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Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

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EFMD Global Focus

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Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

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Catching the tide EU Commissioner Ján Figel welcomes EFMD involvement in education and training

The Economist provides Europe’s business leaders, current and future, with timely insight that helps them to succeed in today’s complex global marketplace.

To advertise your courses to an audience of 3.7 million intelligent and affluent readers, please contact Philip Wrigley on +44 (0) 20 7830 7000 or philipwrigley@economist.com.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE The Bologna effect Gordon Shenton on the emerging European masters market

Chicago blues Edward Snyder explains why students are not customers

Journal ease?

Emerald’s John Peters calls for a rethink of refereed journals

Kangaroo hop Santiago Iñiguez on recruiting faculty and the world at large

Higher ranks Ashridge’s Kai Peters learns to love the rankings

In context Nick Binedell on business schools and their environment

EFMD

European Foundation for Management Development and Graduate Management Admission Council®

2007 MBA Deans and Program Directors Symposium Celebrating 10 years of EQUIS excellence International Business School Accreditation

Dates 7-9 November 2007

» Alternative Strategies for the Internationalisation of Graduate Management Education

Location Intercontinental Grand Stanford Hotel Kowloon (Tsim Sha Tsui – East), Hong Kong

» Social Networking and the Global Network of Learning

Theme From Adaptation to Innovation: Learning from Asia – A Symposium on Graduate Management Education

» Sustainable Leadership

Attendees Deans, Associate Deans and Program Directors from business schools around the world

» Technology Visions » The Corporate Voice » B-School Partner Models » The Indian MBA Market » HR Issues and Leadership Styles in Asia » The Chinese MBA Market

For more information, please contact Helke Carvalho Hernandes: helke.carvalho@efmd.org or visit www.efmd.org

105 schools, 31 countries, 1 goal – Raising the standards of international business education www.efmd.org/equis

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

In focus...

Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

In focus...

EFMD

This issue of Global Focus deals with many of the concerns that are at the top of EFMD’s current agenda: the Bologna process, the role of corporate universities, how academic research in business schools (including the future of peer-reviewed journals) relates to the real needs of business, the most effective ways to develop young faculty and the correct relationship between business schools and their local environments.

At least two of these – the central role of academic research and the global responsibility of academia – are new emphases contained in the Revised EQUIS Standards and Criteria, which are outlined on page 32.

In addition, two of the world’s most respected business school deans – Edward Snyder of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business in America and Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño, Dean of Instituto de Empresa in Spain, offer their own forthright views on these topics as well as describing how they see the current state of management education (pages 18 and 34).

To highlight just a few of the articles included, Gordon Shenton, Associate Director of the EFMD’s Quality Services Department, argues that the emergence of a European market for management education has stimulated business schools and universities in the region to internationalise their activities, putting them in a much better position to compete in world education markets than was the case a decade ago.

And in a piece likely to challenge many academic readers, John Peters, Chief Executive of Emerald Group Publishing, argues that citations in A-list academic journals may not be the best way to assess the real worth of research. Far better, he suggests, to look at the number of Internet downloads to assess relevance and interest generated (page 28).

And in another apparently counter-intuitive approach, Ashridge Chief Executive Kai Peters suggests that business schools have little to fear from rankings. Rather than boycott them, it is better to embrace them and “play the game” (page 46).

Finally, readers will find enclosed with this issue of Global Focus a special supplement on the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI), sponsored by the EFMD and the UN Global Compact. The supplement reflects a meeting in April this year of members of the group (composed of partnerships between individual business schools and businesses) at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK to assess their progress so far and share experiences.

Martine Plompen Editor E: globalfocus@efmd.org

page 01

Contents Volume 01_Issue 02 2007 Executive Editor Matthew Wood Advisory Board Eric Cornuel, Jim Herbolich Editor Martine Plompen martine.plompen@efmd.org Consultant Editor George Bickerstaffe bickerstaffe@btinternet.com Contributing Editors José Ángel Fernandez, Ján Figel, Stefano Gatti, Patrice Houdayer, John Peters, Kai Peters, Nigel Roome, Gordon Shenton, Richard Straub Design & Art Direction Jebens Design www.jebensdesign.co.uk Photographs & Illustrations © Jebens Design Ltd/EFMD unless otherwise stated Editorial & Advertising Matthew Wood Phone: +32 2 629 0810 matthew.wood@efmd.org EFMD aisbl Rue Gachard 88 – Box 3 1050 Brussels, Belgium www.efmd.org/globalfocus EFMD

©

01 In focus...

04

Talking shop EFMD at the Academy of Management EQUIS celebrates 10 years Optimising the marketing mix IESE hosts Deans and Directors

08 EFMD’s role in European education policies Ján Figel , European Commissioner for Education , Training , Culture and Youth, calls on EFMD to continue and strengthen its involvement in EU education and training initiatives 12 The Bologna effect: the emerging European masters market Gordon Shenton and Patrice Houdayer describe how the Bologna process, along with European-specific accreditation and ranking systems, is revolutionising the European “market” in masters degrees 18 The quiet American?

Not really. Apparently unassuming Chicago GSB dean Edward Snyder talks to George Bickerstaffe 22 P rogramme for Innovation in Public Services – a new post- masters qualification EFMD has worked with schools across Europe to develop a new public service programme – PIPS 24 Research with a business edge Richard Straub asks how business schools and Corporate Universities can create more synergies 28 A better way to measure the value of management research?

Emerald’ s John Peters suggests an alternative to peer citation to assess which published management research is not only rigorous but also relevant to business 32 Revised EQUIS Standards and Criteria EFMD has introduced revised EQUIS Standards and Criteria

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Contents

34 Kangaroos to Ancient Greece: how IE sees the world Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño is among Europe’s most thoughtful and outspoken deans and a strong supporter of EFMD. George Bickerstaffe met him in Madrid

pages 02_03

12

40 The future of Corporate Universities in Europe José Ángel Fernandez Izard argues that Corporate Universities are the best way of attracting, developing and retaining talent 44 LINK EFMD’s learning programme for management development and organisational development professionals

46

46 Business school rankings: content and context How Kai Peters came to love the rankings and learn how to “play the game” 50 ITP – Faculty development programmes: the key for success University and business school faculty are under increasing pressure to perform. Stefano Gatti looks at one programme designed to help

52

52 Lost leaders?

We have a pretty god idea of what makes successful leaders. But Nigel Roome wonders why business schools and MBA programmes don’t seem to be teaching it 56 Why business schools should adapt to their environment Nick Binedell tells George Bickerstaffe business schools in emerging economies must adapt to their local situations and play leadership roles 59 Upcoming events at EFMD EFMD organised events for 2007

PIPS is launched – a new EFMD service programme » page 22

Talking shop News and events in brief from the business world

Celebrating 10 years of EQUIS excellence International Business School Accreditation

EFMD at the Academy of Management Meeting EFMD will for the first time have an information stand at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Philadelphia (August 3rd-8th). If you are planning to attend the meeting please take the opportunity to pass by the EFMD stand (226) and say hello.

Howard Thomas, Dean of Warwick Business School, takes over the Chair of the GFME EQUIS celebrates 10 years

97100+ schools, 29 countries, goal – business schools, 131 countries Raising the standards of and one goal – raising the level of international business education

international business education

New EQUIS accreditations www.efmd.org/equis On Tuesday February 27th eight schools were awarded EQUIS accreditation, which takes the number of accredited schools to 105 across 31 countries.

The eight schools are: Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands / CERAM Sophia Antipolis, France / Faculty of Business, City University of Hong Kong, China / Faculty of Business, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China / Faculty of Business, University of Victoria, Canada / ICN – Business School, France / Korea University Business School, Korea / Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria

EFMD Annual Report 2006

EFMD Annual Report 2006

EFMD EFMD

The international network

for excellence in management

development The international network for excellence in management development

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The EFMD Annual Report 2006 is now available online at www.efmd.org/annualreport

The Global Foundation for Management Education (GFME) is a joint initiative of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and EFMD. It aims to identify and address challenges and opportunities in the practice of management education worldwide and also to advance its quality and content.

Howard Thomas, Dean of Warwick Business School, was appointed as the Chair for the coming year. During the autumn the GFME will publish its second report on “Global Issues and Challenges in Management Education”. More information is available at www.efmd.org

EABIS 6th Annual Colloquium The Emerging Global Governance Paradigm: The Role of Business and Its Implications for Companies, Stakeholders and Society. September 20th-21st 2007, ESADE Business School, Barcelona, Spain. More information: www.esade.edu/research/eabis

Optimising the marketing mix The EFMD External Relations Meeting took place at EAE – Escuela de Administración de Empresas – in Barcelona on March 25th- 27th, 2007.

The challenges of globalisation call for innovative decisions and participants explored strategic options such as online communities, branding, alumni involvement and co-operative marketing. Chairperson Nicola Hijlkema, Vice-Rector for International Relations at Estonian Business School, highlighted two major concerns: 1. Internal communication. The discussions at the conference confirmed the wide variety of responsibilities in the marketing, communications and PR departments of business schools and underlined the paramount issue of internal communication between all faculty and staff in a school.

2. Evaluation of new media. How does the widespread use of online tools affect the branding, positioning or communication of a school?

Nicola concluded by saying that EFMD’s External Relations meeting offers a great forum for discussion among large schools as well as small executive centres and among participants from Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Australia, US and elsewhere.

The 2008 EFMD External Relations Meeting will be hosted by the Estonian Business School in Tallinn on April 6th-8th, 2008.

For more information contact Delphine Hauspy – delphine.hauspy@efmd.org

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Talking shop

pages 04_05

SOUNDBITES

Of course we need to listen to the voice of business but we should listen also to other voices and not let business drown these out Michael Hay, London Business School

The most successful ever EFMD meeting for Deans and Directors General hosted by IESE Over 240 Deans from 45 countries gathered in Barcelona, Spain, for the Annual EFMD Deans and Directors meeting hosted by IESE at their stunning new campus overlooking the city. Chaired

by Michael Hay from London Business School, the conference theme was Challenging the Purpose of Business Schools. Michael has kindly provided us with a synopsis of the conference: 1. I believe that when we think about the future we need to think in terms of business schools having a different sense of purpose, geared to their own specific context. Each school needs a clear purpose but one that is adapted and relevant to its situation; there must be confidence of purpose but this must be relevant purpose.

2. Globalisation is the defining feature of the world today – and tomorrow; it’s the way we live now. This means that every school must address the issues of: – what does globalisation mean for us – how should we adapt our courses, cases and content – w hat does it mean for our intake of students – how are we preparing our students for careers in a globalised world There are no simple answers but every school needs to engage with these issues, work out its own responses and posture, and deliver on them.

3. A global world is a plural world.

The time for pluralism has come.

For business schools this means: – there are many different models of being a business school – schools need to engender a genuinely plural outlook

– there is a compelling case for schools to take a plural view of what counts – for example, what counts as topquality research – the hegemony of the US and to a lesser extent the European model of a business school will come under increasing pressure and we will see new, more plural models emerging – this will be reflected in a very different composition of, say, the Financial Times top 20 schools in ten years 4. Of course we need to listen to the voice of business but we should listen also to other voices and not let business drown these out. We need to attend to the needs of NGOs, take account of new developments in social entrepreneurship and new career aspirations of our students. We need to make sure that there is a proper share of voice for other stakeholders, not just the voice of business.

5. The job of a school, any school, is to create value. Each school needs to come up with a clear statement of how it is creating value, what is distinctive and compelling about this, the sort of value it creates and how it does so. Integral to this is clarity as to how a school is creating public value and the way in which it engages with broader social issues.

The 2008 meeting for Deans and Directors General will take place at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, on January 31st and February 1st 2008. The conference theme is Engagement and Innovation.

More information available via www.efmd.org

Ulrich Hommel joins EFMD Quality Services

After successfully completing two pilot phases with a total of 14 accredited programmes, the EFMD’s Programme Accreditation System (EPAS) has become part of the regular accreditation service to the EFMD membership since the beginning of this year. In order for EFMD to cope with the additional demands, Ulrich Hommel joined Quality Services as an Associate Director in May and will, after a transitional phase, take over responsibility for EPAS. He has been Dean of Academic Studies (2000-2002) and Rector (2003-2006) of the European Business School (EBS), Germany, and has been a member of the EPAS Programme Committee since 2006. Chris Greensted, who has been instrumental in setting up EPAS, will continue to serve as Associate Director, Quality Services, but mostly focussing on EQUIS.

“EPAS represents an enormous opportunity for EFMD to shape quality improvement at the programme level. It can be instrumental in triggering change that may subsequently enable institutions with accredited programmes to achieve the EQUIS standard.“

Talking shop News and events in brief from the business world

The EFMD Advisory Services Seminars During 2007 seminars have been organised at the EFMD head office in Brussels, on the following themes: – Making the most of Bologna – Executive education custom programmes: how to meet your clients’ needs – How to design a successful research strategy for the benefit of your business school An impressive international mix of institutions were represented among the workshop participants and workshop reports are available that capture the essence of the events.

Making the most of Bologna

The Bologna process with its harmonisation of higher education structures benefits from the 45 countries that are now involved. The interest goes far beyond Europe’s borders.

The Bologna process provides business schools in Europe with the opportunity to strengthen their position and to explore international partnerships.

Participants debated the opportunities and threats on the demand side, the supply side and at institutional level.

Positioning of programmes is of key importance in the harmonised and more transparent European HE area. However, there is a big question mark over how employers will react to the “new” bachelor graduates. And increased ‘readability’ of degrees will lead to the need for differentiation, reputation and recognition on national and international stages.

programmes work with theme-modules and learning objectives.

The results of an EFMD survey of the profiles of its executive education providers helped participants to better understand the landscape.

How to design a successful research strategy for the Executive education benefit of your business custom programmes: How school to meet your clients’ needs In order to excel in teaching and Currently about half of executive education activities are customised.

Approaches to custom programme design have evolved dramatically: from generic capacity building to achieving business impact. Michael Stanford from IMD summarised key lessons under four headings: – Meeting clients’ needs starts with choosing the right clients – Meeting clients’ needs means building the right kind of relationship with the client – It also means making the effort to understand what the clients’ needs are – Processes and systems are critical At IESE, the focus is on changing behaviours and mindsets. Michael Rosenberg explained how IESE custom

learning, the importance of research cannot be overestimated. This Advisory Services seminar started with Gordon Shenton elaborating on the appropriate mix between academic research, practice-oriented research and pedagogical development. Two in-depth case studies were explored – London Business School and IMD – both in terms of defining a research strategy and in the implementation. Participants were impressed by the research professionalism in the two schools, especially the elaborate processes in place and the ratio of support staff per faculty member.

More information on the Advisory Services seminars is available at www.efmd.org/advisoryservices

Quality improvement for the corporate Quality improvement learning function for online learning The CLIP Awarding Body recently awarded accreditation to the MLP Corporate University, MLP Finanzdienstleistungen AG, in Germany. CLIP – Corporate Learning Improvement Process – is a mechanism for quality benchmarking, mutual learning and sharing of good practice.

More information from www.efmd.org/clip

EFMD

The CEL Awarding Body recently awarded accreditation to the Online MBA programme at the University of Liverpool Management School in the UK. So far six technology enhanced learning programmes have received CEL accreditation.

More information from www.efmd.org/cel

new style outstanding doc ad quarto.qxd Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

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The 2007 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards

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Professor Han G. van Dissel, Dean at RSM Erasmus University, commented on Stefano Puntoni’s success last year as follows: “Congratulations and pride are in place with this

International recognition and cash awards for the best doctoral research Emerald Group Publishing Limited and the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) celebrate excellence in management research by sponsoring the Annual Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards There are 10 awards, in different fields of management, open to those who have completed and satisfied examination requirements for a Doctoral award, or will do so, between 1 June 2005 and 1 October 2007 Award-winning entries will receive a cash prize of ¤1,500 (or other currency equivalent), a certificate and an offer of publication in the sponsoring journal, as a full paper, or as an executive summary/research note, at the discretion of the Editor Awards will be granted for research that demonstrates originality and innovation, and makes an outstanding contribution to theory and its application. The closing date for receipt of online applications is 1 October 2007. Visit the website below for more details

international recognition …

There is no better advantage we can offer our students as future business leaders than by ensuring they learn from the best business thinkers.”

Taranjeet Patel, winner of the Management Science Award in 2006, had the following to say on her success: “Receiving the Outstanding Doctoral Research Award from Emerald and the EFMD has indeed been a turningpoint in my career as an academician and a researcher ... Not only has it led to recognition of my work among peers and students, it has also been a matter of great pride to my employer, ESC Rennes School of Business. From my viewpoint, the best part of the award has been the

www.emeraldinsight.com/awards

possibility of publishing in Management Decision.”

Catching the tide: EFMDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role in European education policies JĂĄn Figel, European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, outlineS EU initiatives in the field of education and training and calls on the EFMD to continue and strengthen its engagement in these crucial activities

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

EFMD’s role in European education policies by Ján Figel

pages 08_09

Figel: diversity in European higher education

The role of the European Union in matters of education and training is defined in the Treaty on European Union, which, since the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991, states that the community “shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action, while fully respecting the responsibility of the Member States for the content of teaching and the organisation of education systems and their cultural and linguistic diversity”.

Before 1991, the community role in education and training was based on a treaty article on vocational training, and indeed the Erasmus programme was launched on that legal basis since higher education also functions as training for the labour market. At present, the triple function of higher education is fully acknowledged: personal fulfilment, preparation for citizenship and training for the labour market.

Education and training thus remain very much in the hands of the Member States and within the Member States, regions often play an important role. There is a lot of diversity in European higher education. Higher-education systems vary from country to country and universities enjoy a great deal of autonomy within those national systems. There are some 4,000 institutions catering for different needs, varying from broad research-intensive universities to small specialised colleges training bachelors in specific fields such as nursing, teacher training or music.

4000

...higher education institutions catering for different needs, varying from broad researchintensive universities to small specialised colleges

Common objectives – Lisbon and Bologna Yet, all these systems and institutions share some common features and have some common objectives. The EU ministers of education and training acknowledged these commonalities when they agreed on a joint programme of work, called Education and Training 2010, as part of the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs. They agreed on common objectives such as fewer drop-outs and more participation in lifelong learning.

They also agreed on a common approach with indicators, benchmarks, reports and analyses. This approach is called the “open method of co-ordination”. In the Bologna context, a similar approach is taken, called “stocktaking”. This measures progress made by signatory states in implementing the main Bologna objectives: the three-cycle system, quality assurance and recognition. The European Commission wholeheartedly supports the Bologna process as most of these objectives originate in commission initiatives (such as ECTS and quality assurance) and help to make European higher education stronger.

The commission has supported inter-university co-operation over the years with the help of the EU action programmes and notably Erasmus, Tempus and Erasmus Mundus. Millions of students have studied abroad with an Erasmus grant. Thousands of partnerships have been created between universities and university departments. Hundreds of networks and associations have established communities of professionals across the continents, be they rectors, deans, directors of study, professors, students or administrators.

Bologna curricular reforms are important but more is needed to modernise higher education in Europe. Governments should give institutions more autonomy. Universities should modernise the content of their curricula, create virtual campuses, reform their governance and professionalise their management of human resources, investment and administrative procedures, diversify their funding and open up to new types of learners, business and society at large.

In May 2006, the commission published a Communication (Delivering on the Modernisation Agenda for Universities

Education, Research and Innovation COM (20006)208 final, of 10 May 2006 – http://ec. europa.eu/education/policies/2010/doc/ comuniv2006_en.pdf ) identifying nine measures considered necessary to deliver the modernisation agenda for universities in education, research and innovation: 1. Break down the barriers around universities in Europe 2. Ensure real autonomy and accountability for universities 3. Provide incentives for structured partnerships with the business community 4. Provide the right skills and competencies for the labour market 5. Reduce the funding gap and make funding work more effectively in education and research

The commission wholeheartedly supports the Bologna process as most of its objectives originate in commission initiatives and help to make European higher education stronger

6. Enhance inter-disciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity 7. Activate knowledge through interaction with society 8. Reward excellence at the highest level 9. Make the European Higher Education Area and the European Research Area more visible and attractive in the world.

New initiatives A new commission initiative is the proposal for the establishment of a European Qualifications Framework (EQF) in September 2006, which will encompass all levels of education and training and promote mobility and lifelong learning. The proposed EQF is fully compatible with the Bologna Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area, adopted in Bergen in 2005.

It provides a reference for teaching and learning expressed in terms of learning outcomes (knowledge, skills and competences).

The commission-supported university project “Tuning Educational Structures in Europe” has specified these common descriptors for more than 20 subject areas. The Tuning descriptors will inform the establishment of what are called “sectoral qualifications frameworks” at national and European level. I would expect EFMD to play an active role with regard to the emerging sectoral framework for business studies.

I would also expect EFMD to play an active role in helping to strengthen the dialogue between academia and the world of enterprise.

This remains a weak factor in the European higher-education landscape. We need to reinforce the knowledge triangle of education, research and innovation if we want Europe to succeed in the global knowledge society. The proposed European Institute of Technology is one way of addressing this challenge.

I am aware that EFMD is at the forefront of these developments, with all its activities in the field of business training, quality labels and fostering modern entrepreneurship.

I would encourage you to step up your engagement at European level, making full use of the opportunities offered by European programmes and policy dialogue.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ján Figel studied power electronics at the Technical University of Košice. After a career as a research and development scientist in this area for more than 10 years, he studied international relations at the Georgetown University in Washington and European economic integration at the UFSIA Antwerp.

His political career began in 1992 when he became member of the National Council of the Slovak Republic and from this time his career has demonstrated his dedication to the European ideal.

He was the chief negotiator for the accession of the Slovak Republic to the European Union. Since 1 May 2004, Ján Figel’ has been a member of the European Commission and is now responsible for education, training, culture and youth.

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

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EFMD’s European involvement

EFMD’s European involvement Over the last few years the EU has gained new competencies and its role has expanded to several domains, including some that were traditionally exclusively a responsibility of Member States. Education is one area where the role of the EU is increasing both in co-ordination and inputs.

In this context, new opportunities arise and EFMD is playing a greater and more influential role in the EU arena. The reason is that the EU is more and more involved in initiatives and opportunities of interest to EFMD both in terms of policies and funding.

Management education and development has gained a great momentum in the EU thanks to the launch of the Bologna process and the goals set by the Lisbon Agenda. In this context, EFMD is determined to capture the opportunity to promote its role as the European centre for management education.

While EFMD is a truly global organisation, its core values are rooted in the European tradition. This led to the decision in 2004 to establish an EU Affairs Unit within the EFMD Development Department. The new EU Affairs Unit aims at strengthening its efficiency and influence to the best interest of EFMD and its members.

With the aim of achieving ambitious goals in terms of efficient lobbying and higher visibility,

and also to bring more support for projects in which EFMD is involved, two new bodies have also been established: the EU Advisory Board and the EU Presidency Steering Committee.

The EU Advisory Board has been established to guide EFMD in its overall EU strategy and to help open doors at a top EU level. The Board is composed of former EU and public sector officials, including important personalities such as Viscount Etienne Davignon, Minister of State Willy de Clercq and John Palmer. The EU Advisory Board convened for the first time in March 2007.

In addition, an EU Presidency Steering Committee was set up in September 2006.

Composed of Deans and Directors from future EU Presidency countries, this has been established to communicate topics of interest and concern for our membership in the area of management education and development to the up-coming EU Presidencies. The Steering Committee has a rotating membership that reflects the rotation of Member States holding the six-month EU Presidency.

Deans and Directors from the same country work closely together to address their home Member State governments in conveying the priorities of the Steering Committee. EFMD actively takes part in these negotiations together with the members of the Steering Committee.

The following themes have been defined

as overarching focus areas to be followed up with the upcoming EU Presidencies (Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and France): – Quality measures and quality systems, with focus on internationally accepted quality standards.

– Public funding of research in management education and management development.

– Governance of university and business schools, ensuring a high degree of autonomy.

Moreover, as part of the new strategy, EFMD is actively looking for EU funding opportunities that support EFMD initiatives in line with its core mission. In this context, EFMD plans to extend its European benchmarking role. EFMD has also strengthened its links with other Brussels-based organisations operating in the field of business and management education and development.

Sara Carrer: European Affairs Manager FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information please contact Sara Carrer, European Affairs Manager at sara.carrer@efmd.org

The Bologna effect: the emerging European masters market Gordon Shenton and Patrice Houdayer describe how the Bologna process, along with European-specific accreditation and ranking systems, is revolutionising the European â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;marketâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in Masters degrees and giving it global competitiveness

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

European business schools are in a much better position to compete in world education markets than was the case ten years ago. Beyond the qualitative improvement of many institutions individually, a number of factors of a systemic nature have contributed to this stronger competitive position.

The general background to this change has been the gradual emergence of a European market for management education that has impelled schools and universities to internationalise their activities beyond the borders of their home countries. This movement has itself occurred in a context in which a more structured world market has been steadily taking shape, reinforcing the need for European institutions to internationalise.

Three factors have accelerated this process of change.

First, rankings in the European press, notably in the Financial Times, have raised awareness within schools of their externally perceived positioning in international markets and encouraged them to improve their standing.

European schools were used to the idea that, with a few exceptions such as London Business School, INSEAD and IMD, they carried little weight in American rankings and were mostly concerned about their position in their own national environment.

However, this all changed when the first serious and credible rankings began to appear in Europe itself. Not only were they able to see how they stood in comparison with American schools,

The Bologna effect by Gordon Shenton and Patrice Houdayer

but they were confronted with their competitive standing on the European scene. “Being in the top 10 (or 15 or 25) in Europe” has become a popular strategic objective among business school deans as a first step towards establishing an international brand.

Second, the arrival of accreditation ten years ago, when the AACSB first began to assess schools internationally and when EQUIS was launched as an alternative, transformed the competitive environment in Europe.

Business schools and university faculties of business and management have been driven to measure themselves against international standards of performance.

EQUIS in particular has turned a searchlight on a broad spectrum of quality criteria ranging across key areas such as effective governance, better qualified academic staff, improved programme quality, increased concern for the professional development and employability of students, stronger research capacity, and, of course, internationalisation.

The fact that Europe has been successful in establishing its own respected accreditation system has contributed to the global credibility of European management education. It is significant that, out of around 100 accredited schools and universities, close to one-third are from outside Europe, including leading institutions from around the world.

A third, decisive, factor in this strengthening of the international positioning of European business schools has been the impact of the Bologna reforms in higher education. Fortyfive European countries have now committed

pages 12_13

themselves to the creation of a more coherent European Higher Education Area with a target date of 2010 for completion of the structural reforms.

All the signatory countries have agreed to converge on a two-cycle system with a bachelors degree of not less than three years and a second masters level of an unspecified length, the objectives being to create “readable” degrees, to facilitate student mobility and to raise the competitiveness of European higher education on world markets.

Moreover, the bachelors degrees are intended to be a sufficient qualification for graduating students to enter directly into employment.

This latter objective does, of course, raise very difficult problems in continental Europe where students are not used to leaving university after three years of study, where universities are used to keeping their students for five years and where employers are unaccustomed to recruiting students for managerial positions after three years of higher education.

EQUIS in particular has turned a searchlight on a broad spectrum of quality criteria ranging across a number of key areas

However, at the masters level, this clarification of degree formats and the introduction of internationally “readable” degree titles are proving to be significant marketing advantages, not only in Europe but on international markets generally. For the business schools and universities, these reforms have generalised for the whole of Europe an officially recognised masters market that previously only existed in a few countries, notably in Britain where the two-tier undergraduate/postgraduate, bachelors/masters organisation of higher education has been the norm. In continental Europe, the most common structure was formerly a four- or five-year curriculum leading to an advanced degree but with no significant intermediate degree after three years.

In the absence of any clear distinction between undergraduate and graduate levels, it was very difficult to argue that a degree obtained after five years of study was in reality the equivalent of a masters. As a result, these advanced degrees were often downgraded in international perception to the undergraduate level. In their negotiations with their American partners, for example, the French grandes écoles have struggled for decades to obtain graduate-level recognition for their five-year degrees.

This is not to say that there was no masters market in continental Europe before the Bologna reforms. Some institutions in, for example, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Scandinavia had been offering programmes carrying the masters label for many years, even though there was (at that time) no official government recognition of the degree. However, they were often private schools or spin-offs of a university business faculty operating outside the mainstream of higher education and dependent on market recognition.

In the absence of any clear distinction between undergraduate and graduate levels, it was very difficult to argue that a degree obtained after five years of study was in reality the equivalent of a masters

It is in this context that the MBA has developed in continental Europe, independently of the public universities and outside the regulated degree systems. In this non-regulated environment, these schools have pioneered a uniquely European version of the MBA as a shorter, more focused, more corporate-oriented degree in which a concern for soft skills and personal development are paramount. However, the continental European masters market has remained small, underdeveloped in comparison with America or Britain and very uneven in its geographical spread from one country to another. Until very recently, for example, Germany was almost totally absent from the international MBA market.

Of course, a change of this magnitude is not occurring without a certain level of confusion. On the one hand, university faculties of business and management are faced with the difficult task of adjusting their educational mindset to the notion of a graduate curriculum that is other than simply the repackaging of the last one or two years of their previous five-year programmes.

A raft of thorny questions arises. How professionally oriented should these new masters programmes be? How specialised should they be? Should they be one-year or two-year programmes? Should it be a requirement to have studied at the bachelors level in the same field of study? Should admission to the masters level be automatic for a student who has completed the bachelors degree at the same university?

The risk is that in some cases change will be purely cosmetic, enough for formal compliance with the new laws but not sufficient to achieve the objectives set out in the Bologna agenda. Indeed, many universities are stuck in the middle of the change process, having made some accommodation to the new structure but without having given up many of the features of the old one. In these cases, the new degrees are even less “readable” than previously. One can charitably assume that these are growing pains and that the supply side of the market will eventually sort itself out. However, the essential point is that the opportunity now exists for the most innovative and progressive university-based institutions to seize market advantage in the new European arena.

10–25

Being in the top ten to 25 in Europe has become a popular strategic objective among business school deans as a first step towards establishing an international brand

The Bologna effect by Gordon Shenton and Patrice Houdayer

pages 14_15

IMAGE RIGHT COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

IMAGE RIGHT COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

On the other hand, there is uncertainty as to how the new “Bologna” masters will co-exist with the previous postgraduate masters programmes that predate Bologna and that were designed from a different market perspective.

The position of the MBA, in particular, in the new emerging market is not entirely clear and there has been a risk that the MBA title would simply be used to describe the new Bologna pre-experience masters. Some difficulty also exists in repositioning the specialised postgraduate programmes that previously recruited students who had graduated with a first degree. In continental Europe, this meant recruiting students who had usually completed five years of higher education, up to a level that now corresponds to a masters.

Shenton: new European arena

45

Forty-five European countries have now committed themselves to the creation of a more coherent European Higher Education Area

Should institutions offering these degrees recruit at a lower age after a three-year bachelors programme? Or should they talk about an “advanced” masters and continue to recruit older students who already hold a masters degree?

These are issues that will be resolved in time as the market adjusts to the new situation.

However, in parallel to the opening up of a masters market through the implementation of the Bologna agenda, an effort has been made within the management education community to clarify the nomenclature of masters degrees, given the extreme diversity within this category.

EFMD in collaboration with the EQUAL group of national associations has sought to distinguish between the MBA as a post-experience professional qualification and the new pre-experience generalist masters programmes which should carry another name such as a Masters in Management or MSc in Management. It is also recommending that the category of specialised Masters in Finance, Marketing, and so on should be distinguished both from the MBA, which is a generalist programme, and from the generalist Masters in Management for younger students. The aim has been not so much to regulate the market as to clarify the landscape so that students and the organisations that recruit them have an understanding of some basic distinctions.

These recommendations have been largely followed within the community of EQUIS accredited schools and beyond. A proof of this has been that the Financial Times

now publishes an annual ranking of this new category of European Masters in Management, thus helping to raise awareness of the significance of this typically European qualification.

As a result of these convergent trends, a structured market for masters programmes in business and management is taking shape in Europe around three clearly differentiated segments: the MBA, which will now benefit from official recognition as a national degree in most countries; the generalist Masters in Management; and the specialised MSc programmes. The offering on this market is now much more understandable (or â&#x20AC;&#x153;readableâ&#x20AC;? in the Bologna terminology) to all stakeholders both in Europe and in the rest of the world. Degree formats are now better aligned with the American and British systems and the use of the word masters to designate secondcycle degrees has put an end to the confusion caused by so many disparate names.

However, this offering is a specifically European one and is not simply a replica of the American market. The MBA, which has long been established in Europe, has evolved its own distinctive European characteristics. The Masters in Management, which is beginning to gain visibility, is also a characteristically European programme, different from the MBA, different from the four-year American undergraduate degree and different from the specialist MSc degrees. It is rooted in the European practice of pre-experience business education, combining at its best the academic rigour of the university tradition, practical exposure to the world of business and a highly developed international perspective. However, the particular mix and emphasis in each country will be different. Although the Masters in Management now has a transnationally recognisable format, it is not a standardised product since it reflects the diversity of culture, values and practice of more than 40 countries.

Thanks to the convergent impact of Bologna, of accreditation and of the rankings, European business schools and university faculties of business are potentially in a much stronger competitive position internationally. The emergence of a credible offering in all segments of the masters market should make it possible to increase inter-European student mobility and to attract increasing numbers of international students to European schools. In particular, the appearance of the Masters in Management as a globally recognisable product can for the first time draw mainstream European management education programmes into the world market.

How well and how extensively these opportunities are exploited will, of course, depend on the schools and universities themselves. The market is still unstructured, with many uncertainties regarding the behaviour of students and employers. There are legitimate doubts about the capacity of many European universities to transform their curricula and to make the necessary adjustments to their governance structures that would allow more market-oriented strategies. However, the market will be made by the leaders, by the forward-looking, innovative institutions that can test new programmes, attract students from around the world, and convince employers to recruit them.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gordon Shenton is Associate Director of the EFMDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Quality Services Department and Emeritus Professor at EM-LYON Business School Patrice Houdayer is Dean of Academic Programmes at EM-LYON Business School.

Thanks to the convergent impact of Bologna, of accreditation and of the rankings, European business schools and university faculties of business are potentially in a much stronger competitive position internationally

pages 16_17

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

EFMD

2ND EFMD/EABIS SURVEY

Launched on Corporate Responsibility in management development EABIS and EFMD Members’ leadership to be profiled in largest ever online Public Directory.

On Friday 11 May 2007 the European Academy of Business in Society (EABIS) and EFMD, with the academic support of ICCSR at Nottingham University Business School, officially launched their 2nd European Survey on Corporate Responsibility in Management Research, Education and Training.

This vital initiative follows an inaugural survey run in 2003, and will generate a ‘state of the art’ Public Directory for EABIS and EFMD members to highlight their success in integrating corporate responsibility into the mainstream of management education and research.

All EABIS and EFMD Members have been invited to contribute, reinforcing the strategic partnership between Europe’s reference networks on corporate responsibility and management development. A profile in the EABIS/EFMD Public Directory will enable Members to: …

Demonstrate institutional innovation and leadership …

Benchmark best practice against and learn from other schools …

Connect with a global audience of potential students and applicants …

Showcase programmes to executive learning decisionmakers and corporate recruiters …

Inform European research and policy agendas …

Measure mainstreaming progress since 2003

The EABIS-EFMD Survey benefits from the vision and thought leadership that each party brings to the corporate responsibility debate at a time when its relevance in the European arena is higher than ever. Together we will continue to pioneer the development of better knowledge, understanding and practices that have concrete, immediate value for business, policy makers, stakeholders and management educators.

Viscount Etienne Davignon, Chairman EABIS and Vice-Chair, Suez–Tractebel Business leaders and prominent academics will get to see the value of and results generated by this strategic partnership, not through standalone ventures, but EFMD and EABIS working hand-in-hand to define the knowledge and skills required by today’s and tomorrow’s managers.

Prof. Eric Cornuel, Executive Director EFMD

Deadline The deadline for Member Survey submissions is Friday 22 June 2007 Further information For more information, please contact Matthew Wood, EFMD Communications Director: E: matthew.wood@efmd.org T: +32 2629 0810 Results To access the results of the 2003 EABIS/EFMD Survey, please visit www.eabis.org/directory

The quiet American?

Not really. The unassuming Chicago GSB dean Edward Snyder knows how to hand it out when he thinks it necessary. He talks to George Bickerstaffe A quiet, friendly and unassuming man, Edward Snyder is still not averse to occasionally throwing a cat into a pigeon loft. And as dean of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) people tend to take notice when he does.

He certainly ruffled a few feathers in January 2007 when in the ‘Deans’ Corner” slot in the AACSB’s online newsletter he castigated what he sees as the growing trend to describe (and treat) business school students, and especially MBA students, as “customers”.

The problem with this, he wrote, is that the model “is corrupt and corrupting. Treating students as customers doesn’t help them develop. Do we really want to tell them that they are customers – and that they are always right – when we are in the last, best position to influence their overall academic, ethical, and professional development? Of course we shouldn’t.

What other responsibilities should we abdicate?”

His answer is what he calls “stretch and support”.

“We should set high expectations of our students.

When they meet them, shine the light and recognise them. When they don’t, kick them in the butt,” his article prescribed.

Typically self –deprecating, he comments on the article now that: “I don’t want to overplay it and I know students pay a lot of money. But I think it’s [the students as customers model] a bad paradigm. I think students get more out of

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

The quiet American? Edward Snyder Interview by George Bickerstaffe pages 18_19

3%

Snyder contends that by most criteria business schools have been a very successful ‘industry’ over the last few decades, growing in real terms at around 3% a year

a programme the more they put into it. So I think the correct approach is to set very high expectations for the students but also to support them – a mixture of pressure and pats on the back – and the customer model doesn’t really do that.”

the economics department of the University of Chicago and perhaps only half-ironically refers to the GSB as “the best business school in the galaxy”) in 2001 after three years as dean of the Darden School at the University of Virginia and a long period at Michigan business school.

He argues that treating the student as “customer” became the dominant model in the 1980s and he suggests that people have not thought through the implications. While business schools obviously have to remain responsive to the demands placed on them, he thinks that the customer model can pull them in different directions.

Although he says that he would not yet identify a “greatest achievement” at Chicago (preferring to stress the integrity and quality of the school’s students and faculty and the importance of consistently delivering the “Chicago experience”), his achievements in his six-year stint so far are in fact impressive.

Prof Snyder also believes that, in terms of preparation for graduates’ future careers, spending the last two years of their educational life thinking of themselves as “customers” does not really get them into the right frame of mind. Instead they should be thinking of the responsibilities they have and will have in the future.

Perhaps in specific terms the most significant so far has been the delivery on time and on budget of a new US$125m building in the middle of the university campus, something that had caused some controversy before his arrival. (Though, on reflection, Prof Snyder would also list the opening of a campus in London.)

Finally, says Snyder, when he came to Chicago in 2001 he faced a number of major challenges, in particular how to change the culture of the school and its representation of itself to the outside world

In focusing the school in one location (it was previously spread across a number of different buildings) Prof Snyder has also helped develop much more of a community spirit among students, aided by his regular coffee mornings with them.

“I had to ask people for a lot of help – how do we do this together?

If students are thinking of themselves as customers, maybe this is not the way to get them to help with that.”

In part, he agrees, his approach does reflect some of the current concerns about management education and business in general, though he puts it fairly mildly.

“I don’t worry about people earning a lot of money. That’s a fine thing.

Success is great,” he says. “But I do worry about the narrow orientation [towards high earning power] in a lot of society and I don’t think that serves students well.”

Prof Snyder joined the Chicago GSB (he gained his MA and PhD from

He has also helped to increase the school’s endowment from $187m in 2002 to its 2006 level of $346m. He performed a similar feat at Darden and this may well have attracted the eyes of the GSB’s head-hunters.

Certainly, the powers-that-be seem pleased with their choice. Prof Snyder’s official profile from the GSB notes that he “has strengthened the school’s values with the objective of ensuring that Chicago continues to offer the most challenging academic programmes of any business school in the world. His other main strategic imperative has been to strengthen the school’s relationships with business and alumni around the world for the dual purposes of (a) increasing opportunities for GSB students and alumni, and (b) increasing the school’s influence

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

The quiet American? Edward Snyder Interview by George Bickerstaffe pages 20_21

I don’t worry about people earning a lot of money. That’s a fine thing. Success is great, but I do worry about the narrow orientation [towards high earning power] in a lot of society and I don’t think that serves students well

so that it can continue to help improve business practices, increase performance, and strengthen the world’s market-oriented economies”.

That reference to market economies is significant. There has been some debate in the business academia world in recent times about the importance, and in particular relevance to the real world, of some academic business research. The old charges of esoteric research in obscure journals with no relevance to business have been receiving some energetic re-polishing.

Prof Snyder comments that “I really think that not all schools have to be research oriented. And not all that are research oriented should do the same type of research”. However, he does really share the concerns about the relevance of research – at least at Chicago. He says he is confident about what the school has to offer and points out that in his experience the faculty who students really value are those who are leaders in their research field. But he does caution that it is very difficult to know which research is relevant.

In any case, he argues that the contribution business schools have made to business is considerable. He contends that by most criteria business schools have been a very successful “industry” over the last few decades, growing in real terms at around 3% a year.

And more importantly, he says, they have been largely instrumental in helping create the conditions to establish a global economy that has brought (through China and India and other countries) many billions of people into economic activity.

At the very least, he says, business academia has created “a common language for people to do business around the world”.

Under Prof Snyder, Chicago’s own global ambitions have been undertaken cautiously and on its own terms. It has steadfastly refused

to follow many other schools in establishing strategic partnerships and what he calls “hyphenated degrees”, preferring instead to establish its own campuses outside the US, first in Barcelona (now transferred to London) and then Singapore.

It was a strategy in place at the GSB when Prof Snyder arrived and one he has been happy to maintain (overseas business strategy is one of his own areas of academic research).

“Businesses might use joint ventures as an initial strategy to enter a market but they don’t use them long term,” he points out. “The joint venture model has problems. I’m not saying we are perfect or anything but if we have problems with a curriculum or with operations, then no one is pointing a finger at anyone else. It’s hard to get things right with two cooks in the kitchen. Joint ventures aren’t impossible to pull off or wrong in themselves – they’re just not for us.”

But Chicago GSB seems definitely for him.

A question about whether he has any regrets about his time there so far leaves him nonplussed. Instead of answering he ruminates about the lessons he has learned. The main one, he finally decides, is that he has learned how to ask for help.

Not that he really seems to need it.

$346m

Snyder has also helped to increase the school’s endowment from $187m in 2002 to its 2006 level of $346m

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

PIPS is launched

pages 22_23

Programme for Innovation in Public Services – a new post-masters programme Over the past year, EFMD has worked with four member schools – Copenhagen Business School, ESADE, Solvay Business School and Warwick Business School – to prepare PIPS – Programme for Innovation in Public Services, a new post-masters programme.

The PIPS initiative arose from a perceived need for public service leaders to develop a more pan-European perspective on the issues they face by learning from each other and developing innovative approaches to their national challenges and initiatives.

The intention is that the programme will enable them to facilitate positive transformational change within public services, thereby improving both operational efficiency and client services.

The programme will last ten months and will consist of 250 contact hours with Internet-based support.

A number of innovative elements have been introduced: › A pre-programme workshop for organisational sponsors will ensure that there is close linkage to institutional priorities › Programme workshops will be held in three different locations around Europe › Participants will visit a number of public service organisations to witness examples of best practice › Groups will be formed to work on Strategic Learning Projects sponsored by their organisations. These projects will be pan-European in scope and will tackle major issues facing public-service organisations › A number of virtual learning tools will be used to help participants develop the skills and confidence to use these as part of their normal operating practices

The first sponsors’ workshop will take place in November 2007 with the main programme beginning in January.

To find out more about PIPS, please contact: Florence.

Gregoire@efmd.org or see the website: www.efmd.org/pips PIPS Programme Overview SPONSORS’ WORKSHOP

08 / 09 NOVEMBER 2007

8 weeks

WORKSHOP 1 (4 DAYS) JANUARY 2008

12-14 weeks

WORKSHOP 2 (4 DAYS) APRIL 2008

20-24 weeks

WORKSHOP 3 (3 DAYS) OCTOBER 2008

ALUMNI NETWORK

Distance learning and collaboration

Research with a business edge RICHARD STRAUB ASKS HOW BUSINESS SCHOOLS AND CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES CAN CREATE MORE SYNERGIES

A real gap exists with regards to applicationoriented research made available and adopted by corporations to address new issues. Business schools and Corporate Universities need to play a key role in creating more synergies.

A global survey conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value has demonstrated that CEOs see “innovation” as the top requirement for their companies to compete in fast-changing global markets.

However, competitive advantage cannot merely be achieved through innovative products and services – innovation is increasingly integrated into processes and business models, which leads to the creation of new management practices, methods and tools.

As these changes move ever-more rapidly, Corporate Universities (CUs) face the challenge of equipping employees with new skills to support cultural changes as well as organisational transformations. They must adapt and re-shape the development programmes offered to their executives, managers and talent pools.

The question arises as to the role that business schools, with their research capabilities, play or should play in this development. In the fields of technology and engineering there are frequently long-standing research partnerships between universities and corporations. But this is not necessarily the case for business and management disciplines.

While managers tend to be sceptical about the impact and validity of academic research for management, there also seems to be a broad consensus that a good deal of innovation is required in today’s management concepts, practices and tools. Where could this innovation come from?

CUs face the challenge of equipping employees with new skills to support cultural changes as well as organisational transformations

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Company executives are not only interested in understanding and leveraging emerging practices based on today’s experiences. They are keen on anticipating new global trends and positioning their companies for the future.

Some business schools have embraced this important area of “trend-spotting”, including the analysis and impact-assessment of future scenarios for management.

However, this area is currently mainly occupied by specialised research organisations, particularly those attached to large consulting firms, which use the opportunities offered by their global scale to drive research projects that appeal to clients with access to the results. Such research projects are normally part of an overall long-term strategic framework established by these client companies, which guarantees the consistency and coherence of the research over time.

It also provides a basis for developing new consulting methods and offerings. An example is the IBM Institute for Business Value, which has developed unique research capabilities at the intersection of business and technology.

Though all this leads to the question of better synergies between business and academia in the field of management studies, the experience of the last 10 years has shown that the implementation of such linkages is a bigger challenge than anticipated.

There have been recent initiatives to improve the understanding of the link between research, education and innovation and to produce sound information on how to act on it.

The Global Innovation Index (GII), released by INSEAD in January 2007, is one example. The GII aims to show how different countries and regions respond to the challenge of innovation by analysing their ability to adopt and benefit from new technologies, increased human capacities, operational and organisational developments, and improved institutional performance.

pages 24_25

IMAGE COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is little to no involvement of CUs in research in the field of management studies. Rather, they tend to learn from their own in-house experiences “on the fly”, try to make this learning available to a larger audience, and involve business schools along with other education providers for delivery of education and learning programmes.

In this sense companies are “living laboratories” for innovation and research in management practices.

Research with a business edge by Richard Straub

Company executives are not only interested in understanding and leveraging emerging practices based on today’s experiences.

They are keen on anticipating new global trends and positioning their companies for the future

IMAGE COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Five out of the eight pillars underlying the GII represent aspects that enhance the capacity of a nation to generate ideas and leverage them for innovative products and services.

(See http://worldbusinesslive.com/article/625442/the-worlds-top-innovators-index/) In addition, EFMD has developed quality improvement schemes for business schools and for corporations that place significant emphasis on research and innovation and synergies between business schools and the corporate world. The EQUIS accreditation standards, for example, include the quality and relevance of the research produced by academic faculty.

At the same time, the CLIP (Corporate Learning Improvement Process) accreditation scheme for CUs and equivalent corporate learning organisations puts significant emphasis on the innovation focus and capacity of CUs and points specifically to the need for ongoing research in the field of business enterprise and management either undertaken or sponsored by CUs. As Yves Doz describes it in a forthcoming article â&#x20AC;&#x153;Building a community of learning through collaborative researchâ&#x20AC;?, managers and academics can be co-creators of applied knowledge in the management field provided they work closely together. Prof Doz has just completed a major research project on strategic agility where he worked alongside the former head of strategy and CIO of Nokia, Mikko Kosonen, and with the participation of major corporations such as Cisco, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, SAP and STMicroelectronics. The joint research will be published in a book later this year. This demonstrates that co-creation of inductive theories can become a reality.

The message to business schools and CUs is clear: research in the field of management education needs to be relevant to corporate needs but also innovative and rigorously conducted.

In parallel to the development of such tools for assessing the quality and relevance of research, several innovative business schools and companies have embarked on initiatives to link business school research to the requirements of the corporate world.

One recent example is the joint research by the Duke Center for International Business Education and Research and Booz Allen Hamilton. This project researched the issue of the globalisation of white-collar work, especially offshoring and outsourcing, including how to develop a global workforce-sourcing strategy.

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Research with a business edge by Richard Straub

There are a variety of opportunities that just a few corporations and business schools have so far taken up. By taking advantage of their different approaches to research, business education providers and corporations can draw considerable mutual benefits from collaboration Another example is the London Business School Management Innovation Lab, which works on selected projects in tandem with corporate partners. The typical partnership lasts between two months and two years and the underlying model operates in four phases (tackling new challenges, deconstructing management orthodoxies, searching for new principles, and experimenting, learning and adapting) while at the same time working towards a disciplined methodology and toolkit.

The Learning Network at IMD in Lausanne is yet another example of close co-operation between the academic and corporate worlds. An array of mechanisms are deployed

by IMD to exchange best practice while stressing that the development of real-world material is done according to the key principles of focused research on practical challenges facing real companies and that the translation of insights into relevant output and materials involves both teaching faculty and executives.

Helsinki School of Economics’ (HSE) strategy is based on combining multidisciplinary scientific rigour and practical relevance in selected areas. An example is HSE’s Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research (CKIR), which focuses on managing global innovation processes, facilitating the development of “human-friendly” technologies, all in so-called living-lab experiments in which new services are evaluated in real-life settings.

There are a variety of opportunities that just a few corporations and business schools have so far taken up. By taking advantage of their different approaches to research, business education providers and corporations can draw considerable mutual benefits from collaboration.

Joint research would provide business schools with insights into emerging trends in the corporate world and allow them to align their own research projects to the needs of companies and refine their programmes so they are best geared towards preparing future leaders.

Furthermore, educational institutions would gain an insight into the multi-disciplinary approach that corporate research is increasingly adopting.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard Straub is the EFMD Director of Development and CLIP FURTHER INFORMATION

A shorter version of this article was published in the Financial Times Special Report on Corporate Learning on the 19th March

pages 26_27

Downloads have a number of advantages over peer citation. They take in a much wider reference group â&#x20AC;&#x201C; students, researchers and practitioners.

Citation measurement is limited to people using a paper in order to write another paper

A better way to measure the value of management research?

John Peters suggests an alternative to peer citation to assess which published management research is not only rigorous but also relevant to business

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Measuring the value of management research by John Peters

Business school researchers often seem to live in a somewhat schizophrenic world, beset on one side by those who preach the need for rigour, measurement and proof and on the other by business leaders seeking relevance and real-world application.

Those of us who work in the scholarly publications business suffer some of the same challenges. As publishers we are an important part of the legitimising process. We are sometimes asked by our authors and editors to create publishing vehicles that are “A-list” – very rigorous, often very quantitative, carrying high regard among the “right kind” of peers and therefore likely to be highly cited (or at least citable).

A-list publishing follows the system of academic peer review, which was adapted directly from scientific research. It sits alongside its brother-in-arms – peer citation measurement – as an arbiter of quality of output. These measures have helped establish management studies as management science – establishing it as a “proper” field for scholars to operate in.

But A-list publishing carries the danger of what I call the “Studio 54” effect – the New York nightclub so desirable among 1970s and 1980s fashionistas that it became virtually impossible for non-celebrities to get into.

The ISI citation index (now branded as Thomson Scientific) is published by the giant Thomson Corporation and comprises a strictly limited list of journals that are carefully assessed before being included. Peer-citation is a closed system of judgement, only measuring which researchers writing in other indexed journals quote a particular article.

The A-list of scholarly business journals is dominated by scholars from elite institutions – most of them based in America. The Web of Science journal citation reports (2005 data) show that the top 19 journals are all US-based (although some, such as Research Policy, have significant European representation). Number 20, Organization, is a European journal.

The most published “fields” in management are dominated by specialist and science-derived areas – behavioural sciences, technology management and information-system management – along with, to a smaller extent, strategic management, leadership and corporate governance.

More interdisciplinary and, interestingly, inter-cultural research fields such as international business are well down the list (although some international business research does get published in some of the top generalist journals). There are no business ethics journals in the top 70.

There is, I believe, a darker aspect to an obsession with peer-citation as a major arbiter of quality. The system of researchers writing for other researchers, citing each others’ work in a benevolent cycle of reciprocity, perpetuates the status quo. It leaves little opportunity for entry to those

pages 28_29

from emerging economies or from second-tier institutions or indeed for those unwilling or unable to understand the (mostly) unwritten rules of scholarly publishing.

This status quo has a number of pernicious side-effects. Rather like a Victorian gentlemen’s club, it keeps out the “wrong sort” through a subtle series of systematic exclusions governed by the members.

But too much exclusivity is bad for the system that perpetuates it.

Knowledge and scholarship has an ecology that thrives on and is strengthened by diversity, as is any other eco-system. And peer-citation measurement may well reward rigour – but what of relevance? In the end, business scholarship does not exist in a sealed universe, serving itself. It must serve the business community and, in doing so, a wider social need.

There are solutions to the problems of exclusiveness and in-breeding.

One is to broaden the measures of quality, something Emerald Publishing has done by looking at download measurements.

A nice publishing industry anecdote is that sales reps used to go into libraries around renewal time, take out the journals published by their firm and crease their spines and covers to make them look well-used.

Today we – and librarians –measure downloads of papers and visits to journal homepages with meticulous accuracy to industry-agreed standards.

This technology enables us to track the popularity of a journal, an article, an author or a topic. It enables librarians to track value for money, dividing subscription prices by downloads to come out with average price-per-download metrics.

A download of a paper is a reliable proxy for readership and this in turn is a reliable proxy for its usefulness. Since – self-evidently – a journal in the field of management should ultimately be useful, in being both relevant and rigorous, this gives another dimension to an assessment of quality. I’ve listed some of the research studies we have been involved with on usage measurement in the references section and would be pleased to share these with readers on request.

Downloads have a number of advantages over peer citation. They take in a much wider reference group – students, researchers and practitioners.

Citation measurement is limited to people using a paper in order to write

14million

Across Emerald’s 150 or so management titles around 14 million downloads were recorded in total in 2006

another paper. Usage is not limited to a restricted number of sample journals and carries no implications of reciprocity (“you cite me and I’ll cite you”). Usage is a consumerdriven statistic.

Crucially, a downloaded paper is – we have found – much more likely to be easy for a user to understand. Another publishing industry joke is that the typical peer-reviewed journal paper is likely to be read by 1.7 people on average – including the author.

Across our online collection in 2006, Emerald’s 150 or so management titles (including both our high citation-index listed titles and our unlisted ones) recorded around 14 million downloads in total. Recently published papers (last 12 months) averaged more than 1,000 downloads each across pretty well every country in the world.

That’s a lot of readers.

But the crucial difference will be made when the scholarly community itself, starting with the leaders of our scholarly institutions, challenges the system. A systematic exclusion of scholars from emerging economies, which perpetuates stasis in the name of quality and exclusion in the name of rigour, cannot survive. Government research funding under systems such as the UK Research Assessment Exercise can often serve to perpetuate such inequalities.

On the whole, the more prestigious the journal, the more limited the dissemination.

The more prestigious the journal, the more specialised it tends to be. But management is a multi-disciplinary function. Problems are rarely function-specific.

None of us, teachers, researchers and publishers alike, should be in management scholarship simply to talk to each other. Good managers in successful organisations, whether business, public administration, social enterprise and others, can change the way people live for the better. Poverty and inequalities can be addressed most quickly by people learning how to be good managers. There is a wider purpose to address than preservation of the status quo.

We would like to work with both the elite, and the rest, to create and disseminate research output that is inclusive, international, useful, rigorous and relevant.

We can’t do that alone.

FURTHER INFORMATION REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Some citation and usage indexing issues for managers and management researchers, Paul Evans, Paul Harrison and JC Spender, presented to the August 2006 Academy of Management conference, Atlanta Georgia, USA Analysis of the dispersal of use for journals in Emerald Management Xtra (EMX), Paul Evans and John Peters, Interlending & Document Supply, Volume 33, Number 3, 2005, pp. 155-157(3) Big Deal usage – a case study with Emerald Fulltext, Lluís M Anglada, Angel Borrego, Paul Evans and John Peters, Library & Information Update November 2005 For information on the ISI Web of Science and Thomson Scientific journal citation index, see http://scientific.thomson.com Interestingly, and pleasingly, Thomson have now (Spring 2007) launched a corollary to the citation index, which measures journal usage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Peters is chief executive of Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Emerald works on a number of research and publishing initiatives with the EFMD, including the Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards. Before joining Emerald in 1999, he worked as a management consultant and teacher in the UK, North America and Australia.

Contact jpeters@emeraldinsight.com

1000

Recently published papers averaged more than 1,000 downloads each across pretty well every country in the world

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

EFMD

CALL FOR ENTRIES

EFMD 2007 Annual Case Writing Competition Awards of 52,000 will be made for cases in each of the following categories: European Categories Corporate Social Responsibility Sponsored by Instituto de Empresa, Spain Entrepreneurship Sponsored by E.M. Lyon, Spain Family Business Sponsored by the Family Business Network Finance and Banking Sponsored by Toulouse Business School – Groupe ESC Toulouse, France Supply Chain Management Sponsored by Supply Chain Excellence – ISLI – Bordeaux Business School, France Corporate Category Corporate Coaching Sponsored by EFMD Special Categories Emerging Chinese Global Competitors Sponsored by EFMD Euro-Mediterranean Managerial Practices and Issues Sponsored by Euro-Med Marseille, Ecole de Management, France Public Sector Innovations Sponsored by Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM), Cyprus Case submission deadline: August 31st 2007 Final judging meeting: February 2008 www.efmd.org/casecompetition For more information, please contact Virginie Heredia-Rosa by email: virginie.heredia-rosa@efmd.org

pages 30_31

Revised EQUIS Standards and Criteria receive official approval Revised EQUIS Standards and Criteria were officially approved by the EQUIS Committee at its meeting on February 22nd 2007. The new Standards and Criteria will come into effect for all EQUIS Peer Review Visits planned from August 2007 onwards.

The document replaces the material that was previously set out in two of the founding EQUIS texts: the Guidance Notes and the Guide to Self-Assessment. While the revision has not involved any substantive change within the EQUIS system, it does represent an extensive updating of the material and an attempt to provide a clearer and more user-friendly document for those involved in the EQUIS process. In addition to offering a comprehensive presentation of the standards and criteria, the document is intended to serve as a detailed guide to schools that are preparing their self-assessment report.

In drafting this revised and merged presentation of the standards and criteria, the following objectives were being pursued: › C larify existing texts where experience has shown that there is ambiguity or imprecision in the formulation of the criteria. A particular effort has been made to clarify the terminology through the addition of explanatory notes › Eliminate repetitions

› Ensure consistency between the different parts of the document › Introduce new material to broaden the scope of the assessment into areas that were not previously covered or only partially covered. Examples of this are the inclusion of a series of items relating to global responsibility and sustainable development or the strengthening of the coverage of programme quality based on the experience of EPAS › Provide an introductory statement regarding the EQUIS approach to quality and its expectations in each of the areas covered by the ten chapters. › Tighten the link between the standards and the assessment criteria. Each chapter now begins with the EQUIS standard, or standards when there are more than one, in relation to the area covered by a particular chapter. As a result, the standards have been given much more prominence › Rationalise the order of the chapters. There are now ten rather than 11 chapters with the redistribution of the material from the previous Chapter 4 relating to the personal development of students into Chapter 2 Programmes and Chapter 3 Students. The order of these two chapters has been reversed so that students come after programmes in the analysis. Similarly, the chapter on Faculty has been placed more logically

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Revised EQUIS Standards and Criteria

before the one on Research. Executive Education has been moved forward in the list so that Corporate Connections and Internationalisation are situated at the end to underline the fact that these dimensions run through the eight other chapters. â&#x20AC;ş Standardise the format of the ten chapters to include 1. The EQUIS standard 2. Introduction 3. The assessment criteria 4. Supporting information to be provided in the self-assessment report and the appendices 5. Supporting information to be provided in the base room during the peer review 6. Notes Two chapters have been the subject of particularly careful reworking. Chapter 1, previously named Context and Mission and now renamed Context, Governance and Strategy, reflects the importance EQUIS attaches to effective governance and internal management systems on the one hand and to strategic coherence on the other. The chapter on Research has been through a number of iterations and has been widely discussed within the EFMD community before being adopted. It stands now as a firm statement of

pages 32_33

EFMDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s position on the issue of research in management education and is, therefore, intended to have relevance beyond EQUIS. The revised EQUIS standards and criteria document, together with other supporting documentation, is now available to download from the EQUIS Documentation Library. If you have any questions, please address these to a member of the Quality Services team.

More information on EQUIS is available via www.efmd.org/equis

Kangaroos to Ancient Greece:

how IE sees the world Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño is among Europe’s most thoughtful and outspoken deans and a strong supporter of EFMD. INTERVIEW BY George Bickerstaffe

IE has expanded rapidly in recent years, particularly in the number of faculty it has hired. Has that been a difficult process?

The job of business school faculty nowadays is very demanding. They need to combine both a solid research background with very good teaching and communication skills, and they must also be very knowledgeable about business and management practices.

So as well as what used to be called “gurus” – those able to frame brilliant and original ideas – what we now need are faculty who can combine many different abilities and skills. I call them “kangaroos” – people who can jump from one thing to another. They need to jump from academia to business, from business back to a classroom – and to be excellent in all those different facets. And these “kangaroos” are very scarce in the market and the leading business schools all find themselves competing for them.

In addition, PhD programmes do not always prepare their graduates to be able to cope with these challenges.

They come out of PhD programmes with a very solid research background, very good research skills but most of the time they lack communication and teaching skills and they can be very distant from the real business world.

Does that mean you have to have your own faculty development programme?

Yes. We run a faculty development programme every year and that has three different tracks. We run a series of seminars on teaching methodology, which includes how to teach using the case method, how to improve your communication skills in class and generally how to improve the formats used in the classroom.

A second series of seminars relates to executive education. Given that the sort of relationships that professors have to develop in executive education programmes are very special they need to understand

Iñiguez: demanding

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Kangaroos to Ancient Greece: Santiago Iñiguez by George Bickerstaffe

pages 34_35

What we need now are individuals I call ‘kangaroos’ – people who can jump from one thing to another.

They need to jump from academia to business, from business back to a classroom – and to be excellent in all those different facets

50 years

A list of ideas produced by academia in the last 50 years contained no management ideas despite the fact that business schools have been in the market for more than 50 years

the real problems that executives and managers face. To a large extent the professor becomes more of a coach, an advisor, rather than a teacher.

The whole issue of business school research and its relevance, or otherwise, to business, is a very hot topic. Where do you stand?

Another track is how to deal with the other stakeholders – such as the media and publishers for example – and especially how to translate the research they develop into an understandable language for the general public.

I was the chairman of a team organised by the EFMD some years ago to explore the concept of research and development within business schools for EQUIS. It showed that European schools, compared to their American counterparts, developed a more applied management research. European schools are probably closer to the market. There are not the same numbers of academic journals here and most of our faculty have a more consultant–like profile compared to the more academic staff in the US. So we are more accustomed to the applied and pragmatic side of research compared to the more academic research in the US.

The main arena now for diffusing knowledge is the Internet. You cannot use the same language in these channels that is used in academic journals. You have to translate your ideas into a language that reaches a wider audience. The concept of authority in knowledge is changing. The authority and legitimacy of an idea is no longer given by, for example, a particular journal or an academic conference but rather by whether it gains acceptance and recognition by the wider Internet audience.

Do you think, then, that we need a reappraisal of the role of academic journals?

I believe the Internet is changing the rules. I think we need wider referee panels composed not just of academics but also qualified managers and consultants in order to evaluate the appropriateness and relevance of research.

My belief is that we need to revisit the way that we select management ideas, the way we hire and promote professors, the way we disseminate research. For example, we require our faculty to produce a piece of research every year in order to evaluate them. Sometimes that forces them to produce imperfect research. Maybe we need to wait for good ideas to emerge.

There was an interesting newspaper article recently concerning ideas produced by academia in the last 50 years, mainly in the UK. There were no management ideas in the list despite the fact that business schools have been in the market for more than 50 years. There have been very few ideas produced by business schools that have been of real use to the business world. Many of the tools we teach in business school have actually been developed by consultancies or by academics in their role as consultants rather than as pure researchers So you think research in business schools is too academic?

I don’t want to be over critical because my perception is that many deans and business schools are aware of this.

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Kangaroos to Ancient Greece: Santiago Iñiguez by George Bickerstaffe

The problem is that they only talk openly and publicly about the problem when they step down as deans!

But I think we have to be prudent. We have to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are many advantages to academic research but we now need to bring together the Agora and the Academy.

In ancient Athens the Academy created by Plato and the Agora, where people did business, were close to each other. In the Middle Ages the monasteries, which were the predecessors to the universities, were very closed places that had no time for business. That was probably the beginning of the malaise, the thinking that universities are the reservoirs of knowledge and that producing pure research has value for its own sake.

I think we need to go back to the old times of bringing the Academy and the Agora together, bringing business and business schools close to each other.

Do you think that is going to be reflected in a divergence of the European and American models of management education?

I think that many American schools are aware of this problem. The thing is that the academic research market in America is self-sufficient. If you look at their tenuretrack system, look at the size of the market for their academic journals, look at the number of academic conferences and congresses, look at the number of universities, then it’s a self-sufficient market. At the same time, many of the universities have big endowments that allow them to continue to develop a research-oriented paradigm.

pages 36_37

But in Europe the leading business schools, many of which are independent, are very oriented to the market mainly because their income comes from tuition.

That means they have to be very responsive. We have to develop educational approaches that are wanted by business. So it seems to me that European schools are more market-oriented. But given that we compete in an increasingly global management education industry I also believe there will be some sort of convergence.

Of course management education is not just about America or Europe. Do you think business schools might emerge in China or India or elsewhere that might follow a “third way”?

China and India will probably pick the best things from America and Europe but my impression is that they will follow more closely the European rather than the American example, given that they share many features with European institutions.

A similar thing has happened in Latin America. If you look at Latin America and some of the emerging countries there then the educational and business school situation resembles some of the characteristics of European business schools.

It has to do with the business models of business schools.

In India or China most of their income comes from subsidies from the state and from tuition, similar to Europe.

This means that universities cannot rely on endowments that allow them to follow some autonomous mission or object, independent from their customers or stakeholders.

A business school needs to become either a big institution with critical mass, in terms of faculty and programmes, or become a niche school

You have taken IE into a broader remit than many others business schools, including areas of the humanities as well as business law. Why is that?

Also, we want to cover not just management but also applied management, including business law, which is becoming a global segment of business education.

The globalisation of business education has meant the growth of two alternative types of institutions. At one end of the spectrum are the full-service business schools, covering all segments from undergraduate programmes to executive education and also delivering different masters degree programmes, not only generalist but also specialised. At the other extreme are the focused, boutique business school, for example IMD, which is excellent in executive education but does not have a large presence in other areas of business education.

IE recently acquired an 80% stake in SEK University in Segovia, near Madrid. Why have you done that?

So business schools have had to opt for one of these alternative approaches. Either they become a big institution with critical mass in terms of faculty and programmes or they become a niche school. If you don’t go for one of these two alternatives you will end up trapped in the middle. You can survive in the middle – but strategy is about winning, isn’t it? It’s not about surviving.

Becoming a full-service business school is dictated by the market. That’s why we need to have a very wide portfolio of masters programmes. We need to cover different areas of specialisation, have diverse methods of program delivery, a big faculty and be present in different parts of the world.

As you know, we have developed considerable expertise in designing and delivering online programmes and I think these will have a growing influence in the future.

Business schools in Europe don’t really need the umbrella of a university so it is not a defensive move.

We actually acquired this university in order to project IE into other disciplines. We will use the same teaching methodologies, apply our knowledge and expertise in online teaching and programmes, and bring in the humanities as a core subject to all the different degrees.

We want to build up a modern, international, very competitive university. And we will grow in a very organic way from management and business law into related disciplines.

We are also determined to create a centre of excellence in higher education. We don’t want to replicate what already existsin Europe or America; we want to create a new concept of a university – a “multiversity” – an institution that responds to the different stakeholders in higher education, not only academia but also business and other social agents.

If we live in the knowledge economy then I believe it is time for universities to become real players. We have to interact; we have to get close to the Agora, the market.

pages 38_39

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

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The future of corporate universities in Europe

COURTESY: TBC?

Josﾃｩ ﾃ］gel Fernandez Izard argues that Corporate Universities are the best way to Attract, develop and retain the Best talent

The future of corporate universities in Europe by José Ángel Fernandez pages 40_41

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Developing people has become a strategic element in modern companies. Their competitiveness is directly related to their capacity to attract, integrate and develop their employees

What used to be human resource management has become “talent management”, a concept based on the recognition that people are essential partners in the drive towards excellence in any company or institution.

Developing people has become a strategic element in modern companies. Their competitiveness is directly related to their capacity to attract, integrate and develop their employees.

This increasing importance is due to four main factors: › The complexity and uncertainty inherent in global business › The lack of technical and scientific professionals in developed countries and the increasing need to integrate such professionals from a range of other cultures and backgrounds › The growth of new employment roles related to knowledge and technology and the need to fill these roles in terms of both quantity and quality › The changing values of a younger generation, which influence their effort, motivation and geographical mobility, all of which are of fundamental importance to companies Talent management has to be seen as an investment in the future and it may take years for the results to be seen. It therefore requires clear and stable corporate policies if the desired aim of highly competitive integrated teams is to be achieved.

It is the responsibility of senior management to generate and sustain a new culture that embraces these changes.

IMAGE COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

But this is only one of the necessary conditions. For the changes to be successful, an organisation needs to create a specialist unit that clarifies the objectives, implements new processes and rolls out the annual plans. In other words, a unit that knows what needs to be done, decides how to implement the required actions and then manages the multiple projects that contribute to performance optimisation at both individual and business levels.

Senior management must put into place an internal “engine” to attract, integrate and retain the best professionals, develop leaders at all levels of the organisation, align competencies with business strategy, enable the transfer of knowledge and experience throughout the organisation, reinforce a common culture, integrate the selection and development of people into the key processes of the company and measure the contribution of human capital.

This is the key strategic role of a Corporate University (CU) within a modern organisation.

IMAGE COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Business schools are the principal suppliers to CUs and for this reason is it very important that the senior management teams on both sides develop strong links

European companies have a shared need to grow and improve their efficiency if they wish to maintain their competitiveness and board the train of change.

They grow by means of developing alliances with strategic partners who provide opportunities for competitive advantage, opening new business streams based on innovation or by acquiring other companies.

To sustain this future growth, organisations need to hire professionals who are capable of coping with these challenges. (They must also not forget the continuous improvement in efficiency driven by emerging technologies that help to manage resources and simplify management models.)

Companies face the challenge of redefining their structures, processes and businesses to adapt to new and ever-changing environments.

They will, therefore, have to place increased reliance on their intangible assets, finding new ways of working that will allow them to identify and manage their people by creating structures such as CUs. The primary aim of a CU is to respond to the challenges of growth and business efficiency. With hindsight we can see that the traditional schema of training and human resource management cannot cope with this dual challenge.

A CU, on the other hand, has a strategic mission that encompasses the whole organisation, including aspects such as knowledge management and the identification of intangible assets. A CU perceives the company as a collection of knowledge and competencies that must be managed on a collective basis. This helps to focus attention on future sustainability.

To succeed, CUs need to become centres of innovation, developing strategic partnerships with the overall group (and its operating divisions) particularly in terms of managing change and developing people.

One of the least defined aspects of this is the profile of senior management within a CU. Yet this is a critical success factor. The head of a CU must be someone who understands the organisation’s business, is sensitive to culture and to people, and who is able to maintain a balance between the aims of the company and those of its professional staff.

He or she has to act as an integrating leader, presenting and implementing a model of professional development that provides strategic reflection in any situation within the context of accelerated change and short-term results. In addition, he or she needs to have highly developed political skills since the role requires constant contact with the company’s senior management team.

But he or she cannot operate alone. There should also be a team made up of key professionals with the credibility and capacity to develop and co-ordinate sensitive processes such as the selection, evaluation and development of the organisation’s people. They have to be able to see the opportunity provided by development programmes and they have to be able to act as consultants relating to team performance in order to maximise the achievement of objectives.

Training and development have a specific peculiarity: they take up people’s most precious resource – their time. From this arises the demand for stringent criteria relating to the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the products and services offered, which must be perceived to be clearly applicable and valuable for the internal clients within the organisation.

In order to achieve this, CUs must develop a model for relating to its suppliers, primarily business schools, universities and research centres, and specialist consultancies.

The senior managers of a CU have to define what to do with whom in each case, based on a deep understanding of each institution, its known

The future of corporate universities in Europe by José Ángel Fernandez pages 42_43

IMAGE COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

and potential strengths, its ability to adapt itself to the company, and the commitment of its faculty when they deliver their sessions.

It takes time to develop a good network of suppliers along with appropriate learning models and effective participant selection processes to obtain the expected results for each programme.

Once the model is defined and a select group of suppliers has been identified, CUs must focus on these business relationships and take advantage of all of their potential, managing present needs and anticipating future ones that may be of interest to both parties.

Business schools are the principal suppliers to CUs and for this reason is it very important that the senior management teams on both sides develop strong links.

In addition, CUs need to include continuous monitoring and improvement processes so that their model is sustainable, even within times of complexity and change. To do this, they need to actively participate in international forums as well as take advantage of organisations that certify their positioning and level of excellence, highlighting areas for improvement.

EFMD provides us with an unmatched tool – CLIP accreditation – which is based on the best criteria for CU management. Eleven European companies have already achieved this level of recognition.

But CLIP is more than an international accreditation – it also provides a worthy platform for developing the relationship between business schools and CUs as well as an indispensable forum of experts to share knowledge, experience and the daily challenges we face in supporting the best European companies – those that invest in their future through developing their people.

As support units, CUs have two clear objectives: contributing to the growth of the company and improving its efficiency through its people.

For growth, it will be fundamentally important that the organisation nurtures its brand as an employer of choice, employing the best professionals and providing opportunities for the updating and development of all employees. Additionally, it must drive leadership within the organisation, supported by the best business schools, concentrating on the most valuable professionals and preparing them to be part of the senior management team.

In terms of efficiency, the CU management team must consist of a small effective group of highly-competent people who provide a permanent example of professionalism and quality of service and who focus on excellent results. With such a team, one can design and implement effective annual plans for the improvement of human capital. This investment, including the indirect costs of people’s time, should be explicitly recognised and supported by the senior management team, its primary client.

11

...European companies have already achieved EFMD’s CLIP accreditation – which is based on the best criteria for CU management.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

José Ángel Fernandez Izard is Director, UNION FENOSA Corporate University

LINK

EFMD’s learning programme for management development and organisational development professionals LINK is the leading European programme focused specifically on the practical needs and challenges of management development and organisational development professionals. It is uniquely designed to improve professional competence in the design, development, implementation and evaluation of corporate learning. LINK participants who complete the programme successfully are awarded the LINK Certificate from EFMD and may enrol in the LINK Network, composed of over 75 previous LINK participants from leading companies and business schools across Europe.

Who is LINK for?

The LINK Programme

The Programme includes:

LINK is for management development and organisational development practitioners with career interests focused on the development of people and organisations.

Participants are:

LINK is a content- and practice-oriented programme that enables participants to build their understanding of the principles, standards and best practices of management and organisational development . Through LINK, participants experiment and test new ideas and approaches and are provided with the building blocks to design and implement their organisations’ management development and organisational strategies.

› Th ree face-to-face modules spread over a six-month period (participation in all three modules is mandatory) › Each module is three-and-a-half days in length and fully interactive › Two modules take place in Brussels and the third module in a destination agreed by participants › Inter-module work supported by a learning portal with virtual learning courses, discussion groups and bulletins related to the modules. › A Self-Development Plan through which each participant can identify key development areas which he or she will focus on during the programme

The folllowing companies have all taken part in LINK

Buhrmann NV

ESADE Business School

Coca-Cola Erfrischungsgetränke AG

European Commission

ABN AMRO Bank

Corporate Executive Board

Heineken International

Allianz AG

Credit Suisse Business School

Janssen Pharmaceutica

Alpha Private Bank

DaimlerChrysler AG

Job Consulting

Auchanhyper

DaimlerChrysler Financial Services AG

London Business School

Axima Management Services

Deutsche Bank AG

L’Oréal

Beiersdorf AG

DSM Nutritional Products Ltd

Management Research Group GmbH

Black & Decker

Enterprise Ireland

Natixis

› W orking in the field of management development › In an international company, a business school or a consultancy › In management development or organisational development roles › Responsible for designing and implementing learning programmes

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

pages 44_45

LINK Cycle 6

Sponsoring a delegate on the LINK programme was of great benefit to our company. He was able to contribute to a strategic HRD project and returned with a much broader understanding of MD and an enlarged international network.

Wilfried von Rath, Head of Management Development Volkswagen Coaching GmbH

LINK Presenters:

LINK Network:

LINK Cycle 6 – REGISTER NOW

LINK presenters are carefully selected from EFMD’s network of 15,000 leading experts and practitioners in the fields of management and organisational development.

Participants who have completed the programme successfully may join the LINK Network, which groups participants from all former LINK cycles and brings the following additional benefits:

Module I 4-17 October 2007 Brussels The Role of Management Development and Organisational Development

Session leaders are selected on the basis of their professional experience, specialist knowledge, ability to interact with participants, learning expertise and commitment to the profession.

Recent session leaders came from, among others: Ashridge, Cranfield, IBM, Novartis, Centre for Creative Leadership, Society for Organizational Leadership, Mayo Learning, Clutterbuck Associates and Novo Nordisk A/S.

› M embership in the EFMD Register of International Management Development and Organisational Practitioners › Invitation to EFMD Corporate Services Workshops › Attendance at the annual LINK Review Day (including career reviews, experiencesharing opportunities, guest speakers) › Access to the LINK members-only section on the EFMD website.

Module II 2-5 December 2007 Brussels Combining Theory with Practice Module III 3-5 March 2008 site decided by participants Applying Action Learning LINK Cycle 6 begins in October.

For more information on the LINK programme visit:

Nordea Bank

Swiss Re

Norsk Hydro ASA

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson

Novo Nordisk A/S

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Open University Business School

Royal Bank of Scotland Group

ORMIT

Work and Organisational Psychology

Poslovno svetovanje Nenad Filipovic sp

World Energy Council

or telephone:

Renault SAS; Sara Lee / DE nv

Yves Rocher Group

+32 2 6290810

Siemens AG

ZF Friedrichshafen AG

Swiss Life

www.efmd.org/link or contact Robin Hartley, the LINK Programme Manager by email: robin.hartley@efmd.org

Business school rankings

content and context HOW Kai Peters CAME TO LOVE THE RANKINGS AND LEARN TO ‘PLAY THE GAME’

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Business school rankings by Kai Peters

pages 46_47

95%

...of graduating MBAs said that school rankings had more influence on their decision-making process than any other media source

MBA rankings affect business. The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania ranked number one in Business Week’s biannual ranking four consecutive times between 1994 and 2000. During that period, Wharton’s applicant pool grew from 4,300 in 1993 to 8,400 in 1999. Following the 2001 Wall Street Journal ranking placing Dartmouth’s Tuck School first, enquiries increased from about 7,500 in September 2000 to more than 12,000 a year later.

According to the Graduate Management Admission Council’s (GMAC) Global MBA Survey of 2001 and confirmed in subsequent surveys, 95% of graduating MBAs said that school rankings had more influence on their decision-making process than any other media source.

Schools confirm this driver. In extended telephone interviews with 12 European schools ranked in the Financial Times full-time MBA ranking, respondents unanimously stated that rankings strongly influenced prospective students.

By extension, positive rankings improve quality. The increased selectivity at admissions allows schools to pick the best possible candidates. These candidates are more attractive prior to their MBA and are logically more attractive with the added value of their MBA. Not only are they inherently more attractive but, of course, recruiters also read rankings and will recruit from highly ranked schools. Since there are simply too many schools to choose from in the total pool, recruiters select ten to 15 schools that fit the profiles they seek.

“The snowball effect of the rankings promotes a ‘rich get richer and poor get poorer’ cycle and creates a ‘Catch-22’ trap from which it is difficult to extricate oneself, win or lose,” researchers Dr Kevin G Corley and Prof Dennis Gioia reported in 2000.

History The ranking of business schools is not new. The Carter Report, the Ladd & Lipset Survey and the survey of the now defunct MBA Magazine all appeared in 1977.

Carter measured research output; Ladd & Lipset questioned business school faculty about which schools they thought were best; and MBA Magazine asked deans to vote. Inevitably, different results appeared as different criteria were used. These early surveys were fundamentally based on insider perspectives and were not widely circulated.

The breakthrough came in 1988 when John Byrne at Business Week constructed a survey that moved beyond industry insiders and effectively began a trend in which salaries formed the key component of business school success. This was the first survey to receive wide circulation. The ranking measured student (45 %), recruiter (45%) and intellectual capital (10%) scores.

US News and World Report launched a US-based MBA ranking in 1990 measuring reputation (40%), placement success (35%) and student selectivity (25%).

The Financial Times, responding to criticism that both Business Week and US News were too US-biased, launched an international ranking of MBAs in 1997. To differentiate, the FT awarded 20% for international diversity and 25% for research performance in addition to 40% based on salary progression and 15% based on student selectivity and quality.

To complicate matters further, in 2001 the Wall Street Journal hired Harris Interactive, a polling firm, to conduct a survey based 100% on recruiter opinions.

Since then, additional surveys have been created by Forbes Magazine, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Aspen Institute, America Economia, Asia Inc, Handelsblatt, Intermediair and a range of others.

Inevitably, there has even been a consolidated ranking stitching all of these rankings together.

The proliferation of rankings has led to a parallel proliferation of academic commentary.

There are basically two streams of response.

The first attacks the methodologies employed in the rankings and attempts to undermine the statistical veracity of the results. The second, generally using grounded theory, looks at business school reactions to the “game”. Both deserve attention.

Critique of methodologies Criticism of the statistical validity, the weightings given, the methodologies employed and the factors used is easy. US News reportedly accepted information based on the response of “at least three students, or 1% of the graduates” up until 2001. Dr Martin Schatz states that the methodology used by Business Week “would not rate a passing grade in any of the schools that the survey ranks”.

Some academics then attempt to redefine methodologies. Dr Joseph Tracy and Prof Joel Waldvogel created a complex algorithm to isolate the economic value added of a business school to distinguish the quality of the programme from the quality of the students.

Working parties have been launched in Europe to attempt to find commonality around criteria and methodologies in a marketplace where schools actually agree about very little. Others, either out of frustration or light-heartedly, have analysed existing ranking results, with Dr Schatz indicating that he “delivered a ranking which is essentially the same as Business Week and US News combined” by averaging the relative scores for GMAT test results and starting salaries of MBAs. Not to be outdone, your contributor has correlated MBA tuition fees and rankings based on the 2006 Financial Times MBA survey. Acknowledging issues of currency fluctuations and a need for absolute rather than relative scores for schools, the correlation is nevertheless there, explaining 30% per cent of ranking results. R 2 increases to 0.4 when the 2006 price is correlated with the 2004 ranking.

This suggests that a positive ranking raises a school’s confidence to increase prices for future programmes. The top decile of schools, on average, charges $79,959, indicating a rankings premium substantially above the “best-fit” line, while the bottom decile charges $36,966 . This is not that surprising as many of the criteria on which schools are evaluated are resource-dependent: more leads to more and exclusivity is self-fulfilling.

Critique of ‘the game’ The other academic stream to emerge from the rankings literature is ultimately more fruitful and emerges from articles concerning reputation and behaviour. Luis Martins completed his doctoral dissertation Organizational adaptation to reputational rankings: the role of managers’ strategic issue interpretations in 1997.

Dr Martins looked at responses from 59 ranked schools to good or bad rankings and controlled against a group of 60 unranked schools. Unsurprisingly, well-ranked schools thought rankings were valid. Poorly ranked schools disputed their validity.

Strangely, ranked schools took more action to address underlying issues that the rankings brought up and to the rankings process than did unranked schools, who evidently felt that getting into the rankings was next to impossible and thus futile.

Dr Corley and Prof Gioia and Ilja van Roon respectively focussed on the behaviour of ranked schools in America and in Europe.

Both studies noted high degrees of frustration among business school professionals.

Rankings criteria are defined outside business schools and change over time, making them capricious. Complicating matters further, criteria among different rankings, as noted earlier, measure different attributes. Even if a school wanted to, optimising

Schools are attempting to contradict the rules set out in ‘the game’. Both in North America and Europe, some schools are not supplying data to the rankers

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Business school rankings by Kai Peters

pages 48_49

in relation to all rankings would be impossible. Just between US News and Business Week, over 90 attributes are measured.

Given these constraints, business schools nevertheless acknowledge the influence that rankings exert. Dr Corley and Prof Gioia anchor their Catch-22 thesis in the idea that the game has a number of rules:

› You must play the game or be significantly disadvantaged › Once you are in the game, you cannot quit without serious consequences › Protest is futile and can antagonise rankings organisations › Criteria change over time › You cannot really win

IMAGE COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

The future With these sobering admonitions in mind, what can one observe in the landscape today? Judging by interaction with colleagues in a number of settings (such as the EFMD Annual Deans Meeting rankings debate in Rotterdam in January 2006 and AACSB working parties) there is continued frustration with rankings.

$79,959

The top decile of schools, on average, charges $79,959, indicating a rankings premium substantially above the ‘best-fit’ line, while the bottom decile charges $36,966

Schools are attempting to contradict the rules set out in “the game”. Both in North America and Europe, some schools are not supplying data to the rankers. Others are convening working parties in which to review all potential criteria, proposing, inter alia, to expand the list of academic work included, to review international factors including job placement and the cost of living in various locations, and to propose ways of measuring reputation.

These initiatives arise because schools are frustrated with journalists determining criteria in a “one size fits all” manner in different ways for different publications.

On the other hand, many schools have come to terms with the reality of rankings and they are learning how to work with them. Rankings cause schools management to reflect on a broad range of conditions and outcomes related to their schools. They can tackle issues where they feel that a particular criterion does touch upon a real issue.

Additionally, due to the profusion of rankings and because they have been part of the business school environment for quite a few years, one can observe less rankings-related tension both among schools and among rankings journalists.

The profusion of rankings means that there is always a criterion or a previous iteration of the rankings in which one’s school has done particularly well and which is then proudly advertised in the schools advertising or collateral material whether it be ”the greatest diversity” or “highest salary increases” or simply “the best school in Berkhamsted”.

Rankings are here to stay and they will continue to affect the fortunes of business schools. The criteria upon which the rankings are based will continue to change and deans and marketing directors will continue to search, in vain, for a proactive strategy in the rankings marketplace.

That said, research indicates that it is better to “play the game” than to boycott the rankings, since bad publicity is better than no publicity.

Lastly, rankings have brought some external scrutiny to the performance of business schools and have, in part, contributed to quality improvement among MBA programmes specifically and business schools generally.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kai Peters is chief executive of Ashridge Business School in Berkhamsted, UK. www.ashridge.org.uk

ITP

Faculty development programmes: the key for success University and business school faculty are under increasing pressure to perform. Stefano Gatti looks at one programme designed to help The current higher-education market shows clear signs of an increased level of competition, particularly for institutions that want to play a relevant role outside their national markets.

Furthermore, top faculty are often required to play administrative and management roles, making the management of a complex set of goals even more difficult. Being a good teacher, researcher and manager is not easy.

The trends are clearly visible: – A market for education that has become more international and more exposed to intense competition from outside players

The difficulty of achieving all these objectives simultaneously has received a lot of attention at leading business schools. In a forthcoming article, for example, James Bailey and Roy Lewicki report on the cases of two American business schools.

– An increased internationalization of “consumers” of management education and the need to manage cultural diversity – An increased need to update education techniques and skills – The growing importance placed by both top business schools and universities on the achievement of excellence in both teaching and research This market evolution poses important challenges to business educators. The growing pace of change requires faculty to update their teaching methods and to reshape their career paths in order to meet the increasing need for talented teachers and skilful researchers.

At Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University in Columbus faculty performance is rewarded in two areas: knowledge creation (essentially theoretical and applied research) and knowledge dissemination (basically teaching). Fisher assigns tenure based on an acceptable performance in one category and the potential for excellence in the other.

A similar policy is followed at America’s oldest and top university, Harvard, where tenure and promotion is based on the idea that faculty must demonstrate a relevant

impact on one audience and have a clear potential to impact a second. If the first is represented by scholars and the second by students, the policy is clear. A Harvard professor will always be either an excellent researcher/good teacher or an excellent teacher/good researcher.

All this makes clear the increased complexity of building – and managing – a career in business education and the renewed importance of faculty development programmes as a way to enhance the teaching and practical capabilities of faculty.

The International Teachers’ Programme (ITP) originated in America and was transplanted into Europe by the International Schools of Business Management Consortium (ISBM).

ISBM is a not-for-profit charity incorporated under UK law whose statutory objective is the promotion of faculty competencies in an international context.

Members of the consortium include SDA Bocconi School of Management , New York University’s Stern School of Business,

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

pages 50_51

ITP by Stefano Gatti

ITP encompasses a wide range of topics, including creativity development in teaching, preparing teaching materials and interacting with different classes

ITP’s key objective is the development of a teacher’s creative capabilities and enabling him or her to best manage a complex set of variables: – Teaching tools and techniques – Contents and knowledge relevant to his or her specific field of teaching and research – Self-esteem and the management of interpersonal relationships – Varying audiences In line with this, the ITP encompasses a wide range of topics, including creativity development in teaching, preparing teaching materials and interacting with different classes/audiences (such as MBAs, executives, undergraduates etc).

ITP also deals with teaching methods and with the psychology of interpersonal relationships in teaching. Finally, it addresses the relationship between teaching and technology, and the link

between teaching and research from the standpoint of career development.

The programme is taught by an international faculty of top academics from leading business schools including, among others, NYU-Stern, IMD, ESADE, MIT and Babson College.

The core part of the programme (taught in early January each year) is compulsory for all attendants. ITP also includes elective modules that participants may choose to customise their experience. Elective courses are taught during the second residential module in July.

During the programme participants are supervised by personal coaches and can join different coaching activities (for example, personal video sessions, teaching in English and professional development projects).

In the core module each participant must choose an individual development project – a video, a case study, a simulation or a research paper – based on the programme topics.

This is then presented to the class during the July module.

IMAGE COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Northwestern/Kellogg, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, HEC Paris, Manchester Business School, Stockholm School of Economics and IAE Aix en Provence. EFMD is also a member.

The ITP has served over 1,000 high calibre faculty from all over the world, and many of them now are top-level business educators.

The SDA Bocconi School of Management will host the Programme for two consecutive academic years, 2007–2008 and 2008–2009 and more information is available via www.sdabocconi.it/itp ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stefano Gatti is Associate Professor, Università Bocconi, Milan, Italy, senior lecturer SDA Bocconi School of Management and International Teachers’ Programme Director.

Lost leaders ?

We have a pretty good idea of what makes successful leaders. But Nigel Roome wonders why business schools and MBA programmes donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to be teaching it

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Lost leaders by Nigel Roome

pages 52_53

My point of departure for this article is the recent suggestion that a key aspect of leadership is the capacity of managers to reconfigure their informationprocessing and decisionmaking styles as they climb the corporate ladder

Scan advertisements or brochures from the world’s leading business schools and two specific claims emerge (aside from their international outlook and opportunity they provide for MBA graduates to enhance their careers).

Today, almost all self-respecting business schools say that they are research driven and that they are as much in the business of educating and developing “leaders” as they are in providing the skills, tools and awareness needed for successful managers.

The first claim is based on the idea that research provides the leading edge of knowledge that is necessary to provide top-quality, up-to-date content in a school’s programmes. The second claim is not so clear. A possible explanation is that MBA programmes compete to attract applicants with high-level abilities and that many of them will go on to assume leadership roles in business, supported in part by the accolade of their MBA. Leave aside for a moment any possible cynicism that these assertions might be part of the general inflation that occurs in the self-promotion of business schools as they seek to attract the best pool of candidates or that when one school makes a claim to develop the leaders of tomorrow the others must follow. I recognise that business schools have a tendency to inflate their claims in this highly competitive world, just as managers do when labelling anything slightly beyond tactical as “strategic” or, in the case of our students, when we pander to the idea that they would rather see themselves as executives than managers.

I want to lay cynicism aside and take these claims seriously. What implications for MBA programmes follow from the idea of researchdriven schools preparing leaders of the future?

My specific intent is to address this claim in the light of the normal processes by which business schools select, educate and assess their

students. In particular, I want to explore the question of how would we know if an MBA programme has equipped a student with the basis for leadership and what is the role of research-driven course content in that process?

This question clearly invites an exploration of what leadership is and the potential of MBA programmes to develop a capacity for it. Rather than rehearse the literature on leadership, my point of departure for this article is the recent suggestion that a key aspect of leadership is the capacity of managers to reconfigure their information-processing and decision-making styles as they climb the corporate ladder (see Brouseeau, K, Driver, M, Hourihan, G and Larsson, R “The Seasoned Executive’s Decision-making Style, Harvard Business Review, 84, 2, Feb 2006).

These authors suggest that as managers move into leadership roles those who are successful become more open to, and encouraging of, inputs of information provided by others. They have a capacity to analyse information drawn from a wide range of sources and to process it into a few workable strategic options This information-processing and decision-making capacity combines analytic skills with an integrative style.

This integrative style, so important for senior managers, is one of five key methods of information processing and decision making discussed in the HBR article. It is important to note that an individual’s informationprocessing and decision-making style is not rigidly fixed over his or her career but evolves through a complex interplay of factors and events including socialisation, natural disposition, as well as educational and work experience. Styles do change and can be developed.

Work situations that require a highly integrative style will often generate stress among those with little experience or aptitude for such an approach.

Similar observations apply at the other side of the task and informationprocessing and decision-making spectrum. Those with a highly analytic

Typically business schools design programmes around courses and course content according to the norms of convention and the demands of accreditation and integrative style do not work well in situations that require rapid decisions based on limited information.

Some research has been done on the way information-processing and decision-making styles affect the tasks of groups of individuals. This has shown that the outputs from groups working on the same problems vary markedly depending on the information-processing and decisionmaking styles represented in the group (see Sweet, P, Roome, N, and Sweet, S (2003) Corporate Environmental Management and Sustainable Enterprise: the Influence of Information Processing and decision-styles, Business Strategy and the Environment, 12 (4) 265-277).

In this research the styles of various individuals were assessed and used to place individuals in work groups. The groups then had to undertake the same complex task, centred on the financial, environmental and social aspects of a business. The task was designed to demand group and individual capabilities in the integrative or systemic styles of information processing and decision making.

Given the importance attached to leaders developing an integrative style, what are the implications for business schools when they design and carry through their MBA programmes for leaders of tomorrow?

Business schools design programmes around courses and course content according to the norms of convention and the demands of accreditation.

However, another way to see business school programmes is in providing “interventions” in a student’s development pathway as much as imparting content.

This second view is much more consistent with the idea that MBA programmes are designed to prepare students for leadership roles and that educational interventions, as part of the overall business school experience, are a basis for that preparation. It also raises the issue of how courses, as “interventions”, affect the core skills of leadership rooted in a student’s ability to understand his or her decision style, to recognise its strengths and weaknesses, and to be able to seek to adapt their style through experience.

As an educational process, the MBA begins with the assessment of prospective candidates based on a variety of factors, particularly a minimum proficiency in the Graduate Management Admission

Test (GMAT), which provides an indication of a candidate’s verbal, numerical and analytic writing skills and abilities. In addition, schools use other means to select from among their aspiring students such as assessment of past experience or through interviews, written statements of intent and so on.

Once admitted to a programme students are subject to a range of learning and self-development experiences such as individual assignments, group projects, class presentations and case studies intended to cultivate an understanding of content and provide experience of analytical tools.

The courses students take are assessed and graded. Grades are allocated on many factors including mastery of content and the application of tools and techniques. Grades often include judgments on the quality of insight and analysis a student provides. Accumulated marks are used to award the final degree.

Business schools have broadened and varied the basis for these assessments, with increasing emphasis on group work and the development of interpersonal skills. In part this has followed from the critical comments from employers that while MBAs are highly accomplished in their analytical skills their interpersonal and team skills and decision-making capacities are not necessarily as well developed.

It has already been suggested that research-driven schools have faculty who should be at the leading edge of their discipline or functional area and that this means that students will be more likely to experience upto-date ideas and emerging tools and techniques in the classroom.

However, in the system described above the relationship between the abilities of incoming students, course content and final outcome is pretty vague. Curiously, while we have seen that the ability to integrate diverse material is at the centre of leadership and designers of MBA programmes often recognise the need for integration, such course designers invariably struggle to find ways to integrate the content and experiences provided by the 15 to 20 courses taken during the typical MBA. Indeed, the nature of current research and the institutional norms of the research peer-review process often pushes faculty deeper and deeper into their subject matter. It does not encourage a broad perspective, the contextualisation of knowledge, or the integration or linkage of

Lost leaders by Nigel Roome

pages 54_55

IMAGE COURTESY: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

ideas. Perhaps the faculty in research-driven schools are among those least able to integrate or co-ordinate complex material. This faculty might not qualify, then, as “leaders for tomorrow”. And we must ask what model this provides for our students.

This implies that any claim to be a research-driven business school should be further qualified. The type and orientation of research is just as important in terms of student development as is the quality and depth of research as measured by publication in top-class journals, peer-reviewed by specialised faculty.

A research-driven school is only as good as the type of research that its faculty conduct. And, boldly, I suggest that what is required is a more appropriate balance between highly specialised research and cross- or trans-disciplinary research, with its integrative underpinnings.

Without this second stream of research there is no good model of integration available to those future leaders among the student body.

At the moment, in fact, business schools seem to select highly capable students, offering them a “rite of passage”, which is signified as having been accomplished through the award of their final diploma.

What does the earlier discussion about information-processing and decisionmaking styles say about the process we call management education?

If business schools are seen as development arenas for those who might assume leadership roles in senior management positions, then we might ask to what extent candidates are selected, taught and assessed so that the integrative capacities required of senior management are better developed.

This thought leads to a rather different approach to the admission, teaching and graduation of candidates than is the case today. Alongside their GMAT scores, candidates might be assessed in terms of their pre-entry informationprocessing and decision-making styles as a basis of entry to the programme.

The MBA, as a series of interventions, would provide content, knowledge of and exposure to analytical tools and techniques as well as providing students with insight into their own dominant, information-processing and decision-making style(s), including an assessment of the strengths and weakness inherent in their style(s).

Programmes would be more tailored to individual needs, with interventions designed to support each student, providing ways

15–20

The average number of courses taken during a typical MBA, posing difficulties for course designers when trying to integrate the content and experience of these courses and means for them to develop the styles regarded as appropriate for their senior management careers and roles.

Graduation would then not be based simply on marks accumulated during the MBA but might include a further assessment of the development of a candidate’s information processing and decision making during and at the end of the programme.

This would offer a way to determine if the interventions provided by a business school have had any effect whatsoever on the way students process information and make choices. It would also provide feedback to programme designers on whether they have developed the integrative capabilities so necessary for those in leadership roles.

I suggest that this type of continuous assessment and reflection on capabilities would be a significant advance for business schools and for their students. It would make more transparent the connection between inputs (interventions and courses based on research and integrated knowledge) and outcomes (acquired skills and capabilities).

It would make a clearer connection between the type of research that informs educational courses and the types of capabilities so important for leadership in our current and future world.

We can then look at our MBA programmes in a new way, with the idea that they become better fitted for the purpose of educating and developing the future managers and leaders of business.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nigel Roome is Daniel Janssen Chair of Corporate Social Responsibility, Solvay Business School, Free University of Brussels, Belgium

Why business schools should adapt to their environment South African business school director Nick Binedell talks to George Bickerstaffe The old adage “think global, act local” is not heard so much these days. Indeed, it could be argued that globalisation has become a shorthand term for the celebration of a Western economic market system that, in management education terms, may in fact be failing properly to serve some of the emerging economies it is supposed to help and inspire.

That, at least, is the view of Professor Nick Binedell, director of the Johannesburg-based business school, the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

He suggests that there are quite different forms of political economy that are also successful but that are not based on the Western model.

“China has a very different model to India.

South-east Asia includes very different models, many of which are successful. The Middle East has a very particular type of political economy and so on,” he says.

“My broad thesis is that there are currently many ways to succeed economically and that the trick for business schools in emerging countries is to learn from everyone but to copy no one. Good strategy always starts with understanding your environment.”

Professor Binedell accepts that the first thing for emerging country business schools is to learn from the best. He himself, for example, is a regular visitor to leading schools such as Harvard and London Business School.

“You don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” he says.

“There’s a huge amount we can follow. But on

the other hand you have to push yourself to go the other way, to say what are the kinds of issues that we face in this environment that are different?”

He argues that management and leadership are not universal but are informed by the history and culture – and the business system – of a particular country.

“Doing business in Berlin is different to doing business in Bogotá, which is different to Beijing, which is different to Boston. And so the positioning of business schools must be deeply context-specific.”

Another reason to respond to the local environment, he says, is that there is a tremendous shortage of resources in most emerging countries and the state struggles to fund business schools.

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

Nick Binedell interview by George Bickerstaffe

pages 56_57

1500

GIBS created the Dialogue Circle, a suite of mainly non-academic programmes that now enrol 1,500 people a year, with a budget of $1m

“In my view, business schools must partner with business in emerging country markets, to be client-centric, market-centric. And once you do that, with smart companies that understand their context, you have a different agenda than just limiting yourself to the Western model.”

a business school in these countries has to be informed by all these factors, he says.

Also, emerging economies are very varied within themselves and business schools must adapt to that. South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, India and China, for example, are all home to some world-class companies.

Then there is a “middle market” of domestic businesses that are perhaps not so advanced and the SME and NGO sectors, which Professor Binedell says are very important to emerging countries– more so than in developed economies. How you think about

But it also asked itself how it could act on its ideas of aligning to the context-specific demands of its own particular environment.

Like any other business school, GIBS offers academic programmes such as an MBA, a doctoral programme, and both open-enrolment and customised executive education courses.

As a response it developed the Dialogue Circle, a suite of mainly non-academic programmes that now enrol 1,500 people a year with a budget of $1m (see box page 58 for details).

The Dialogue Circle, says Professor Binedell, “probably has as much impact as anything else we do”.

The programmes aim to create greater understanding and promote interaction regarding socio-economic issues between different elements of South African society.

Given the nature of the changes in the country, there is a feeling that there is a need for a broader perspective and deeper understanding of a multi-faceted diversity that crosses race, gender, culture and industry.

Some of the issues the programmes address include (see overleaf ):

My broad thesis is that there are currently many ways to succeed economically and that the trick for business schools in emerging countries is to learn from everyone but to copy no one

Dialogue Circle Dialogue Circle is the overall name for the GIBS department that manages the programmes detailed below. Its objective is to create opportunities for dialogue and interaction across different elements of South African society so that people work towards changing the socio-economic environment for the betterment of all.

The programmes in the Dialogue Circle are: Policy Dialogue The Policy Dialogue holds four events each year to provide a platform for people from all the groups to interact with policy makers on issues that concern them.

Nexus Nexus is a network for leaders across institutions, which creates a peer-mentoring environment to address leadership challenges, as well as developing a deeper understanding of socio-economic issues affecting South Africa. It is aimed at delegates between 28 and 35.

What is South African society about?

How can it grow and create an inclusive economy?

Do South Africans have the ability to build a common purpose and vision?

The Dialogue Circle programmes aim at facilitating solutions by engaging with each other different people who “see things through different eyes”, according to Professor Gill Marcus, a professor of policy, leadership and gender studies at GIBS and the moving force behind the Dialogue Circle.

She maintains that networking and conversation are an essential element in the transformation of society, an idea that forms the basis for all Dialogue Circle programmes. Professor Marcus adds that many business schools are perceived as remote by broader society and as places only relevant to those studying there.

However, she says that GIBS feels very strongly that it should be relevant in South Africa society, which is deeply committed to a fundamental change, and that the role of the corporate world in this is crucial.

ImagiNation ImagiNation builds leadership for broad economic prosperity. It is a year-long programme that develops a network of senior leaders (generally over the age of 35) who learn from leading thinkers and experiential events. They leave with a better understanding of the country and improved ability to lead their organisations.

Women Empowered The Women Empowered Programme aims to create a network of women with an emphasis on examining policy issues, creating dialogue opportunities, developing leadership skills and enabling a stronger voice of women to be heard.

Colloquium for Social Entrepreneurs The Colloquium builds a network of social entrepreneurs, creates a body of knowledge, and supports the effectiveness of social entrepreneurs in the NGO sector.

Though some might regard it as some way beyond the academic remit of business schools, Professor Binedell is convinced they must get involved in this kind of activity.

The Spirit of Youth The Spirit of Youth programme engages leaders in their final year of schooling, and creates opportunities for them to experience South Africa in a world context.

“In emerging countries it is make or break,” he says. “Big emerging markets like Brazil, Malaysia and Eastern Europe have gone through major turbulence over ideology, class, religion or whatever. Business schools must take a leadership role.”

Young Professionals Forum Young Professionals Forum (YP Forum) is currently being redesigned to aim at unemployed and underemployed graduates.

While business schools students, understandably enough, generally want successful careers and everything that comes with that, he argues that schools must go beyond that and also provide students with a “map” of the society they are in which may be different from the map that comes from their personal background.

ILIMA Graduate Programme ILIMA is a graduate programme for participants of Nexus, ImagiNation and Women Empowered. It takes the key learnings to a deeper level, develops a broader network and takes action on issues relevant for preparing South Africxan leaders for the football World Cup in 2010.

“I am arguing that there is a moral persuasion that says that in most emerging economies everyone has to understand poverty, the markets at the bottom end of the pyramid, and the impact of politics on economics and business.

“In most emerging countries my impression is that politics drives economics and not the other way round. If you produce business leaders without helping them become politically and intellectually literate then you are short-changing them.”

Chairpersons Forum The Chairpersons’ Forum brings together former and current chairpersons of large corporations with the objective of learning from their experiences.

pages 58_59

Global Focus Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

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Upcoming events in 2007 For more detailed information, please visit our website www.efmd.org under conferences & learning groups or email info@efmd.org

June 2007

July 2007

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September 2007 EVENT

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37th EISB Conference THEME

Sharing Best Practice: EFMD Advisory Services seminar

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Contributing to an entrepreneurial society

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Quality Assurance as part of the management system of a business school.

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Rouen School of Management – Groupe ESC Rouen

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LINK Cycle 6—Module I

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November 2007

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European Foundation for Management Development and Graduate Management Admission Council®

2007 MBA Deans and Program Directors Symposium Celebrating 10 years of EQUIS excellence International Business School Accreditation

Dates 7-9 November 2007

» Alternative Strategies for the Internationalisation of Graduate Management Education

Location Intercontinental Grand Stanford Hotel Kowloon (Tsim Sha Tsui – East), Hong Kong

» Social Networking and the Global Network of Learning

Theme From Adaptation to Innovation: Learning from Asia – A Symposium on Graduate Management Education

» Sustainable Leadership

Attendees Deans, Associate Deans and Program Directors from business schools around the world

» Technology Visions » The Corporate Voice » B-School Partner Models » The Indian MBA Market » HR Issues and Leadership Styles in Asia » The Chinese MBA Market

For more information, please contact Helke Carvalho Hernandes: helke.carvalho@efmd.org or visit www.efmd.org

105 schools, 31 countries, 1 goal – Raising the standards of international business education www.efmd.org/equis

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Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

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Volume 01_Issue 02 2007

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Catching the tide EU Commissioner Ján Figel welcomes EFMD involvement in education and training

The Economist provides Europe’s business leaders, current and future, with timely insight that helps them to succeed in today’s complex global marketplace.

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE The Bologna effect Gordon Shenton on the emerging European masters market

Chicago blues Edward Snyder explains why students are not customers

Journal ease?

Emerald’s John Peters calls for a rethink of refereed journals

Kangaroo hop Santiago Iñiguez on recruiting faculty and the world at large

Higher ranks Ashridge’s Kai Peters learns to love the rankings

In context Nick Binedell on business schools and their environment