GF Vol 6 Issue 01

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Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

EFMD

EFMD aisbl

Global Focus Volume 06 | Issue 06 2012

Email: info@efmd.org

Dr Tony Kinder on selecting for success

Phone: +32 2 629 08 10 Fax: +32 2 629 08 11

Rue Gachard 88 – Box 3 1050 Brussels, Belgium

DR TONY KINDER, DIRECTOR OF THE MBA PROGRAMME, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH BUSINESS SCHOOL

With over 400 years of teaching experience, the University of Edinburgh Business School is world renowned for its focus on leadership, innovation and best practice, key principles of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Edinburgh MBA looks to the future addressing key business challenges through cutting edge research and informed debate.

While our focus is on the individual and developing their true potential, The Edinburgh MBA has a strong emphasis on collaboration and team work, a reflection of today’s global business needs. The success of our MBA is reflected in the career achievements of our graduates, with our strong global network of alumni setting the business agenda around the world.

Selecting the right students is of critical importance to us. That’s why the GMAT exam is an integral part of our admissions process. With students attending The Edinburgh MBA from across the globe, the GMAT offers effective selection and significant insight into an applicant’s abilities.

At the University of Edinburgh Business School, we educate students to become the business leaders of tomorrow and the GMAT helps ensure that we select the right students for our programmes.

To learn more about the GMAT exam and the products and services it makes possible, visit gmac.com/efmd 2011 Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC ). All rights reserved. The GMAT logo is a trademark and GMAC , GMAT© and Graduate Management Admission Test© are registered trademarks of the Graduate Management Admission Council in the United States and other countries.

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EFMD continues its mission to promote excellence in business and management education with a global mentoring programme

INSIDE THIS ISSUE No Borders EFMD launches Deans Across Frontiers programme

Risky Business Debating the importance of risk management

Revolution?

The 21st century’s unlikley publishing heroes

Top Rank Media rankings inform MBA changes

Sparks for change Siemens’ new culture of internal transformation

Society role New opportunities for business schools

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1 Taking Stock and Looking Ahead: Staff Performance, Economist Intelligence Unit report, 2008.

1 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

In focus Mahatma Ghandi said: "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members" and in Chris Greensted’s lead article in this issue of Global Focus, we learn about an important initiative launched by EFMD – the Deans Across Frontiers programme which encourages the best-developed business schools to mentor colleagues in less-developed schools.

Continuing the theme of responsibility (page 22) Alfons Sauquet, Dean of ESADE in Barcelona points to both obligations and opportunities for business schools arising from their role in society.

Designing and delivering effective Executive Education always provides a challenging moving target, and the EFMD CLIP programme is designed to help organisations address their learning needs in a structured way.

Andrew Rutsch describes how learning and development supported corporate transformation at Siemens (page 42), and Gert-Jan van Wijk and Jamie Anderson point to a different, emerging model for business schools to address executive education needs (page 12).

Managing, leading and changing a large corporation is a major undertaking, and doing the same within a business school is equally challenging. George Yip offers an inside story of change at RSM Erasmus (page 46) with a few surprising revelations! And in managing organisational change, Ulrich Hommel, Roger King and Anna Pastwa remind us not to forget about proper governance, and a considered view of risk management (page 25).

Howard Thomas of Singapore Management University, and one of only a handful of EFMD Honorary Life Members, always offers insightful and incisive opinion, and he explores the distinctive characteristics of European business education (page 17).

It’s almost a cliché to say that the pace of change has never been so fast – but it doesn’t make it less true. And changes in publishing and educational technologies are likely to turn the worlds of educational provision and scholarly publishing on their heads in the coming years. John Peters of GSE Research discusses some ‘Unlikely Heroes’ of the publishing revolution (page 30), and Lin Squires and Elmar Husmann of ELIG remind us to ignore Open Education at our peril (page 54).

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

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

Two articles look at the theme of integration, from very different perspectives.

Baback Yazdani (page 34), Dean of Nottingham Business School, considers an integrationist position between a pure research focus and a predominantly teaching one. Stephanie Hussels of Cranfield discusses case writing as a way to integrate teaching and research (page 50).

Robert S Rubin, Eric C Dierdorff and Fredrick P Morgeson's article (page 38) takes on some of the business school community’s obsession with media rankings, and finally, Bentley University’s William M. Gribbons claims that understanding and learning about the human-technology interface is an issue for all managers, and belongs in the business school rather than schools of engineering or psychology.

2 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Contents Global Focus The EFMD Business Magazine Executive Editor

Matthew Wood matthew.wood@efmd.org Advisory Board

Eric Cornuel Jim Herbolich Howard Thomas John Peters Consultant Editor

George Bickerstaffe bickerstaffe@btinternet.com

1 In Focus 4 Talking Shop EFMD celebrates its 40th birthday Tomorrow's MBA Mathias Falkenstein joins EFMD EQUIS accreditation for three new business schools

6 International Deans’ Programme

Contributing Editors

8 Deans across frontiers

Jamie Anderson, Eric C Dierdorff, Chris Greenstead, Ulrich Hommel, Elmer Husmann, Stephanie Hussels, Roger King, Fredrick P Morgeson, Anna Pastwa, John Peters, Robert S Rubin, Andrew Rutsch, Alfons Sauquet, Lin Squires, Howard Thomas, Gert-Jan van Wijk, Baback Yazdani, George Yip

12 Customised Executive Learning – A Business Model for the 21st Century

Design & Art Direction

Jebens Design www.jebensdesign.co.uk Photographs & Illustrations

Jebens Design Ltd / EFMD unless otherwise stated

©

Editorial & Advertising

Matthew Wood matthew.wood@efmd.org Telephone: +32 2 629 0810 EFMD aisbl Rue Gachard 88 – Box 3 1050 Brussels, Belgium www.efmd.org/globalfocus ©

As EFMD launches its Deans Across Frontiers initiative, Professor Chris Greensted looks at its mission of promoting excellence in business and management education worldwide

A new design for tailored executive education is emerging – Gert-Jan van Wijk and Jamie Anderson report on the Platform Model

17 What is the European Management School Model?

Over the last ten to fifteen years the identity, importance and legitimacy of European management schools has been strongly established in the context of the ‘business of business schools’, writes Howard Thomas

22 Business Schools and Society – Opportunities and Accountability Business schools can create new opportunities, says Alfons Sauquet, if they continue to take stock of their role in society

EFMD

26 Risky Business? Do you know what your risk exposures are?

Institutional and regulatory perspectives from Ulrich Hommel, Roger King, and Anna Pastwa, who open the debate on risk management in the business school community

30 Unlikely Heroes A 21st century publishing revolution? John Peters looks at the post-publication environment and its unlikely heroes

3 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Contents

12

34 Defining the role of business schools Baback Yazdani, Dean of nottingham Business school, looks at how business schools across the globe might define their role

38 From Rankings to Ratings Robert s Rubin, eric C Dierdorff and Fredrick P morgeson look at the significant changes to mBa programme quality, due in part to media ranking

42 Busting Boundaries to Accelerate Business Transformation

30

a recent eFmD CLIP workshop shedded light on siemens’ transformation from troubled company to role model. andrew Rutsch explains how Corporate Learning played a key role in this strategic renewal

46 Using “action strategy” to transform a business school George Yip reports on his programme of action strategies to transform Rotterdam school of management

50 Case by Case stephanie hussels describes how Cranfield uses case study writing as a means of integrating research, teaching, and practice on the mBa course

54 Closing the gap

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Lin squires and elmar husmann show the significant gap between the perception and reality of Open education

56 The Human Factor: the emerging user experience discipline William m. Gribbons explains why, increasingly, leading organisations demand a balance of the user perspective with the traditional focus on technology, and how business schools can fulfil this need

Lin Squires and Elmar Husmann show the significant gap between the perception and reality of Open Education page 54

4 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

News and events in brief from the business world

Talking shop EFMD celebrates its 40th Anniversary – a very Happy Birthday! eFmD was formed after the merger of the european association of management training Centres (eamtC) and International university Contact (IuC) and to commemorate this landmark achievement, eFmD plans to celebrate the success of reaching 40 years over the course of the next year at eFmD events across the international community. From the very outset, eFmD's mission was "to act as a catalyst to promote and enhance excellence in management development in europe and worldwide" and with the support of many leading business schools and companies eFmD has, through good times and bad, stayed true to this mission and had a profound impact on our community.

Long before the days of email, twitter, Facebook and even fax machines, eFmD was able to bring people together to share, explore, exchange and debate on issues facing business and management education. Over the past 40 years eFmD and its membership have hosted over 1000 meetings and conferences, conducted over 400 peer review visits, published hundreds of papers and articles and brought together over 100,000 professionals from across 80 countries and the community that supports eFmD has grown into a worldwide body that eFmD is very proud to serve and be associated with.

On behalf of eric Cornuel, the Director General & CeO of eFmD and the current eFmD Board, we would like to warmly thank each and every person who has been associated with eFmD over the past 40 years (members, schools, companies, staff, boards) and who has helped to make the network a truly world-class community. eFmD and our global network have faced many challenges over the past 40 years and is currently facing probably the most serious so far. however the network remains strong and committed and with its growing support, eFmD will continue to lead and advance management education and development around the globe.

1k

400 100k 80

Over the last 40 years EFMD has hopsted over 1,000 meetings...

... conducted more than 400 peer-to -peer reviews

... brought together over 100,00 professionals

...from across 80 countries!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EFMD AND CONGRATULATIONS ON A SPLENDID 40 YEARS!

Mathias Falkenstein joins EFMD as the Director of Business Schools Services

mathias Falkenstein, the former Director of International Relations at the IeseG school of management Paris – Lille, has joined eFmD as the Director of Business school services.

With 15 years experience of higher education, mathias has gained a deep knowledge and appreciation of international business education and the unique needs of business schools around the world today. he has developed a strong network in the Business school's world and he equally enjoys the high-level strategic planning as well as the day-to-day operations. mathias has always been working in an international context, in asia, north america and europe, where he learned the importance of sensitive communication skills that acknowledge major cross-cultural differences.

Mathias can be contacted at: mathias.falkenstein@efmd.org

5 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Talking shop

Accreditation from EFMD is one of the best and most complete ways to certify the actual quality of a business school Professor Julio Urgel, eFmD Director of Quality service

EFMD awards EQUIS accreditition to three new schools

EFMD

eFmD would like to warmly congratulate the: Victoria University of Wellington, Faculty of Commerce & Administration Singapore Management University, Lee Kong Chian School of Business University of Sheffield, Management School who have just been awarded eQuIs accreditation. this takes the number of accredited schools to 133 across 38 countries.

Crisis postponed? the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the associated financial crisis produced a welter of negative stories about mBas. Business schools held their breath and waited for the recruitment impact, but it never came. as with other economic downturns, admission numbers grew but, many schools are now reporting a tight recruitment market for 2012. against this background CarringtonCrisp, with support from eFmD, carried out their third annual study, tomorrow’s mBa, looking at the views of prospective students.

Both part-time and distance learning programmes continue to grow in popularity. Only in north america did a majority of Prof. Julio urgel, the eFmD Director of Quality service said, students still seek a two-year programme. Just under 30% "We are delighted to welcome three more leading international of students are prepared to consider a specialist masters as schools into the eQuIs community. accreditation from eFmD an alternative to an mBa. is one of the best and most complete ways to certify the actual quality of a business school and the new schools should be When considering the mBa experience students are commended for their commitment to excellence." increasingly looking at skills over money. Better career outcomes will make students consider paying more than Professor howard thomas, Dean of the singapore they anticipated for an mBa, but skill development has management university Lee Kong Chian school of become more important than earnings on graduation Business comments “It takes a great deal of determination as students seek an advantage in a tight jobs market. and self-assessment to achieve accreditation, which, in itself, is a rigorous process of evaluation and review. to be one of Despite the importance of career, academic strength remains the few schools in asia to attain a five-year accreditation a key selection criteria. however, value for money is also demonstrates the eFmD’s strong confidence in the holistic significant, with students assessing not just on fees, but also nature and high quality of our undergraduate and poston outcomes. When considering outcomes a feature often graduate programmes.” sought by students is a dedicated career service for mBas. “the school is absolutely delighted to have been awarded eQuIs accreditation”, says Professor Bob Buckle, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Business school, Victoria university of Wellington. “this recognises the quality and relevance of our programmes and our commitment to continuous improvement”.

"I am delighted that the management school at the university of sheffield has been awarded eQuIs accreditation. this is a significant achievement for the school, and recognition of the hard work and dedication of my colleagues to meet the international benchmark of excellence that the award represents," said Dr. Keith Glaister, Dean of the university of sheffield management school.

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

ethics remains in the bottom five of 30 subjects considered valuable by students. One student commented ‘there are no jobs for ethicists, but plenty for responsible managers’ – the clear message being, don’t teach ethics as a stand alone subject, but embed it throughout the curriculum. the web remains the dominant media used by prospective students when considering schools and their offers, with LinkedIn usage sharply up on a year ago. however, still key to the impression that prospective students have of the mBa and of business schools are the people they meet be that faculty, staff, students or alumni. an executive summary of the latest tomorrow’s mBa has just been published and can be downloaded from the eFmD website. the next round of the study takes place in October 2012. www.efmd.org

6 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

International Deans’ Programme 2012 >

Gain unique insights into the multiple roles of deans of business and management schools

>

27-28 March

>

Engage in debates about real time complex issues – income streams and funding models, governance, the student and alumni experience, reputation/branding, faculty development, Format: internationalisation, Round table debates, learning sets, interactive activities globalisation, technology, co-designed with the participants and host institutions. markets, positioning

>

Visit a diverse range of business and management schools, take time out to network with your counterparts, re-energise and reflect on strategies for your own school

27-28 March

Université Paris-Dauphine; IESEG School of Management Lille-Paris

6-8 June McGill University, Desautels Faculty of Management; HEC Montréal; Concordia University, The John Molson School of Business; Université du Québec à Montréal, ESG. In collaboration with the Canadian Federation of Business School Deans

10-11 September BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo

7 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

>

6–8 June

60

Previous participants include 60 deans from: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Turkey, UK, Ukraine, USA

“I found the IDP provides both an engaging network of fellow deans from around the globe as well as a great opportunity to expand my personal experiences and contacts in radically different global communities.”

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10–11 September Fees: Early bird fee until 10 February 2012 of €4250 for members of EFMD and/or ABS and €4750 for non members.

Normal fee of €4500 for members of EFMD and/or ABS and €5000 for non members.

Contact: jdavies@the-abs.org.uk or virginie.heredia-rosa@ efmd.org Registration: www.efmd.org/business-schools/idp

Prof. Chris Earley, Dean, Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management, formerly Dean of the University of Connecticut School of Business and Dean of the National University of Singapore Business School, Chair of Organizational Behavior at London Business School and Randall L. Tobias Chair of Global Leadership at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

8 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

As EFMD launches its Deans Across Frontiers initiative, Professor Chris Greensted looks at its mission of promoting excellence in business and management education worldwide

Adding value through partnership

13k There are an estimated 13,000 business schools worldwide.

Around 1,000 have gained some form of international accreditation

9 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Deans across frontiers by Prof Chris Greensted

EFMD’s social responsibility EFMD has a mission to “promote excellence in business and management education worldwide”.

This is partly fulfilled by its existing accreditation systems which are aimed at the top 10% of schools, about 130 in EQUIS and 50 in EPAS to date. While these systems have been very successful, EFMD also has a social responsibility to support all levels of schools, whether they are members of EFMD or not, but especially those that are constrained by resources. The launch of the Deans Across Frontiers (DAF) initiative is the response to this need.

There are an estimated 13,000 business schools worldwide. This staggering number encompasses a huge variety of structures, goals, resources, markets, and programmes. They will also be at different levels of development and quality. Around 1,000 schools have gained some form of international accreditation (EQUIS, AACSB or AMBA) and thus have achieved market recognition for a certain level of quality. Even so, international accreditations can signify different quality levels. (See the weighting system used by the French newspaper L’Express/L’Etudiant in its ranking calculations published December 2011, www.letudiant.fr/ palmares/classement-esc.html).

The quality of business schools impacts directly on the quality of management

Accreditation is not only about providing market information to help future students, employers and corporate clients to choose a school.

Arguably more importantly, these accreditation systems are more concerned with fostering quality improvement through a process of international benchmarking and offering peer advice on areas for improvement. Therefore this means that only 1,000 schools are in a structured international process for improvement out of the 13,000. How can EFMD help the others to develop further?

The perceived need Economic development depends on having an educated and trained workforce, including management capable of giving leadership and direction. University level business schools play an essential role in developing that management cadre.

The quality of business schools therefore impacts directly on the quality of management and hence on the speed of economic development.

However many business schools in both developed and developing countries have a mainly local focus, and can lack resources, access to a good quality pool of students and faculty, and sometimes have to operate within a heavy regulatory environment. There is often a lack of clarity as to what constitutes a good or excellent business school. In such circumstances, external guidance or advice of a strategic nature would be beneficial not only to the business school but also to the parent institution or university.

Meeting the need EFMD recognises this gap and, as a network of business schools, it has the ability to fill it through harnessing an invaluable pool of expertise and experience to help developing schools realise their potential. The tremendous asset of its associated network of deans, associate deans and other senior managers (currently or recently in post, including those recently retired) offers the backbone of a mentoring system to nonaccredited schools.

Deans Across Frontiers (DAF) has been developed as the third and newest service offered by the EFMD Quality Services Department that complements EQUIS and EPAS. DAF aims to support and to assist Business Schools to develop further through mentoring of the institution’s Senior Management Team. The DAF system is open to any school in both developing/emerging and developed economies.

The DAF Process As with the EFMD accreditation systems, the school will undergo a Self-Assessment and Peer Review Process to evaluate its current position against a set of universal criteria. The assessment by the Peer Review Team then acts as the base line for future development. The school will benefit from mentoring by an experienced former Dean for a three-year period and will progress towards defined development objectives. EFMD will assure the effectiveness of the process through systematic progress tracking. More detail on the process is available at www.efmd.org/business-schools/ deans-across-frontiers.

10 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

DAF Evaluation Criteria The Deans Across Frontiers model views a business school as a wheel with a number of interlinked activity spokes, which emanate from the senior management hub, and which together are located within its environmental context.

GY RATE ST

STUDENTS

N M EN TAL CONTE

XT

FA CU LT Y

IRO

MARKET POSITIONING

V EN

FACULTY SENIOR MANAGEMENT

PROGRAMMES

The environmental context must be taken as a given set of variables. These of course must be fully understood by the School’s senior management team but are not part of the quality assessment process. The eight spokes are aspects of the School’s activities which can be influenced by senior management decision making and actions. The performance of these are able to be assessed, and link ultimately to the overall perceived quality of the Business School. The evaluation of these spokes should be made available to all of the School’s stakeholders so that any improvements necessary may be clear to them.

FACULTY LINKED TO INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY/OUTPUT PROGRAMMES LINKED TO STUDENTS STRATEGIC POSITIONING LINKED TO EXTERNAL LINKS

CES

STRATEGY LINKED TO RESOURCES

R OU

EXTERNAL LINKS

INTE AC LLE TI CTUA VI TY L

RES

The structure is designed to be flexible and not to constrain a school to any particular portfolio of activities or organisational structure. It therefore allows for diversity between schools, countries, cultures, etc. These aspects are fundamental to a legitimate business school. Furthermore since BUSINESS SCHOOL WHEEL organisations in-country must act internationally, the business schools themselves must take an international The Business School senior management are the hub of the wheel perspective. while the rim is the environmental context. The activities are the spokes of the wheel which must be mutually supportive and interactive and they also make the practical link between the senior management hub and the environmental rim. The diagonal axes are major links but are also interdependent on the other axes:

DAF Mentoring Structured mentoring is the core of the DAF system although it uses peer evaluation as its starting point. The Mentor to be appointed is likely to have been a member of the Peer Review Team and therefore will have a good understanding of the current situation. The Mentor “contract” will be for a period of 3 years initially.

The role is purely advisory and not executive. It is likely that the Mentor will be able to advise on: – The development of various activity areas within the school – The senior management structure, management style and culture – The personal development of the senior management team The role should also have a networking perspective with other business schools.

A formal link or partnership may be formed with the Mentor’s own institution to facilitate faculty and student exchanges, potential sponsorship, etc.

There should be mutual benefits in such links, since the transfer of knowledge (different cultures, types of economy, working practices, etc) would work in both directions. Some of the top member schools may offer tangible support to less privileged schools as part of their own social responsibility initiatives.

The School will be expected to write a short progress report annually on which the Mentor will provide written feedback.

This formal process is designed to maintain momentum and it will be a condition for any future funding.

11 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Deans across frontiers by Prof Chris Greensted

The DAF Partnership

The DAF challenge

Current status

The DAF system is offered by EFMD and run through its Quality Services Department as a quality improvement system complementary to its EQUIS and EPAS accreditation systems. Its activities are overseen by the DAF Committee.

The DAF Committee comprises members drawn from both the developed and the developing world.

The spirit of DAF and especially the relationship between mentor and institution is one of mutual cooperation and learning. The evaluation and mentoring of a school has to consider the educational, cultural and political environment in which the institution operates, and relate it to a wider international context. It is not the intention of DAF to promote any particular model of a Business School but to give contextualised assistance or advice.

The initial development work for DAF is complete and has been approved by the DAF Committee. The pilot phase has now been officially launched and the DAF office welcomes applications.

These may be from any school anywhere that is seeking advice on its future development.

Funding for DAF is designed to come from a partnership of bodies such as: a. Infrastructure contribution and some funding from EFMD and other member organisations b. A contribution from schools in the DAF process (where possible*) c. Partner schools providing mentors and their travel/accommodation expenses d. Donor agencies such as EU, UNDP, World Bank, etc Mentors and peer reviewers will be expected to give their time without charge. * While fees are charged for DAF, applications are invited for full or partial scholarships. The contribution from each school will depend on their perceived ability to pay. In all cases, some contribution will be required. Funds from fees will largely be fed back into the DAF system in order to fund the scholarships for less well resourced institutions.

However environmental contexts vary tremendously within and between countries and especially across continents. Normal behaviour in one place can be unacceptable in another, and different value sets are often imposed from outside the institution.

Many schools have to operate in difficult environments with limited control or autonomy. DAF recognises these conditions and constraints, but advice given by DAF need not necessarily accept the status quo. External advice from international experts can sometimes facilitate change which can be difficult to achieve from the inside.

As DAF is still at an early stage of development, individuals and institutions are invited to become involved with DAF as a mentor, reviewer, donor or partner school.

EFMD views DAF as helping to fulfil its mission of promoting excellence in business and management education worldwide. Furthermore DAF enables EFMD to provide that service across the full quality spectrum of business schools, whether they be a member or not. In this way it aims to continue to add value to the global network of business schools.

DAF reviewers and mentors recognise that they must not fall into the trap of exporting their own values and models, especially to developing countries.

For example, in many countries the generation of employment and social benefit is much more important than profit maximisation. The DAF team will go in with the spirit of partnership rather than paternalism. Indeed there is now much that can be learnt by the developed economies from the rapidly emerging countries in Africa, Asia, South America and India. Western partner schools have much to learn from the developing world and vice-versa. DAF ABOUT THE AUTHOR Prof Chris Greensted is Associate Director of EFMD’s aims to be a bridge between these Quality Services Department worlds.

External advice from international experts can sometimes facilitate change which can be difficult to achieve from the inside

For further information please see the DAF section of the EFMD website www.efmd.org/business-schools/ deans-across-frontiers or email daf@efmd.org

12 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

A new design for tailored executive education is emerging – Gert-Jan van Wijk and Jamie Anderson report on the Platform Model

A BUSINESS MODEL FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Customised Executive Learning – A Business Model for the 21st Century by Gert-Jan van Wijk and Jamie Anderson

13 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Traditionally, the world of customised executive education has been dominated by top-tier business schools that are generally positioned in the top twenty-five of rankings such as the Financial Times and Business Week lists. More recently we have seen the emergence of a new customised executive education model – what can be termed the ‘Platform Model’ – that is being leveraged by some of the world’s largest corporations.

All people involved realise that learning comes from facilitated action learning

the Platform model for executive learning recognises the existence of what has become a two-sided network, entailing a triangular set of market relationships. On one side of this network are the individuals and firms that possess specialist skills and expertise, and on the other side are organisational clients seeking learning solutions. the need for these two groups—the network’s “sides”—to interact with each other efficiently has created the opportunity for the emergence of intermediaries – what technology-based industries commonly call platform providers. the Platform embodies an architecture —a design for services, and infrastructure facilitating network users’ interactions—all at low delivered cost. Platform providers can be small, such as netherlands based ‘the world we work in’ or substantially bigger: such as antwerp management school, the Lorange Institute of Business, mannaz of Denmark and London-based Duke Ce. the platform is a boundaryless organisation, which drives executive learning ROI, through customisation, real action learning assignments and teamwork of faculty who integrate the learning. these characteristics are not the exclusive domain of platform intermediaries, but we have witnessed that executive education buyers increasingly value these characteristics in their decisions to source executive learning. this development potentially creates a disruptive effect in the market, and will require top-tier business schools to re-evaluate their approach. the implications reach beyond the world of executive education to all professional services, such as consulting and advertising, where intelligent networks of independent people cocreating solutions with clients could be the future of competition.

The Platform Model Platform intermediaries build client relationships by becoming trusted advisors, and act as open gateways to introduce corporations to a linked network of professionals. the platform model transforms executive education into executive learning: the architecture ensures that all design, development and delivery activities are aimed at the participants of the programme, rather than faculty teaching or facilitating the programme (see example at Diagram 1 – overleaf).

Program design within the platform ecosystem focuses on outcomes and learning processes rather than business/academic content. Furthermore the platform ensures that all programmes are sourced by faculty who are interested in the client’s business reality and show a willingness to collaborate with others to create an integrated programme. Finally all people involved realise that learning comes from facilitated action learning in which participants are given the concepts, tools and skills to apply in real business challenges.

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Drivers of the Platform Model the platform model is primarily driven by a changing client demand for return on investment (ROI). In recent years client demand has evolved around demonstrating the ROI of executive learning through the enhancement of the practical skills of executives and the implementation of tangible business results. the requirement to prove ROI has led to a much closer involvement of buyers in the design of programmes and generally a higher level of sophistication amongst clients. they know what creates a real impact and they will demand it regardless of departmental or institutional domains. this increasing sophistication of client demand pushes the world of customised executive learning to customise and innovate beyond the boundaries of a single institution or knowledge domain. the client may request different providers to work together, previous consultants’ work to be integrated, or certain professionals to be included in the offering because of their know-how, skill or relationship with the company.

Concurrently we have observed clients asking to integrate divergent management disciplines, research areas, and learning methodologies. Increasingly the skills of open collaboration and innovation have become differentiating capabilities of a customised executive education provider, because in practice these capabilities can hardly be attributed to a single institution.

Clients have also become familiar with the benefits of working with professional practices outside the academic domain. they recognise that their executives’ development needs cover the physical, emotional and spiritual, as well as the intellectual. In order to meet these demands a broad range of professionals from literature, the performing arts, media, wellness and sports bring expertise to address broader learning needs. Clients understand that “non-academic” programme elements can create a high impact, if they are well integrated in the overall design and linked to the academic contribution. the role of the platform intermediary is to bring entirely different worlds, mindsets and people together and ensure that everyone involved can translate their profession to the business world, and understand their role in the overall programme. the Platform model has been underpinned by an explosion in the number of intellectual free agents who desire to collaborate openly with

other individuals and institutions. these free agents are knowledge workers who determine their own work portfolio and integrate their own work/life tradeoffs, without a contractual commitment to a single employer. In the executive education world the free agent has often once worked for a business school, where the classic divide between tenure track academics, non-tenure track faculty and ‘administrative staff’ often limits career possibilities. academics who haven’t chosen the tenuretrack route, can be marginalised or even forced-out of traditional business school hierarchies, regardless of their executive education capabilities. talented executive educators often choose a free agent role wholly or partially outside the boundaries of the business school. their commitment and values are with the clients, the learning process, the delegates and their disciplinary know-how, and they value the collaboration in the kind of open network offered by the platform model. In turn, this networked collaboration has been empowered by the pervasive spread of low-cost information and communication technologies, such as the communication service skype and the file sharing service Dropbox, that are enabling virtual teams to deliver integrated educational offerings.

Diagram 1 The Platform Model (example)

CLIENT ORGANISATION

PLATFORM INTERMEDIARY

ACADEMIC A

PROGRAMME DIRECTOR

ARTIST

COACHING NETWORK

ACADEMIC B

INDUSTRY EXPERT

Customised Executive Learning – A Business Model for the 21st Century by Gert-Jan van Wijk and Jamie Anderson

Guiding philosophy of the Platform Model ultimately many of the tangible building blocks of a more traditional organisation such as buildings, physical infrastructure, systems and job contracts have been replaced by intangible pillars like trust, relationships, collaboration, agility and quality of execution. these pillars are solely dependent on the capabilities and commitment of the professionals involved – it relies upon “locking-on” clever people through a deeper sense of commitment, reciprocity and shared purpose rather than “locking-in” faculty through formal contracts and formal performance measurement tools. In this sense all the professionals are viewed as clients rather than resources. the ability to accelerate change and transform client organisations must be reflected in the transformation of all professionals involved.

15 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

enhanced if the platform can link the professionals directly to their commitment, development and values. the underpinning core values of this organising model are trust, transparency and continuous learning.

Limitations of the Platform Model successful platform intermediaries excel at what Ghoshal (1999) called: “managing the intangibles: people, process and purpose”. the Platform model strengths (speed, entrepreneurship, agility and passion) are based on these pillars. simultaneously it also shows the limitations of the Platform model:

People: Relationships and (virtual)

collaboration are the cornerstones of each team working on a client project. the subtle difference between real open collaboration and ‘going through the motions’ is sometimes hard to detect. Yet ‘going through the motions’ clearly is not good enough. the Platform the platform model is underpinned model is built upon working with professionals by independence, and the role of the who are usually self aware, (overly) confident intermediary between the two sides of the and deeply uncertain and anxious to deliver network is to be impartial and authentic. the good performance, and do at least as well approach is solutions oriented and focused as their peers on the programme. Client on achieving the best outcomes for clients and expectations, participant evaluations and the partners. a prerequisite is that the platform free agent status may add to this insecurity. In “creates an environment in which…clever order to deliver excellent programs all these people can thrive” (2007, Goffee & Jones). anxieties need to be overcome individually as the possibility that people will thrive is well as a team. It requires careful relationship building, continuous encouragement and mutual feedback.

Clients recognise that their executives’ development needs cover the physical, emotional and spiritual, as well as the intellectual

Process: excellent programmes rely on clear and well-run support processes executed by colleagues often in the early phases in their careers. the collaboration between faculty and programme coordinators is as crucial as between faculty and the result of anything less than flawless teamwork is immediately visible in the delivery of the programme. since the platform members are involved in various different networks with different procedures, it requires an extra effort to get them to understand the administrative processes, focus attention on building a relationship with coordinators and adhering to these processes.

Purpose: With distributed leadership, open boundaries and sometimes little management in place, all the emphasis in the platform is focused on creating immediate outcomes for clients. as professionals are typically paid on a per diem basis, it can be a challenge to get people involved in the longer term continuity of the platform. Creating rituals, a brand and meaning beyond today’s work is

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Textbox 1 Comparing the Business School and Platform Model for Executive Learning Compare and contrast easily creates ‘archetypes’. This text box paints the ‘black and white’ picture of the two models.

Many organisations display features of both models.

Dimension

Business School

Platform Model

Reputation

Brand as quality guarantee Track record of professionals and intermediary referrals as quality guarantee

Boundaries

Clear institutional boundaries

Immediate access to professionals

Purpose

Primary aim is research

Primary aim is a program with impact

Starting point Academic content led

Broad range of perspectives and professionals included underpinned by academic insight

Orientation Teaching, faculty orientation

Facilitation, participant and result orientation

Connections

Connecting disciplines

Integrating holistic learning experience

Collaboration

Collaboration has no incentive Multiplicative effects of open collaboration

Proposition

Leading edge knowledge and ‘right’ answers

Ownership

Proprietary Shared

Further strategy execution and people development

complicated by the fact that many are dispersed around the globe. The moments of togetherness, celebration and loss are rarely shared by the whole community, whilst we know how powerful these are to build community. Can we really talk about community here? Are we entering new eras of community building?

The Dilemma for Business Schools Traditional top-tier business schools face a number of dilemmas in responding to the Platform Model. Top-tier business schools typically draw from their internal faculty pool for the teaching of executive education programs, with the belief that academic faculty best understand the latest insights and are best placed to explain these insights to an executive audience. Indeed, one of the main differentiators communicated by top-tier business schools has been the leading edge research of their core faculty. Not surprisingly, most business schools are strict with regard to who can teach on executive education programmes. Many top-tier institutions forbid the use of external faculty and especially nonacademics (ie. non-PhD qualified consultants or practitioners) thereby severely limiting access to the wider fields of knowledge offered by free agents.

Unlike the non-hierarchical philosophy underpinning the Platform Model, academic faculty at top-tier business schools typically monopolise the ‘intellectual’ design of executive education programmes. This approach can be limiting for a number of reasons: academic faculty are experts in a specific management discipline and often tend to frame client issues through their own field of interest; academic faculty can be reluctant to collaborate and share their intellectual content with other faculty on a programme, making integrated design difficult; research-oriented more traditional learning approaches such as lectures and case studies, and; formally trained academics can be dismissive of learning approaches

that have not been academically validated, which can be rather limiting when integrating approaches. It is instructive that very few top-tier business schools include teaching performance as a key element of faculty evaluation.

Some long-established business schools have taken the path of more open collaboration, with Duke University’s off-shoot Duke CE probably the most widely recognised in this respect.

But the vast majority of business schools are still grappling with proprietary approaches more appropriate for the industrial era than the 21st century knowledge economy.

Conclusions It has been our aim to describe an emerging model for delivering customised executive learning programmes, which is gaining significance in the world of management development. The continuing proliferation of intermediaries that bring together free agents and clients to deliver customised executive learning programs will pose an increasing challenge to the dominance of the proprietary model of most top-tier graduate management schools.

Especially, in these dire economic times, the platform model’s approach has the potential to outbid the top-tier Business Schools and gain a foothold in the market for executive learning. They may then establish what the Business Schools' current advantage is: a brand that makes them a trusted advisor and provider of services. This could potentially be a disruptive development for Business Schools.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gert-Jan van Wijk is Initiator at the world we work in.

Jamie Anderson is jointly Adjunct Professor of Strategic Management at Antwerp Management School and Lorange Institute of Business Zurich, and visiting faculty member at ESMT.

17 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

CAMPUS AFFAIRES

GLOBAL BUSINESS EDUCATION WITH A FRENCH TWIST FSA Laval wishes to thank all of its partners and stakeholders for their trust and support leading up to the five-year renewal of its EQUIS accreditation.

FSA Laval is committed to being an internationally-recognized school in business education. New programs such as our MBA Global Business, offered entirely in English, help students develop into true global business leaders.

www.fsa.ulaval.ca FSA Laval Our World is Business Our Business is the World

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EFMD AT 40 : 40TH ANNIVERSARY ARTICLE

What is the European Management School model?

Over the last ten to fifteen years the identity, importance and legitimacy of European management schools has been strongly established in the context of the ‘business of business schools’ writes Howard Thomas

What is the European Management School model? by Howard Thomas

Recent research undertaken with Fernando Fraguiero1 has demonstrated how schools such as INSEAD, IMD, LBS and Warwick have positioned themselves as international business schools in global rankings such as the Financial Times. And, the same rankings, established in 1999, currently show a significant number of European schools in the Top 100 Global Schools confirming the rapid rise and increasing stature of European business schools.

The identity and positioning of the European business school has been strongly influenced and shaped by the strategic role of the European Foundation of Management Development (EFMD) since its founding in 1971. EFMD has constantly focussed on linking European experience and ideas with management practice and learning. It has also emphasised internationalisation and corporate linkages as essential to high quality management education.

The identity and positioning of the European business school has been strongly influenced and shaped by the strategic role of EFMD

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Business school evolution Up until the clear emergence of an European model, the evolution of European business schools largely followed the pathways pioneered by U.S. Business Schools. The early business schools, described by Roger Martin2 as Business 1.0, were essentially ‘trade schools’ which sought to teach managers how they should practically manage the functional aspects of their businesses. There was little or no research carried out in these schools, and no clear theoretical or academic framework. Herbert Simon described this period as a ‘wasteland of vocationalism’.

Following the Ford and Carnegie Foundation reports in 1959 which critically reviewed the U.S. business school scene, a proposal for a new business school structure emerged (Business 2.0 in Martin’s terms). This emphasised greater academic rigour and scholarly depth and linked social science disciplines (e.g economics, psychology and sociology) to the functional areas of business. It mandated the growth of the research mindset, common to the scientific disciplines, leading to knowledge creation (i.e. new knowledge not best practice) and the development of stronger, rigorous analytical abilities. In addition, graduate and doctoral education was further emphasised as essential for modern business schools.

Many European scholars were subsequently trained in these leading U.S. schools and when they returned, many of them adapted the main elements of this U.S. model to their economic and cultural contexts. However, over time as they grew in stature they incorporated a series of elements such as action-based, practice oriented research more reflective of European traditions alongside the more academically rigorous U.S. approach.

Consequently, by the early 1990s European business schools had achieved respect and growing influence in the field.

Indeed, Professor Pedro Nueno, trained at Harvard Business School, and an European pioneer at both IESE (Barcelona), with EFMD and CEIBS (Shanghai) and Claude Rameau3, a former INSEAD Dean, noted that the diversity, identity and internationalism of Europe and European management should be an inspiration for the rest of the world. They believed that EFMD and European management schools should emphasise their international character and be agents for transformation and change in management education.

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EFMD AT 40 : 40TH ANNIVERSARY ARTICLE

Indeed, the history of eFmD demonstrates its continued commitment to international linkages and activities. During the first 25 years of its existence the International Programmes unit of eFmD promoted a range of international alliances and research centres including euro-China, euro-India, euro-CIs, euro-arab and euro-Palestine. this unusually wideranging international footprint attests to its pioneering intent to transform the educational infrastructure of rapidly emerging economies such as China and India through cooperation with experts from the european management schools. and, it should be noted that the euro-China initiative itself led directly to the establishment in China of the first independent international business school in shanghai (CeIBs – the China-european International Business school) in 1994. With subsequent investment this school is now a very significant, and important, asian school with broad international recognition in the rankings.

Fragueiro and thomas provide a much more comprehensive ‘map’ of the management education landscape in europe, showing the breadth of the marketplace and its heterogeneous nature. they point out that european schools are generally viewed as more eclectic and flexible and have generated a whole range of models reflecting their different leadership styles and cultural differences. Indeed, almost every country in europe now has a set of national Business school champions and many are internationally ranked. France, the u.K., spain and switzerland have probably led the growth of international schools with countries such as Germany now producing an increasingly important set of business schools.

The European Management Model What then are the characteristics of european management schools? What makes them distinctive? at the outset it is important to recognise that management education originally started in europe and not the united states. the purpose was to improve the relatively low societal and professional status of business managers. the material taught was very practical and focussed on increasing the basic skill levels of managers. Indeed, the intellectual basis for the founding of business schools in Wharton and harvard in the early 1900’s was the German Cameralist education system. however largely because of private donations the business school concept grew much more rapidly in the u.s. and gained acceptance much more quickly (e.g. aaCsB (the association to advance Collegiate schools of Business) was founded in the u.s.in 1916 while eFmD was not founded until 1971 in europe). nevertheless France, Germany and the united Kingdom had all developed schools of commerce in the mid to late 19th century, and some of these served as blueprints and influencing factors for curricular developments in the twentieth century (particularly in the u.s.). the european identity and model of management education has been shaped by the following main environmental characteristics which differentiate the european scene4.  europe and the eu is a large trading area

involving many cultures and countries.

Its diversity means that european trading corporations have learnt how to expand and develop their businesses across borders. they have wide experience of international business and international relations.  european companies have grown in size and have become leaner and fitter through european and international competition. as a consequence there are now a series of large influential european corporations of a multi-national character.  most european countries have a strong

Almost every country in Europe now has a set of national Business School champions and many are internationally ranked

governmental and public sector influence on the conduct of business and business policy. europeans accept and recognise a broader role for government in business and society.

What is the European Management School model? by Howard Thomas

simple credit transfer process across courses taken in different European management education institutions has strongly facilitated cooperation and network building among these institutions.

 Europeans generally favour socially

responsible capitalism over unbridled market capitalism. Centrist models of social democracy are more common in the European political environment than in the United States.

 The strong emphasis on quality

Therefore, European business, and European management education, has a more balanced relationship with government and society. Hence, business must be seen to grow not only economically and technically but also with social responsibility and legitimacy clearly stressed. It more directly cooperates with government to improve poverty and social welfare and favours balanced human and economic progress.

management education is evident through the EQUIS process for business schools.

A similar emphasis on quality assurance in corporate learning is also available through EFMD's Corporate Learing Improvement Process (CLIP).  There is a much greater emphasis currently on cross-European educational networking for the development of interdisciplinary research programmes and quality faculty development. As a consequence the quality of European research output is being fully recognised on the world scene.

In European management education the following themes, and differentiating features, are clearly evident:  The belief in socially responsible

management education as stressed by agencies such as the GRLI (Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative), EABIS (European Academy for Business in Society) and PRME (The Principles For Responsible Management Education).  The development of very close linkages

between business schools and corporate organisations. As a consequence strong bridges between management education and practice are evident in the rapid expansion of executive education in Europe.

This has led to a focus on action-based, project oriented learning often providing clear evidence of promising management practices in business.  Internationalisation and globalisation

are very important to large European corporations (and the EU as a trading bloc) as they expand their markets and corporate influence globally. European schools such as INSEAD (in Singapore and Abu Dhabi), Nottingham (in China) and CEIBS (in Shanghai) provide evidence of how European schools have rapidly built an international footprint to mirror the international growth perspectives of European businesses.  The Bologna Process and European Accord

in management education have considerably strengthened European management education through the creation of common management education structures for degree level management education. The resulting

21 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

EFMD AT 40 Howard Thomas is the Dean of Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University and LKCSB Chair of Strategic Management, former Vice-President of EFMD, honorary life member of EFMD and long-standing Board Member.

To celebrate and recognise EFMD’s 40th Anniversary Howard, and co-authors, are writing a book to be published

by Emerald Group Publishing next year. It examines management education and its futures focussing on EFMD’s contribution to management education in Europe and its influence around the world. The book’s material is drawn from a wide range of interviews with leading management educators.

In essence, European management educators have adopted a more balanced, and somewhat less analytically rigorous, perspective on management education. They believe in a closer linkage with practice and focus on a balanced view of management and leadership. While formal analytic and strategy models are seen as valuable and sensible, it is argued that such analytically rigorous approaches are heavily overstressed in current curricula and lead often to the production of scientific research of little practical managerial relevance. The emphasis on softer skills, more socially responsible management and vision and communication skills for engaging employees are viewed as critical and important. Indeed, Europeans strongly believe in a balanced philosophy in management education involving an appropriate mix of course and project work to develop skills of analysis, synthesis and criticism in their cohorts of students. Through this process the differentiation between European and other models of management education becomes clear and provides welcome diversity in models of management education.

FOOTNOTES

1. Fernando Fragueiro and Howard Thomas ‘Strategic Leadership in the Business School’ Cambridge University Press, 2011 2. M.C. Moldoveanu and Roger L. Martin ‘The Future of the MBA’ Oxford University Press, 2008 3. See ‘Training the Fire Brigade’ EFMD, 1996 4. See also Phillipe de Woot in ‘Training the Fire Brigade’ EFMD, 1996

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Business schools can create new opportunities, says Alfons Sauquet, if they continue to relect on their role in society

Opportunities & Accountability A good deal of pressure has been exerted on business schools in the wake of the financial crisis, on what our contribution could have been or should have been. But let’s reect instead on the actual contribution that business schools make, or can make, to society. By taking stock of how we contribute to society, we can pave the way forward towards a sustainable, meaningful input in the future.

to start with, let’s address the simple role business schools play in attracting, training and developing talent. sophisticated human capital is vital for economic development, and business school-trained managers should be in a position to provide the operational knowledge and the sound, efficient decision-making that fast-growing companies need. Business schools located in emerging countries have to prioritise the Business schools undoubtedly play a great production of graduates educated to the number of different roles in society. their best possible level to take advantage of the systematic contact with more than 250,000 positive economic context at hand and thus, Gmat takers each year and their direct access help the country to grow. In such cases the to leading companies and institutions ensures main focus of the schools is on talent this. Yet the extent to which each role is taken generation, as this is what stakeholders on, and the importance schools and society expect from them. give to it, depend greatly on the context in the second, and much debated, role which they find themselves. notwithstanding of business schools in society is the the vast array of socio-political realities, responsibility we have for instilling values the voices of different deans and academics brought together in the book Business Schools in the next generation of business leaders. education in general can be described as and their Contribution to Society highlight a kind of impact-on-society-mix that business a way of empowering people to become active agents in the transformation of their schools around the world work with. While the weight schools give to each area varies, societies. so the task of training future most are capable of exerting some influence societal transformers does not lie solely in each. with business schools. however, there is

Human capital is vital for economic development

Business Schools & Society: Opportunities & Accountability by Alfons Sauquet

Education in general can be described as a way of empowering people to become active agents in the transformation of their societies

23 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

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no doubt that educational establishments are expected to deliver graduates who have been provided with an ethical framework, and a sense of the “big picture” as the background to managerial decision-making. A number of business schools already treat this issue as vital and go to great lengths to understand their part in it, and have imaginatively integrated this into their curricula.

Learning should also focus on the values and conduct which enable people to live together in a diverse and plural ecosystem. Business schools have generally achieved and managed levels of class-room diversity envied by other disciplines. But despite this plurality, many schools seem to struggle to focus on values.

It is deceptively simple to identify a set of precepts and declare them as ‘our values’ to the world at large. It is quite a different story to create a framework for valuebased decision-making in the wide-ranging curricula of an MBA. The challenge goes beyond the espoused values of the school itself. It lies in the development of the values of individual students. This boils down to how to focus on business efficiency while also instilling an understanding of the competencies necessary to take effective decisions, and their long-term consequences.

Thirdly, there is the role business schools play in the formation of public opinion, and the pressure they may be able to exert on public policy formation. This role can range from helping the public interpret what is happening, or providing guidelines on how to act with a view to changing public opinion, to lobbying public institutions with the aim of influencing political decisions. Again, the extent to which each school plays this role depends. For example, the smaller the country, or the higher the need for economic development, the greater the level of influence and responsibility the business school has in this field.

Fourthly, business schools also have a vital role to play in the development and dissemination of management and economic thinking resulting from research. In recent years, there has been discussion on the question of rigour versus relevance. Much has been made of the need for business schools to move away from academic status-seeking yet inapplicable or irrelevant knowledge

advancement, towards more useful work on “the business of business”. The challenge lies in encouraging the use of research practices underpinned by various methodologies, along with a sustained effort to transform basic research into actionable, relevant structures which eventually can inform practice. Creating actionable outcomes requires focused effort for little obvious academic prestige, while the use of various methodologies requires flexible minds. Business schools have to think creatively about how to deal with this.

Finally and perhaps an extension of these elements, is the relevance of the business school itself from an institutional standpoint.

This is particularly evident in economies that are in transition, moving away from centralised models of governance or strict regulation. In such cases it is not just the output of the business school that is relevant, but the school itself as a milestone in the transition. There are values embedded in the very nature of scholarly work that permeate institutions forming a reference point for a society in transition. In such cases, business schools can become a beacon of development within society.

Business Schools & Society: Opportunities & Accountability by Alfons Sauquet

The challenge lies in achieving a balance between ensuring excellent short term results for the graduate, while also instilling them with a long term perspective

25 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

critical thinking space. Yet it is in the content, that schools have a big chance to make a difference. Business schools increasingly find themselves stuck between meeting the candidates’ immediate demands, and educating them in a way that will maximise their contribution to society as the next generation of leaders.

The challenge here lies in achieving a balance between these two, ensuring excellent short term results for the graduate, while instilling them with a long term perspective that they did not necessarily ask for. One So with such a mix of potential influence on society, business schools have a plethora of the ways that this may be done is by of challenges before them. These challenges increasing the amount of critical thinking are relevant, regardless of the size, prestige, required in a management degree or location or international reach of the school. executive education. One approach may be to go back to the humanistic roots of We need to honestly reflect on our role in society, considering how our mix is weighted management, encouraging participants and consciously decide how we wish to wield to extract the causes and effects, as well as examining the shortfalls of applying our influence. certain models or methods. At the same Business schools increasingly have to time management education must not lose grapple with the commoditisation of its capacity to produce effective managers. business education globally. This should Today’s business schools are not short of point towards the development of distinct challenges. Rather than a clear-cut response profiles, where schools would take the to what role business schools do or should opportunity to reinforce unique or play in society, we are left with a rather competitive traits. Creating such a profile managerial ‘it depends’. Even if we can all entails going far beyond a promotional or agree that business schools have a role to positioning strategy, into the alignment play through influencing the next generation of resources towards true institutional of business leaders, it is hard to say how this development. Yet this need to distinguish should be done, in the light of other external can find itself directly at odds with the pressures. Yet one thing is for certain. If standardisation goals laid down by schools do not reflect long and hard on accreditation and ranking organisations. these issues, their role will never be clear While these organisations clearly aim to and they will leave themselves open to raise the standard of business education, ongoing criticism. By taking continual stock they may indirectly drive a push towards of their role in society, business schools increasing similarity. around the world will find they can create new This, however, reflects another challenge opportunities, embracing the accountability for business schools; the mismatch between that comes as part of this. We are seeing how the individual legitimate motivations of business schools are increasingly adopting prospective participants and what and how a more reflexive attitude. As well as producing schools should address learning processes and delivering knowledge, business to maximise their contribution to society. schools have a responsibility to society.

For instance, MBA participants may well choose business schools for both the image of the school and the ability it has to help them get a good job on graduation, ahead of the educational content of the ABOUT THE AUTHOR MBA itself. And when students do look Alfons Sauquet, Dean of ESADE Business School and coto content, it is the efficiency-maximising editor of Business Schools and their Contribution to Society. tools of the trade they are after, not perhaps

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Ulrich Hommel, Roger King, and Anna Pastwa open the debate on risk management in the business school community

Do you know what your risk exposures are?

Risky Business: Do you know what your risk exposures are? by Ulrich Hommel, Roger King and Anna Pastwa

27 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

As companies around the globe are bracing themselves for a recessionary fall-out from Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, business schools have also begun searching for ways to cushion the negative budgetary impact of such a downturn.

A report in the Financial Times (Delivering more with less, 4 December 2011) suggests that deans primarily target traditional drivers of financial performance such as CRM systems, cautious cost management or operational efficiency gains. This begs the question to what extent business schools – and for that matter higher education institutions in general – have established sound risk management systems, which move them credibly beyond the ex-post management of risk exposures turned bad.

We see a risk-taking culture, without a risk management culture

One of the very basic principles of risk management is that “it is too late to lock the barn when the horse has already bolted”.

It means that business schools should actively manage (and ideally reduce) their dependency on risk factors outside of their area of core competence and they should do so well ahead of risk-related losses actually materialising. Globalisation has led many business schools to adopt entrepreneurial internationalisation strategies ranging from cross-border marketing of degree programmes to the establishment of offshore campus operations. Additionally, the growing importance of accreditations and rankings has fostered tournament-style competition as seen in professional sports – costs are hiked up in an effort to improve competitive positioning, while subsequent revenue gains are often negligible due to competitors pursuing similar strategies.

Evidence from EFMD accreditations indicates that many business schools still operate in an environment dominated by short-term cash-basis accounting. The sector has seen the emergence of a risktaking culture, without a corresponding risk management culture.

A prolonged recessionary downturn in Europe promises to change market dynamics in fundamental ways. Governments are less likely to act as ‘lenders of last resort’ and university parents will no longer be able to cross-subsidise failing schools. Above all, we will see a rising number of defensive mergers, coupled with for-profit institutions significantly extending their mainstream market coverage. The on-going process of Asian business schools developing a global presence will gain speed as well. Faculty mobility will increasingly be directed toward the Far East, and the U.S. trend of shifting faculty resources from tenured researchers to temporary adjuncts will spill over to Europe.

Proper risk management is the very essence of managing organisations well. This applies to businesses in general as well as business schools. Deans tend to have a tremendous influence on organisational performance, much more so than typical CEOs. They are often also personally responsible for excessive risk taking and deficient risk management.

Following Della Bradshaw’s argument (Trouble at the Top, FT.com, 4 December 2011), the coming economic downturn will certainly unveil more problems for business schools. And, in response, a considerable number of institutions may follow the call to put non-academic managers in charge and reduce faculty influence. The core issue is however not the managerial background of the dean, but a lack of managerial professionalism supporting senior management. Business schools need to implement proper checks and balances, in particular with respect to the creation and management of risk exposures, which challenge a dean’s leeway over strategic decision-making. Ultimately, it is a question of properly designing external and internal risk governance.

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External governance covers two dimensions – regulatory oversight as well as the strategic and operational control exercised by the parent organisation or owners.

Encouraged by international bodies such as the OECD, World Bank, and the European Commission, risk-based regulation has become diffused across different domains in recent years. Increasingly, such risk-based regulatory frameworks are beginning to colonise higher education as well. In the UK, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), is working on the introduction of risk-based regulation by 2013. Australia, through its new all-purpose regulator – the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) – will do so by the end of 2012. Rather than subjecting every institution to the same processes of monitoring, risk-based regulation is by design more discriminatory. It modulates levels of institutional scrutiny on the basis of regulatory judgements concerning the risks posed by the institutions to the sector and to the regulator. Rather than a uniform approach that applies the same levels of audit to all providers, risk-based regulation varies the scope and intensity of monitoring against explicit calculations of risk.

Risk-based regulation is meant to improve the quality of regulation by becoming more proportionate, targeted, and explicit. It aims to control relevant risks, rather than secure compliance with a given set of rules. Partly the aim is deregulatory: the lowest risk providers should be free to become entrepreneurial and competitive globally in a context of reduced regulation; high-risk providers, however, receive increased attention. This occurs in terms of ‘detection’, but also ‘enforcement’ strategies are likely to escalate to a punitive and sanctions level more quickly than with other providers. Risk assessment by regulators of institutions is meant to strongly determine the allocation of the regulator’s resources.

It is a question of properly designing external and internal risk governance

Risk assessment by regulators looks backward (‘track records’) and forward (anticipating risk) and connects the two processes by looking at ‘inherent’ risks, on the one hand, and management and control of risks, on the other. The first refers to the intrinsic risks of a particular type of activity (commercial franchising with a relatively unknown international collaborator, for example, offering a high intrinsic risk); the second refers to the propensity of the organisation’s internal controls to exacerbate or mitigate risk exposures.

These regulatory developments underscore the need for business schools to institutionalise the risk management function more explicitly – defining internal risk management processes and responsibilities, establishing proper reporting standards and linking to their external governance. Company failures are an integral part of business life and they can be dealt with by reallocating assets to a better use. The same logic does not apply to education, even for-profit education. Alumni have invested (and current students are investing) in the reputation of the institution, and economic failure imposes an enormous negative externality on these individuals. This is one reason why regulators are showing a rising interest in monitoring risk-taking behaviour of higher education institutions.

The outright and unexpected failure of an educational institution is a rare occurrence.

But risk ignorance in business school management may be a slow and often hidden process, such as the lowering of admission standards and student selectivity, reduction of faculty time devoted to non-income generating activities (such as non-funded research), diversification in search of additional funds, moving from high-margin to high-volume activities, or top-off courses to award executive education participants academic degrees. Many of these indicators rely on self-reporting, and are therefore themselves susceptible to operational risk failures.

Risky Business: Do you know what your risk exposures are? by Ulrich Hommel, Roger King and Anna Pastwa

29 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Designing a risk management system is in principle a straightforward conceptual task.

Next to the aforementioned governance aspects, it requires developing an explicit understanding of its purpose (the ‘objective function’) in order to evaluate the benefits of managing risks: – identifying relevant risk factors and their statistical properties, Risk management may not have been a high-priority issue in the past. It gains in relevance as universities and colleges (and notably business schools) are encouraged to become more entrepreneurial and to act with greater autonomy – implying that school budgets become more reliant on proprietary revenue sources. Risk-taking is regarded by both governmental and university leaders as a source of value and innovation, but it also offers a multitude of potential hazards if not properly planned for and anticipated.

Reputation, once lost, is difficult to regain.

The current economic climate, competitive market entry and general increases in revenue volatility, coupled with operational expenses largely consisting of (quasi-)fixed costs are worrying ingredients. They will leave a growing number of middle-ofthe-pack and lower-tier business schools in a vulnerable position in the coming years.

Would these business schools be able to cope with these challenges in a laissez-faire environment? First, organisations characterised by risk ignorance tend to allocate resources from back to front office activities when hitting hard times. Hence, they are least willing to invest in risk management when it is needed the most. Second, business schools need to focus on how risk exposures may ultimately impact institutional reputation, which is a fairly fuzzy concept. They will display a natural reluctance to invest tangible resources in order to achieve ambiguous gains. By doing so however, they disregard the fact that once the impact of risk ignorance on reputation becomes measurable, it is typically too late to stem the tide. Third, the performance of deans is typically measured by how much an institution has grown in terms of student body and faculty, by upgrades of physical facilities, by upward moves in the rankings, etc. Experts of the bull-market game are however not necessarily the ones who can successfully guide institutions during bear market times.

– measuring the exposures to these risk factors, – developing counter measures to hedge, mitigate or insure against critical exposures, – evaluating risk management performance and carrying out feedback loops to adjust the system.

The key analytical challenge is to understand how risks actually interact with each other.

Major crises are always the result of several things going wrong at the same time.

EFMD is ideally positioned to raise general awareness for the importance of managing risk in business schools. We need a debate on the extent to which risk management principles applied in the corporate world should be adopted by business schools as well and, if so, what modifications are actually needed and desirable. There is also scope for shaping the regulatory debate on this issue – and the business school community is probably more qualified to do so than anybody else. We may also need to raise the bar for accreditation by becoming methodologically more challenging, by becoming more probing during reviews and by offering more systematic advice on embedding risk management in school operations and governance. The latter is particularly important since risk management tends to be a centralised activity, which can potentially lead to infringements of business school autonomy by parent organisations. University administrators will present strong arguments that risk is managed best at the source, i.e. when making strategic choices with respect to programmes, faculty, internationalisation, etc. Diluting strategic control over business school development may help to avoid undesirable risk in the short term, but is also likely to prevent risk taking where it is actually desirable in the long term.

DISCLAIMER

All opinions expressed in this paper are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not represent an official position of EFMD. We have received helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper from Roland van Dierdonck, Chris Greensted, Julio Urgel and especially Michael Osbaldeston.

About the AuthorS

Ulrich Hommel is Director of Research & Surveys, EFMD; Professor of Finance, EBS Business School and the editor of “The Strategic CFO”, Springer 2011) Roger King is Visiting Professor, School of Management, University of Bath Anna Pastwa is Manager of Research & Surveys, EFMD

30 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

If we reflect on the publishing landmarks of the early 21st century so far, we may first think of JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, Dan Brown and Stieg Larsson. The multimillion-selling epics of good and evil, love and loss, vampires and wizards, puzzles, detectives, hackers and criminals have been credited with turning an entire generation of teenagers (and quite a few adults) into avid readers, and with reviving a flagging fiction industry.

But when they write the history of publishing in the early 21st century, I wonder if it won’t list heroes altogether more unlikely than harry Potter and Bella swan. For example, John Locke, insurance salesman from Louisville, Kentucky, who in 2011 became the first self-published author to clock up one million sales of digitally-downloaded books. Or amanda hocking, who signed a $2m contract with st martin’s Press in march 2011, on the back of hundreds of thousands of e-book sales (teen vampire romance again) on amazon’s Kindle store.

Locke and hocking are unlikely new heroes of a revolution in publishing, which is taking place on several fronts. not just the switch from ink on paper to ‘e-ink’, but the fragmentation and unpredictability which is coming from authors disintermediating traditional supply chains and finding smart ways to go more directly to market. even the textbook market is getting in on the action: according to social learning platform, Xplana, one in four college textbooks will be digital by 2015, with growth of between 80% and 100% over the next four years.

UNLIKELY HEROES A 21st century publishing revolution?

John Peters looks at the post-publication environment and its unlikely heroes

80%+ One in four college textbooks will be digital by 2015, with growth of between 80% and 100% over the next four years

2.7m By 2010 ‘non-traditional’ titles had exploded to a mind-boggling 2.7million; a 130-times increase, now comprising more than 90% of total new titles

31 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

KI ND LE

AN NO NC ED

AY 2011 AMAZO N IN M

AMAND AH OC KIN G

SI GN ED

A

$2 M

CO NT RA CT

G IN eB LL OOK SE S ARE NOW OUT

W IT H

OF CK ST BA E MA TH RT IN’ 1, N S PR 201 ESS IN MARCH MBINED S CO CK BA D R HA -& R E PA

S OF RED ND HU

THOUSANDS OF

E-B OO KS AL ES

Unlikely Heroes: A 21st century publishing revolution by John Peters

Venerable bibliographic data provider, Bowker’s industry stats show that in 2004, just over 275,000 ‘regular’ books were published. a further 20,000 or so ‘nontraditional’ books (described as “reprints, often public domain, and other titles printed on-demand”) were published; less than 7% of the total output (table 1 – overleaf).

By 2010, ‘traditional’ new titles published had grown to 316,000 – a steady 14% growth over the seven year period. But, in the same period, ‘non-traditional’ titles had exploded to a mind-boggling 2.7million; a 130-times increase, now comprising more than 90% of total new titles. the world is certainly changing – and publishers are finding the changes challenging and unpredictable. amazon announced in may 2011 that Kindle e-books are now out-selling paperback and hardback titles combined. Only a month before, the Bookseller’s Phillip Jones was quoted as saying “the most bullish predictions suggest that ebooks will account for 50 per cent of the us market by 2014 or 2015, and then will probably plateau." the uK’s Yorkshire Post reported in august 2011 that “in January [2011] digital popular fiction comprised three per cent of consumer sales; by early summer they were six per cent, and they’ve now hit 10 per cent”.

Industry blog novelr stated “no traditional publisher in the world... can offer amanda hocking terms that are better than what she’s currently getting, right now on the Kindle store, all on her own.” things are looking messy…

32 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

Locke, hocking and other digital revolutionaries seem to have learned as much from apple itunes and the ‘user review’ approach of the app store, trip advisor, etc as they have from the mainstream publishing industry. Both authors price their fiction at itunes rates. If you buy a song for a dollar and you decide you don’t much care for it – not much is lost. It’s not a high-commitment purchase. so why not take that philosophy and apply it to a novel? and why not take the advice of a fellow reader – someone like you – rather than accept the word of a paid critic?

On his refreshingly irreverent website, Locke advises struggling authors to ignore publishers’ calls to “lower your expectations”, advising them instead to “raise them”. the subtext is not just to ignore publishers’ discouraging advice, but to ignore old-model publishers altogether. my own field is the ultra-conservative one of scholarly research publishing. In this world the talk is of doubleblind peer review, 95 per cent rejection rates, and arcane measures of citation half-life and ‘eigenfactors’. here a year’s subscription to a handful of obscure papers published in a single journal can cost more than a small car; and a single article download can be $40 or more. although scholarly publishing was quick to embrace online technology – searching through hundreds of thousands of published papers for something which matches a specialised research interest is a whole lot easier online – it has firmly resisted the messy, disintermediated, democratised philosophy of the digital era. technology-enabled innovations such as post-publication peer review, continuous online publishing, and utilisation of cloud technology and semantic search, creates a ‘lean’ scholarly publishing model, with lower costs. those pursuing a lower-cost model should be able to offer fair prices and more pricing flexibility.

Locke advises struggling authors to ‘raise expectations’ not lower them – the subtext is not just to ignore publishers’ discouraging advice, but to ignore old-model publishers altogether

Table 1: Book industry statistics.

Source: Bowker Date

New titles ‘traditional’

New titles ‘non-traditional’

Total

2010

316480

2776260

3092740

2009

302410

1033065

1335475

2008

289729

271851

561580

2007

284370

123276

407646

2006

274416

21936

296352

2005

251903

30597

282500

2004

275793

19730

295523

(estimate)

33 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Unlikely Heroes: A 21st century publishing revolution by John Peters

We must lower barriers to entry for scholars from the developing world, practitioners with something to say, and less-experienced researchers

When we formed GSE Research, a new-model scholarly publisher in 2011, we chose to locate firmly in this messy new world. It makes little sense for work which has been a year or two in the making to wait another year or two – or longer – to progress through peer review, revision, production, and the inevitable queue to be published in a future issue.

But the change from a process which takes years, to one that takes weeks or days between submission and publication, needs a change in mindset, not just technology.

In our field of corporate governance, CSR, sustainability and environmental management, speed to market and inclusivity are important. A light-touch editor review, followed by post-publication peer review, comment and development, allows GSE to achieve this.

John Locke and Amanda Hocking will not displace JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer. They offer alternatives. This isn’t a revolution which seeks to overthrow the old regime, but to work alongside it, offering choices, alternatives, and broader participation. In common with others such as the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) we fully expect some authors to develop ideas in GSE’s friendly post-publication environment, and to be published in traditional media elsewhere.

There is a freshening wind blowing through traditional research publishing and it is blowing towards the future.

Protests about passing fads, lowering of quality standards and the need to preserve a system which has served us well for several hundred years, won’t make the tide turn back or the wind stop blowing.

There has been much talk through 2011 of revolution – the ‘Arab Spring’ and the battles for self-determination and freedom of expression in Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere.

Revolutions typically come with weapons and bloodshed.

The revolution in our industry is of a different sort, where the weapons are words, ideas, websites, e-books and Kindles.

We need to understand this revolution, and create some new rules; of choice, inclusivity, fair dealing, author engagement and open-mindedness. Publishers need to embrace the ideas that underpin the revolution and move forwards through the next decades.

The unlikely heroes of the publishing revolution around us in the early 21st century are playing a significant part in history. We at GSE Research are pleased to be part of the revolution; embracing the brave new world of democratised and globalised scholarly endeavour.

Widening participation in research publishing is another challenge, which must be met. We need to bring in ideas, working papers, case studies, teaching and learning methodologies and company-based material, as well as traditional scholarly research. We must lower barriers to entry for scholars from the developing world, practitioners REFERENCES AND SOURCES with something to say, and less-experienced researchers. http://amandahocking.net/ Questions about quality control will, invariably, be raised.

But as Dr Kamal Mahawar of the innovative medical publisher Webmed put it, “Why do people think that respectable professionals with good reputations would put their names to bad research, just because there is no peer review system in place to stop them doing so?”

To those from academia who feel locked into the game of tenure, rigour, four-star journals and citation counting, I say: play that game, if you must. Just don’t play it all the time Spend 10% or 20% or 30% on a different game; on inclusivity, relevance, and getting ideas into circulation quickly and openly. That’s all it needs.

http://donovancreed.com/ www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/selfpublished-authorjoins-kindles-elite-millionseller-list-2300724.html www.bowker.com/index.php/book-industry-statistics www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/the-arts/why_you_can_t_even_judge_a_ holiday_ebook_by_its_hi_tech_cover_1_3680059 www.readwriteweb.com/archives/1_in_4_college_textbooks_will_be_digital_ by_2015.php www.webmedcentral.com About the Author

John Peters is CEO of GSE Research; online publisher of scholarly research and business information in the areas of Governance, Sustainability and Environmental Management. GSE is working with likeminded partners including Pub2Web (semantic web technology hosts); OKS (digital production and workflow); Institute of Directors India; Social Science Research Network (SSRN); EABIS, the Academy of Business in Society; and EFMD; to embrace the challenges of sustainability, governance and the digital information revolution. john.peters@gseresearch.com

34 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

Defining the role of business schools Baback Yazdani, Dean of Nottingham Business School, looks at how business schools across the globe might define their role

Today there are more than 12,000 known business schools across the globe, and the number is increasing every year. This is due to an increasing demand from the global student population, people at work who wish to advanced their careers, and of course the employers of graduates in business and management.

According to data collected by the Association of Business Schools (ABS) in the UK, 1 in 7 undergraduate students are now studying business or a related subject. This amounts to some 200,000 students across the country.

70,000 postgraduate students study business, management and closely related subjects; about 12% of the total UK postgraduate population.

Defining the role of business schools by Baback Yazdani

35 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

>12k There are more than 12,000 known business schools across the globe today, and the number is increasing every year

1:7 ... 1 in 7 undergraduate students are now studying business or a related subject

The growth observed in the UK, is also reflected across the world with many new business schools being set up. This growth is a function of demand. All stakeholders, but particularly the students themselves, expect a lot from the educational experience we in the business school community provide.

This puts a special responsibility upon our shoulders.

The stakeholders of a business school are a more widely-spread community than might be first thought of. Figure 1 overleaf shows a representation of business school stakeholders.

12% ...which is about 12% of the total UK postgraduate population

36 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

Business schools can be classified according to the main focus of their work, and how they interact with the wider stakeholders which make up the sources of their operating income. a great variety and diversity exists amongst schools, which reflects how they see themselves and their role and place in the world and how they respond to the pressures operating in their markets. these pressures, and market choices, include price positioning, rankings, and institutional focus.

We can however draw three very broad categories: 1: Research Focused 2: teaching Focused 3: Integrationists at one end of the spectrum there are those schools which aim to focus on excellence in teaching, and who build their market position around the teaching and learning experience. at the other end of the spectrum there are those that predominantly focus on research, reflecting the character of their client base and institutional heritage. these two positions can become quite polarised. a third position is what I call the ‘integrationist’ position; integrating research, engaging with business,and bringing research and business insights into its teaching and learning experience.

Figure 1: The Main Stakeholders of Business Schools

this integrationist position is one we aim for at nottingham Business school. But taking this stance creates the challenge of competing effectively for top quality business school faculty. Consequently the number of business schools which successfully integrate their main lines of activity are limited to a small amount in most countries. this integration can prove difficult when rankings are a key objective, because the pursuit of a top-class research agenda is an important driver of rankings. similarly those schools where teaching dominates – particularly at mBa level, frequently find it difficult to stay relevant and excel in research. however, the most transformational gain is at the full intersection of the three main activities of research, engagement with business where the ideas gain reality and relevance and are tested, and education that reflects both rigorous research and application, as shown in the Figure 2 below.

But simplicity is hard to achieve and only a few do actually manage to hit the sweet spot.

Figure 2: Transformational gains at the intersection of key activities

sOCIetY & COmmunItY (InC. FutuRe GeneRatIOns) Government eDuCatIOn

Students Alumni

BusIness enGaGement

Research / Public Funding Bodies Scientific and Knowledge Community

ReseaRCh

BusIness enGaGement

eDuCatIOn

Parents

Industry Research Bodies

Local National and Global Business, Industry, Public and Third Sector Organisations

TRANSFORMATIONAL PEOPLE & KNOWLEDGE

ReseaRCh

Simplicity is hard to achieve and only a few do actually manage to hit the sweet spot

Defining the role of business schools by Baback Yazdani

37 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

the role of education for nBs also fits our integrative stance. We state that we aim to design and deliver programmes that integrate nottingham Business school (nBs) aims theory and practice. even at undergraduate to pursue this ‘middle way’ integrationist level we aim to ensure application of theory approach. although, as discussed this in real business environment through a range raises a number of challenges, we try to do so via a number of deliberately designed of work and practice based learning. to help execute this strategy, we have carefully and executed strategies. cultivated long term relationships with First and foremost is our mission statement. businesses that sponsor 600 fully paid this gives a public ‘this is who we are’ placement opportunities every year. similarly statement, and sets us up to be judged on the postgraduate programmes are designed whether we succeed or fail in its execution. to ensure practice and application of theories. nBs has set itself the mission to provide We have tried to reflect our mission through education and research that combines design; the nBs mBa includes a week long academic excellence with impact, team based Consultancy Project in major uK transforming business and organisations companies, an International Consultancy through knowledge and people. this reminds Project and an applied Dissertation based on us – nBs faculty, customers and stakeholders a strategic problem for a partner company or – that we are here to serve our customers. industry.

In the sometimes inwardly-focused world of business education and scholarship, we the ‘integrative’ approach is not for everyone.

Its pursuit is partly about setting out a find this is a valuable reminder! strategic intent, but more importantly, about secondly, and following from the overarching delivering that intent. as with the execution of mission statement, we aim to set out any successful strategy, it requires discipline definitions for each of our operations and perseverance. of research, business engagement and education. the research mission of nBs is to develop research with impact on business, management and policy. therefore, we set ourselves an orientation towards ‘Business R&D’ rather than ‘pure research’. We challenge ourselves to test research in business practice, with our corporate and government clients and students.

Nottingham Business School’s Integrationist Approach.

The number of business schools which successfully integrate their main lines of activity are only few in every country

600 We have an aim to design and deliver programmes that integrate theory and practice – to help execute this strategy, we have carefully cultivated long term relationships with businesses that sponsor 600 fully paid placement opportunities every year

similarly our business engagement mission is to embed the nBs way of applying theory to practice and focus on work based learning, and assuring a supply and development of top business and management and leadership talent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professor Baback Yazdani is Dean of Nottingham Business School (NBS) and Professor of Product Development, and the Vice-Chair and member of the Executive Board of the UK Association of Business Schools.

38 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

Time for a more complete view of MBA Programme quality

5th

6th

7th

Over the past three decades business schools have undergone significant changes, due in part to the work of media ranking publications contend Robert S. Rubin, Eric C. Dierdorff, and Fredrick P. Morgeson

From Rankings to Ratings by Robert S. Rubin, Eric C. Dierdorff, and Fredrick P. Morgeson

Rankings such as BusinessWeek, US News & World Report, and Financial Times have pushed MBA programs toward increased accountability to constituent concerns.

Indeed, our colleagues who were in business schools prior to BusinessWeek refer to life back then as “BBW” – before BusinessWeek.

Business schools seemed to have heard the central message: come down from the ivory tower and get to work improving the MBA. After all, stakeholders have the right to know how their resource investments will be shaped. The influence of media rankings on recruiter behavior, alumni donations, placement, applicant quality and so forth is undeniable.

We discovered that media rankings are highly deficient. Most of the indicators we uncovered are not represented in media-rankings

the general consumer view of media rankings is that they objectively and comprehensively summarise an mBa programme’s most fundamental product – educational quality. unfortunately, academic research shows rankings are inadequate indicators of educational quality. We believe the time has come to move business school assessment away from incomplete rankings and toward a comprehensive rating system. moving to a rating system requires a detailed understanding of the essential criteria that constitute educational quality in graduate management education. to date, such an important undertaking has yet to be conducted. We recently conducted a research study aimed at systematically defining and assessing what constitutes mBa program quality. Our research builds the necessary foundation to move beyond rankings, and towards a rating system.

39 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

MBA Academic Quality We reviewed the academic literature on educational quality, both within business education and in post-secondary education in general. We also reviewed media sources and accreditation standards. From this initial effort we identified nearly 50 sources and derived more than 300 different educational quality indicators.

We reviewed these indicators, and sorted them into twenty four key indicators, within nine broad clusters (below). these indicators were then independently verified by subject matter experts. this is a synopsis of our quality model:

1. Curriculum:

a) content, b) delivery, and c) program structure

2. Faculty:

a) qualifications, b) research, c) teaching, and d) overall quality

3. Placement:

a) alumni network, b) career services, c) corporate/community relations.

4. Reputation:

a) perceptions of programme quality

5. Student learning and outcomes:

a) personal competency development, b) student career consequences, c) economic outcomes, and d) learning outcomes

6. Institutional resources:

a) facilities, b) financial resources, c) investment in faculty, d) tuition and fees, and e) student support services.

7. Programme/institution climate:

a) diversity and b) educational environment

8. Programme student composition:

a) the overall makeup and quality of students

9. Strategic focus:

a) the quality of the articulated institutional mission and strategic plan.

40 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

the more we looked at the challenge of understanding quality of educational programmes, the more complex we found it.

We especially wanted to avoid the so-called “criterion-problem,” which refers to the inherent difficulties in conceptualising and measuring concepts that are clearly multidimensional in nature. Criteria developed with insufficient thought regarding the ultimate aim – in this case, quality of education – will be deficient. Indeed, one critical misstep of any evaluative system is to begin assessment without first developing a complete understanding of the essential indicators of interest.

Based on our research, most existing indicators of programme quality lack the multidimensionality we uncovered.

When comparing our model’s 24 quality dimensions against media rankings, we discovered that media rankings are highly deficient. BusinessWeek and Financial Times rankings cover only 9 or 10 of the 24 dimensions in their rankings’ criteria, and US News & World Report covered just four. that is, at least 60% of the indicators we uncovered are not represented in media rankings. We therefore recommend caution in interpreting the meaning of rankings as overall quality indicators. at the same time, if stakeholders are interested in knowing about a few dimensions (e.g. student economic outcomes), rankings do capture some of this information, albeit on a limited number of institutions.Yet, even here, many of the criteria captured in rankings are largely out of direct institutional control. For example, our subject matter experts indicated that the most malleable aspects of mBa programme quality are those falling under Curriculum and the least malleable as Reputation. Ironically then, reputation represents the factor least sensitive to institutional change efforts yet is the very factor driving most media rankings.

Our research also captured reactions to assessing quality from mBa policy-makers (e.g., programme administrators, associate deans, etc.) a few results were troubling to say the least. For instance, only 9% of policy-makers endorsed the idea that media rankings provide “good measures” of overall quality, yet 73% reported that their institutions pay close attention to rankings. herein lies the tyranny of rankings: academic stakeholders (and even many publishers of rankings) know that media rankings are flawed, but with few alternatives available, they feel stuck chasing the rankings rather than their unique educational mission. Yet, as a study by Fred morgeson and Jennifer nahrgang on the stability of media rankings recently showed, such efforts are not likely to result in breaking into rankings regardless of the educational quality achieved.

Advantages of a Rating System using our multidimensional model of programme quality content, we believe we have built the foundation for the development of an educational rating system (akin to Consumer Reports). such a system would offer some key advantages over rankings, including:

Multidimensionality: Ratings systems allow for depictions of “quality profiles” across schools. stakeholders could evaluate the full breadth of quality, applying their own weightings to what matters most for them. and ratings are by nature compensatory, meaning that the quality dimensions programmes choose to emphasise will be more clearly depicted.

Focus on important differences (and similarities): Programmes that are not

substantially different in terms of quality ratings can be treated as functionally equivalent. actual differences would be more clearly highlighted across quality criteria while taking certain “baseline” information (e.g., accreditation) into account.

Improvement of transparency: Rating systems are not limited to an arbitrary “best set” of institutions, which allows for differences to emerge across a wide swath of programmes. this transparency is not present in rankings today. no longer would debates be structured around whether or not a school ranked 15th is really different than the school ranked 19th.

Reduction in “gaming” educational rankings:

a rating system is likely to reduce the dysfunctional behavior involved in chasing or manipulating the most heavily weighted criteria in media rankings.

Ironically then, reputation represents the factor least sensitive to institutional change efforts yet is the very factor driving most media rankings

From Rankings to Ratings by Robert S. Rubin, Eric C. Dierdorff, and Fredrick P. Morgeson

41 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Further, a rating system would more clearly highlight distinctiveness in programmes. Distinctiveness encourages schools to invest in their strengths and serve their mission more fully; whereas rankings encourage schools to chase the same small set of heavily weighted criteria regardless of their educational mission. a rating system would make it perfectly apparent when schools possess equivalent levels of quality on any given criteria; whereas a rank, by its very nature, forces even the most miniscule of differences to appear significant.

73% Only 9% of policy-makers endorsed the idea that media rankings provide “good measures” of overall quality, yet 73% reported that their institutions pay close attention to ranking

It is time to take accountability seriously

although a rating system could be used to establish wide bands of schools who achieve certain levels of quality (e.g., “tier 1” schools), the number of schools able to achieve such levels is not limited. under a rating system, the number of schools able to achieve different quality levels is limited only by an institution’s own efforts and accomplishments.

Because ratings aren’t concerned with declaring a winner, the end result is a system that provides flexibility, transparency, and increased usability to all stakeholders.

Given the hundreds of schools worldwide who have already achieved high standards in educational quality, it’s hard to see the value of endorsing ranking systems that obscure rather than illuminate important distinctions between programmes. For example, media rankings give recruiters limited information regarding the quality of the curricula and whether students actually learn the knowledge and skills purported to be trained by the programme. a rating system would better serve all business school stakeholders by providing this type of detailed information that can truly shape decision making, within and outside business schools.

Despite these promises, we recognise that many people will prefer a system that declares winners and losers, no matter how incomplete the data driving it. although no comprehensive alternatives to ranking and ‘league tables’ currently exist, over time, consumers are likely to embrace a system based on ratings With this in mind, we firmly believe it is no longer viable to stand on the sidelines, while inadequate systems dictate conversations of business school quality. Instead, we need to apply the general philosophy of rigorous and evidencebased decision-making that we so often espouse in schools of business.

It is time to take accountability seriously.

FURTHER INFORMATION

(Re)Defining MBA Program Quality: Toward a Comprehensive Model by Robert S. Rubin and Erich C. Dierdorff of DePaul University and Frederick P. Morgeson of Michigan State University was funded by a 2010 research grant from GMAC’s Management Education Research Institute

42 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

Busting Boundaries... ...to Accelerate Business Transformation: The Siemens Transformation Story

Andrew Rutsch explains how a recent EFMD CLIP workshop shedded light on Siemens’ transformation from troubled company to role model. Andrew Rutsch explains how Corporate Learning played a key role in this strategic renewal.

In 2007, in a booming global economy, Siemens was in troubled waters. The industrial giant was facing a global corruption scandal which would cost the company 32.5 billion in fines and lawyers' and accountants' fees (The Guardian 2008).

Peter Loescher was hired as the new CEO to clean up the company. He was the first top executive in the 162-year history to join from the outside. Today, Siemens is a role model in Dow Jones’ sustainability world index, and one of the top five in the 2010 Hay Group Best Companies for Leadership survey.

So what is the Siemens transformation story?

The EFMD CLIP Sharing Best Practice Workshop at the Siemens Global Leadership Center in Feldafing near Munich on 7 October 2011 provided rich insights. Four key success factors for transforming a global organisation were highlighted and discussed:

Busting Boundaries to Accelerate Business Transformation – The Siemens Transformation Story by Andrew Rutsch

43 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012 PICTURED: The world’s first series hybrid electric plane DA36 E-Star Quiet and efficient, the aircraft's flight is driven by a small combustion engine and just one Siemens electric motor.

Getting the right people on the bus New blood was injected to heal the patient. Within a short time frame Loescher changed 90% of the Group’s management board, 70% of the second tier and 50% of the third management level.

Overall, 1,000 leadership positions were filled with external and internal talent.

Loescher took the crisis as an opportunity to change the leadership team and leadership culture in order to spearhead the transformation of the company.

Factor 2 Strengthening collaboration The One Siemens strategy, assuming the whole is more than the sum of its parts, is another key factor. The firm moved to a sector based structure bringing products, know-how and people together across borders to create solutions that meet the needs of hospitals, cities, and so forth. All 90 direct reports of the management board are assessed and incentivised for how well they and the entities they oversee collaborate with each other horizontally.

Traditional incentive systems over-reward results, while Siemens recognises collaboration as a key means to the end.

Factor 3 Strategic decisions based on an outside-in view The renewed leadership team had to make tough decisions.

For example, the rail business was turned around within one year, taking an outside-in view looking at how automotive producers work and mobilising the employees in the change process. Similarly, Somatom, a new computer tomography generation developed by an engineer in China, played a key role in boosting innovation in the healthcare business. Today,it is a block buster and exported across the world. Also, patients were brought in to meet with employees, to change the view that their mission was not to develop technology, but to help cure patients.

Factor 4 Speed, speed, speed The crisis Siemens was facing called for a decisive response and course of action. The firm realised that if it did not learn faster than the speed of change in its environment, it would not survive. Today, current and future leaders at Siemens are systematically assessed on their ability to learn, capability and ambition. As a result, change leadership and speed in execution have become critical attributes of an effective leader at Siemens.

PHOTGRAPH COURTESY OF SIEMENS

Factor 1

44 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

The role of Corporate Learning Siemens Leadership Excellence (SLE) and Corporate Development Executive Affairs (CD EA) are two key actors in this transformation process. SLE is part of HR and works very closely with CD EA that directly reports into Loescher. As a result, the development review and direction of key leaders and successors facilitated through CD EA is at the top of the CEO agenda. SLE provides the platform to connect and develop them through Siemens’ global leadership center in Feldafing or out in the regions. SLE and CD EA collaborate to bundle forces in order to better support Siemens’ transformation, and as such reinforce on the organisational level what leaders in the business are asked to do.

PHOTGRAPH COURTESY OF SIEMENS

In contrast, the traditional focus in Corporate Learning is lesser on the organisational level.

It directly works with and helps develop leaders to contribute to business transformation, which is the space where it has been socialised in and has most control over. While this model has strong merits in developing leadership at the individual and team level, it lacks collaboration with other key actors in the firm that also have a stake in organisational transformation such as corporate development, operations and R&D. Joining forces across borders in order to accelerate business transformation implies Corporate Learning leaving its comfort zone - as also applies to the rest of the Siemens business.

A lot of innovation happens at the periphery of the firm

Busting Boundaries to Accelerate Business Transformation – The Siemens Transformation Story by Andrew Rutsch

45 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Accelerating Business Transformation The Siemens story essentially highlights how key stakeholders are brought together across vertical and horizontal boundaries to co-create and accelerate the continuous and sustainable transformation of the company (Rutsch 2012) , in which SLE and CD EA play a key role. Horizontal collaboration across entities involves internal and external stakeholders such as clients or patients.

Vertical collaboration across levels, for instance, involves employees in the change process or elevating a local solution such as Somatom to the global level.

PHOTGRAPH COURTESY OF SIEMENS

Indeed, practice shows that a lot of innovation happens at the periphery of the firm through sales and technical personnel which are closest to clients and suppliers (e.g., Gulati 2007). Thus, both running the machine and acting on early signs in the environment requires firms to dynamically manage the bottom-up flow of new ideas and top-down execution through multi-directional collaboration (Rutsch 2012) – so the firm does not have to wait until its leadership realises the need for change such as at Siemens in 2007 when investors and media were hammering the company to make changes.

Hence, the Siemens story encourages Corporate Learning to increase its role as a partner to the business, by facilitating horizontal and vertical collaboration between key stakeholders across boundaries in order to drive the co-creation and thus acceleration of the continuous transformation of the firm (Rutsch 2012).

Busting boundaries to accelerate business transformation – the latest EFMD CLIP Sharing Best Practice Workshop with the Siemens transformation story provided much inspiration for taking a more dedicated attempt in this direction.

About the Author

Andrew Rutsch is Co-Founder and the Academic Facilitator of the EFMD Learning Business Partner Special Interest Group. He is a PhD candidate at the University of St. Gallen and consultant to Capgemini University and is currently writing a case study with IMD on Capgemini University’s role and impact in business transformation.

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46 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

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Using “action strategy” to transform a business school by George Yip

Professors of strategy and organisation behaviour teach that strategic transformation is best done through a formal programme involving many people in the organisation. But in seeking to transform Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, The Netherlands, from a primarily academic orientation to one that also values engagement with business, George Yip, a new dean brought in from outside, rejected a formal approach. Instead he successfully applied an “action strategy”.

RICHARD PASCALE

It is easier to act your way into a better way of thinking than to think your way into a better way of acting

As a long-time professor of strategy and former management consultant, I have taught, researched and applied programmes of strategic transformation. So when it became my turn to actually put this into practice as a dean, I rejected a formal programme of change in favour of what I now call “action strategy”. I realised that most faculty members resist change, and that a formal change process would generate a lot of talk and disagreement rather than action. Furthermore, as both an outsider and a foreigner, I doubted my ability to rapidly achieve change through persuasion in a national culture renowned for its emphasis on consensus gained through long discussions. I also had limited time, with a four-year contract before I would reach the mandatory retirement age. So I decided to begin a programme of strategic actions that, while not secret, did not involve much discussion or approval. I would not start by trying to change people's views, but work instead on their behaviour. Richard Pascale, then of Stanford Business School, said: “It is easier to act your way into a better way of thinking than to think your way into a better way of acting.”

47 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

In thinking about the transformation process that we advocate for companies I noted three key differences between business and academia.

First, in business, organisation members can be rallied around the common objective of financial performance. In academia there is no common objective. Indeed, the most important disagreements in business schools are about what should be the objectives.

Second, in business, the leaders of the transformation effort usually have a large number of sticks and carrots to motivate alignment, including firing and promotion. In academia, the person most at risk of being fired is the dean. Indeed, during my years as Dean of RSM, three new deans of other top European business schools were all forced to resign within two years or less of their appointments. Third, even more than in companies, academia poses many institutional barriers to change. In addition, most organisational rituals and day-to-day routines reinforce an orientation to academic concerns rather than to engagement with business.

So, what was the context? When I arrived as Dean in January 2008, RSM was a very large school: about 175 faculty, 175 other staff, 75 PhD students, 7,500 other students, and 20 different degree programmes. The School was also complex. There were two separate legal entities, one of which was public and one private, and each occupying different buildings. These two entities had been merged only four years before. The public entity held all the regular faculty, and the BSc, MSc and PhD programmes. The private

48 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

another objective was to change the mind set and behaviour of the faculty to recognise that publishing in academic outlets was necessary but not sufficient for us to be a top business school. When I arrived, only 1% of the 300 publications a year were in managerial journals and these were not top ones. I instituted a reward programme by which faculty who published in the top managerial I had agreed a number of four-year objectives journals, such as Harvard Business Review, with the university board. these included: would receive a cash bonus of up to 115,000. growing the revenues for executive education I also brought in editors from such journals to and the mBa and emBa programmes, moving help train the faculty in how to write for these up in the various rankings, raising money journals. I sent out congratulatory e-mails (which had not been done before), improving when faculty got acceptances in such journals the connection to business, and increasing but I did not send out congratulations for media coverage, while maintaining the acceptances in academic ones. also, to help already excellent level of academic faculty understand the difference between an research and the high standing of the academic article and a managerial one, we bachelor and msc programmes. It is launched Rsm Insight, a quarterly that had a important to understand that I had been journalist rewrite selected academic articles given these objectives by erasmus by the faculty into two-page summaries for university, so I did not feel the need to managerial audiences. Over time more and discuss them with the Rsm faculty. I wanted more faculty did indeed submit and get to avoid having these objectives questioned at accepted in managerial outlets. the very start. Furthermore, I needed only a Perhaps the most important transformation few of the “willing” to start implementing occurred in our research institute. Rsm has strategic actions. the strictest publication requirement of any Key Strategies to Achieve the Objectives school I know. even full professors have to most of the teaching in the private part, more keep up a number of publications in ranked than 80%, was delivered by external faculty. journals in order to preserve research time. therefore, a key objective was to greatly From day one I tried to persuade the director increase the level of integration between of research that the top managerial journals, the public and private parts of the school. harvard, sloan, and California should have to do this I became highly involved in the equal status with top academic journals in management of Rsm BV, so much so that counting toward faculty members’ status for the then separate Dean of Rsm BV told me release from teaching. By the end of my that there was not room for both of us. he tenure, the research director upgraded the soon left for a better job elsewhere. I then status of these top three managerial journals. convinced both the Chairman of the this was one of my finest farewell gifts! supervisory Board and the President of the university that we did not need to replace him and that I would play this role. to offset that I made the new Vice Dean responsible for faculty. the new Vice Dean, who had been the most widely supported and respected of the existing department chairs, became an indispensable partner in my journey, mr. Inside to my mr. Outside. Indeed, I view one of our best achievements as his succession as Dean after my retirement.

PHOTGRAPH COURTESY OF ERASMUS

PHOTGRAPH COURTESY OF ERASMUS

entity, Rsm BV, hosted the mBa, emBa, and executive education programmes, and had its own supervisory board, chaired by a former chief executive of unilever. the public entity also had eight separate departments with very powerful department chairs. specifically, each department had its own profit and loss account and reserve.

49 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Using “action strategy” to transform a business school by George Yip

Additional Action Strategies

A New Business Model

There were many other individual action strategies:

The reverse sequence of changing actions before attitudes culminated in a process to develop a new business model. This process did not start until 2.5 years into my tenure.

The advantage of this delay was that, by the time we came to discuss how to get the faculty more connected to the corporate world and how to better integrate the public and private parts of the school, both faculty and staff had seen that some of this could be done. So they were much more willing to do more. By the end of my tenure I was able to feel that I had lived up to the Nike slogan: “Just do it.” And the School had a very healthy surplus and reserve.

– The finance faculty objected to me telling them that academic publications alone did not have direct impact on practice. Rather than arguing this out, I organised events with practitioners that involved the finance faculty.

Indeed, the best event was one that I initiated but which they organised themselves, and led to their greater recognition of the need to engage with executives.

– I revived the Advisory Board, which consisted of top executives from different companies, by engaging them in real debate about current issues facing the school. Then I also brought in key faculty to present to the Board – a great way to stimulate engagement with practice.

– Not only did I spend significant time on fund raising, but I also involved individual faculty, which again demonstrated the importance of engagement with business. We succeeded in raising over 12 million in a national culture unfamiliar with educational philanthropy.

Academia poses many institutional barriers to change

– I created the position of Director of Corporate and Alumni Relations. I added this director and the Director of Marketing to the Management Team, the top management body. We communicated to faculty that the alumni are key stakeholders.

¤2m

– The Director of Marketing launched a new social media campaign, that had faculty, staff and students create personal, action oriented statements: “I WILL …..”

– Executive education was an activity with limited participation by regular faculty.

I brought in a new director, and together we worked to convince the faculty of the benefits to them, both financial and in terms of learning, of more involvement.

– Faculty had not paid much attention to rankings. Whenever a new ranking came out, I sent an email explaining what had happened, and stressed the link from higher rankings to more revenues to greater support for research. This heightened attention helped us improve in a number of rankings, culminating in the Financial Times meta ranking of No. 6 in Europe in late 2010.

We succeeded in raising over ¤2 million in a national culture unfamiliar with educational philanthropy

6 Increased attention to rankings culminated in a Financial Times meta ranking of No. 6 in Europe in late 2010

About the Author

George Yip is Emeritus Dean, Rotterdam School of Management Erasmus University; Professor of Management and Co-Director, Centre on China Innovation, China Europe International Business School; and Visiting Professor, Imperial College Business School. gyip@ceibs.edu

50 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

Stephanie Hussels describes how Cranfield uses case study writing as a means of integrating research, teaching, and practice on the MBA course

51 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Case by Case by Stephanie Hussels

The Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield School of Management was founded in 2006 and named after Tim Bettany, Cranfield MBA alumnus and serial entrepreneur, who endowed a Chair of Entrepreneurship at the School of Management. The Centre has now developed a diverse portfolio of entrepreneurial activities across five broad areas: internationally recognised research, graduate programmes, networking events, technology transfer, and executive education.

2006 The year the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield School of Management was founded

25

The Business Growth Programme (BGP), going for nearly 25 years is the longest running programme for the development of owner-managers in the UK...

1250 ... and to date has helped more than 1,250 ownermanagers achieve their business and personal ambitions

How does it work?

Prior to the elective we identify businesses that have come through our executive portfolio and that might create a good case.

Then in the outline session of the elective we briefly introduce the students to the options. Once the course kicks off they have to form teams of up to five students to work on their case study and teaching notes.

Students can also use their own contacts to identify firms and secure company access should they wish. To help them with the This article describes how executive education process, we run a session explaining the and graduate programmes have been linked classic structure of a case study and the at Cranfield, to the benefit of both process of setting-up and writing a case entrepreneurs and students. The executive study and the teaching notes. Good writing education portfolio, Exhibit 1, covers the conventions are highlighted. We also discuss entire entrepreneurial life cycle from start-up, typical issues around entrepreneurship and growth, to harvest and exit. The flagship new venture creation that they might want to programme of the executive portfolio is keep in mind when thinking about the focus of the Business Growth Programme (BGP), their case study. Moreover, we ask the MBA the longest running programme for the students what, in their opinion, makes a case development of owner-managers in the UK. study excellent. These points are collected It has been running with great success for on the board and kept as a reminder for two nearly 25 years and has helped more than workshops where each team has to present 1,250 owner-managers achieve their business work in progress to the whole class. To help and personal ambitions. the students understand the company Around a quarter of Cranfield MBA students background and focus on a core issue, the are personally involved in venturing within main emphasis of the first workshop lies 10 years of graduation. Keeping this in mind, on the case study itself, whereas the second the MBA entrepreneurship elective covers workshop requires them to review the the entire entrepreneurial life cycle. During theory covered on the course and present the the course MBA students are challenged accompanying teaching notes. Exhibit 3 to learn both sides of the entrepreneurial provides some of the questions raised during process by evaluating a venture from an previous workshops. The students arrange investor’s point of view, as well as getting company visits and discussions with the first-hand experience by developing their entrepreneur and key company staff to gain own business plan, which they then have all the necessary insights. to pitch to real investors at the end of the Once the case study and teaching notes are elective. To enhance the practical aspects submitted for assessment, the MBA teams of the elective, case studies are employed usually present their final version to the throughout the course. The cases are based company. Following this, the best student on businesses well known to us. As a cases are then worked up by faculty before consequence, Cranfield entrepreneurship submitting them to the European Case faculty have written numerous case studies Clearing House (ECCH), academic journals, over the years (see for examples Exhibit 2). and case study competitions such as the In addition, case study writing has been annual EFMD case writing competition. incorporated on the MBA entrepreneurship elective, allowing students to write a case study and accompanying teaching notes as an alternative to writing their own business plan.

52 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

CustOmIseD PROGRammes

BGP BusIness GROWth PROGRamme

ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS

BGP ReLateD PROGRamme

VALUE FORUM: haRVest & eXIt

UPSTART

Exhibit 1: The Bettany Centre Executive Education portfolio

What are the benefits for all parties involved? students gain a number of benefits from doing case study writing on the mBa entrepreneurship elective. Researching the company history, structure, and processes and subsequently writing the case study and teaching notes are an excellent tool of testing the understanding of relevant economic and management theory, and connect theory with practice. In particular, the creation of teaching notes requires students to reflect on the important learning points, thereby helping them to understand and assess choices made by the key parties involved and then link them back to the underlying theories covered in the class. With most mBa students coming from a corporate background, case study writing provides them with very valuable insights into the running of an entrepreneurial venture. moreover, writing case studies and teaching notes forces students to make decisions with the available (most times limited) information, and allows students to step into the shoes of the entrepreneur and discuss ‘real’ business issues. It enables learning by doing. additionally, the assessment gives students exposure to another business and provides them with something for their CV, especially if the case study is published in the eCCh or an academic journal. By dealing with the entrepreneur, presenting their work in progress in class during the workshops to gain feedback from other ‘customers’, it helps students to develop interpersonal and soft skills, time management, and communication.

even though taking part requires time commitment from businesses – usually two to three visits from the students – the process also produces several benefits for the businesses and entrepreneurs. For example, the businesses and entrepreneurs gain exposure among students to attract talents for the business. In the case of Cobalt telephone technologies, Joanna miller, the lead full-time mBa student, subsequently joined the business and now is the managing director of the company. Once completed, the case study often also creates a good basis for internal training and induction purposes. moreover, the entrepreneurs are regularly invited back to Cranfield when covering the case studies in the classroom. On the one hand the entrepreneurs feel that they can contribute to education by sharing their experiences with the students, on the other hand through the discussions in the classroom the entrepreneurs gain new insights and perspectives from talking to faculty and students. Businesses that took part in programmes often see it as a privilege to come back and be involved with the school. tristram mayhew, 'Chief Gorilla', of the Goape! company stated ‘the Cranfield Business Growth Programme helped me take my business to the next stage. to have a case study written by Cranfield on the business is an honour and has proven very beneficial for internal training purposes’. also, companies can gain exposure through publications and case writing competitions.

Writing case studies and teaching notes forces students to make decisions with the available information, and allows students to step into the shoes of the entrepreneur and discuss ‘real’ business issue

53 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Case by Case by Stephanie Hussels

Exhibit 2: Case studies: participating businesses

In 2002, Robert Brown and David molian were awarded the eFmD case writing prize for their study of hotel Chocolat, a Sunday Times Fast track 100 company that attended the Business Growth Programme in 2000. that success was repeated with the IViewCameras case in 2005 and yet again in 2009 with Pacific Direct. In 2009, the case study Goape!, written by David molian and stephanie hussels, also won the eFmD case writing competition in the category entrepreneurship.

Conclusion Incorporating case study writing into the mBa curriculum is an excellent way to integrate research, teaching, and practice. It is as such very much in line with the ethos of Cranfield school of management of transforming knowledge into action. It benefits all parties involved – and it is fun, too!

Exhibit 3: Workshop criteria Case Study

Teaching Notes

What is the history of the business?

What are the learning objectives of the case study?

Is there a core issue or set of issues?

How do these objectives relate to theory?

Does the case study have genuinely alternative outcomes?

Who is the target audience?

Does the case study have enough information available to work through the alternative outcomes?

What is the structure of the classroom session?

Does the case provide a voyage of discovery and even some interesting surprises?

What is the suggested teaching approach?

Is it accurate , unbiased and non-judgemental?

Are there any additional resources for the case study?

Is the case study well structured and easy to follow?

Persuasiveness of the team Quality of presentation slides

Case study writing is very much in line with the ethos of Cranfield School of Management of transforming knowledge into action. It benefits all parties involved – and it is fun, too!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Stephanie Hussels is a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Cranfield School of Management, UK. FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information on the Bettany Centre please visit www.cranfield.ac.uk/som/bettany

Others

54 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

Closing the

The future has already arrived.

It’s just not evenly distributed yet William Gibson Modern history contains many examples of industries that failed to see the signs of major disruption early enough for large and well-respected institutions to avoid painful damage to their businesses. The music industry marginalised Internet file sharing to its own considerable cost, and the rise of Open Source happened despite the initial opposition of the software industry.

Earlier this year ELIG (European Learning Industry Group) surveyed over 80 different organisations from the learning industry and higher education to understand the commercial hesitation for the adoption of Open Education. ELIG was left with the view that to not proactively engage with open education, its production, use and practices could present a serious threat to the sustainability of many players in the current learning market.

Our study shows there is a significant gap between the perception and reality of what Open Education already does and could mean for the Learning Industry. Any institution with a stake holding in the provision of learning as content, services or products should understand what Open Education is and its related concepts of Open Educational Services (OES), Resources (OER) and Practices (OEP).

There is clear evidence that Open Education is a steadily growing phenomenon in the learning world and the initiatives already in place are considered successful. What’s more, they have made a real difference to the way people find knowledge, learn and develop within formal education, workplace learning or through informal learning.

gap Lin Squires and Elmar Husmann show the significant gap between the perception and reality of Open Education

Closing the gap byLin Squires and Elmar Husmann

55 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Examples of Open Educational Resources In 2000 the nupedia project was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry sanger as a platform for peer-reviewed expert articles licensed as OeR. Wikipedia was created in 2001 as a side project to allow collaboration on nupedia articles. In 2003, Wikipedia uK had already over 100.000 articles. In 2011, Wikipedia uK passed the 3.6 million mark and became the world’s 7th most popular website.

In 2001 the massachusetts Institute of technology, mIt, initiated its Open Courseware Initiative (OCW) and started to subsequently release all mIt’s course material as OeR. now in 2011, the mIt OCW includes material from over 2000 courses which is estimated to be shared by 100 million learners worldwide – and further strengthening the mIt brand and impact globally.

WHAT IS OPEN EDUCATION? OPEN EDUCATION IS:

“... the free and open access to, the usage of and the right to modify and re-use digital open educational resources and digital educational tools, and the free and open access to the related virtual educational communities, in order to learn, teach, exchange or advance knowledge in a collaborative and interactive way.”

The How and Why of Open Education, Collaborative Creativity Group at UNU-MERIT: http://tinyurl.com/43q6g5t

apart from the most well-known examples, such as the mIt OCW and Wikipedia, our survey has revealed more than 25 leading Open education initiatives. the recent Open educational Quality Initiative has collected and analysed 58 further cases. academia is currently the source of most of these and also the most consistent users of OeR, contributing time, content and some funding. many commercial organisations regard this heritage as a reason in itself for dismissing Open education for their area of the market. however Open education holds the key to as many opportunities for profit-based companies as it does for non-profit organisations.

56 www.efmd.org/globalfocus DeLIVeRY InDustRIes:

CORPORATE – PRIVATE SECTOR

GOVT. & PUBLIC SECTOR

EDUCATION HIGH. & FURTHER

EDUCATION K12

EDUCATION VOCATIONAL

INFORMAL & LIFELONG

sOLutIOns ORGanIsatIOnaLLY ORIGInateD Oe/OeR maDe aVaILaBLe

seRVICes

Oe/OeR COmPLImentaRY VaLue-aDDeD PRODuCts & seRVICes PaID FOR assesment seRVICes

COntent

COntent suPPLIeRs InteGRatInG OeR IntO theIR estaBLIsheD PORtFOLIOs as WeLL as IDentIFYInG thOse eXIstInG PRODuCts theY COuLD tRansFeR tO the OeR

suPPORtInG InDustRIes:

teChnOLOGY PLatFORm

InteGRatIOn OF Oe/OeR IntO estaBLIsheD tOOLs & PLatFORms

InFRastRuCtuRe Oe/OeR stanDaRDs estaBLIsheD & emBeDDeD

Figure 1: Potential OE/OER learning market value chain

Parallels are often drawn between the evolution of Open source software and Open education. there are indeed some similarities including a founding conviction that collaborative development of open resources is a most powerful way. however, the ‘Open’ in Open education is not just about licensing and development. It is also about content, its quality, its provenance and its specific didactic context. unlike the governance in Open source projects, there is no organisved moderation authority in Open education overseeing how the parts relate to the whole. Rather there are governance mechanisms to ensure quality aspects of the diverse open resources, such as peer reviewing. this has allowed users to gain benefit and learn from individual open resources but it has not allowed for structured study programs that would lead to formal degrees or systematic improvement of skills and competences. hence, Open education initiatives mostly show a balance towards OeR and predominantly self-directed learning and only more recently have we

The ‘Open’ in Open Education is not just about licensing and development – it is also about content, its quality, its provenance and its specific didactic context

this is not just a question of options – our industry is also confronted with the needs of a new generation of learners that have grown up with collaborative learning, social networking and social working schemes. the impressive numbers of participants in Oe initiatives, such as more than 100 million learners that share mIt Open Courseware OeRs, speak for themselves.

seen examples of entire courses being conducted as Open education. eLIG itself has recently partnered in the piloting of such an open course on Business and management Competencies in a Web 2.0 world with multiple providers organised by the united nations university (http://www. open-ed.eu/index.php).

Within the current distribution pattern of Open education lies the key to its fragility and the source of enormous opportunity.

Open education will further flourish as a component of a diverse ecosystem of players and with a range of activity in place to create value for all stakeholders – producers and users. In this context, motivation and funding are essential.

In fact, many of the current initiatives are linked to singular sources of funding or closely tying to an institution. the eLIG study showed that respondents believed that Open education and also the production of OeR was only possible in europe because university grants, Foundations, national Governments and the european Commission offer primary sources of funding.

Funding and grants are important in the world of Open source software as well – but here these are primarily private funds from commercial entities. this indicates a reciprocal commercial interest.

Funding sources of Open Source – the mozilla Foundation benefits from over 175m of yearly grants and distributes funding to many projects in the Oss world. a large donor to mozilla has been Google.

– alternative support-models in the Oss world are donations of code from commercial projects and donations of developer time. an example for this is IBm that donates large developer capacities to Linux.

– moodle is largely supported by the Open university.

57 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

Closing the gap byLin Squires and Elmar Husmann

214

45m

By 201 Moodle, an opensource software solution and also the basis for many open educational practices was used in 214 countries...

...and by 45 million users

However, with the exception of some isolated examples there are no business and funding models, comparable to those seen in Open Source Software, to make Open Education attractive to both the commercial sector and independent of public funds. The commercial viability of the practice of openness in education (OEP) is already evident in the success of learning management tools such as Moodle. Moodle is fundamentally an open-source software solution but also the basis for many open educational practices and commercially very successful. By 2011 it was used in 214 countries and by close to 45 million users. The wide support for open standards by learning platform and technology providers is further underlining the commercial viability of Open Education Practices. Here further lesson can be learnt from Open Source Software – that being open to new ways, new business models and new services will ultimately generate sufficient funds to be sustainable without funding donations.

So the practice of Open Education and the use of OER are advancing; however the development of business models and new forms of public-private partnership are lagging behind.

Viable business models which will drive Open Education into a new level of maturity cannot be achieved by just a predominantly academic community who have driven Open Education forward to date on their own. They simply do not have the resources to take Open Education to the next level. Open Education cannot develop without a real engagement from the remainder of the learning industry, which includes the commercial sector. At the same time the commercial learning industry cannot afford to ignore the force of Open Education that is so strongly aligned to people’s preferences for learning styles in today’s world.

Governmental agencies would do better to provide access to venture capital to seed new innovations and sustainable models for Open Education than simply funding individual projects over a limited lifespan. There is in addition a risk for incumbent players of the learning market that new entrants, such as social networking providers, general Internet service providers and content platforms, will shake

So the practice of Open Education and the use of OER are advancing; however the development of business models and new forms of publicprivate partnership are lagging behind

Commonsense tells us that the reliance on public funding for Open Education is a difficult model to sustain in the current European economic climate. The creation of mutually beneficial partnering models with the Learning Industry is needed.

up the learning market and use Open Educational practices as their baseline.

Already over 10 million students are using free Google Apps for Education for communication and collaboration and there are more than 350,000 files of educational audio and video content, free or at low cost to internet users on iTunes U. During our investigations of Open Education we saw huge enthusiasm, mixed with a sense of uncertainty for Open Education from the organisations we surveyed.

It is risky for the commercial segments of the learning industry to ignore Open Education.

But more than that, Open Education also provides an opportunity for the whole industry to create wide impact, innovate in related products and services and to address the needs of new learner groups such as the Internet-savvy young generations. Open Education could become a predominant model of the future. Our industry should better be prepared to grasp opportunities and to actively shape this development.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elmar Husmann is Deputy Secretary General of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG) and a Senior Advisor on Innovation Policy and Management to IBM. Dr Lin Squires is a Senior Advisor to the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG) and to the Drucker Society of Europe.

58 www.efmd.org/globalfocus

William M. Gribbons explains why, increasingly, leading organisations demand a balance of the user perspective with the traditional focus on technology, and how business schools can fulfil this need

Thirteen years ago, a group at Bentley University recognised an opportunity to reconsider the relevance of humantechnology interaction – the discipline known as ‘Human Factors’ in business education.

We saw technology slowly becoming a commodity rather than a point of difference, and we sensed a growing dissatisfaction with the return on investment for information technology and its unexpectedly high life-cycle costs. We recognised a contributing factor to these conditions was the traditional narrow focus on the technology itself, and the development community’s failure to properly consider the needs and abilities of the end user or customer.

What emerged from this analysis was the need for a new and comprehensive strategy focused on the user experience, independent of whether this strategy is applied to an internally facing It system or to a product that competes in the open market. traditionally, ‘human Factors’ graduate programmes were most often affiliated with schools of engineering, or possibly psychology. the programme at Bentley is one of the largest in the world, and we chose to locate it in our school of business. the reasons behind this thinking, and the implications for the business community, are two-fold: 1. In the development and implementation of information technology; business, regulatory, and technical requirements must now be balanced with the needs and abilities of the end user (the human factor).

2. For producers of commercial technology products or technology-enabled services, competition is increasingly defined by the quality of the user/customer experience in addition to the capabilities of the core technology.

n e a h : m r T u to g H ac ergirnience F he ermexpiene T se pl u isci d

The Human Factor: the emerging user experience discipline by William M. Gribbons

59 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 06 | Issue 01 2012

This experience may have psychological, cultural, physiological, or emotional components – most likely, a combination of the four

The rules of the technology marketplace have changed, and business schools must adapt accordingly. Although today’s business organisation is increasingly built on the back of complex IT infrastructures, business schools often question the role of information technology in the curriculum. We believe it is highly relevant in the business education curriculum. However, business schools must complement our traditional focus on the strategic, technical, and management aspects of IT with a significantly closer consideration of the user of this technology – Human Factors. The human factor is a consideration in product management components of MBA programmes, as well as in new technology product development and marketing courses. A narrow focus on technology’s engineering and functionality is no longer adequate in today’s marketplace.

Changes in the market do not happen overnight. We have witnessed a slow and steady migration from the narrow and deep focus on technology and process of twenty-five years ago, to an increasing attention to enhancing the usability of that technology in the 90s, to today’s increasingly sophisticated view of the user experience. Most IT organisations and producers of commercial technology have slowly evolved to meet these changing demands. This evolution has not minimised the importance of the technology itself; instead, each stage builds on and adds value to the one that preceded it. IT organisations that systematically align the development and implementation of new systems with the needs and abilities of the user have lowered lifecycle costs by improving system acceptance, enhancing productivity, minimising errors, and reducing training/support costs. The commercial marketplace for technology products has realised similar benefits and gained a competitive advantage from a development process focused more closely on the end user.

At Bentley University, we set out to create a model of the user experience (UX) that meets the demands of today’s business community and the producers of technology and technologyenabled services. We adopted a trans-disciplinary approach, blending the best of business with the arts and sciences.

We defined the user experience as the careful alignment of human behaviors, needs, and abilities with the core business value delivered through a product or service.

Depending on context, this experience may have psychological, cultural, physiological, or emotional components – most likely, a combination of the four. We

optimise this experience through the detailed study and assessment of “people” in the appropriate use environment.

To avoid repeating the past mistakes of a narrow focus, the UX model carefully balances a user perspective with the goals of the business, including technical and regulatory requirements. The model recognises that this balance must shift based on the conditions and requirements of a particular use environment.

In practice, this model guided the design of a new graduate programme and a research consulting center at Bentley University. Key to our success has been our location in a business university. The educational experience is built on a strong foundation in human behavior, complemented by rigorous research methods needed to identify user and business requirements, and culminating in the exploration of a range of innovative design solutions. Some students focus exclusively on user experience research and design while many MBA candidates receive a dual degree in business and human factors to pursue careers in product management. At the same time, we increasingly collaborate with marketing colleagues, both at our institution and others, to explore the implications of the user experience for their programmes. In many branded technology organisations,the user/customer experience defines the brand itself.

Success is often measured in the academic community by the placement of graduates. UX professionals with a deep knowledge of the user, an appreciation for the goals of the business, and an understanding for the enabling potential of technology are in great demand in information technology and commercial development organisations. UX professionals work alongside business analysts, IT project managers and product managers. Through their research and design efforts, a carefully orchestrated user experience has become a significant point of differentiation for the world’s most progressive technology producers and leading business organisations. Time will tell what lies ahead for new technologies and how these changes are addressed in schools of business. We are confident that the role of the user experience will only grow in prominence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. William M. Gribbons is Director, Master of Science in Human Factors in Information Design, and Founder and Senior Consultant, Design and Usability Center at the Bentley University – www.bentley.edu/

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With over 400 years of teaching experience, the University of Edinburgh Business School is world renowned for its focus on leadership, innovation and best practice, key principles of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Edinburgh MBA looks to the future addressing key business challenges through cutting edge research and informed debate.

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Selecting the right students is of critical importance to us. That’s why the GMAT exam is an integral part of our admissions process. With students attending The Edinburgh MBA from across the globe, the GMAT offers effective selection and significant insight into an applicant’s abilities.

At the University of Edinburgh Business School, we educate students to become the business leaders of tomorrow and the GMAT helps ensure that we select the right students for our programmes.

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