the differing experiences of Trump and Conte, and the experiences of their respective countries at that point, informed their perception of the risk. Italy’s experience was more severe by that date and the US was still relatively unscathed. Their understanding and future expectations would also be informed by in-built bias rooted in what they hoped would happen. A Reaper drone operator can spend months or years tracking down enemy vehicle-mounted rocket launchers. She would also have to overcome bias to avoid wrongly identifying water pipes on the back of a plumber’s truck as a weapon system, then blowing it up. And if I just made you feel uncomfortable with my use of “she” to describe the person who controls a missile onto its target, then you have just experienced your own bias. Cognitive dissonance occurs when the brain struggles to cope with two simultaneous, strong and contradictory messages or values. At the moment when it happens it can be confusing or disorienting. When sustained over a long period it can be psychologically harmful. In the COVID-19 response examples of such dissonance can be found at every level of society and decision-making. At the time of writing (early April 2020), global death rates are currently climbing, health services are being overwhelmed, and medical staff experience cognitive dissonance every day. For example, doctors, nurses and others are risking their own health – and lives – because of a strong desire to treat and cure sick and vulnerable patients, all underpinned by core values such as protectiveness, caring and empathy. However, those instincts are set against shortages of intensive care equipment and no medicine, as yet, to cure a severe COVID-19 infection. A doctor describes what it is like to save lives by deciding who to let die: Now I am forced to play God. A sweet lady in her 18

80s is struggling to breathe with the [continuous positive airway pressure] machine. There is nothing I can do to help her – and because of her pre-existing conditions and age, she is simply not a candidate to take to intensive care. Sounds callous, doesn’t it? But there are 11 people elsewhere in desperate need of her mask. At governmental level, presidents, prime ministers and ministers must decide on what policy to enact and when. Leaders whose first responsibility is to the safety and wellbeing of the people of their country must decide how many to let die. On scientific advice, should they adopt response Model A, which might result in a short-term spike in deaths but an overall lower number? Or enact Model B, which will lead to more deaths but spread over a longer time so that the healthcare system is not overwhelmed? People will die either way. It is not difficult to find ethical dilemmas in the COVID-19 response. All of these choices about who to treat and who to let die require ethical judgement. But in extreme situations the usefulness of standard written codes can reach their limits. For example, the UK General Medical Council ethical advice to doctors states: If a patient is not receiving basic care to meet their needs, you must immediately tell someone who is in a position to act straight away. That guidance doesn’t help a doctor when there is insufficient trained medical staff, intensive care beds and essential equipment in their hospital, city,

Deciding life or death | Peter Lee

Powerlessly witnessing actions and events that contradict an individual’s moral values can have a similar, mentally traumatising outcome. Although moral injury was originally associated with military personnel, it can be seen in the situations faced by COVID-19 medical staff

region or even country. There is still a code-based ethical obligation upon them to meet the needs of their patients but one they cannot always fulfil. So another option is to make judgements on anticipated outcomes – a consequence-based ethic. Who is most likely to survive? Social norms, like giving equal value to the lives of the elderly and the young, might be put aside in the COVID-19 context. In that situation the young tend to be prioritised. Doctors and nurses then have to live with those decisions about who to let die. When individuals are called upon to repeatedly act in ways that violate their core moral values, moral injury can result. William Nash and his colleagues define it as [C]hanges in biological, psychological, social, or spiritual functioning resulting from witnessing or perpetrating acts or failures to act that transgress deeply held, communally shared moral beliefs and expectations. Powerlessly witnessing actions and events that contradict an individual’s moral values can have a similar, mentally traumatising outcome. Although moral injury was originally associated with military personnel, it can be seen in the situations faced by COVID-19 medical staff. The elderly patient mentioned above went on to die and the doctor has to live with her decision: I call her daughter. She is understanding. She doesn’t say much. But no one wants to be told on the phone that a hospital is going to leave their mother to die. ‘Will she be comfortable?’ was her first response. In truth, it’s hard to be comfortable when dying with COVID-19 . I eventually get out at 11pm and walk into London’s empty, dead streets – I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone. These words are a warning and a reminder for those who have to take terrible, painful decisions in uncertain situations. Regardless of your training or education you will ultimately be alone to make the big calls. Then you will have to live with those decisions.

About the Author Dr Peter Lee is Professor of Applied Ethics, Director, Security and Risk Research and Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK. He is author of Reaper Force: Inside Britain's Drone Wars peter.lee@port.ac.uk

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The complexity of business schools Kai Peters and Howard Thomas wonder how long business schools can survive the growing complexity of their industry

ncreasingly, universities and, relatedly, business schools have become more complex and complicated – with multiple activities, multiple locations and multiple audiences. For example, state-wide higher-education systems exist across many US states including California, Texas, Virginia and Illinois while complex groupings of different Catholic clerical orders run universities around the world. Complexity is increasing even at the more mundane level of individual universities and business schools, be they integrated or stand-alone institutions. Many work across multiple sites bridging urban and suburban campuses. Add to this feeder/foundation-year activities and expanding online education often delivered in conjunction with for-profit partners, international campuses, academic partnerships and validation activities.

One can view the managerial challenges of these more complex institutions as a three-dimensional Rubik’s cube with one axis representing products, another location and a third markets. Defining the suitable strategies and structures for institutional success, alas, is neither simple nor as well developed as it ought to be 20

For another layer of complexity, consider the different products and services ranging from “business to consumer” items such as undergraduate and post-graduate pre-experience degrees, to post-experience programmes, part-time programmes for working professionals through to business to business executive education where corporate learning and development managers purchase education on behalf of their staff. Lastly, scale these elements up to a global level. At last count, there are close to 200 countries in the world. Many of these countries are involved in international student mobility either as exporters or importers of students. In some, direct student recruitment is possible. In most, educational agents intermediate between the university and a school. One can thus view the managerial challenges of these more complex institutions as a three-dimensional Rubik’s cube with one axis representing products, another location and a third markets. Defining the suitable strategies and structures for institutional success, alas, is neither simple nor as well developed as it ought to be.

The complexity of business schools | Kai Peters and Howard Thomas

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Recent trends In some cases institutions were brought together through mergers policies instigated by local, regional or national governments. In France particularly, funding that had previously been provided by local Chambers of Commerce for business schools began to dry up leading to new constellations of multi-location institutions. French schools KEDGE and SKEMA are examples of these top-down driven mergers. In other cases, mergers have occurred in more of a “mergers and acquisitions” manner to achieve critical mass. Reading University’s acquisition of Henley Business School in the UK, Arizona State’s acquisition of Thunderbird in the US and Hult’s UK acquisition of Ashridge are all examples along these lines. Invariably there was an acquirer and the target. Taking place mostly (but not exclusively) in the private sector and often (but not solely) originating from US or UK for-profit educational groups, a “buy and build’ strategy has been pursued. In some cases, the portfolio of schools has become significant and invariably the range of institutions acquired have covered a wide range of subjects and degree levels. A particularly interesting example to watch is EM Lyon in France, which not only has multiple locations but has also recently been acquired by a consortium of investment firms. A number of individual institutions have expanded to the point where they have become small groups in and of themselves, having added suburban or urban campuses, international locations, and online activities. One of the authors’ own institution, Coventry University, now has five sites in the UK, three internationally, extensive online provision and a range of partnership arrangements. This article thus has two goals. The first sets out to investigate what these market changes mean for increasingly complex business school internal management. The second is to reflect on what these developments mean for business school associations and accreditation activities. 22

Coventry University now has five sites in the UK, three internationally, extensive online provision and a range of partnership arrangements

Management consequences There are two key effects of this scaling-up that deserve attention. The first is definitely paramount for many university-based business schools. It is simply that business schools are often no longer, if they ever were, masters of their own destinies. Decision making on scaling-up locations and activities largely happen beyond their control. New initiatives such as branch campuses are almost always determined at a central university level, especially given that they often offer multiple subject area courses. Mergers and acquisitions are also centrally run. Over time, this leads to business school activities in a variety of different forms and locations. A business school will no doubt have opinions and may well be consulted but generally does not have the final say on the original initiatives or management later on. Similarly, how support services are organised across a university is also not in the gift of the business school. There is presently a noticeable trend in many universities to centralise a whole host of services in the name of efficiency and of avoiding duplication or divergence.

The complexity of business schools | Kai Peters and Howard Thomas

Business subjects are lucrative cash cows for universities and are often used by the central university administration to fund more “proper” university activities. One could be significantly harsher here but at last glance university presidents seem to view business schools more as funding sources than as legitimate university departments

One clear factor, at least in the UK, is the increasingly stifling set of regulations faced by all institutions. There is thus a marked increase in centralised marketing, student recruitment and admissions; of centralised student advisory services, and of careers planning in addition to centralised registry, legal, financial, IT and HR services. There clearly are benefits here but also down-sides in relation to the increased adoption of command/control, micro-management styles of management at university level. Business subjects are lucrative cash cows for universities and are often used by the central university administration to fund more “proper” university activities. One could be significantly harsher here but at last glance university presidents seem to view business schools more as funding sources than as legitimate university departments. For both the university-based and multilocation stand-alone business schools, the increased complexity has also, of course, led to multiple challenges on the more prosaic educational delivery tasks such as developing common educational goals among the various campuses; paying attention to the different groups of students and faculty members; ensuring that the curriculum, the standards of admissions and progression and professional support services are of high quality and consistent; and lastly, ensuring that geographically separated staff members can meet each other and collaborate rather than compete. Sometimes these challenges have been met and group cohesion is successful; often the consequence is a group of largely autonomous entities related fundamentally but in name only. Higher education institutions increasingly ought to reflect on how corporations, professional service firms or for that matter hotel groups or supermarkets manage local responsiveness with overall cohesion. This is a theme we are investigating at the moment. We live too much in a business school / university bubble. 23

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Consequences for accreditation While business school accreditation bodies nobly seek to be aware of trends and developments in the “sector” insufficient attention has been paid to the role of the university and the expansion of institutions into complex groups. Increasingly, there is thus a need to expand the lens from a focus on the business school to a focus on the business school within its national context and especially within the context of a broader university. Presently, many accreditation guidelines assume business school have autonomy and control, which is simply not the case in many institutions. This can lead to ambiguity and disconnect between the “rules” and the realities. In touring the business school landscape extensively, one comes across myriad institutions where business subjects are taught in other locations and often in other faculties where faculty members are not “academically qualified, research active and fully participating”. Validation and franchising arrangements, which exist widely in the UK and many Australian and Canadian universities, mean that parent university degrees are awarded to distant students. These partnerships tend to generate modest incomes but can also be seen as a positive form of sharing expertise and thus worthy activities. It depends on one’s lens. It must also be noted here that expecting business schools in developing markets like West Africa or Indonesia to adhere to Western expectations is unrealistic. Whether they are the other side of a validation agreement or independent, they rarely have the history or resource base to engage in a research paradigm that is considered “proper” in developed nations. In terms of the control of the marketing, student recruitment and management mechanisms, there are also issues where rules and realities diverge. Clearly, ring-fencing the business school and suggesting it should control all of these means of production is laudable as the business school would almost always prefer this; but it is unrealistic in the context of university vice-chancellors and presidents who make the rules. Making sense of all of this and passing appropriate accreditation judgement is therefore a significant challenge but one that must continuously be tackled. 24

The complexity of business schools | Kai Peters and Howard Thomas

At the time of writing (late March 2020) it seems certain that the present COVID-19 pandemic will lead to further closures and mergers. Additionally, the pandemic will stimulate important changes in learning approaches, involving perhaps even more novel mixes of on-line and F2F teaching

12k

Since 1984 the US Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid database notes that over 12,000 branch campuses and complete institutions have been shut because they were unsustainable

Conclusion If, from a management side, we posit that structure should follow strategy and we also add some insights from professional service firms then we can examine these issues more dispassionately. If we look at income versus cost control on one axis and centralisation versus decentralisation on another, we can draw some conclusions in those realms. For example, on the income-generating side, overall brand cohesion and undergraduate recruitment in markets where there is a centralised governmental student application system make sense as centralised collective university or group endeavours. Specific “product” marketing, especially at the post-graduate level, requires specific knowledge about the subject, local conditions, student recruitment markets, and the ecosystem of actors and employers in that field. This, we suggest, is best left to individual business schools and faculties. On the cost management side, professional services are generally best structured in a centralised manner for cohesion and fairness across an institution. We would nevertheless posit that physical centralisation creates “them and us” conflicts and that embedding professional services within business schools and faculties while drawing them together as a collective is preferable. Matrix management is clearly unavoidable here but there are ways to make it work. In all cases, open and honest discussions rather than turf wars are necessary. On the accreditation side, it is hard to suggest a simple solution but it is clear to us that increased competition leading to financial difficulties for some institutions will continue the trend towards increased size, complexity and ambiguity in those institutions that survive.

By way of focus, since 1984 the US Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid database notes that over 12,000 branch campuses and complete institutions have been shut because they were unsustainable. At the time of writing (late March 2020) it seems certain that the present COVID-19 pandemic will lead to further closures and mergers. Additionally, the pandemic will stimulate important changes in learning approaches, involving perhaps even more novel mixes of on-line and F2F teaching. This will improve the quality, effectiveness and reach of responsible management education. It will also alter the business model of business schools significantly. For anyone in higher education, these developments ought to sharpen the mind and suggests to us in any case that we all need to balance the rights bestowed through academic freedom with the responsibilities for competent and prudent management and an acknowledgement of the challenges we face. From both a management and an accreditation perspective, we believe that an open dialogue about these realities for business schools should be ongoing and very worthwhile. Business schools need to continue to prove their academic legitimacy and value in order not to descend into a permanent cash cow status. There will be no simple answers but awareness and collaborative acknowledgement of these realities is paramount.

About the Authors Kai Peters is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Business and Law, Coventry University, UK Kai.peters@coventry.ac.uk Howard Thomas is Emeritus Dean, Singapore Management University, and Professor Questrom School of Business, Boston University, US howardthomas@smu.edu.sg

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Strategy education is under siege. It is heavily criticised both from outside and from within. As a way forward, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink makes the case for teaching integrative strategy methods and illustrates what such methods could look like

The case for teaching integrated strategy

The case for teaching integrated strategy | Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

he traditional way of teaching strategy is to make students learn a significant number of analytical frameworks — the five forces framework, SWOT analysis, the BCG matrix and so on — and apply these to a number of cases, mostly representing large and successful western companies. This is also what best-selling textbooks such as Johnson & Whittington’s (with varying co-authors) Exploring Strategy look like: thick colourful books containing a catalogue of analytical frameworks in the first half and a large set of cases in the second. Obviously, this is a bit of a caricature but it is also not too far off from how strategy is taught in many business schools across the globe. And it has been like this for the past four decades. On one hand, we could see this as a remarkable success story. After all, a format that survives that long, must be good. On the other hand, it is this format that is heavily criticised — not just by outsiders or by the media but by strategy professors themselves. When we read their articles in respected journals there is a host of criticism of the content and quality of this type of strategy education. The most important criticisms levelled are that it is: • Too fragmented into too many tools and frameworks that at best only loosely connected • Too instrumental and focused on immediate usefulness • Too much emphasising economic analysis at the expense of more synthetic and artistic skills. • Not enough value-based, or focused on the wrong values, thereby fostering individualistic unethical behaviour • Too simplistic and prescriptive in its reliance on case-based solution finding • Too much based on folk wisdom, gurus and a pretence of knowledge rather than valid theory • Losing its relevance in today’s world with its content mostly being decades old

On one hand, we could see [how strategy is taught] as a remarkable success story. After all, a format that survives that long, must be good. On the other hand, it is this format that is heavily criticised — not just by outsiders or by the media but by strategy professors themselves

Taken together, these concerns form a broad, deep and quite coherent critique. While they differ substantially, they share their response to the same core of the dominant, traditional approach to strategy education: the textbook-based learning and application of a large repertoire of analytical tools and techniques. Of course, there are many exceptions, variations and alternatives across the thousands of strategy courses that are offered around the globe. However, with such broad and consistent concerns directed at the core of the dominant mode of teaching, there is wide agreement that innovation is needed. Avenues for improvement can be sought in every aspect of education. One could, for example, look for improvements regarding: when strategy education is offered (undergraduate or postgraduate?); where (in the classroom, online or elsewhere?); or how (through case-based teaching or action-learning?). Such choices have a crucial influence on the delivery and effectiveness of education. If we really want to improve strategy education, though, we also have to look deeper at what is being taught. If, as the criticisms jointly suggest, the core of strategic management education should not be a repertoire of analytical tools then what can we put in its place? One answer to this question is teaching more integrative strategy methods (ISMs). 27

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To be truly integrative ISMs also need to bring together the various people that have a stake in the strategy process. This means not only including senior management but also middle management and employees from throughout an organisation, thereby fostering interaction and dialogue

Strategy Generation

Mapping 2

3 Assessing

Innovating 4

Activating

5 Formulating

6 Planning

7 Organising

Rather than fragmented analytical tools, ISMs reflect comprehensive, coherent approaches to strategy. They bring together a significant portion of the complexity of strategy in a coherent manner and guide their users — leaders, managers, students, educators — through the strategy process in a systematic way. Leaving the notion of strategy aside, defining ISMs requires an explanation of what is meant by “integrative” and what is meant by “method”. Starting with the latter, a method is “a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one” (Oxford Dictionary). This indicates that a method contains a systematic approach by which the user can achieve something specific. Along that line, a strategy method is a systematic approach that someone can use to manage strategy. An integrative strategy method, then, is a method with an integrative character. ISMs are integrative in four ways: with respect to the content, process, tools and people involved in strategy. • First, they are integrative in the sense that they bring together a significant portion of the complexity of strategy content in a coherent manner. This means that an ISM should include key elements of strategy such as goals, values, customers, competitors, risks, resources and competences and bring those all together in a systematic way. • Second, an ISM needs to be integrative with respect to its coverage of the strategy process. It needs to cover the entire strategy process, or at least a significant part of it, and combine the various parts into a coherent and systematic approach. Should key strategy processes be 28

Bridging

9 Realising

Strategy Execution

Figure 1 The Strategy Process (Source: Kraaijenbrink (2018), The Strategy Handbook, Part 2)

missing — such as strategy execution — this limits the integrative nature of the method, since strategy generation and strategy execution are intertwined. • Third, ISMs also need to be integrative in the way they bring together a variety of tools. Even though the toolbox character of the current approach to strategy education is criticised, this does not render tools useless. Despite their limitations, tools can have substantial value in practice. However, rather than using them in a fragmented or stand-alone manner, ISMs can bring them together in a coherent and integrative process so that their purpose, role and relationship to other tools is clear. • Finally, to be truly integrative ISMs also need to bring together the various people that have a stake in the strategy process. This means not only including senior management but also middle management and employees from throughout an organisation, thereby fostering interaction and dialogue. This involvement is important because, as research shows, it leads both to analytically better strategy as well as socially more acceptable strategy that people can and want to execute. Given the concerns that are raised about the state of strategy education, arguing for ISMs is almost a truism.

The case for teaching integrated strategy | Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

By their integrative content and tools, ISMs address the critiques of fragmentism and oversimplicity; by their integrative process they address the critiques of instrumentalism and lack of synthetic and artistic skills; and by their integrative participation of people they address the critique of individualism. And, even though ISMs per se do not directly address the critiques of the pretence of knowledge and lack of relevance, their careful development should address these concerns too. The field of strategy is certainly not short of analytical frameworks — there are literally hundreds of them. But when it comes to ISMs, there are only a few. A reading of the strategy literature — articles, monographs and textbooks — reveals only two that are integrative and distinctive enough to be truly called ISMs: Michael Porter’s “dynamic theory of strategy” and Robert Kaplan and David Norton’s “closed loop management system”. Porter’s approach is reflected in his books Competitive Strategy (1980), Competitive Advantage (1985) and The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990) and accompanying articles, most notably his 1991 article “Towards a Dynamic Theory of Strategy” in Strategic Management Journal. In his publications, Porter constructs an integrative approach that moves from a macro-level understanding of the determinants of national competitive advantage, via a meso-level understanding of industry dynamics and a positioning relative to the competition, to the choice and alignment of the activities within a firm’s value chain. Kaplan and Norton’s integrative approach is described in three consecutive books: The Balanced 29

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Scorecard (1996), Strategy Maps (2004) and The Execution Premium (2008), as well as accompanying articles, especially their 2008 article “Mastering the Management System” in Harvard Business Review. Based on the idea that “what you measure is what you manage” they introduce a framework with four dimensions to measure: the balanced scorecard. Subsequently they bring a causal logic into this framework in the form of strategy maps that reflect cause-effect relationships between the four dimensions. Finally, they develop a five-step approach that they call the closed-loop management system that outlines a cyclical strategy process. One might argue that the ever-popular ‘missionvision-SWOT’ approach that we find in many strategy and marketing textbooks is integrative as well. But it is less complete and integrative than the previous two and it is hardly substantial. Finally, a more recent approach around the work of Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur on “business model generation” might be considered too. While not an ISM yet, it is wildly popular in education and practice and there are seeds present of an integrative approach to strategy. The brief review above immediately shows the main problem strategy education has if it wants to move forward along the lines suggested: there are hardly any ISMs available that can be taught—or at least that have made it into the mainstream literature. And as far as they are present, their core has been developed in the 1980s and 1990s — over 30 years ago. Furthermore, while they address some of the critiques, they hardly cover strategy execution or social and participative aspects of strategy making. And they are not exactly dynamic either. This means there is work to do. Not merely in terms of upgrading strategy education but also in terms of research and developing ISMs. Given the credo “practice as you preach”, I embarked on a journey seven years ago to develop an ISM better able to address the critiques than existing approaches. By adopting an action and design-research way of working in my teaching, consulting and research, I have developed an approach to 30

strategy that aims to be truly integrative in all four meanings of that term: content, process, tools and people. Throughout these years I have attempted to integrate the theoretical insights present in the strategy literature with practical experience in an iterative design process receiving feedback from students and managers while teaching and applying the emerging approach. The result is a nine-step cyclical and integrative approach covering the complete strategy process, both strategy generation and its execution (see Figure 1). This process is guided by a “canvas”-like template that I have called the “Strategy Sketch” See Figure 2. This sketch lays out the 10 key elements of strategy in a visual way, thereby offering an integrative view on strategy content. The way of working throughout the nine-step process is inherently participative in nature, including all

The case for teaching integrated strategy | Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

Risks & Costs

6 Revenue Model

Partners

Resources & Competences

Value Proposition

Customers & Needs

Competitors

key persons in and outside an organisation that affect or are affected by the strategy. This makes the approach also integrative with respect to the people that are involved. Finally, as part of the approach, other (new or existing) frameworks can be used to deepen any of the 10 elements, for example, for competitive analysis or value proposition design. This makes the approach integrative in terms of tools as well. Critiques can, of course, be levelled at this approach as well. It is undoubtedly far from perfect but that is not the point. It illustrates what strategy approaches could look like if we focus on developing and using ISMs. The advantage of using an ISM like this in strategy education is that it offers students an integrative oversight of the complexity of strategy generation and execution while at the same time providing them structured guidance in how strategy can be actually generated and executed in practice see Figure 1. The learning that can take place by having students study and apply such an approach has significantly more depth and practical relevance than the traditional approach. Therefore, it is key for progress in strategy education that moreâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and perhaps better â&#x20AC;&#x201D;ISMs are revived, developed and adopted. And when this refocus of what is taught in strategy education is combined with advancements in when, where, and how strategy is taught, we can even expect further improvements in addressing the criticism. Not only concerning the quality of strategy education, but also and ultimately more importantly, that of strategy in practice.

8 Values & Goals

Organisational Climate

10 Trends & Uncertainties

Figure 2 The Strategy Sketch (source: Kraaijenbrink (2015), The Strategy Handbook, Part 1)

About the Author Jeroen Kraaijenbrink is an independent strategy writer, speaker, trainer and consultant, lecturing at the University of Amsterdam Business School and TSM Business School in the Netherlands. He has authored several books on strategy, is a Forbes.com contributor and initiator of the online learning platform betterasstrategy.com.

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How a leading Hong Kong business school responded to both social and health crises. By Tam Kar Yan

Ready for disruptive changes in education

Ready for disruptive changes in education | Tam Kar Yan

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced extensive experimentation with online teaching globally. Such experimentation started earlier in Hong Kong than in many other regions due to the social unrest in late 2019. This was followed closely by the pandemic outbreak in early 2020

he COVID-19 pandemic has forced extensive experimentation with online teaching globally. Such experimentation started earlier in Hong Kong than in many other regions due to the social unrest in late 2019. This was followed closely by the pandemic outbreak in early 2020. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) began promoting online teaching some time ago but not many faculty members had tried it until online teaching became the only option to safeguard studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; safety amid the ongoing disruptions in the city. The social unrest in fall 2019 provided HKUST with an early experience of rapidly migrating the whole university to an online teaching mode, which we built upon in spring 2020. To serve as food for thought, we hope to share our experiences of providing online education and some other issues we addressed during this challenging time.

An early taste of online teaching The social unrest that rocked Hong Kong last year (2019) made headlines around the world. The confrontation and violence escalated towards the last two months of 2019 and caused mounting disruption throughout the city, including its higher-education institutions. Owning to safety concerns, some non-local students started to leave the city. At HKUST, the decision to suspend all classes was made in early November. With only three weeks left until the end of the fall term, HKUST decided to switch to online teaching. All courses were required to migrate online over a few days, if not overnight. Individual faculty were free to make choices for their own classes: synchronous or asynchronous; recordings; voice-over presentations; Zoom or something else. The main objective was to tide the semester over. Our MBA was the first programme across the university to get its online courses up and running using Zoom. About 30% of MBA students attended classes online at that time depending on the extent of traffic disruption to campus. Within about a week, most courses for our broad portfolio of MSc programmes and for our 3,500 undergraduate business students were also available online. Through the conscientious efforts of faculty and staff, the delivery of these programmes was carefully monitored and many teething issues were resolved. In response to strong demand from students and with enhanced safety measures on campus, face-to-face classes were soon resumed for our MBA and MSc programmes, accompanied by an online option for those who expressed concerns about their safety or found it difficult to commute to campus. 33

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230 50% HKUST has about 230 exchange partners across 36 countries around the world. All of our undergraduate students are encouraged to apply for overseas exchange places to complement their programmes

We also welcome incoming exchange students. In fact, more than 50% of our undergraduate students will have at least onesemester international exchange before graduation

Listening and responding However, there was still considerable concerns from some students to online learning. Some groups of students launched petitions on social media platforms, questioning the quality of online courses and their methods of assessment. At our business school, undergraduate students need to select their major by the end of fall term in their second year and thus grades from most courses are required by this point. Hence, we decided to retain the original grading schemes after migrating to the online mode, despite some dissatisfaction. To address these, we communicated to students that we understood their concerns regarding online learning. While holding firm that continuing courses online was the best way to achieve the two objectives of ensuring safety and continuing learning, we were mindful that communication and sympathy were vital. Our senior administrators and programme offices explained the reasons for all major decisions, responding rapidly to students’ questions and meeting with students in person. Multiple measures, including providing additional support and resources for students and faculty, were introduced to ensure that we could deliver high-quality learning despite the change in teaching mode. In terms of assessment, we encouraged the use of alternatives to traditional closed-book proctored exams and provided faculty with suggestions of best practices for designing online exams. Student feedback at the end of the term revealed that while most classes had gone well, those classes held in synchronous, interactive mode, had, on average, done better. 34

Preparing for COVID-19 Having weathered the storm in the fall, we anticipated face-to-face or mixed-mode classes in spring term in 2020 but this did not happen. With the outbreak of COVID-19, HKUST made another decision to deliver all classes online to contain the spread of the pandemic. To prepare for the change, the university deferred the beginning of spring term by two weeks, to February 19. A Task Force led by the President oversees the overall safety of the campus and devises measures to cope with the disruptions to teaching and research activities. Now a crossdepartmental team, led by the Provost Office and consisting of Associate Deans of all Schools and senior administrators from our Center for Education Innovation, Academic Registry and Information Technology Services Center was created to be the driving force in facilitating the exchange of experiences and achieving university-wide co-ordination to migrate all courses online within the two-week extension. Based on the experience of the fall, it was decided that all classes would be in “online, real-time, interactive” mode. The team, which had gained early experience back in November, quickly decided to support only one delivery platform—Zoom. The Zoom platform was chosen not only to allow focused training and support but on account of its accessibility around the world, server capacity and integration with existing online learning management systems. Although some faculty members had experience of teaching online, online delivery was still new to most of the 680 faculty members at HKUST. They were encouraged to experience online learning, first as students and then as teachers, in multiple training sessions conducted to get everyone up to speed. With repeated training and hotline support, they have formed their own support community and started learning from each other. Meanwhile, constant feedback and best practices from faculty were put together on a one-stop webpage.

Ready for disruptive changes in education | Tam Kar Yan

With a view to achieving the same outcome for our programmes, a continuous quality assessment was put in place, with a one-button online feedback form for students to anonymously express their views or report technical problems. After around eight weeks (as of mid-April), most faculty had settled in quite well. To review the effectiveness of online learning, a student survey was conducted in mid-March. Over 70% of the students surveyed were satisfied or very satisfied with the technical aspects of their online courses and the instructorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; arrangements for the course logistics. Many students rated their learning as effective or highly effective. Achieving this level of satisfaction would not have been possible without the sustained efforts of all members of the university.

Above and top: An instructor delivers a real-time, interactive online class Left: A one-button online feedback form for students

New possibilities The occurrence of social unrest and the pandemic outbreak within a few months of each other drove the rapid adoption of online teaching across the university. Our experiments have taught us that, even after these crises subside, online education offers many new possibilities. In our ongoing endeavours to improve teaching and learning, we have observed that some teachers who are not good at traditional teaching can perform well online whereas other teachers find interactive features offered by online teaching, such as polling and screen sharing, new and useful. We are also pleased to see several students, who would normally be quiet in physical classrooms, participate actively through online â&#x20AC;&#x153;chatâ&#x20AC;?. Other issues HKUST has about 230 exchange partners across 36 countries around the world. All of our undergraduate students are encouraged to apply for overseas exchange places to complement their programmes. We also welcome incoming exchange students. In fact, more than 50% of our undergraduate students will have at least onesemester international exchange before graduation. In the fall term 2019, our business school alone hosted 190 incoming exchange students. Due to safety concerns on campus and in Hong Kong, these students were given the option of leaving earlier and continuing their classes remotely in their home countries. 35

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They were also offered the choice of pass/fail grading or withdrawing from their courses. Our major challenge was to ensure that they could return home safely if they wanted to. The majority of these 190 overseas students chose to leave early. Shortly after finishing the arrangements for the incoming exchange students, the COVID-19 pandemic began to pose a different level of risk to our 222 outgoing exchange students around the world, some of whom were in the hardest-hit cities. A flexible approach, including offering students the possibility of resuming their studies later at HKUST or taking classes via remote learning offered by host institutions, was adopted to help those who wanted to return to Hong Kong or their home countries. Our programme office worked around the clock to check their whereabouts, advise individual students on their return and communicate with our partner institutions regarding the status of our students. Of all of the outgoing exchange students in the spring term, over 170 have already returned home. For those non-local students returning to Hong Kong from affected regions, the university arranged a quarantine facility to host these students for two weeks before they returned to their dormitories. Today, universities around the world are facing exceptional challenges with the running of student exchange programmes. As students preparing to study abroad need to make arrangements many months in advance, HKUST has announced the suspension of its undergraduate exchange programme (inbound and outbound), including that in fall term 2020, as we feel that this is in our students’ best interests. 36

Ongoing support MBA students tend to be especially keen to look for networking opportunities to advance their careers and thus find these difficult times particularly stressful. Indeed, many people and institutions around the world, including businesses, governments and universities, are victims of these unfortunate circumstances. We sympathise with students’ concerns and are trying our best to minimise the impact of the virus outbreak on their learning. For examples, we have introduced series of workshops to help students manage changes and crises. We have arranged online recruitment talks and provided training on online interviews. We have called on and received strong support from our alumni to provide jobs, internships and consultancy projects for graduating students. We have invited senior alumni including those who graduated in 2003—the year in which Hong Kong was hit hardest by the SARS outbreak—to share their stories of how they grew stronger and wiser after a particularly challenging period in Hong Kong. Every cloud has a silver lining. Hong Kong rebounded quickly after the SARS outbreak. We believe that as long as we uphold our commitment to providing the best education in good times and bad, our graduates will succeed in their lifelong journeys. Instead of focusing on short-term impact, they should concentrate on the long-term value of their investment and prepare for the new opportunities ahead. Much like our online education experience, when the right time comes, their efforts will pay off. HKUST conducted an online forum to exchange online teaching experience, attended by representatives of more than 40 universities around the world. Readers can watch on: http://cei.ust.hk/migrating-wholeuniversity-online-real-time-interactive-teaching

About the Author Tam Kar Yan is Dean, HKUST Business School

Get in touch: ITP@insead.edu

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How to develop collaborative projects that drive innovation Boston Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Questrom School of Business is creating an innovative approach to identifying co-operative ways to improve business education By Paul Carlile, Steven Davidson and Howard Thomas

How to develop collaborative projects that drive innovation | Paul Carlile, Steven Davidson and Howard Thomas

The Business Education Jam Global Symposium was held at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and brought together 31 Deans, faculty, administrators, and organisational representatives from over a dozen countries and 25 organisations

he Business Education Jam Global Symposium was held at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, in November 2019. This unique collaboration brought together 31 Deans, faculty, administrators, and organisational representatives from over a dozen countries and 25 organisations. Most participants had engaged in one of the nine regional Business Education Jams held across the world between 2017 and 2019, and each brought a unique interest in driving forward management education in innovative ways. The regional Jams had emerged from discussions following the original Global Business Education Jam, which was centred “virtually” at Boston University in 2015, powered by IBM Jam technology, and sponsored by leading organizations including EFMD, GMAC, AACSB, the Financial Times, Merck, Johnson & Johnson and Santander Bank. The purpose of the follow on regional Jams, which were held in partnership with schools across the world, were to identify the local challenges and opportunities to improve business education that were not easily identified in the initial Global Business Education Jam. The idea behind the subsequent global symposium was not to have another meeting or conference but to physically bring together deans, administrators and association executives in a way that prompted innovative brainstorming and fostered meaningful, collaborative projects. The group assembled in Boston was a very diverse and highly motivated set of individuals invited for the PURPOSE of developing (hacking) collaborative projects during the day-and-a-half event. The other PURPOSE was to introduce a shared methodology of developing (hacking) collaborative projects that could then be taken back and used in each individual’s location and context, to further advance their projects. This methodology was developed at Questrom over the course of the past 3 years as we took insights from the initial Global Business Jam and turned them into sustainable collaborative projects, including the creation of two new

The idea behind the subsequent global symposium was not to have another meeting or conference but to physically bring together deans, administrators and association executives in a way that prompted innovative brainstorming and fostered meaningful, collaborative projects

degree programmes both featured as exemplars of innovation. The integrated, project-based MS in Management Students programme was spotlighted by Poets & Quants as a “breakthrough” master’s programme and named on its list of “The Most Innovative Business School Ideas of 2015”. The second is the online MBA, launching in Fall 2020 in partnership with edX, and built from the ground up with an integrated, purposeful curriculum that can scale led to Questrom being named by Poets & Quants as one of the “10 Business Schools to Watch” in 2020. So, the PURPOSE of the Global Symposium was to develop the CONTENT of the potential projects and, more importantly, introduce the PROCESS of how those projects could be created and sustained. What we outline below are the PROCESS details of the methodology we used to lead this truly unique and collaborative event. This methodology is an amalgam of various design thinking approaches as well as other open innovation influences such as hackathons. The method was structured for a short-duration event (essentially 10 hours of working together within and across groups). 39

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Introductions and developing topics (depending on the size of the group this can take about two hours. You can start with a dinner so they can get to know each other before this session begins) The event began in the evening after an informal dinner. After that initial socialisation, we had each individual briefly share the challenges in business education that they faced, with a particular emphasis on unique characteristics of these challenges based on their region. This sharing framed the following prompt: What question would you like answered while you are here? This provided an opportunity for group members to introduce themselves and their role and the problems and challenges that were motivating them in a very natural fashion. It also allowed them to hear each other’s challenges and what they valued and they began to see common themes despite differences in region and role. At this early stage it is critical to develop a variety of possible topics and challenges, but also to develop a common language for those involved to jointly understand that variety. All of these challenges are recorded by the facilitator on a large board and are then collaboratively arranged under categories of similarity through the engagement of the larger group. This can form between 12 to 15 categories that will be used as a starting point for the working session that begins the morning of the following day.

Figure 1 Developing (hacking) collaborative projects Step #1 (90 minutes)

Step #2 (90 minutes)

Step #3 (90 minutes

WHAT

WHO

HOW

What problem or unmet

Who needs to be involved

How will the project work

need do you want to

to address this problem?

•W ho are the potential

• What does success

address as a group? • What consequences

The collaborative project methodology The next morning a summary of the 12 to 15 categories, grouped according to four or five key themes by the facilitators, are handed out to all the participants. Time is then allowed for groups to begin to self-organise around themes and define a topic that was most consequential to them. Once groups were formed around topics, the facilitator explained the project methodology (see Figure 1) that each group will complete in their breakout rooms. The method has three steps: 1) WHAT problem will your group address? 2) WHO needs to be involved to address this problem? 3) HOW will the project work to address this problem? 40

does it have on

stakeholders and why

education in the region?

would they participate?

look like? •W hat activities and

• How was the problem reframed by the group?

•W ho are unusual

resources are needed?

suspects that have addressed problems like

•W ho else needs

this in other industries?

to participate? •W hy are you addressing this problem?

Present/Feedback

Present/Discussion

How to develop collaborative projects that drive innovation | Paul Carlile, Steven Davidson and Howard Thomas

By reframing we mean that as the group talks about how the problem manifests itself from each of their experiences they develop new insights, expand the potential problem space that they want to address and hence identify underlying assumptions about the source of the problem and reframe the problem accordingly

Each step takes approximately 90 minutes. This consists of 60 minutes for each group to complete each step of the method, followed by a short two-minute presentation on a large post-it note by each group to the full group. Individuals from the other groups then provide written feedback and some oral feedback. Written feedback is captured on medium-sized post-its and gathered together for the presenting team. Explaining each of the steps in the process STEP #1: Reframing: The process of identifying topics and then self-organising into groups working around a particular topic initiates Step #1 (approximately 90 minutes). But once the group begins to work together it is important for members to come to a common agreement about the topic they want to address. We often use the language of “framing and then reframing” the problem to describe this iterative process of improvement. By reframing we mean that as the group talks about how the problem manifests itself from each of their experiences they develop new insights, expand the potential problem space that they want to address and hence identify underlying assumptions about the source of the problem and reframe the problem accordingly. From a pure design-thinking point of view each group develops a “How might we …” statement framing WHAT the problem they will focus on. Presentation/feedback to Step 1 (5 minutes per team for presentation (2 minutes) and feedback (3 minutes)) Each group takes two minutes to state their problem and also reveal to the other groups key points where they developed new insights as they reframed the problem. The other groups wrote down their feedback on medium-sized post-it

notes that were gathered up by the facilitator and given to the presenting group. This is done to maximize feedback since all participants can make comments in the allotted five minutes of presentation and feedback. The facilitator also invited verbal comments from the audience about strengths or limitations of the problem statement and also offered suggestions on how to improve the problem statement. STEP #2: Unusual Suspects (approximately 90 minutes). Step 2 asks the question of WHO needs to be involved to address this problem. During the problem framing and reframing process in Step 1, the groups began to identify key people or stakeholders who would need to be involved to address the problem and develop a solution. It is important to examine a variety of stakeholders and clarify their involvement and interest in the project. So it is important to think about which stakeholders should be engaged first and how their participation could lead to developments that can then attract other important skills and resources to the project. When thinking about stakeholders who might drive innovation and change it is also important to think about what we call “unusual suspects” as important potential participants. Unusual suspects are people who have addressed a problem similar to the one your group is focusing on, but who have done so in a very different context or industry. For this reason, unusual suspects have a unique position in helping the stakeholder be more willing to change and innovate. During our symposium, these “unusual suspects” included musicians, celebrities, community organisers, and religious leaders. While the audience often reacts with shock or humour to the suggested names, working through them it becomes clear that each does offer unique and powerful ways to frame problems or advance solutions. Innovative projects are always associated with a lot of uncertainty, so bringing in an outsider who has done something similar “de-risks” parts of the innovation pathway and decreases resistance. 41

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Presentation/feedback for Step 2 Each group takes two minutes to restate their problem and outline the stakeholders who would need to be engaged to address the problem and specify what each of those stakeholders value and why they would agree to participate. Groups should also identify one or two unusual suspects that could be engaged as learning participants in addressing their problem. The other groups are given time to write down feedback on medium-sized post-it notes gathered up by the facilitator and given to the presenting group. Again, this is done to maximise feedback since all participants can make comments in the allotted five minutes of presentation and feedback. The facilitator invited verbal comments from the audience about key stakeholders and the choices of a given unusual suspect. STEP #3: Starting with the end in mind (approximately 90 minutes). With the problem reframed and the value that key stakeholders and unusual suspects bring to the project established there is now enough details of the WHAT and WHO to develop HOW this collaborative project will be structured. However, this very concrete step is the hardest and so we invoke another key design approach – “starting with the end in mind” – approach to make this process easier (see Figure 1 p40 for a summary of STEP #3). This backwards design approach helps reduce the sprawling complexity of hacking a collaborative project. This requires the group to describe what a successful outcome would look like for the problem you are trying to address. The group may even think about how that success could be measured, whether qualitatively or quantitatively, to be able to concretely specify the HOW that could lead to success. With that done you then need to outline the sequence of activities and the knowledge, financial and other resources needed to get to 42

that desired outcome. Identifying sequences of activities and resources not only places key stakeholders in a particular order, but might also identify additional people WHO need to be engaged to drive the sequence of activities that get at the desired outcome. The last stage of Step#3 is to reflect on WHY your group is addressing this problem. Even though we tapped into each individual’s motivations at the beginning of the symposium (what questions do they want answered) it is more important to get at a collective WHY of the group at the end of the symposium. Now that each group has hacked their projects (the WHAT, WHO and HOW) they have a more concrete understanding of the WHY – their PURPOSE in changing business education in their part of the world and that needs to be clearly stated at the end of this stage. Final presentation of Step #3 Figure 2 outlines a sequence of storyboarding the backwards design of the HOW of hacking a collaborative project. Each group outlined this on one or two large post-it notes and presented it to the other groups for the last interactive discussion. This discussion was not focused on the same kind of feedback as were the previous presentations but collectively identifying key insights about the essential CONTENT of the WHAT, WHO and HOW outlined in each project. This includes more general insights from across all the projects concerning the PROCESS of developing the WHAT, WHO and HOW of a collaborative project that can be used to drive innovation in business education in any region of the world. Outlining one of the projects at the event Figure 2, on page 43, is a summary of the “storyboarding” project with a focus on undergraduate business education.

How to develop collaborative projects that drive innovation | Paul Carlile, Steven Davidson and Howard Thomas

Figure 2 Storyboard format for presenting Step #3 (starting with the end in mind …) focused on the topics of improving undergraduate business programmes What does a successful outcome

What activities, resources

look like?

and experiences are needed?

• Achieving the highest reputation and

• Surveys/focus groups addressing needs

status both from academia and the wider audiences (media rankings) • A programme that balances hard and soft skills to improve management and managerial judgement • A programme educational philosophy that

of key stakeholders • Understanding “unusual suspects” eg how do sports coaches teach teams • Exploring the attitudes and beliefs of different audiences • Millenials

embraces humanities and the social

• Religious organisations

sciences and develops both analytical/

• Examining methods of interactive

technological acumen and skills of critical thinking and ethical moral judgement

participative learning • Studying approaches of experiential project-based learning

Who needs to participate and

Why are you addressing this problem?

in what order?

• A business undergraduate degree is the

• Teaching and research faculty in business education

largest and increasingly most popular programme globally

• Students

• Changing lifestyles and environmental

• Parents

influences must impact the content of

•P olicy makers in government and society

business education

•C ompanies, voluntary organisations,

• Business schools have focused much

mutual organisations, co-operative

greater attention on MBAs than other

organisations, professional organisations (eg law)

programmes. • The undergraduate (UG) programme

•U nusual suspects:

should have much more significant

•S ocial media companies

impact on global management education

Conclusion Reimagining business education is about large-scale change in schools and how the business education industry operates. Given this, the primary purpose of the Global Symposium starts with the recognition that this amount of change can only be catalysed through collaborative projects and ultimately realised by developing a network of collaborative projects to create and sustain innovation within and across schools. When these projects are developed and connected it develops key individuals with a reimagined career trajectory, resources that are necessary to sustain their efforts and new practices that can be leveraged to engage the large numbers of people required to drive change and innovation within schools and across the educational industry (using, in this case, the Business UG programme as an example). For us at Questrom, we have learned to drive change through creating projects and then stringing them together into a network of change. This would be true in our development of our experiential learning based MSMS programme and our new OMBA programme that will be delivered at scale. In all cases, it started with WHAT problem were we trying to solve, WHO did we need to engage and then HOW would it all get done. The WHY of reimagining business education has to start somewhere, but for the WHY to be realised it has to be catalysed and developed through a sequence of networked projects that make manifest and accumulate that reimagined change.

•E ntertainment companies • Gamers •S ports coaches •E xperiential learning (e.g. Lego serious play)

About the Authors Paul R Carlile is an Associate Professor of Management and Information Systems and the Senior Associate Dean for Innovation at Boston University Questrom School of Business. Steven H Davidson is Associate Dean, Decision Support and Strategic Analysis, at Boston University Questrom School of Business. Howard Thomas is the Ahmass Fakahany Distinguished Professor of Global Leadership at the Questrom School of Business, Boston University and Emeritus Dean and Professor at Singapore Management University.

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The 'Sustainable Business' and agriculture Jonathan Scott describes a front-line research project designed to reduce costs, increase revenues and create jobs in agriculture

Inputs

Unit (stage) inputs

The proces stage being examined (including subtasks)

Unit outputs (waste)

Unit outputs (waste) Outputs

Approximately 30% to 50% of the world's food is wasted due to poor work practices and other inefficiencies at various stages of production and storage. If waste is eliminated, total food production output could dramatically increase with little to no need for additional land water and other traditional inputs. The world does not have a food shortage problem, it has a food waste problem. From the Farm to the Fork Every stage of your work process contains waste

The Sustainable Business and agriculture | Jonathan Scott

he challenges posed by agriculture are becoming more pressing as the world struggles to meet its ever-growing need for food. By 2050, over nine billion people will need to be fed – two billion more than the current population. Additionally, the spread of prosperity and a longer-living populace, especially in China and India, is now producing increased demand for meat, eggs and dairy products that intensifies pressure to grow more corn and soybeans for a rising number of cattle, pigs and chickens. Indeed, some estimates claim that we may have to expand food production by 70%, including doubling the number of crops grown, within the next 30 years. Meanwhile, the agriculture industry is among the greatest contributors to climate change, emitting more greenhouse gases than all cars, trucks, trains and airplanes combined (largely from methane released by cattle and rice farms, nitrous oxide from fertilised fields and the clearing of rain forests to grow crops or raise livestock). Farming is also the single greatest consumer of water supplies and a major water polluter in the form of run-off from fertilisers. And agriculture continuously accelerates our planet’s loss of biodiversity as areas of grassland and forest are cleared to enlarge the size of farms. The overall result is a miasma of crop stress, job loss and even human displacement. For example, Homeland Security officials in the US have reported that a puzzling increase in the number of families showing up at the US border seeking asylum appear to be fleeing a hunger crisis in Guatemala’s western highlands. Years of meagre harvests, drought and the devastating effects of “coffee rust” fungus on an industry that employs large numbers of rural Guatemalans is speeding up an exodus of families from villages now bereft of jobs and food.

Solving agriculture problems on the front-line “Precision agriculture” involves detecting various forms of crop stress (for example diseases, pests, water issues, soil deficiencies and on) and applying corrective resource inputs (water, fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides) at the most opportune time and in the most effective and economical quantity, to plants or parts of a plant or crop. To accomplish its goal precision agriculture combines the science and technology of GPS, aircraft, satellites and specialised cameras to provide growers with the information they need to make informed decisions as early as possible – often before problems arise. Undeniably, the economics of early detection are a major benefit of “precision ag”, revealing potential financial and resource losses that humans may not notice until it is too late. Aerial imaging is the key According to Chenghai Yang, a leading agricultural research engineer with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its Aerial Application Technology Research Unit (AATRU), the cost savings that aerial imaging provides are significant. For example, a grower can save over $10,000 on fungicide costs if he or she has to spray only 30% of a 300-acre plot rather than 100% of the same area. Put another way, if a fungicide product costs $50 an acre, it would take $15,000 of product to spray the entire field, versus $4,500 to spray 90 acres, or 30%, of the field. Further south in Costa Rica, a precision ag multi-spectral imaging programme at Universidad EARTH worked with a local farm/owner and operator to help increase his harvest by 33% and his profits by $200 per hectare. The farmer had been growing sugarcane, grass and rice on his land for 21 years but in 2012 he began looking at ways to protect the fish populations living near his plantations by growing rice without synthetic pesticides. The result was so successful he converted 300 hectares of his land into a pesticide-free operation for which the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Costa Rica awarded him the Medalla del Mérito Agrícola (Agricultural Merit Medal) in 2016. In a recent interview, he said that precision ag also enables him to add more nutrients exactly when they are needed to boost the productivity of his soil. 45

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The cost of solutions is part of the problem Although agricultural aerial-imaging is projected to become an $18 billion global market, it remains largely untapped because few farmers know how to read aerial images and/or do not know where to go to learn such skills. Lack of access to cost-effective aerial platform tools that provide images create additional cost challenges. Satellites, for example, can produce pictures that cover massive areas of land but satellite usage is costly and sometimes difficult to schedule due to competition from other users. And satellites are never useful if the window of opportunity is missed due to weather or timing issues (for example the Landsat satellite covers the earth once every 16 days). At the other end of the spectrum are drones, which can deliver detailed, high-resolution images in a multitude of settings. If flown low enough, drones will produce incredible images in which a single pixel can reveal a 1 cm x 1 cm area on a plant or flower. Yet despite the benefits of a low-flying camera, the USDA's resident researcher on remote sensing and aerial imaging says that â&#x20AC;&#x153;from a practical standpoint, high-resolution plant-level or leaf-level details are not necessary for most field applicationsâ&#x20AC;?. To add to their limitations, drones are also bound by restricted flight ceilings heights (by law, drones must stay below 122 metres) and small payload weights that limit the size (and capability) of the on-board camera. The time-consuming chore of piloting drones is yet another headache. USDA research shows that it can take 80 flight-time minutes to photograph a two-square-kilometre area with a drone, which amounts to less than 1.5 sq km per hour â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and that does not include travel time to and from the area being photographed. Also, because the batteries that power multi-rotor drones only last 15-25 minutes (fixed-wing drones can stay aloft up to 45 minutes), multiple expensive batteries must be used, which adds to overall costs (high-end drones can have a purchase price of $100,000 or more). 46

Re-examining solution costs After years of research, AATRU has concluded that manned aircraft are usually the best way for farmers to obtain aerial images. For example, an aircraft equipped with two cameras can cover 83 sq km in about 40-minutes. Compare that to a drone, which would require two work-weeks to complete the same task. Equally important is the weight and cost of the camera(s) involved. Prices for small multi-spectral cameras range from $5,500 to $9,950 or much more depending on the image/data required and the payload capability of the aerial platform. Manned aircraft, however, can carry multiple imaging equipment (as well as additional items) because camera weight is not an issue. The USDA, for example, works with two different camera systems each of which it built for $1,500 apiece. Of course, the downside of manned aircraft is costs. Much imaging work with manned aircraft is

The Sustainable Business and agriculture | Jonathan Scott

Above: Jonathan T. Scott piloting a Cessna 152 Above right: The 'Sky Arrow' is one of the planes being examined

122m Drones are also bound by restricted flight ceilings heights, by law, they must stay below 122 metres

Satellites, for example, can produce pictures that cover massive areas of land but infrequently, for example the Landsat satellite covers the earth once every 16 days

done with a standard four-seat or six-seat singleengine aircraft, which, when new, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase and $100-$200 per hour to operate. Purchase price, maintenance costs, storage fees, insurance, pilot fees and more quickly add up, which puts such aircraft far beyond the reach of most budgets. 'The Sustainable Business' enters the picture Late in 2019, I asked the USDA why it uses a six-seat Cessna 206 (which consumes 64 litres of leaded aviation fuel per hour) to collect aerial images. Using The Sustainable Business and its template of analysing purchase price, operation costs and disposal costs to eliminate and prevent waste, I explained that the USDA could easily begin a basic waste-elimination programme by replacing one or more of the planes in its current fleet with a small two-seat aircraft that can fly at low speeds (some as low as 45 kph, which is ideal for imaging) and take-off and land on a patch of grass. Also, because small two-seat aircraft consume less than half the fuel that four-to-six seat aircraft require, and use automobile petrol as their fuel source (which costs half the price of aviation fuel), they can fly at a cost of $10-$12 per hour. The result is not only a profound reduction in expenses but fewer carbon and other emissions and other when compared to the distance a vehicle must travel to transport a drone over a two-week period to cover the same 20,480 acres that a small plane can photograph in 40 minutes.

Several two-seat aircraft even have the ability to fold their wings after use, which means they can be stored in a garage, not an expensive airport hangar. Additionally, the purchase price of some two-seat aircraft is less than the cost of high-end drones. To my surprise, the head of aerial imaging replied within a few hours and invited me to bring my plane to the USDA testing facility in Texas to gauge the fuel and other cost savings that a small manned aircraft can generate. I don’t own a plane, so the search began to round up a few aircraft for testing. One manufacturer told me it doesn’t conduct research and development and most of the others didn’t want to get involved unless I bought one of their planes! After many months of investigation, three aircraft have now been lined-up and testing is scheduled for mid-July (the date may change due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Global Focus is keen to broadcast the results throughout 2020 as a means of highlighting the benefits of front-line research – with aerial imaging being just the first link in the chain. Watch this space!

About the Author Jonathan T Scott is the author of several books including The Sustainable Business and The Entrepreneur's Guide to Building a Successful Business. He has taught at numerous top-50 business schools and is currently exploring ways to eliminate waste and increase production (and revenues) in agriculture

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

The COVID-19 experience will accelerate digital transformation even further says Martin Moehrle

Corporate learning as an accelerator of digital transformation igital transformation challenges traditional ways of organising work, of defining careers and work identity, of understanding competition within clearly defined boundaries, and of experiencing products and services. It requires organisations to somehow reinvent themselves and, thereby, to recognise that transformation is more about people than technology. Corporate learning has a dual role to play here: on the one hand, to transform itself and digitise the learning experience and, on the other, to enable the transformation of the enterprise. This article would like to shed light on the second aspect: corporate learning as an accelerator of digital transformation. To perform this role effectively, learning and development (L&D) has to evolve from the identity of a service provider (we deliver flawlessly what the business asks us to) and being a strategy enabler (together with the business we agree the best way to build the capabilities required to execute strategy and deliver accordingly) to become a transformation agent, challenging the business and the status quo. At this stage, corporate learning must lead, not lag. This is not a small request (see Figure 1). As a transformation agent, corporate learning must seek answers to questions such as (see Figure 2): • How to activate leadership and mobilise the entire workforce for a different future? • How to allow everyone to recognise their digital skills gap and how to close it? • How to take innovation outside R&D and make it everyone’s job? • How to promote agile ways of working? • How to rethink work as human augmented intelligence?

1. Engaging leadership and mobilising the workforce Digital transformation asks for a different way to lead. Today’s leaders increasingly recognise that in order to credibly transform their organisations, they must transform themselves and their teams. This time, leadership development must start at the very top and not one or two levels down. And it must entail a process of deep reflection about the changes ahead and the capabilities required for continued success. This might include a review of the current leadership model.

Value creation

Stage 3: transformational impact

Stage 2: strategy enablement

Stage 1: service delivery

Incremental effort

Figure 1 Three stages of value creation for corporate learning

Corporate learning as an accelerator of digital transformation | Martin Moehrle

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

1: Engaging leadership / mobilising workforce

In a comprehensive study, MIT â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in collaboration with Cognizant â&#x20AC;&#x201C; found an emergence of new and an erosion of traditional leadership competencies in addition to a set of enduring competencies that stand the test of times of digital transformation (see Figure 3). Empowerment and inspiration will replace command and control as leadership imperatives. It takes courage and insight to imagine a leadership model that pulls toward a digital future yet is simple and memorable and to then embed it in relevant people processes and engage leaders at all levels to embrace it and overcome cultural inertia. The engagement must be at scale and both top down as well as bottom up. In addition to engaging an organisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leadership, the entire workforce must be mobilised and prepared for a decade of reskilling and upskilling. All jobs, clearly some more than others, will be impacted by automation and artificial intelligence (AI). For some, it will be a matter of incremental learning. For others, it will mean changing professional identity and starting another career. It will be a major effort to motivate associates to take stock and ownership of their future employability. Concepts such as life-long learning and adaptive personalised learning have to be turned from idea into reality. Corporate learning must orchestrate an ecosystem of internal and external learning partners and resources to cope with such a singular challenge and it requires top management commitment and sponsorship. Increasingly, companies set aside a dedicated fund of significant size to finance the forthcoming reskilling wave, as this would surpass the means of normal learning budgets that get allocated at business unit level. These funds are held at enterprise level and facilitate internal mobility in line with the shifting demand for new skills. For example, Shell just announced a large-scale deal with the online learning provider Udacity to provide online education on AI for 2,000 employees. Novartis offers its employees a free online masters degree programme in data science via Coursera, another provider of online education. And Siemens launched a Fund for the Future that facilitates a bottom-up approach to creating new qualification projects. 50

2: Closing the digital skills gap

5: Rethinking work as human augmented intelligence

3: Promoting agility

4: Unleashing innovation

Figure 2 The five action areas for L&D to accelerate digital transformation

ERODING

ENDURING

EMERGING

Asks for permission

Creates a clear vision

Is purpose-driven

Has no-exception protocals

Focuses on performance

Nurtures passion

Reinforces command and control

Maintains a profit orientation

Manages top-down

Is customer-centric

Demonstrates authenticity

Avoids transparency

Leads by example

Demonstrates empathy

Micromanages

Demonstrates ethics and integrity

Employs an inclusive approach

Takes risks

Shows humility

Leads change

Works across boundaries

Creates rigid long-term plans Takes one-size-fits-all approach

Makes data-driven decisions

Figure 3 The new leadership playbook for the digital age

2. Closing the digital skills gap In the past few years, companies have been defining skills required in the context of their digital transformation. Based on this digital skills model, many provide a self-assessment tool for experts and for everyone else. This can happen in the form of an app to understand the level of digital literacy or mastery and to identify respective gaps and how to fill them. Competency models are updated and amended accordingly. Digital academies are launched to bundle learning offerings for digital skills. The academy scope can be broad to include communities of practice for areas of expertise such as data analytics and data science. Reverse mentoring programmes allow, for example, digital natives to teach senior management how to develop a social media footprint.

Shell just announced a large-scale deal with the online learning provider Udacity to provide online education on AI for 2,000 employees.

Corporate learning as an accelerator of digital transformation | Martin Moehrle

4. Promoting agility The agile movement has brought about new ways of working that rely on the principles of trust and empowerment, self-organisation, cross-functional collaboration, user experience and customer value, experimentation and speed. A wealth of new work hacks and agile methods are spreading through organisations, to provide transparency about work priorities and about what everyone is working on, and that define work as a team effort, such as daily stand-ups, Kanban boards, objectives, and key results or retrospectives. Corporate learning provides plenty of assets to learn about and experiment with new methods. It might even consider the launch of an agile academy to develop agile coaches and accelerate the diffusion of new work practices and to facilitate the sharing of experience and best practice.

3. Unleashing innovation Digital transformation requires an organisation to experiment and innovate at scale across businesses and functions. Along with the business model canvas, design thinking has become the method of choice for the development of products and solutions in the digital age. Corporate learning supports the penetration of design thinking through tutorials and workshops and embeds the underlying principles in its learning architecture through customer journey mapping; frictions in the customer experience are eliminated and the overall experience improved; customer segments are described by personas and there is a continuous interaction between the design team and targeted user groups; solutions aim at combining technical feasibility, economic viability and human desirability; and new ideas are evaluated differently, to enable experimentation and learning from failure. L&D is often the co-owner of innovation labs and incubators that allow for the promotion and testing of internal and external ideas, collaboration with start-ups and for the engagement with critical stakeholder groups. Some organisations launch digital accelerators to develop a digital customer experience next to their existing business and task corporate learning with developing appropriate capabilities.

5. Rethinking work as human augmented intelligence Advances in AI and automation will reduce the demand, first for isolated and repetitive then for more advanced physical and cognitive skills. Therefore, machines have often been regarded as a threat to employment. However, organisations must cultivate those capabilities that will enable humans to add value where machines fall short: in problem solving and critical thinking; in managing ambiguity; in creativity and imagination; in empathy, communication and collaboration. Only a positive attitude toward smart machines and AI and its use to augment human intelligence will allow companies to unearth new and formidable sources of productivity and competitive advantage. It is not a question of either machine or human, but of a symbiotic integration of both. This integration will become a new and seminal arena for corporate learning. It means nothing less than proving those wrong who predict the fourth industrial revolution to lead to mass unemployment, and instead unlocking new opportunities for humans to learn, grow and excel.

About the Author Dr Martin Moehrle is a Management Consultant and Director of Corporate Services and of CLIP at EFMD

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

Intellectuals of the world, unite! Johan Roos says we must learn how to make best use of the input of academics and scholars to recover from an unprecedented pandemic

he COVID-19 pandemic is testing every thread in the fabric of humanity – our personal lives, families, jobs, communities, companies, nations and the entire world as we know it. What is the most threatening, perhaps, is that there is a clear and present danger that ill-informed decisions taken by governments may prove unnecessary and wreak deadly havoc on our economies and societies. This crisis stretches our limits of what is unthinkable and impossible in the modern world. While the globe has suffered many crises before, this pandemic is unique. During the Great Recession, people who lost their job could still meet at a café to chat and recharge. Now they are quarantined, as we all are. There is no escape and no real promise of when we can return to normal. In fact, the “old normal” may never exist again. With no revenues, many companies face wholesale financial liquidation that will threaten the functioning of markets. Cash transfers to the unemployed, interest-free loans and corporate bailouts will help in the short term but these risk overwhelming governments and creating a vicious cycle leading to economic depression. Social distancing may flatten the curve but it too risks destroying communities, generating alienation and resentment and even cultivating crime. The big question is how public and private leaders can best lay new economic, social and psychological cornerstones for global and sustainable post-corona growth? What fiscal and monetary policies will make most sense following the panic decisions we see now? What new models of economic value creation will work to regenerate prosperity? In which direction should innovations be steered? How do we best organise jobs and work? What will our 52

educational systems look like? What kind of leadership is needed to make smart change happen? What type of follower-ship does it imply? As a professor, former Dean, and now the chief academic officer of an international business school, I suggest that these problems lie at the crossroads of business school research. Professors with this background have the curiosity, awareness of theory and engagement with practice that enable them to ask the right new questions and suggest the best new answers to the complex economic and business problems we now face. Meanwhile, our colleagues in the natural sciences, engineering, medicine and the humanities have the brainpower and curiosity to push the frontier to help shape new solutions and policies. Intellectuals of the world, please unite. The more thinking and dialogue among capable intellectuals there is, the better our collective chances to help policy makers and company leaders everywhere make informed decisions rather than imposing singular, quick (and often self-interested) fixes while entire economies are decimated and social unrest waits around the corner. Our work may even prevent some authoritarians from using the crisis to attack democracy. We must learn from the past how important the input of intellectuals is. The 9/11 report concluded that a “failure of imagination” explained why the US society was so unprepared for that catastrophe. Let us engage our educated imagination to describe how we see the practical problems, create entirely new ways of dealing with them, and challenge what we take for granted. It is time to stretch what is "impossible" and "unthinkable"! What concepts, models, theories and tools can guide public and private leaders as they balance

Intellectuals of the world, unite! | Johan Roos

We need capable intellectuals who can formulate guidelines for how public and private leaders can best lay the economic and social future of the world

ethical demands with the need for practical effectiveness and economic sanity after this crisis? How can we fashion a smart post-pandemic economy? What activities can make our societies more poised to deal imaginatively, effectively, and responsibly with the next big viral threat? How can we detect early warning signals in an ocean of ambiguity? How can we choose the best next steps with very limited information? How do we best co-ordinate across time and space, on-line and/or face-to-face? It may be that the world needs a global post-COVID-19 commission to help guide the policies needed to re-build economies and world trade but we know how difficult it will be for a United Nations-type of organisation to take shape and actually work. Until then, we need capable intellectuals who can formulate guidelines for how public and private leaders can best lay the economic and social future of the world. If you are an intellectual in academia, you have a duty to engage in the public debate. Use your knowledge, practical experience, imagination and intuition to create, describe and challenge your ideas into the appropriate media. If there were ever a time for intellectualism to be respected and listened to, it is now. A previous version of this article was published on the blog series of EFMD and Chartered Association of Business Schools

About the Author Johan Roos is a Swedish management scholar and leader in academia known for his work on intellectual capital and serious play. He currently serves as the global Chief Academic Officer at Hult International Business School, having previously served as Dean of Jรถnkรถping International Business School, President of Copenhagen Business School, and Dean of the MBA Programs at Stockholm School of Economics.

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

Jawad Syed explains how organisations can ensure the involvement of their employees during a crisis and suggests 15 steps to enable or sustain employee engagement

Ensuring employee engagement amid a pandemic

Ensuring employee engagement amid a pandemic | Jawad Syed

n a fast-changing and uncertain situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic, many leaders are struggling not only in terms of organisational survival and operations but also in terms of the continued engagement and well-being of their employees. As someone who studies organisational behaviour and people management, I regularly tell students, business leaders and policymakers that employee engagement is the key for organisational survival during a crisis. To cope with COVID-19 , countries are resorting to extreme preventive measures such as social distancing, home confinement and lockdown. As a result, organisations are forced to cease their normal operations and instead are exploring and experimenting with alternative ways of work. In this article, I explain how organisations can ensure the involvement and engagement of their employees during this pandemic. Based on insights from human resource management literature as well as a survey of organisational approaches to COVID-19 , I discuss 15 steps to enable or sustain employee engagement.

To cope with COVID-19 , countries are resorting to extreme preventive measures such as social distancing, home confinement and lockdown. As a result, organisations are forced to cease their normal operations and instead are exploring and experimenting with alternative ways of work

1. Communications The most crucial enabler for employee engagement in a crisis is communication. Employers must keep their staff updated and involved in terms of organisational response to a crisis. In this era of immense flows of information and misinformation, organisations should create channels where information and guidelines from credible sources may be disseminated to employees in an easy and accessible manner. Communication may also be directed at informing employees about existing or revised organisational policies such as health coverage, employee assistance programmes and working from home. For example, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan is offering online sessions known as â&#x20AC;&#x153;LUMS Liveâ&#x20AC;?, led by the Vice Chancellor, for virtual interactions with students, faculty members and other stakeholders. Communication may also be directed at informing and educating customers and other stakeholders. For example, Targetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s CEO has sent a note to customers, providing details of enhanced cleaning procedures and additional staffing for order pickup and drive-up services. 2. Technology Robust technology is crucial for a reliable flow of communications. An impoverished infrastructure in the shape of outdated laptops, obsolete apps or poor internet connection may inhibit employees from making a meaningful and timely contribution to their work or from engaging with their co-workers and other stakeholders. Organisations should regularly invest in information and communication technology. For example, Twitter has provided home office setup expenses to employees who are working remotely. Similarly, LUMS has committed to provide free-of-charge internet access to all students fully dependent on financial aid. Companies such as Nestle and Tetra Pack have subscribed to third-party apps to enable their employees to work from home.

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3. Trust Another key factor for employee engagement in a teleworking context is a culture of trust. This will depend on whether managers trust their employees in the absence of direct or immediate visibility of their work. Those managers who previously were in the habit of continuously monitoring or micromanaging their employees will need to be more trusting and respectful of their teams working remotely. 4. Accommodation Given the COVID-19 situation, schools and day-care centres in many countries are closed. This means that employees with caring responsibilities not only have to do their work from home, but are also dealing with education, well-being, and the food and hygiene of their dependents. Managers need to be more understanding and accommodating of these circumstances when specifying tasks and timelines for their employees. For example, organisations may consider paying for educational games or online tutoring of children for employees working remotely. In April 2020, Microsoft announced threemonths paid parental leave for its workers as schools were shut and parents had to cope with children taking online classes at home. The tech giant gave two options to its workforce: take a 12-week leave at one go or a few days in a week. Furthermore, organisations may take into account gender differences and individual circumstances of their staff. Female employees are generally more likely to be struggling in terms of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;double shiftâ&#x20AC;?, that is, managing domestic duties alongside job requirements. This diversity may be taken into account in task allocations and timelines. 5. Visual interactions Remote working during a pandemic may result in feelings of isolation and loneliness. Virtual meetings and interactive tools for collaboration can help organisations address this issue. Although it may not be made mandatory, employees, where possible, should be encouraged to keep their webcam on during online meetings. Such visual interactions may bring life, colour and interactivity to an otherwise dry and mechanical meeting. 56

Ensuring employee engagement amid a pandemic | Jawad Syed

A sense of community may be developed through an intelligent use of technology. For example, dedicated web pages on intranet or private groups on social media may be created to celebrate employees’ birthdays, wedding anniversaries, work anniversaries or to showcase any awards 6. Training Home confinement during a crisis may be used as an opportunity for training. In some instances, remote working may not be an option but if it is, employers may encourage and support their employees in attending online training courses to develop skills, not only relevant to their current job but also useful in future assignment. Training opportunities may be provided to develop employees’ understanding of digital technology, which may assure employees’ future career paths. Many universities and other providers are offering online courses on a variety of topics at a minimal charge or free of cost. This opportunity should be taken up. 7. Sense of community A sense of community may be developed through an intelligent use of technology. For example, dedicated web pages on intranet or private groups on social media may be created to celebrate employees’ birthdays, wedding anniversaries, work anniversaries or to showcase any awards. Team members can share fun or creative activities such as healthy cooking, a picture of a finished game of Scrabble, fitness and well-being challenges, gardening or anything else that could encourage a healthy lifestyle and a feeling of belonging.

8. Psychological support Employers may organise online therapies and counselling for employees experiencing anxiety and uncertainty. For example, Starbucks employees can use therapy sessions and meet a counsellor in person or via video chat. 9. Office time Another major issue is the failure to honour the boundary between office and family. It is crucial to refrain from blurring this boundary. Many people who work from home keep their smartphones with them 24/7 and some of them tend to check and respond to messages within a matter of minutes. This may lead to burnout and must be avoided. As a matter of policy, organisations must avoid the always-on working environment. For example, there should be no work-related communication outside the normal working hours and, while there may be exceptions, the boundary of office hours must not be violated.

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The crowdsourcing platform ‘NASA@work’ is an internal website, where employees can provide ideas and come up with solutions in response to certain urgent global requirements, such as personal protective equipment ventilators and forecasting models

10 Alternative work patterns Depending on local regulations and guidelines, organisations may explore alternative work patterns to keep their employees engaged, safe and productive. Here are a few examples. Khyber Teaching Hospital has allowed its doctors to practise telemedicine in outpatient departments so that patients are not deprived of healthcare while ensuring the safety of their medical and nursing staff. Coca-Cola has restricted visitors to its facilities, split manufacturing plant shifts to minimise contact, reduced the number of people in a shift, and provided their employees, in production and distribution facilities, with sanitisers and alcohol wipes. Engro Foods has given its employees the option to work from home using Microsoft Teams and other apps. Work deadlines have been made flexible, and the company has added new clauses in its health insurance policy. Procter & Gamble is taking actions such as temperature scans, shift rotations, queuing avoidance, physical distancing and work from home if an employee is unwell. Habib Metropolitan Bank is operating with only 30% of the branches during the COVID-19 lockdown. Employees have been divided into two teams working on alternate days and those above 55 years of age have been advised to work from home. For the organisations still recruiting such as those in superstores (Walmart), food delivery (Domino’s) or online shopping (Amazon), recruitment drives are taking place through virtual screening and interviewing. 58

11. Generosity Organisations may engage in social responsibility initiatives for their employees and wider community. This may reinforce individual pride in organisational identity. For example, Google has established a COVID-19 fund that allows all temporary staff and vendors globally to take paid sick leave if they have potential symptoms of the virus or cannot come into work because they are quarantined. While Apple’s initial policy was to only guarantee its full-time employees paid leave, it has now stated that contractors and daily-wagers such as cleaners and drivers who are not required to work from home, will also be paid. McDonald's has promised to donate one million N95 masks across Illinois as the state battles a growing number of COVID-19 cases. Unilever has donated 12 million rupees to provide PPE kits for medical and paramedical staff in hospitals in Pakistan. 12 Employee voice To enable two-way communication, organisations may create structures and channels for employee feedback. For example, virtual “town hall” meetings of senior management with an entire department or workforce may be organised. Similarly, virtual continuous improvement groups may be formed to gather ideas for problem identification and resolution. Employee surveys may be conducted online to assess and refine organisational intervention and policies.

Ensuring employee engagement amid a pandemic | Jawad Syed

13. Crowdsourcing Employers may use the crisis and remote working situation as an opportunity to develop a sense of civic responsibility and innovation. For example, in April, 2020, NASA announced a new project to develop ideas for how the organisation could assist in the COVID-19 pandemic. The crowdsourcing platform ‘NASA@ work’ is an internal website, where employees can provide ideas and come up with solutions in response to certain urgent global requirements, such as personal protective equipment ventilators and forecasting models.

12m

Unilever has donated 12 million rupees to provide PPE kits for medical and paramedical staff in hospitals in Pakistan

N95

McDonald's has promised to donate one million N95 masks across Illinois as the state battles a growing number of COVID-19 cases

14. Time zones Another factor to ensure engagement in a remote working context is the understanding and respect for different time zones. In scheduling meetings or assigning deadlines, employers should consider different time zones. Within one time zone, meetings may be scheduled within working hours while for different time zones, meeting times may be kept as convenient as possible for all team members. 15. Cultural diversity Diverse religious and cultural traditions, rituals and festivals should be considered in scheduling meetings or specifying timelines. For example, the Ramadan timings of meals (Suhoor and Iftar) or Ashura rituals in Islam, Hindu rituals of Diwali and Holi, or Judaic traditions of Yom Kippur and other cross-cultural sensitivities should be accommodated as much as possible in scheduling projects and meetings. To summarise, while individual, organisational and national circumstances may vary, the steps above, with some customisation, may help organisations and leaders ensure employee engagement during a crisis. As Malcolm X once said: “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today”.

About the Author Dr Jawad Syed is Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Leadership at Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan jawad.syed@lums.edu.pk

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.1 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

Sustaining education The SDG Academy: A global initiative offering education to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Florencia Librizzi reports

Sustaining education | Florencia Librizzi

Sustainability is no longer considered a “nice thing to have” but rather a “must have” that allows businesses to ensure a social licence to operate and results in better risk management and positive impact in business and financial performance, while fostering innovation

usiness school education and sustainable development Sustainable development is without a doubt, the greatest challenge of our time. In 1987 the Brundtland Report Our Common Future introduced the concept of sustainable development as “... development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” . This call for a sustainable world is not only still relevant but also constitutes the foundation of the 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by 193 United Nations member states in September 2015. The SDGs provide a shared global blueprint to achieve peace and prosperity for people and the planet, aiming to eradicate poverty and hunger, tackle inequalities, stir economic growth and ensure environmental protection while promoting peace and good governance universally. This ambitious and holistic agenda implies deep and complex interactions across all 17 SDG topics. In that sense, the SDGs are integrated, complementary and require to be jointly addressed. Each SDGs has a specific set of targets to be achieved by 2030. The goals and targets are universal, applying to all countries around the world. Achieving the goals require deliberate actions from all sectors —government, private sector, civil society, academia— significant investment and strong partnerships since no single actor or country can tackle these challenging issues by itself. While UN member states play a crucial role in advancing the goals, the private sector is instrumental in ensuring successful implementation

of the SDGs. By integrating sustainability into their strategy and operations and developing new business models and innovation, business can contribute to make the SDGs a reality everywhere. Sustainability is no longer considered a “nice thing to have” but rather a “must have” that allows businesses to ensure a social licence to operate and results in better risk management and positive impact in business and financial performance, while fostering innovation. Achieving the SDGs will also nurture an enabling environment for business and societies to thrive in while bringing more business and innovation opportunities for those that align to the changing needs of our world. Just as businesses have an important role when it comes to sustainability and the achievement of SDGs, business schools are key enablers of sustainability as educators of current and future leaders. In that sense, business schools should also align their curricula, research, organisational practices, as well as partnerships with the SDGs. By doing so, business schools become better suited to providing their students with the knowledge, skills and mindset needed to address today’s unique challenges and opportunities, while contributing to creating more sustainable, inclusive and prosperous societies. 61

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

The SDG Academy aims to be the premier source of high-quality educational content on the SDGs, with the mandate to enrich the field of sustainable development and advance the UN’s Agenda 2030

The SDG Academy is the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network The SDG Academy -- the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) – is a global initiative for the United Nations. SDSN was set up in 2012 under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General and directed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs to mobilise global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development, including the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. SDSN works closely with UN agencies, multilateral financing institutions, the private sector and civil society to promote integrated approaches to implement the SDGs through education, research, policy analysis, and global cooperation. In addition, SDSN’s National, Regional and Thematic Networks mobilise over 1,200 members in more than 100 countries, to develop long-term transformation pathways for sustainable development and to promote SDG implementation. The SDG Academy aims to be the premier source of high-quality educational content on the SDGs, with the mandate to enrich the field of sustainable development and advance the UN’s Agenda 2030. The SDG Academy engages a community of education institutions — including business schools and higher-education institutions— as well as individual learners, offering educational content and peer exchange and learning to advance sustainable development. So far the initiative has garnered roughly 300,000 enrolments across its platforms, from more than 180 countries. The SDG Academy aims to reach millions of learners around the world. 62

Sustainable development and the SDGs, core to our vision and mission While the SDG Academy’s work seemed in principle captured by SDG 4 of the 2030 Agenda, focused on ensuring “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, in reality, this initiative touches virtually on all SDGs, since every single goal in the 2030 Agenda depends upon education as the vehicle that can ultimately empower people to obtain the skills, knowledge and mindset to flourish as individuals and together as societies. For that reason, our materials are global in nature, based on science, taught by experts in their fields, accessible online, created in partnership with SDSN members and other organisations from around the world and built to scale, having reached hundreds of thousands of learners around the world. By focusing on a wider range of topics related to the field of sustainable development and covering all SDGs, the SDG Academy’s free, high-quality online educational resources play a unique role in empowering individuals (students, practitioners, policymakers and so on), as well as educators, to contribute to sustainable development.

The SDG Academy Library is a searchable repository of all SDG Academy course videos. Over 1,000 video lectures and case studies can be searched by MOOC, SDG, faculty, academic subject or keyword

Sustaining education | Florencia Librizzi

High-quality learning on the SDGs available to everyone, everywhere

30+

In collaboration with leading experts around the world, the SDG Academy has produced over 30 MOOCs on the SDGs and related topics, hosted on edX, the world’s largest non-profit online learning platform

Our vision is a world in which the SDGs are achieved through the efforts of the next generation of educators, practitioners and citizens that have access to relevant educational content and partnerships to advance sustainable development everywhere. Our mission is to create and curate relevant content on the SDGs made available globally to prepare this generation and the next to achieving sustainable development. To meet the SDG Academy’s mandate and mission, we strive to ensure that our content is high quality and brings together global leading expertise on sustainable development —while ensuring diversity of views and an evolving conversation—that reaches an increasingly large global audience; and that our impact can be adequately measured, seeking for better ways to monitor and evaluate our programmes.

Content The SDG Academy convenes the world’s experts to create and deliver educational content on key issues for the future of people and planet, including education, health, climate change, agriculture and food systems, human rights and sustainable investment. As a premier source of creation and curation of content, the SDG Academy provides a variety of free resources, available for the public good: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) In collaboration with leading experts around the world, the SDG Academy has produced over 30 MOOCs on the SDGs and related topics, hosted on edX, the world’s largest non-profit online learning platform. Our most recent course, “Conversations with Global Leaders: Leading on Sustainable Development,'' featured engaging and personal conversations with former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Paul Polman, former President of Colombia Jose Manuel Santos, and former Prime Minister of Norway, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, among other global leaders. Our course “Work and Employment for Sustainable Development” was launched on 1 May. The course was developed, The course was developed with renowned experts in the field and in partnership with the International Labor Organization (ILO). 63

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SDG Academy Library The SDG Academy Library is a searchable repository of all SDG Academy course videos. Over 1,000 video lectures and case studies can be searched by MOOC, SDG, faculty, academic subject or keyword. This resource is a key asset for any educator who needs online content for a class, presentation, workshop, or training; or any learner who would like to learn specific topics related to the SDGs. Webinars and online conferences The SDG Academy organises webinars and online conferences with global experts covering sustainable development topics, online pedagogy and current topics such as our recent webinar on “The Epidemiology and Economics of COVID-19 ”. In addition, the SDG Academy plans to develop additional resources with strategic partners, such as an Online Encyclopaedia of SDG Solutions, a Global Online Master’s Program on Sustainable Development, and a high-level global task force on Education for Sustainable Development.

It is our hope that the SDG Academy resources ease the transition to online teaching and will continue to be useful to educators and their colleagues across many disciplines and areas of education and training.

Sustaining education | Florencia Librizzi

1200

The SDG Academy is nurturing a community around its content to ensure peer exchange and learning, leveraging the SDSN network that counts over 1200 members, and other relevant actors

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So far the initiative has garnered roughly 300,000 enrolments across its platforms, from more than 180 countries. The SDG Academy aims to reach millions of learners around the world

Community The SDG Academy is nurturing a community around its content to ensure peer exchange and learning, leveraging the SDSN network that counts over 1200 members, and other relevant actors. Our community includes: • Global Association of Master’s in Development Practice (MDP) Programs: This community comprises 34 universities that share a global interdisciplinary curriculum on teaching development practice. The Global MDP Secretariat serves as the umbrella organisation overseeing all MDP programmes and activities worldwide. • University Partnership Program (UPP): Since 2017, the SDG Academy’s University Partnership Program has worked with global universities, academic institutions and education programmes, including business schools, to integrate SDG Academy course material into existing and new programs on sustainable development and related subjects. Institutions that are part of the UPP receive privileged access to SDG Academy materials in a format suitable to the needs of the institution, as well as pedagogical and technical support from the SDG Academy team in the implementation of the material in a blended learning programme. Resources such as teaching guides, tool kits and best practice manuals are made available to participants. • Community of Practice: The next phase of our UPP is a dynamic network through which partners can engage with each other and the SDG Academy to access resources to support the sustainable development needs of their organisation. Stay tuned for our updates! • Alumni Network: With roughly 300,000 enrolments, and an active Alumni Network of 4,000+, hosted on Facebook, students from our courses are encouraged to engage around the SDGs, collaborate with peers, and share what they have learned to make positive contributions to sustainable development in their lives and work. • Partnerships: An important focus of the SDG Academy is to develop strategic partnerships

to scale up the efforts to deliver impact on the SDGs. Some of our strategic partners are edX, regional platforms such as Edraak and XuetangX; academic and education-focused partners such as United Nations University and the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning; policy partners such as the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens, and business school accreditation associations like EFMD. Online learning during COVID-19 crisis In response to the COVID-19 crisis and as schools and universities around the world are moving lessons online, the SDG Academy made a concerted effort to reach out to educators at this time to make them aware of our resources. We hosted a webinar to introduce people to these resources and support many of whom were previously unfamiliar with our work or who were struggling to adapt to remote teaching. A summary of the webinar and recording is available here. https://sdgacademy. org/amid-covid-concerns-sdg-academyhighlights-resources-for-online-teaching/ It is our hope that these resources ease the transition to online teaching and will continue to be useful to educators and their colleagues across many disciplines and areas of education and training. Our goal is to engage as many academic institutions as possible to ensure we empower the current and next generation to become the leaders needed to create a sustainable, inclusive and just world for all.

About the Author Florencia Librizzi is a sustainability and education professional as well as an international attorney, licensed to practice law in Argentina and New York State. As Head of Program and Partnerships, she leads the SDG Academy, flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UNSDSN). Previously, she devoted over 6 years to building the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), an initiative of the United Nations Global Compact. Previously, Florencia served as a consultant for the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) advising on issues of human rights. From 2006-2011, Florencia practiced law advising business and non-business clients on a wide range of legal and sustainability issues. She has prior research and teaching experience at several universities. She holds a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and Masters of Laws (LL.M.) from NYU School of Law.

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

An African MBA fit for purpose Hayley Pearson explains the rationale behind a major re-thinking of one of South Africa’s leading MBA programmes

purred on by the fast-changing global business environment and an increased demand for competitive skills, the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) has undertaken a full rethink and refreshment of its flagship MBA programme. The South Africa-based business school, part of the University of P retoria, recognised that technology, digital disruption and profound global shifts required globally relevant African executives capable of navigating exceptional change while seizing new opportunities in untapped markets. The process was long and exacting, forcing GIBS to examine its own internal structures, teaching approaches and the current and future needs of students. Run entirely in-house, the refreshed GIBS MBA was rolled out via a structured and staged process leading up to the initial pilot in 2018. Prior to the refresh, the GIBS MBA was largely similar to the structure and approach adopted by many business schools around the world and run in a very siloed fashion, students complete individual course such as corporate finance, management accounting, human resource strategy, marketing and so on, completing one course and then progressing to the next. The decision to refresh our MBA was informed by global and African trends as well as in response to the demands coming from business recruiters. We further recognised the need to radically rethink the heavy emphasis being placed on assessment and the lack of integration across the programme. All these inputs – together with a nationwide re-accreditation of the MBA by South Africa’s National Qualifications Framework – gave us a great opportunity to really think deeply about our MBA. We began the refresh process by splitting-out the functional subjects students would expect from a traditional MBA programme –- such as financial 66

accounting, marketing and operations management – and housed these MBA fundamentals in Year One of the refreshed programme. Then we took the higher-order thinking outcomes and ensured they formed part of a highly integrated Year Two. Year One was converted into a Post Graduate Diploma in General Management and Year Two into the MBA. All students, with a few exceptions, complete both qualifications. The design team thought hard about what they wanted students to achieve with a GIBS MBA. Ultimately, having come out of our programme, we would like our students – within five to 10 years – to be general managers, heads of large business units, running their own business or advising businesses. GIBS adopted a three-phase approach to the design of the refreshed programme. Phase One was the completion of a comprehensive review process, which included detailed input from all key stakeholders including interviews and focus groups with faculty, alumni, current students, GIBS Advisory Board members and key representatives from business. A historical review of the programme’s evaluations was taken into account, as were the MBA designs of other top-ranked business schools. The latest articles and literature relating to MBA programmes and management development and the accreditation requirements were considered alongside input received through a series of workshops held with representatives from across the business school, the programme management and the executive education team. Phase two focused on programme structure and Phase Three centred on operationalising, content development and delivery.

An African MBA fit for purpose | Hayley Pearson

Ultimately, having come out of our programme, we would like our students â&#x20AC;&#x201C; within five to 10 years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to be general managers, heads of large business units, running their own business or advising businesses

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Across the process, faculty were given the latitude – and time – to formulate new outlines and agree on essential elements; in spite of the administrative demands. This proved critical as the time it took to formulate the courses was far more than we expected and the debate that occurred for faculty to arrive at finalised content and a seamless flow took far longer. But there needed to be flexibility in the system to ensure time to think, critique and debate in order to arrive at the best outcome. Navigating that tension was certainly interesting but faculty buy-in, alongside that of the programme management team and administrators was critical. As a result, from the start special attention was paid to capacity issues and stresses on the system; leading to the phased roll-out approach. Other challenges included the dramatic shift from a traditional teaching perspective to a team-based teaching approach. Teaching sessions were added to the programmes, some almost doubling teaching time as well as outcome expectations. There might be anything up to five faculty teaching on one core course. Teaching teams really pushed GIBS to think carefully about achieving a succinct narrative around course outcomes. A change management process was needed to help faculty, who had taught in one particular way for so long, to open their hearts and minds to teaching in a different way. There was a lot of work around selecting faculty, getting faculty to come together, working through what those course outcomes were as well as the latest thinking in areas. We had to assign a course lead to take ownership of the overall process. In spite of the challenges, the new teaching approach elevated both delivery in the classroom and the preparation. In part, this was due to the direct comparisons students could draw between teachers, forcing faculty to “step up” and rethink how they were teaching, what they were teaching and how their positioning of content linked with the broader subject . Adapting the teaching approach was integral to the core courses, which made up the new MBA. These core courses (referred to as buckets in the initial design phase) include: • Environment of business • Innovation and design 68

GIBS piloted its entrepreneurship focus in 2019 and took in a full intake of 40 students in 2020. The consulting focus was piloted in 2020 with 17 students signed up for the first intake and with a hard start planned for 2021

An African MBA fit for purpose | Hayley Pearson

• Decision making • Strategic implementation • Leadership Once we had made the decision about the ‘buckets’, we reorganised and reviewed the current outcomes of the existing MBA programme through a lengthy mapping process. We arranged the outcomes according to the new areas, removed redundant ones and added new and relevant ones in line with the programme goals. As we added all the bells and whistles, we needed to ensure we did not lose any of the fundamentals. In order to create a common thread linking all the courses, the designers incorporated leadership as the explicit integrating course. The leadership course cross cuts and integrates into each of the other courses so when a student embarks on the environment of business course, for example, leadership would be taught as part of that course and students may be pushed to consider leadership outcomes in the context of that specific core subject. Leadership, as the explicit integrator, would itself be supported by two implicit integrating mechanisms: strategy, which was woven throughout the core course, and technology, which was embedded in all subjects. While this approach better reflected the multifaceted nature of modern-day business and the multiple touch points facing managers, the designers were concerned that students should clearly understand how this interplay worked in practice. A GIBS MBA Road Map – not dissimilar to an underground metro guide you might pick up in any global city – was created as a visual guide (complete with individual core subject icons) to illustrate how the various streams intermingled with and fed off one another. The Road Map also includes components beyond the core, such as electives, an integrated business simulation, a global module and the independent research project. What the Road Map could not illustrate were the specific focus choices made by each student as part of the refreshed MBA’s radical personalisation of the learning journey. Three personalised pathways were included, which overlaid and ran parallel to the MBA programme. The intention was to give each student the ability to fine-tune the MBA experience to their specific personal and career needs.

Each student selects his or her focus in Year One and this choice permeates the suite of electives and workshops on offer, global module, and the portfolio of evidence options available to them. The first personalised stream is “Run a Business”, the general management focus and GIBS’s standard offering; the second is “How to Start and Grow a Business”, an entrepreneurshipfocused MBA; and finally “Advise a Business” the consulting focus. GIBS piloted its entrepreneurship focus in 2019 and took in a full intake of 40 students in 2020. The consulting focus was piloted in 2020 with 17 students signed up for the first intake and with a hard start planned for 2021. While this is the first major shake-up for the GIBS MBA in 20 years, it is by no means set in stone and will benefit from ongoing improvements. Based on the feedback from the students and wanting to improve a variety of areas, we have already made some changes. One example is that the integrated simulation has been moved to after the final report hand-in date, bringing students back to the classroom after their global electives to compare and contrast their experiences and to assess their leadership style, capabilities and thinking around responsible leadership; a key principle underpinning the leadership course. It is also a clear indication that while GIBS believes it has created a blueprint from which others can learn in terms of process, integration and design, that the journey is ongoing. If we think about what we wanted to achieve and what we have achieved and the outcomes that we wanted our students to obtain then we have certainly delivered. The refreshed GIBS MBA is forward thinking and innovative. The student experience is deliberate from all aspects, ensuring our students achieve the overall programme goals and objectives. GIBS is now focused on benchmarking its refreshed MBA programme against other traditional MBAs and this will be an important next step in our refinement process.

About the Author Hayley Pearson is Associate Director: Faculty and Director: MBA Programme at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), University of Pretoria, South Africa

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Educational institutions globally are facing major challenges, a function of tectonic shifts in the techno-socio-economic landscape and the digital revolution occurring in Industry 4.0, ushering in the shift from an industrial to a knowledge economy. Atish Chattopadhyay explains what might be in store

Curriculum 4.0 for Industry 4.0

Curriculum 4.0 for Industry 4.0 | Atish Chattopadhyay

FIM Business School, Bangalore, India, in association with National Human Resources Development Network (NHRDN) undertook an exhaustive initiative in 2018 to reach out to 292 industry executives to identify the skills required for Industry 4.0. They organised three round-table discussions in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi in India. Participants included 43 senior executives and 18 chief executive officers. The study identified the following needs for Industry 4.0 1. Learning orientation and analytical mindset 2. Integration of data, communication and technology 3. Solution orientation and problem solving 4. Dealing with change and uncertainty (unstructured situation) 5. People and team orientation 6. Innovation and creativity – entrepreneurial orientation 7. Social sensitivity and cross-cultural orientation 8. Managing self (self-awareness, self-development including wellness) 9. Business orientation – multidisciplinary approach 10. Globalisation The findings showed that future professionals will be “T-shaped”, combining both a liberal mind-set covering a wide breadth of knowledge across disciplines and in-depth knowledge in a specialised area. The research also revealed a need for re-skilling at various levels, the emergence of a multigeneration workforce, wellness as an important element of self-management, and solutioning or problem solving as the critical skill set required for Industry 4.0. The study pointed out that technological disruptions may result in professionals finding themselves becoming “irrelevant”. Hence, “learning to learn” or learning orientation will be key for future professionals to remain relevant.

The first change will have to be the curriculum. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, the curriculum should facilitate the process of “discovery” – encouraging “exploration” and “experimentation”. Students should be able to customise their learning pathways depending on their style, pace and learning orientation

This skill set can be achieved only when institutions make major initiatives in education that will prepare students for the “future of work”. This will entail educational institutions investing in education that prepares graduates to embrace change and be life-long learners. Institutions will require a rebooting of their curricula pedagogy of teaching/learning and faculty. The first change will have to be the curriculum. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, the curriculum should facilitate the process of “discovery” – encouraging “exploration” and “experimentation”. Students should be able to customise their learning pathways depending on their style, pace and learning orientation. 71

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As the curriculum for Industry 4.0 undergoes a metamorphosis, the pedagogy of teaching/ learning will also undergo a makeover. With most of the content being available online, the role of faculty will shift from the traditional task of lecturing to more one of coaching and mentoring

Holistic development: a multi-disciplinary orientation The curriculum must facilitate the “holistic development” of students. As the “100-year life” becomes a reality, most of that life is anticipated to be spent working. Students will need to be exposed to multiple disciplines across functions and areas. Institutions may consider exposing students to multiple disciplines across humanities, performing arts, design, languages, and science, including natural sciences. This exposure will enable a student to discover his or her potential and possible choice of profession. A holistically developed graduate is expected to be prepared to embrace change with an ability to respond effectively to changing career options at different stages of life. Technology integration As data becomes the “new oil”, the pressing need will be the integration of technology across courses and platforms. Today, AI and Big Data are being used across diverse professions ranging from medical science and healthcare to sports and entertainment. Universities will need to develop in their graduates an appreciation of technology integration with their areas of professional expertise. Social responsibility In a developing country such as India, institutions will need to inculcate in their students social responsibility and sensitivity to the issues of distributive justice. No professional will be able to function in the future, without an understanding of the impact of their actions on the environment and society. Interventions, which expose students to the issues of social reality including the SDGs (UN Sustainable Development Goals) will be a requirement in planning the curriculum for the future. 72

Managing “self” including “wellness” The essence of “leadership development” lies in “self-management” and “self-development”. The findings of the IFIM-NHRDN survey clearly indicated “wellness” and “fitness” as integral elements of managing ones-self. As institutions prepare their graduates for the “future of work”, there will be an urgent need to integrate “wellness” and “fitness” as part of the required curriculum. In India, IFIM Business School is the first institution to have a credited course, “Personality Enhancement Program” involving “lifestyle” and “life-skills”. Dealing with uncertainty, problem solving and solutioning: integration of research The study identified uncertainty, problem-solving and solutioning as important skills for management graduates. Employers worry that while teaching students using conventional classroom-based courses does help professionals prepare for the future, students are most often trained to address structured problems with very little ambiguity or missing data. This approach does not adequately prepare students to solve unstructured problems. Business schools globally are trying to find ways to impart problem-solving skills and many believe that real-time research experience can provide students with an edge. Internationally, many schools, particularly the top ones, require students to carry out their own piece of research as part of their course – either on a business problem they have brought with them or on a live problem posed by a company. Sometimes students even get a chance to get involved in longer-term research projects that the school is carrying out. “Learning by Solving”, a unique pedagogy introduced by IFIM Business School, is a step in this direction. Students work in teams to solve problems provided by industry partners.

Curriculum 4.0 for Industry 4.0 | Atish Chattopadhyay

Innovation and creativity – entrepreneurial orientation Many forward-looking schools have considered introducing courses in the areas of Design Thinking and Innovation as required courses. Students work either on their own business ideas or on innovation projects supported by industry. For example, at IFIM Business School student groups present their innovations in an exhibition supported by industry sponsors. Pedagogy As solutioning and problem solving assume more significance, institutions will need to develop a close interface with “practice” (industry, governments and social organisations) to take up real-life problems for students and faculty to work on. This will be the fourth change (with faculty, students and practitioners) to develop an association of mutual interdependence to remain relevant, creating a virtuous cycle of value creation. In the years ahead, most of the repetitive tasks and easily deciphered problems will be handled by machines. Human beings will be more involved in decision making and imagining future possibilities. Our pedagogy of teaching learning will need to move away from information dissemination to imagining the future.

A typical in-class case discussion will no more be about “what happened?” but will be about “what can happen?”. This will imply a change both in content and in delivery. Institutions will need to travel that extra mile to re-ignite the imaginative ability of its students. Such an approach to learning can facilitate self-learning and make students learn “how to learn”. With the availability of technology to facilitate remote learning, both synchronised and asynchronised, the “pedagogic mix” going forward will evolve into a combination of in-campus, online and on-site. Faculty – as coach and mentor: As the curriculum for Industry 4.0 undergoes a metamorphosis, the pedagogy of teaching/learning will also undergo a makeover. With most of the content being available online, the role of faculty will shift from the traditional task of lecturing to more one of coaching and mentoring. This shift will aid the process of “self-discovery” and “self-learning” among students.

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Faculty will be required to have a probing mindset to foster an ability of imagination among the students. Classroom experience will undergo a shift from students being mere passive listeners in the class to becoming active co-producers of new insights. This highlights the rising importance of group work, simulations, games, role plays, industry interactions, industry-relevant problem solving as compared to earlier roles. Faculty will be playing the role of an athletics coach providing individualised guidance and mentoring to each student. The shift will be from “one-to-many” to “one-to-one” facilitated by data and technology platforms. Practice orientation: In today’s ever-evolving world, there is a need to develop an active interface between academia and practice to create the virtuous cycle of value creation involving all the three stakeholders: namely, students, faculty, and practice. Implementation of curriculum 4.0 will depend on the active participation of all the stakeholders. The careful and thoughtful intervention of practitioners at important junctures in the curriculum is much needed to achieve a fit between their needs and skills imparted. At the same time, proactive engagement and networking of faculty and students with practice expands the boundaries of the classroom settings beyond the premises of the institutions, thus achieving synergy across the three stakeholders. However, this is easier said than done. Tomorrow’s successful institutions will be those who can facilitate the process of “discovery”, who can inculcate in its graduates, responsibility towards self, environment and society, who can combine the apparent contradictions of “professional” skills with a “multi-disciplinary’ foundation” Peter Drucker had said that “management is a liberal art”; in today’s context, this statement has become more relevant than ever before and is applicable across professions.

About the Author Dr Atish Chattopadhyay is Director of IFIM Business School, Bangalore, India

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During the initial 18 days of lockdown, the school delivered 694 synchronised lectures...

... 20 live workshops on Design...

...44 webinars and 1790 assessments

Postscript The COVID-19 crisis, particularly the way it has unfolded has put to the test each of the skills identified by the IFIM-NHRDN study, cutting across boundaries, across industries and institutions. The winners will be those who can deal with this uncertainty -- learning quickly, leveraging technology, working in teams and innovated in finding feasible solutions to ensure business continuity. IFIM Business School was quick to embrace the “new normal” and to run its functioning as per schedule – teachinglearning, assessments and meetings. Teaching: We used an interactive video learning solution (Impartus) to enable synchronised interactive delivery of courses by the faculty to the students at home. The learning management system (Moodle) allowed the students to access course outlines, reading material, class presentation, recorded lectures, and the digital library. Assessments: Online assessment solutions (Mercer Mettl) allowed students to appear for exams from home with AI proctoring combined with live proctoring and a chat facility with human invigilators. The platform also allowed online test creation and evaluation reports for the benefit of the faculty. Meetings: We used Teams as the hub for teamwork, where all stakeholders – students, faculty, staff and industry partners could actively connect and collaborate in real time to get things done. We could have a conversation right where the work is happening, whether co-authoring a document, holding a meeting, or working together on projects. During the initial 18 days of lockdown, the school delivered 694 synchronised lectures, 20 live workshops on Design, 44 webinars and 1790 assessments.

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed our world. And though the preparation, rapid response, and early vigilance of the universities and the government in Singapore was admirable Richard Smith looks at the challenges still ahead

A business school disrupted: a view from Singapore

A business school disrupted: a view from Singapore | Richard Smith

After the SARS outbreak, the Singapore government ensured that the universities have risk management plans that include a pandemic response. For the past eight years, all faculty must complete mandatory online teaching training and conduct at least one virtual lesson each term remotely as part of the compliance with emergency preparedness measures

fter noting the early actions in January, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that Singapore was the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gold Standardâ&#x20AC;? for managing a pandemic. However, the more recent view has turned into more of a cautionary tale as the second and third waves of the pandemic swept through the island. From the view of a business school in Singapore, the disruption can be viewed in phases: Anticipation and forecast After the China outbreak, the spread of COVID-19 began around the world. On 21 January, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was made in the US and other countries. While there were no cases in Singapore at that time, emergency planning meetings had already started taking place as the busy Chinese New Year holiday was approaching. The idea that this could be a pandemic was already shared and university leaders were alerted. With the SARS impact in mind, the universities started preparing for contact tracing, temperature taking, travel declarations and communication management. The 30 January announcement of a public health emergency by the WHO, prompted many new measures around the world.

Proactive planning After the SARS outbreak, the Singapore government ensured that the universities have risk management plans that include a pandemic response. For the past eight years, all faculty must complete mandatory online teaching training and conduct at least one virtual lesson each term remotely as part of the compliance with emergency preparedness measures. Upon joining, the university, all faculty and staff are issued a personal thermometer for reporting temperature. To track movement of employees, a system of travel declaration is ready for deployment as needed. While no amount of planning can prepare for the unknown, this vigilant approach is showing benefit in Singapore. First wave measures With many of our Chinese students returning to China for the annual New Year holiday festivities and many Chinese visitors coming to visit Singapore, the emergency response plan was triggered in the universities. Self-quarantine measures were put in place for anyone returning from China, temperature screening started and travel declaration forms were required for all students, faculty and staff. Contact tracing measures were immediately put in place as faculty were required to take photos of each class session and carefully document student group activities. The staff and leadership teams immediately went to a split team arrangement to avoid contact risks. In addition, large classes over 50 students immediately moved to an online format. 77

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Singapore was aggressive in testing and rapid in the response. Most importantly, the general public knew all too well what was required with social distancing. In the business school we had some “Near Miss” cases but the early containment of the outbreak worked well thanks to the vigilance of the well-prepared team

Early success Singapore was aggressive in testing and rapid in the response. Most importantly, the general public knew all too well what was required with social distancing. In the business school we had some “Near Miss” cases but the early containment of the outbreak worked well thanks to the vigilance of the well-prepared team. Due to the rapid response, there were no virus infections transferred in any of the Singapore universities. However, the issue of our returning 400 students scattered around the world on exchange programmes along with the planned overseas programme trips became new challenges. Second wave As Singaporeans and our overseas students began to return to the island from the US and the UK, they brought with them the second wave of COVID-19. This time, it was too challenging to contain. In the business school we had no cases, but we were alerted that we need to prepare for campus closure. Of course, faculty generally have a view that university rules do not actually apply to them… so this group became a challenge as we had to explain multiple times that they could not come to campus in the future. This all became much clearer when the Prime Minister announced a “Circuit Breaker” exercise (modified lock-down) for the nation for a month. 78

A business school disrupted: a view from Singapore | Richard Smith

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There were no virus infections transferred in any of the Singapore universities. However, the issue of our returning 400 students scattered around the world on exchange programmes along with the planned overseas programme trips became new challenges

Temporary new normal All classes have been running in the online mode and all exams are being conducted virtually. Faculty and student travel is not permitted for the remainder of the calendar year. Overseas study missions, faculty hiring, exchange programmes and international research activities are all put on hold. Graduation, open house, freshman orientation, sporting events, summer study programmes have all moved to a virtual mode or cancelled. As businesses feel the impact, the ability of our graduating students to find jobs became a significant challenge as even those with simple internships were sent home. As a short-term measure, our faculty and students were able to rise to the challenge with a generally positive view. Third wave The temporary lockdown was extended to another month following the third wave of COVID-19. This time quickly spreading across many of the migrant construction workers residing in Singapore. Unfortunately, the successful vigilance of the citizens did not extend to the management of our visiting workers, which has cast a dark cloud over the city-state. While there are great successes in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, other Asian countries are also grappling with the challenge. Populous nations such as India, Indonesia, Philippines struggle to keep up with the testing and basic care needed for citizens.

2020 new normal With international travel largely halted, the time horizon for allowing international students to obtain a visa and enter Singapore looks like a distant hope. The government of Singapore has advised the universities to think about this pandemic in terms of years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not in weeks and months. As a business school, we are grappling with this concept as we rely so much on the international network of business schools for our student experience, faculty research and global collaboration. Rethinking assumptions In our virtual meetings and discussions across the university a number of long-held assumptions are being tested. We have been rethinking such things as: the place of learning; the definition of good teaching; the timing of the learning process; sources of students; qualification of instructors; elements of the student experience; and the differentiation of our institution. Like many universities, students have started to ask hard questions related to the price vs value of their online learning. At the same time, the interest of hearing directly from the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sage on the Stageâ&#x20AC;? is waning as students experience the benefits of asynchronous learning platforms and other high-quality digital experiences while being fatigued with online broadcast lectures. 79

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Potential industry shifts Stepping back from the local situation and reflecting on the common conversations in business schools around the world, several potential industry shifts seem to be accelerating the transformation of business education. The potential disruption of higher education has been bantered about for several years, and the pandemic may provide the catalyst for bringing about shifts such as: • Local classroom to global blends of delivery When not everyone can be in the same classroom location, we might see the creation of various blends of learning experiences including synchronous broadcasts, asynchronous learning activities, small local gatherings and other tech-enabled experiences through virtual reality or other solutions. • Full degree programmes to micro mastery New questions about the price vs value of two-year degree programmes have heightened. As a result, we might see more movement toward the “unstacking” of a degree into groups of courses (or “micro masters") designed for specific objectives. • International exchanges to virtual experiences As international travel becomes more challenging and expensive we might see the shift to virtual exchanges and experiences as students engage in online learning from schools to engage and cultures without travelling. • B2C marketing to B2B partnerships To address the challenges with placement (which affects enrolment), we may see more schools establishing stronger business partnerships to create tailored curriculum and industry-related options for executive education and degree programmes. • Chinese students to diversified mix The over-dependence on fully-paid Chinese students has created a high-risk profile for a number of programmes and schools around the world. 80

Trustees and university leaders are likely to insist on diversification strategies for the future. • Standard curriculum to customisable degrees For decades, MBA programmes have crafted careful “cohort experiences” with the right mix of diversity, experiences and challenges to foster life-long student bonds. In the online world, we may see a rethinking of this assumption to create a “cohort of one” to allow each student to customise their own degree and education experience. • Professor teaching to student learning In many school departments the core subjects of business have not changed in years. Students have little choice in their experience and tend to study for the assessments, which serve as evidence of learning. The online formats have raised more questions about the relevance and choice of student learning pathways. We may see more emphasis or allowance for student learning and exploration on diverse topics of business.

A business school disrupted: a view from Singapore | Richard Smith

As a school with a strong focus on innovation, there is high interest in making the most of the crisis situation to drive positive change for the future

Future Business school questions While the benefits of management education are still perceived as positive, the questions related to the fees and opportunity costs may continue to put pressure on many business schools. University systems that rely on government funding are dealing with significant budget impact while private players have seen the declining market value of endowment funds. With every business school forced into disruption at some level, new questions are arising such as: • Why does every school need their own faculty to teach basic introductory courses? • With high-quality asynchronous learning, what unique value do local instructors add? • How do schools re-think the physical infrastructure use and capital expenses? • What is the cost of business research and what stakeholder groups are providing funding? • How applicable are the accreditation standards and ranking processes to our new realities? • What is the right risk profile for a school relative to endowment funding? • How do we re-shape the myriad of business school alliances and partnerships? • Why do business schools have limited impact on key social sectors such as healthcare? • How are business schools making an impact in society in priority areas? • What is the new agenda for the business school dean in the post- COVID-19 world?

Preparing for 2020 and beyond With questions circling and the future unknown, our school is taking both short-term and long-term actions. In the short-term, we are doubling up on our investment in online courses as an alternative study pathway for the future.For business schools like ours that rely on large numbers of international students, we must consider alternative learning pathways if physical travel is limited. While the level of interest in graduate education and the number of applications is high this year, the reality of seeing them on campus is still in question. We are fortunate to be a member of the Future of Management Education (FOME) alliance, which provides us with a high-quality online platform and collaborative partners. With a view towards the longer-term impact of this crisis, we have launched innovation task forces to address some of the key issues and questions facing management education in South East Asia. As a school with a strong focus on innovation, there is high interest in making the most of the crisis situation to drive positive change for the future. Our efforts are strongly supported by our government stakeholders as the unfortunate situation of a third wave of infections has raised the level of vigilance and preparedness for the future in Singapore. As the global situation develops, each business school and country will address the pandemic in their own unique way. Perhaps this overview of the responses, questions, shifts and plans in Singapore is of value as we examine the future in light of the disruption of our business school industry.

About the Author Dr Richard R Smith is a Professor at Singapore Management University where he also serves as Deputy Dean for the Lee Kong Chian School of Business.

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

Agenda 2030 is the new global roadmap for public policies. Alain Tord explains

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Higher Education

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Higher Education | Jordi Diaz

The 2030 Agenda was adopted by heads of member states in September 2015 at a special summit for sustainable development. It features 17 SDGs

200m HEIs have a major role to play in the transition towards sustainability with nearly 2 00 million students all around the world, a teaching staff of 6.5 million including 4.7 million professors and 1.8 million researchers

he 2030 Agenda was adopted by heads of member states in September 2015 at the special summit for sustainable development. It features 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted by 193 states, the universal programme for sustainable development addresses environmental, social and economic issues, fighting against inequality, exclusion and injustice, tackling climate change and the erosion of biodiversity and putting an end to extreme poverty. Higher education institutes (HEIs) have a major role to play in the transition towards sustainability with nearly 200 million students around the world, a teaching staff of 6.5 million including 4.7 million professors and 1.8 million researchers. The SDGs are international goals currently being translated and taken on board at national and local levels. Localising the SDGs gives HEIs an opportunity to boost sustainable development action on campus. Three guides recently released highlight how to: Getting started with the SDGs in universities (issued on 2018 by SDSN Asia/Pacific); Education for Sustainable Development Goals: learning objectives (published in 2017 by UNESCO); and Sustainable Development Goals: How can French higher education and research institutions contribute? (published in 2018 by Conférence des présidents d’université (CPU), Conférence des grandes écoles (CGE) and B&L évolution). How can French higher education and research institutions contribute? is a manual about [HEIs] professions and how they are associated with the SDGs. [It] has been developed to provide practical answers, categorised by [14] major professional groups in higher education and research institutions.

Every professional can contribute to SDGs… in its own way In the professional sphere, action for sustainable development and social responsibility are often reduced to eco-friendly gestures and awarenessraising operations and seem only to concern certain specialised professionals. Yet deep-seated change is needed to contend with the environmental and social issues facing us: change that will result in the way we report and communicate; in the way we guide and support students; in teaching and research methods; in risk management and end-user protection; and in our international relations. And behind each of these elements are HEI professionals whose activities are directly concerned with SD&SR. As a consequence, the challenges concern all HEI activities including teaching, learning content development, social actions, career guidance, workforce integration, facilities and property management, finance, human resources, IT and food services. CPU, CGE and B&L evolution, with the support of institution management associations, student associations, and funding and insurance bodies picked up 14 major professional groups and analyses for each: social issues for the profession, the main SDGs pertinent to the profession and their deployment, the major challenges facing the profession and good practices to go further to address SDGs. This guide provided us with a wealth of information, covering 14 professional categories, whose four examples are presented below: • Faculty • Student affairs • Human resources • Finance and accounting

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Silo, or stand-alone, practices are still common and are often criticized. But each profession now works with others and links among professions are starting to develop. HEIs’ capacity to meet environmental and social goals depends on the quality of the connections between professionals

Four examples of HEIs professions Faculty (teacher-researcher) HEI teaching staff have an important responsibility in social change. They need to deliver education adapted to the requirements of tomorrow’s world, which must be more sustainable. By communicating their research findings, they can orient political and strategic decisions. Teacher-researchers have several roles: they create knowledge; they transmit knowledge; and they help students to learn and acquire the skills necessary to reach a high and stable level of knowledge and expertise. Main SDGs: 4, 8 and 9 Main social issues covered • To orient political and strategic decisions (by communicating their research findings) • To influence political agendas and building process of social issues Some issues to tackle to commit further • To go beyond disciplinary framework since lots of social and environmental problems need interdisciplinary approaches to be accurately investigated • To scale-up individual initiatives of pioneers regarding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to trigger an in-depth change of curricula Examples of good practices • To encourage autonomous learning such as internet research during class, personal analysis of work, e-learning, MOOCs • To work towards becoming a model institution by creating collaborative courses for teachers, students and other personnel about research findings into sustainable development 84

Human resources Human Resources (HR) comprises a wide variety of activities that cover all the administrative and social aspects of personnel management. One of the main issues is employment stability. HR professionals guide and manage employees, both payroll and administration, and other issues such as training and quality of working life. Main SDGs: 3, 5, 8 10 Main social issues covered • Support to quality working conditions (including occupational risks and psychosocial risks) • Social dialogue facilitation (in relationship with workers representatives) Some issues to tackle to commit further • To find a balance between administrative tasks and HR management • To maintain employability of HEI professionals Examples of good practices • To work with other departments to implement a jobs and skills forecast management tool • To identify obstacles to recruiting people with a disability

650

Contribution to the SDGs is also proven to strengthen relationships and connections in-between HEI professions. How can French higher education and research institutions contribute? highlights a network of over 650 relations between the professions supported by the SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Higher Education | Jordi Diaz

sdg 17 No profession can address the issues alone, as stressed by the UN with the SDG 17 promoting “partnerships for the goals”

Finance and accounting Responsible for an institution’s financial management, finance and accounting professionals play a key role in operations. Their main role is to assist the policy team in the deployment of the institution’s projects with budget control and financial management. Working with teams in the field, they also calculate budgets and forecasts. Main SDGs: 8, 12, 16 and 17 Main social issues covered • Compliancy of accounts and operations • Social and environmental impacts related to projects and activities funded Some issues to tackle to commit further • To maintain HEI financial viability in a price scissors context (reduction in public funding while expenditures are increasing) • To improve existing tools (to boost productivity of finance and accounting professionals) and create new ones (to include environmental and social issues in the decision-making process) Examples of good practices • To plan department funding programmes over several years to reduce excessive consumption at the end of the accounting period • To create an internal ethical alert system for unorthodox practices, embezzlement, conflict of interest and corruption • To include sustainable development criteria in procurement contract ratings Student affairs Professionals involved in student affairs are an important bridge between students and institutions. Their job is to ensure the selffulfilment and success of students. First and foremost, they ensure students have the means they require to successfully complete their higher education. They help students who have health problems or who have physical, psychological or financial difficulties. They ensure access to health care and participate in funding attribution.

Main SDGs: 3, 4 and 10 Main social issues covered: • Ensure the self-fulfilment and success of students • Create links between students Some issues to tackle to commit further • To enhance visibility of student life services (especially social aide services, due to their lack of visibility it is difficult to identify students in difficulty) • To better design schedules (by avoiding short lunch breaks, short and intense exam periods, etc) Examples of good practices • To train association administrators in preventing at-risk behavior • To organise dietary prevention campaigns such as classes about cooking in student rooms All professions in higher education and research institutions can contribute to the SDGs in their own way as shown by these few examples. Contribution to the SDGs is also proven to strengthen relationships and connections between HEI professions. Silo, or stand-alone, practices are still common and are often criticised. But each profession now works with others and links among professions are starting to develop. HEIs’ capacity to meet environmental and social goals depends on the quality of the connections between professionals. No profession can address the issues alone, as stressed by the UN with the SDG 17 promoting “partnerships for the goals”. Deep-seated change is needed to tackle the environmental and social issues that face us: change in the way we report and communicate; in the way we guide and support students; in teaching and research methods; in risk management and end-user protection; and in our international relations. HEI professions are at the core of these elements and their activities are directly concerned with sustainable development and social responsibility.

About the Author Alain Tord is Cooperator in charge of Higher education and Green IT, B&L évolution, in Paris, France, and lecturer at Université Paris-Dauphine

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

The COVID-19 pandemic is not just a health, economic and humanitarian crisis,it is laying bare some undeniable truths in societies worldwide. By Smaranda Boros, Anita Bosch and Yuliya Shymko

North meets South: A call for inclusive global research

North meets South: A call for inclusive global research | Smaranda Boros, Anita Bosch and Yuliya Shymko

We need to learn not just how to correct mistakes but to strategically envision different ways of working and being together to build sustainable societies. This sustainability should manifest itself both in relation to nature and among people

he COVID-19 pandemic is emphasising the extent of inequalities, both between and within societies. In the dynamics between nations, these inequalities revolve around the reliance on international funding bodies for humanitarian aid â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and what happens when these big funders withdraw their support. It is exposing heightened territorial, us-vsthem dynamics of hoarding and a crisis of global solidarity. This is reflected on the one hand in acrimonious economic negotiations between the-haves and the-have-nots of the world, even when they reside under the same institutional umbrella, such as the European Union, but even more so when it comes to developing countries negotiating with international monetary funds for financial relief. The response to the pandemic has also shown limited collaborative help in the distribution of medical equipment, staff and resources needed to operate, with a future worry about the possibilities and willingness of international sharing and distribution of a vaccine. It reveals both the power of the state and the need for centralised and aligned policies and interventions and, at the same time, the limitations and boundaries of these interventions in the absence of collaborative, grassroots community efforts to address upcoming challenges.

At the same time we see, across the board, the difference that positive exceptions to these rules can and do make. It is more important than ever to learn from these positive events so that future policy interventions will support initiatives that are proactive, collaborative and creative rather than reactive and reparatory. We need to learn not just how to correct mistakes but to strategically envision different ways of working and being together to build sustainable societies. This sustainability should manifest itself both in relation to nature and among people. Living and learning to be with each other has to be done in a more respectful and empathetic way rather than the current competitive, discriminative and resource-hoarding manner. This is a difficult task, however, when knowledge is produced and reproduced within the same paradigms and theories and via the same systems of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Global Northâ&#x20AC;? (we use the terms the West and Global North interchangeably in this text).

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

Throughout this pandemic, many voices have stressed that not all the basic WHO guidelines for the pandemic are applicable in the Global South — from the ability to practise social distancing to having access to water to maintain minimal hygiene. The colonialism of knowledge production enforces Western/Global North management discourse and practices on the lives and experiences of those in the non-West, dictating a Western tradition of managerial thinking that defines how and what should be studied and practised. As a means of control, it detaches those in the Global South from their native condition and capacity for autonomous thought. In the context of modernity, organisation studies rarely acknowledge non-Western experience and offer no alternative non-Western modes of managing and organising. The limited engagement with indigenous knowledge in the Global South has largely been categorised and determined through the gaze of the West. As long as so many of the research studies that inform policies continue to be conducted in mainly Western settings and remain mainly deductive and based on theoretical models developed there, there will be no escape from this loop of inequality). What we need, then, is: more inductive research conducted in the Global South that transcends the “vulnerable populations” focus and framing; research that learns from local initiatives that tackle the aforementioned issues (inequality, us vs them dynamics and the absence of collaborative, grassroots community initiatives) and that portrays local communities as agentic actors instead of “targets of our benevolence” and wisdom and research that is open to learning about alternative sources of power (ie power that you don’t expect to see), alternative forms of community organising and radically alternative paradigms of operating (collaborative instead of competitive, focused on the good of the whole community instead of the individual, needs-based vs merit-based). In other words, we need to hear more from the Global South in the voice of the Global South. 88

Taking this a step further, research itself needs to transcend identity politics — Global North vs Global South, inductive vs deductive, quantitative vs qualitative — and, instead, builds on hermeneutic models that combine the general and the particular, the abstract principle and its contextual reality. Approaches that are collaborative at their core, instead of competing conceptualisations and methodologies. We need truthful and relevant social research in societies everywhere, where researchers are enabled to address issues and not be prescribed what their research focus should be according to dominant Northern priorities and foci. Or, in the words of Responsible Research in Business, we need “responsible science, producing useful and credible knowledge that addresses problems important to business and society. We are, after all, a single globe and contrary to current thinking, what happens in the South does impact the North in significant ways (the opposite of which is already an accepted fact). In theory, relevant research is already the case. In practice, most of the recent calls for research proposals and all the money that comes with it will be granted mainly to organisations based in the Global North. This is because they know how to write compelling proposals and they have resources to hire researchers who have the “right” credentials to bring the desired weight and legitimacy to the proposal. In practice, and illustrating the point, journals now calling for COVID-19 -related papers and promising a speedy publication process, will publish mainly quantitative research results. Numerous surveys and two- to three-week online diary studies are now taking over the internet, and any researcher with half a day to spare has jotted down a “quick-and-dirty” design to make use of these opportunities because tenure tracks equal survival and promotion in academia. The problem of data collection being skewed and biased (eg with respect to gender or the inclusion of the very poor and difficult to reach – especially in a pandemic where internet/telephone access is the condition for participation) has already been raised by international development organisations.

North meets South: A call for inclusive global research | Smaranda Boros, Anita Bosch and Yuliya Shymko

It is time to give priority to international co-operation in research between the Global North and the Global South. Time to make room for more inductive and qualitative research to complement deductive and quantitative approaches

Sadly, the research that we publish now will, in the near future, once again talk about the privileged and be used to inform policies that impact everybody, with a marked negative impact on those geographically and culturally far from the policy makers, as the findings are not based on the realities of their groupings and societies. This is particularly pertinent in business management, as businesses function at the intersection of local and global dynamics. If ever there was a momentum to break this cycle of privilege reproduction and be more inclusive in our research, it is now. It is time to give priority to international co-operation in research between the Global North and the Global South. Time to make room for more inductive and qualitative research to complement deductive and quantitative approaches. But, more than ever, it is time to build bridges through co-operation between local communities and on-the-ground agents outside of academia and research groups. Time to give voice to the voiceless and let them speak in their own way not just in the language of our theories and jargons. Time to allow these voices to be heard and be genuinely considered in the policies to which they will be subjected.

About the Authors Smaranda Boros is professor of Intercultural Management and Organisational Behaviour Vlerick Business School, Belgium Anita Bosch is professor in Organisational Behaviour and Leadership and holds the USB Research Chair dedicated to the study of women at work. University of Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa Yuliya Shymko is professor of Strategy and Management. Audencia Business School, France

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.1 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

Coping with COVID-19 The experience of Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), in India in facing the disruptions caused by COVID-19 By Harivansh Chaturvedi, Ajoy K Dey and Nimisha Singh

Coping with COVID-19 | Harivansh Chaturvedi, Ajoy K Dey and Nimisha Singh

he sudden and disruptive nature of COVID-19 rendered the famous quote of the Chinese general and military strategist Sun Tsu that: ‘The supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy’ inconsequential. Before the world could wake up to devise countermeasures, it brought life on this planet to a complete halt, impacting many economies. This short article captures the experience of Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) in India as ity faced the disruptions caused by COVID-19 and contained the impact to a minimum. Response of Indian Government On 11 March, 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 situation as a pandemic. Four days later the Indian Government issued canceled classes in schools and higher education institutions and advised institutions to allow people to work from home wherever possible. To combat the spread of COVID-19 the Indian Prime Minister declared Janata (Public) Curfew on Sunday the 22 March 2020 for nine hours. Perhaps it was also to condition the mindset of people for lockdown for a longer period. After Janata Curfew, the Indian Government put the entire country in lockdown for three weeks till 14 April 2020, now further extended till 17 May 2020. BIMTECH The Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), promoted by the Birla family and located at a residential campus in Greater NOIDA, U. P., about 30 kilometres from the capital city of New Delhi, has carved out a niche in “value-based education” over the 32 years since inception. Like many other institutes, BIMTECH was not prepared to face the wrath of the COVID-19.

The focus of any organisation concerned with resilience should be on assuring the continuity of business operations in co-existence with the environment in which the business is embedded. Being resilient demands a strategy that is less focused on mitigating risk than designing for it

Managing in a VUCA world VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) is a trendy managerial acronym that comes up frequently in a management class. The vision of BIMTECH is developing ethical leaders with entrepreneurial and global mindsets striving for sustainability and inclusive growth so they can operate in a VUCA world. Students are taught that a volatile situation can be faced if an organisation has a clear vision and values aligned with its end goals. When faced with uncertainty, developing an understanding by taking multiple perspectives and diverse views of stakeholders helps to find new creative approaches to solve the problem. A culture of collaboration and commitment develops high levels of trust and encourages a focus on changing circumstances to tackle a complex situation. Agility, the ability to quickly adjust to a new situation, is needed to deal with the unknown. Dealing with ambiguity requires quick decision making, trying new approaches and creating multiple contingency plans. Resilience The focus of any organisation concerned with resilience should be on assuring the continuity of business operations in coexistence with the environment in which the business is embedded. Being resilient demands a strategy that is less focused on mitigating risk than designing for it. The attributes of a resilient system include: robustness, or the ability to absorb shocks and continue to operate; resourcefulness, being able to manage a crisis as it unfolds; rapid recovery, the ability to get services back as quickly as possible; and adaptability, being able to learn from experience and incorporate lessons learned to improve resilience. 91

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Designing for resilience Only after facing a pandemic, BIMTECH realised that the institute could absorb the shock and control the impacts because it had three resilient strategies in place: • business agility and organisational resilience • capability enhancement of individuals with tools to rebuild a life • evolving humanitarian services to be more responsive to people’s needs. From now onwards these three strategies will serve as the foundation of the business continuity plan for BIMTECH. The following three paragraphs describe in brief the combination of tactics under each of these: Business agility and organisational resilience The Birla family of founders is known for helping society and building institutions that provide value-based education; strong support of top management; good governance; open and experimentative culture driven by faculty; “future conscious”, stable and humane leadership; and the support of a network of leading industry associations Capability enhancement of individuals with tools to rebuild a life Empowered employees; regular development workshops for faculty and staff; encouragement to attend workshops and conferences within India and abroad; institutionalised research focus; faculty and staff allowed to experiment with novel ideas, failures are not reprimanded; the presence of Atal incubation for entrepreneurs; clubs and conduits managed by students provide the opportunity for sharpening leadership, team building, communication, and interpersonal skills Evolving humanitarian services to be more responsive to people’s needs Investing resources in community outreach, CSR projects are taken up by BIMTECH Foundation and Ranganathan Society for Social Welfare and Library Development; experiential learning for students by exposing them to the lives of underprivileged, established Education Promotion Society of India to serve as an interface between the government and the higher management education sector 92

Opportunities delivered “gift-wrapped” Along with COVID-19 came three opportunities – almost gift wrapped. For the past few years, many of the BIMTECH faculty had been experimenting with blended learning in trying to integrate technology for classroom delivery to influence the learning experience of the students. Since October 2019 the institute has been busy implementig a phased plan to shift to blended learning using simulation packages for courses. The plan gained impetus from the pandemic. BIMTECH was lucky because at the time of the pandemic all teaching in the third trimester was over and there was no teaching load. Hence there was no urgency to shift to conducting online classes. Further, as a part of global CSR activity most of the online learning platforms allowed free access to their credit courses. Major processes This section summarises the actions taken to reorient some of the major processes of the business school. Placement The placement scene at BIMTECH was smooth because of its early start. Most of the students in the passing-out cohort had job offers in hand. The only mild set back was that their joining would be delayed.

Coping with COVID-19 | Harivansh Chaturvedi, Ajoy K Dey and Nimisha Singh

Along with COVID-19 came three opportunities â&#x20AC;&#x201C; almost gift wrapped. For the past few years, many of the BIMTECH faculty had been experimenting with blended learning in trying to integrate technology for classroom delivery to influence the student learning experience of the student

20%

The major operation that had to be executed under the pressure of time was reorienting the three-month summer internship projects for the students. Out of the 420 students, about 20% had joined the organisations as interns. So, they were guided by the social distancing norms of their target organisations

Admission of the new batch The qualified students who secured admission were to come to the institute to get their documents verified and pay the first installment of fees to secure their seats. This part of the process has been put on hold. The candidates have been offered conditional admission to the programmes and once the situation returns to normal, the process will be undertaken. Effective communication helps in controlling the anxiety level in a situation of high uncertainty. Continuous communication between faculty and the new batch of students using WhatsApp groups helped in managing the situation. Riding on the good mobile network penetration throughout India, WhatsApp helped the institute to address the queries of students of the existing and new batches. The admission interviews of the final phase of applicants were conducted via Skype. For some, place connectivity was a big issue but most of the faculty were satisfied with the video-based remote interviews. It may become a regular part of admission operations from next year. Summer internship projects The major operation that had to be executed under the pressure of time was reorienting the three-month summer internship projects for the students. Out of the 420 students, about 20% had joined the organisations as interns. So, they were guided by the social distancing norms of their target organisations. For the remaining students, the opportunity to gain exposure to corporate life by doing a project suddenly vanished. Further, the start date of the internship was uncertain. In many cases the offer stands indefinitely withdrawn. 93

EFMD Global Focus_Iss.2 Vol.14 www.globalfocusmagazine.com

Going by the current estimate it seems unlikely that classes will be allowed to be held. Even students may hesitate to report to the campus. Their parents may not allow and may ask for online classes to be conducted Convocation The convocation ceremony for the batch 2018-20 was scheduled to be held on April 11. Even before the nationwide lockdown was announced, graduating students were notified of the postponement of the event..

Even if the government allows physical classes to be conducted, social distancing norms may apply, which will double the number of sections due to the norm of 30 students per section

Students on the exchange programme Many BIMTECH students were studying at universities in Austria, Australia, France and Poland. The institute had been observing developments since the end of January and sending students advisories issued by the WHO. To get a clear picture and to make a decision, the institute was taking updates from partner universities and students. It was crucial to keep students engaged so that they will be ready in case they were to come back at short notice. On March 12, it was decided to call back all the students who were pursuing their exchange term at partners. When this decision was made, students were advised to come back in the middle of their semester. Fortunately, one week later all the partner universities had to close and they arranged online classes for all students. Acclimatisation to the work from home culture After a few days into the lockdown, faculty and staff realised that there are many challenges to working from home. Partitioning time for office and home works, finding a quiet place to set up an office with all facilities, unwanted intrusion and noise, lack of competency to handle different communication software and hardware, some time shortage of laptops, headphones, and availability of internet bandwidth was of major concern.

Planning for immersion and classes in first and fourth trimesters If the regular schedule is implemented, the immersion programme for the new batch to start on 18th June 2020 and the first and the fourth trimester to start in the first week of July 2020. Going by the current estimate it seems unlikely that classes will be allowed to be held. Even students may hesitate to report to the campus. Their parents may not allow and may ask for online classes to be conducted. Even if the government allows physical classes to be conducted, social distancing norms may apply, which will double the number of sections due to the norm of 30 students per section. Availability of classrooms, time to conduct classes and the number of faculty needed will be severely stretched. The institute may have to run online classes. The good news is that all the concerned faculty are confident about conducting online classes.

About the Authors Harivansh Chaturvedi is corresponding author and Director, Birla Institute of Management Technology, India Ajoy K Dey is Professo r, Birla Institute of Management Technology, India Nimisha Singh is Assistant Professor, Birla Institute of Management Technology

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Dr Anne KerĂ¤nen (Martti Ahtisaari Institute, Oulu Business School, Finland) is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in responsible leadership, a mother of three boys and in her spare time, a keen cyclist. Anne is seen here during her recent visit to the University of Stellenbosch, a South African Partner of the GRLI, where she worked on a programme for women entrepreneurs and leadership professionals.

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