EFMD Global Focus vol 08 issue 01

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Volume 08 | Issue 01 | 2014

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Global Focus Volume 08 | Issue 01 | 2014

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Voice to values Making ethics the right thing to do

BSIS A new way to assess local impact

Corporate Unis Forget cosy courses; it’s time for transformation

Big data It’s why we need to recruit big brains

Exec Ed How to make sure the tools really work

Research Why it still has to matter

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Global Business School Network & EFMD Present a Joint Conference in Africa

from the Emerald Bookstore

Quality in Context Management Education for the Developing World

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The second of two volumes written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of EFMD

(paperback)

Securing the Future of ManageMent educa tion • Volume 2

Securing the Future of Management Education Volume 2

Securing the Future of ManageMent education

Competitive Destruction or Constructive Innovation?

Competitive Destruction or Constructive Innovati

Howard Thomas • Michelle Lee • Lynne Thomas

on?

• Alexander Wilson

This is the second of two volumes written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of EFMD. Drawing on interviews conducted with leaders in the world of management education, the first volume took a retrospective view, focusing on the evolution of management education and providing the context that led management education to where it stands today. It also synthesized respondents’ views on the strengths and weaknesses of the field, the challenges it faces, as well as lessons learned and not learned from the past.

This second volume similarly draws on the Written by Alexander Wilson, Howard Thomas, Lynn Thomas, very rich data provided by the same respondents, but is future-oriented and takes on the theme of change.

It provides the reader with a sense of the challenges and edited by the authors and blind Michelle Lee on the horizon, potential spots, and new realities of an increasing ly competitive environment.

It discusses a range of alternative future scenarios for management education, and urges the field to resist the lures of the dominant paradigm and to develop new models instead. The authors contend that, given the challenges ahead, it is only through transforma tions and innovations that the future of the field can be secured.

3-5 November 2014 CEIBS Africa and GIMPA Accra, Ghana Sponsored by:

More information: www.efmd.org/africa www.gbsnonline.org/africa2014

It discusses a range of alternative future scenarios for management education, and urges the field to resist the lures of the dominant paradigm and to develop new models instead.

I S B N 978-1-78350-913-3

9

Trimmed page size: 152x229mm (6x9”) • paperback

It provides the reader with a sense of the challenges on the horizon, potential blind spots, and new realities of an increasingly competitive environment.

781783 509133

• gloss finish • ISBN: 978-1-78350-913-3

ManageMent education

Competitive Destruction or Constructive Innovation?

Thomas • Lee Thomas • Wilson

Drawing on the very rich data provided by the same respondents as for the first volume, this second volume is future-oriented and takes on the theme of change.

Securing the Future of

Volume 2

How do you define “quality” for management education in the context of the developing world? Explore the on-theground realities facing students, companies, governments and countries, and how to deliver the management education that they need.

Reflections on the Role, Impact and Future of Management Education: EFMD Perspectives

Howard Thomas • Michelle Lee • Lynne Thomas

• Alexander Wilson

Spine 13 mm tbc

The authors contend that, given the challenges ahead, it is only through transformations and innovations that the future of the field can be secured.

Order your copy here: http://bit.ly/1hC6ijL

Connect

|

Share knowledge

|

Amplify impact

BUY YOUR COPY

Global Business School Network & EFMD Present a Joint Conference in Africa

from the Emerald Bookstore

Quality in Context Management Education for the Developing World

£24.95

The second of two volumes written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of EFMD

(paperback)

Securing the Future of ManageMent educa tion • Volume 2

Securing the Future of Management Education Volume 2

Securing the Future of ManageMent education

Competitive Destruction or Constructive Innovation?

Competitive Destruction or Constructive Innovati

Howard Thomas • Michelle Lee • Lynne Thomas

on?

• Alexander Wilson

This is the second of two volumes written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of EFMD. Drawing on interviews conducted with leaders in the world of management education, the first volume took a retrospective view, focusing on the evolution of management education and providing the context that led management education to where it stands today. It also synthesized respondents’ views on the strengths and weaknesses of the field, the challenges it faces, as well as lessons learned and not learned from the past.

This second volume similarly draws on the Written by Alexander Wilson, Howard Thomas, Lynn Thomas, very rich data provided by the same respondents, but is future-oriented and takes on the theme of change.

It provides the reader with a sense of the challenges and edited by the authors and blind Michelle Lee on the horizon, potential spots, and new realities of an increasing ly competitive environment.

It discusses a range of alternative future scenarios for management education, and urges the field to resist the lures of the dominant paradigm and to develop new models instead. The authors contend that, given the challenges ahead, it is only through transforma tions and innovations that the future of the field can be secured.

3-5 November 2014 CEIBS Africa and GIMPA Accra, Ghana Sponsored by:

More information: www.efmd.org/africa www.gbsnonline.org/africa2014

It discusses a range of alternative future scenarios for management education, and urges the field to resist the lures of the dominant paradigm and to develop new models instead.

I S B N 978-1-78350-913-3

9

Trimmed page size: 152x229mm (6x9”) • paperback

It provides the reader with a sense of the challenges on the horizon, potential blind spots, and new realities of an increasingly competitive environment.

781783 509133

• gloss finish • ISBN: 978-1-78350-913-3

ManageMent education

Competitive Destruction or Constructive Innovation?

Thomas • Lee Thomas • Wilson

Drawing on the very rich data provided by the same respondents as for the first volume, this second volume is future-oriented and takes on the theme of change.

Securing the Future of

Volume 2

How do you define “quality” for management education in the context of the developing world? Explore the on-theground realities facing students, companies, governments and countries, and how to deliver the management education that they need.

Reflections on the Role, Impact and Future of Management Education: EFMD Perspectives

Howard Thomas • Michelle Lee • Lynne Thomas

• Alexander Wilson

Spine 13 mm tbc

The authors contend that, given the challenges ahead, it is only through transformations and innovations that the future of the field can be secured.

Order your copy here: http://bit.ly/1hC6ijL

In focus

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

In focus

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his issue begins with a powerful article (page 6) that calls for business schools to focus more directly on what the authors call their dynamic capabilities in order to re-invigorate and re-develop themselves and their students.

The three authors – Howard Thomas, Peter Lorange and Jagdish Sheth – are leading proponents of a new approach to management education and among the most respected and experienced academics in the field.

They write: “If business schools are to be persuaded to embrace the strategic management concept of dynamic capabilities (which we believe they need to do), two perspectives are involved: First, a review of the most relevant, appropriate and useful capabilities and qualities that management educators should develop in their students. These capabilities (also known as ‘core competences’ or ‘strategic assets’) represent an organisation’s capability to deploy resources, usually in combination, through organisational processes to achieve superior long-term performance.”

Many of the points they raise are expanded on in other articles in this issue.

For example, Kai Peters, chief executive of Ashridge in the UK, (page 42) argues that “A plethora of challenges are impacting globally on the management education market, including the continuing evolution of online possibilities, the emergence of new providers, the role of for-profits, changes to public funding, a turbulent economy and cost pressures in the competitive environment”.

On page 52 Julie Davies and Toni Hilton suggest some ways that business schools can be structured to achieve individual excellence as business and management education come under increasing criticism while Rachel Edgington outlines how a new book from GMAC warns of troubled times ahead for business schools unless they embrace disruptive change.

But it is not just business schools that face challenges in this tsunami of change. For example, on page 12 Thomas Sattelberger calls for a rethink of corporate universities, saying that they must evolve from being socialisation and knowledge transfer machines to agents that can help their parent companies undertake effective transformation.

But let us end on a positive note.

On page 32 Jørgen Thorsell and Justin Bridge explore how to achieve immediate impact from executive development while Johan Roos explains how Jönköping International Business School in Sweden is being reformed and reinvigorated (page 48).

We hope you enjoy this issue.

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

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Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

Contents Global Focus The EFMD Business Magazine

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Executive Editor Matthew Wood matthew.wood@efmd.org

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Advisory Board Eric Cornuel Howard Thomas John Peters Consultant Editor George Bickerstaffe georgebickerstaffe@gmail.com Contributing Editors Justin Bridge Marco Busi Julie Davies Rachel Edgington Mary Gentile Chris Greensted Toni Hilton Ulrich Hommel Peter Lorange Suzy Moat Thomas Norman Kai Peters Tobias Preis Johan Roos Andrew Rutsch Thomas Sattelberger Hellmut Schütte Jagdish Sheth Howard Thomas Jørgen Thorsell Mahmood Zaidi 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 ©

EFMD

In focus

Business school impact survey The key tool for measuring a business school’s impact on the world around it

6 Dynamic capabilities and the business school of the future Business schools need to focus more clearly on their dynamic capabilities in order to re-invigorate and re-develop themselves and their students. By Howard Thomas, Peter Lorange and Jagdish Sheth

12 Rethinking corporate universities Thomas Sattelberger argues that corporate universities must evolve from being socialisation and knowledge transfer machines to helping their parent companies undertake effective transformation

20 Intended Learning Outcomes: friend or foe?

Intended Learning Outcomes are a key aspect of programme accreditation yet they seem to cause many schools and programme directors considerable difficulty or even resistance.

Chris Greensted and Ulrich Hommel examine the issues

26 Globalisation: unfinished business for business schools Business schools have reacted loudly to the challenges of globalisation. But has their reaction been effective or appropriate? Hellmut Schütte is not so sure

32 Executive development: a cry for immediate impact Jørgen Thorsell and Justin Bridge explore new perspectives on achieving immediate impact from executive development

38 Research that matters: thoughts on reinventing scientific (management) research Scientific research, and particularly management research, is in dire straits, accused of lack of relevance and impact and an unhealthy preoccupation with theoretical and methodological rigor. Marco Busi suggests some solutions

Contents

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EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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42 Business schools face the future Globalisation and technological developments are changing the business of business schools and presenting new opportunities to innovate says Kai Peters

48 Making the good even better Johan Roos explains how Jönköping International Business School in Sweden is being reformed and reinvigorated

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Building better business schools With business and management education coming under increasing criticism, Julie Davies and Toni Hilton suggest some ways that business schools can be structured to achieve individual excellence

56 The ‘Holy Grail’: educating for values-driven leadership across the curriculum and giving voice to values Mary Gentile explains how a new pedagogical model is helping to integrate values into the business education curriculum

60 Graduate management education in disruptive times A new book warns of troubled times ahead for business schools unless they embrace disruptive change says Rachel Edgington

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Training tomorrow’s Big Data analysts Big Data is about to become big business, but only, say Suzy Moat and Tobias Preis, if we can train enough data analysts and alert managers to its growing importance

68 Collaboration that brings strategy to life Andrew Rutsch chronicles how Spanish bank BBVA is using its learning centre, Campus BBVA, not only to facilitate development but also to engage people with the company brand, values and strategy

72 Transferring western management knowledge to China Mahmood Zaidi and Thomas Norman report on how team teaching and virtual international student teams have proved a vital ingredient in a successful international EMBA

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The key tool for measuring a business school’s impact on the world around it

The Business School Impact Survey (BSIS) scheme is designed to determine the extent of a school’s impact upon its local environment – the city or region in which it is located. The scheme was initially designed by FNEGE (the French National Foundation for Management Education) and is already well established in the French highereducation arena.

The BSIS process has been adapted for an international audience and is now offered in a joint venture between EFMD and FNEGE as a service to EFMD members in any part of the world. The assessment criteria and the process for measuring a school’s impact are currently being tested with three pilot institutions from three different countries.

This new service will be formally launched during the upcoming Deans and Directors Meeting in Gothenburg at the end of January 2014.

01/14

This new service will be formally launched during the upcoming Deans and Directors Meeting in Gothenburg at the end of January 2014

The scope of the BSIS scheme The BSIS scheme identifies the tangible and intangible benefits that a business school brings to its local environment.

For example, a school spends money in its impact zone; it provides jobs and pays salaries that are partially spent in the zone; and it attracts faculty and students from outside the zone whose expenditures contribute to the local economy.

Beyond this measurable financial impact, a school contributes to the life of the community in numerous ways. Its faculty generate new business creation through entrepreneurial projects and support local business needs through professional training. Its students are a source of dynamism in the life of the region and are a valuable talent resource when they graduate.

A business school also provides an important intellectual forum for the introduction of new ideas in a wide variety of social, cultural and political areas of concern within a region. Last but not least, it contributes to the image of the city or region.

Business School Impact Survey

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

Financial & Economic Impact

The benefits of BSIS At a time when all organisations, public or private, are being held accountable for their activities, there is a need to demonstrate the impact that they are having on their immediate environment. This is particularly the case when they are financed or politically supported by local stakeholders.

In pursuit of this objective the BSIS system intervenes at two levels.

First, it guides a business school in the difficult task of extracting the relevant data from its existing information base.

Second, the review provides an external analysis of the existing evidence carried out by two experts with broad international experience. The written report will serve as an objective document in a school’s communication with its local stakeholders.

The BSIS scheme is, therefore, to be seen as an instrument for identifying the factual elements that characterise a school’s local impact. It is not an accreditation system based on qualitative assessment.

A business school cannot fail BSIS. Neither is it a ranking system attempting to position institutions at different levels or comparing them one to another.

Impact on the Regional Community

Impact upon the Attractiveness & Image of the Impact Zone

The BSIS process Once a business school has applied to enter the BSIS process the first stage is to define the impact zone for the analysis. The next stage is the data collection process during which the school works closely with the BSIS experts to prepare the documentation required before the on-site visit.

At the heart of the BSIS process is a two-day on-site visit during which the team of experts interviews a carefully selected group of key players within the school and a range of external stakeholders. These meetings are the occasion to confront internal perceptions regarding the school’s impact and external expectations. Measuring the gap between the two is a significant outcome of the process.

Following the on-site visit the BSIS experts draft a report setting out the findings related to the assessment framework, the school’s own input and the input from the interviews. The report will highlight areas in which the school’s impact is strong while also drawing attention to the areas in which it remains limited.

All organisations, public or private, are being held accountable for their activities, there is a need to demonstrate the impact that they are having on their immediate environment Full details on the BSIS process can be found on the EFMD website via www.efmd.org/bsis.

If you would like further information or are interested in your school taking part you can also email bsis@efmd.org

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Business schools need to focus more clearly on their dynamic capabilities in order to re-invigorate and re-develop themselves and their students.

By Howard Thomas, Peter Lorange and Jagdish Sheth

DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES & THE BUSINESS SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE

Dynamic capabilities and the business school of the future by Howard Thomas, Peter Lorange and Jagdish Sheth

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f business schools are to be persuaded to embrace the strategic management concept of dynamic capabilities (which we believe they need to do), two perspectives are involved:

First, a review of the most relevant, appropriate and useful capabilities and qualities that management educators should develop in their students. These capabilities (also known as “core competences” or “strategic assets”) represent an organisation’s capability to deploy resources, usually in combination, through organisational processes to achieve superior long-term performance.

Such capabilities may include expertise in the areas of leadership, strategy, innovation, people management and delivery/customer service. These represent different kinds of skills, organisational systems, routines and so on. The management educator must make choices regarding which to focus on and nurture in their students in order to produce impactful, practical managers.

Second, there needs to be a thorough examination of the dynamic capabilities of the business school itself, addressing effectively the challenges of impact, relevance and competition.

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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Dynamic capabilities for students and the curriculum Management educators have long questioned whether there is “a theory of managing”, and whether the necessary capabilities and qualities that should be developed in their students are clearly understood.

Basing our analysis on Henry Mintzberg’s 10 managerial roles, there are clusters of interpersonal, informational and decisional skills. Reinterpreting these, it is argued that management education should increasingly embrace a cross-disciplinary, holistic and interactive philosophy that covers: • the intellectual skills of analysis, criticism and synthesis (advocated by Cardinal Newman and other proponents of liberal education) • the study of the domain of management knowledge, (ie knowledge skills about the structure and functioning of organisations, including process skills about the interactions and interfaces between the different functions, for example marketing, finance and so on • the range of Mintzberg’s interpersonal skills, including imagination, vision and leadership capabilities • the multi-disciplinary nature of the managerial skill set required to develop the broader skills of global and cultural intelligence. This includes the need to be sensitive to ethical and socio-cultural differences and the adoption of a holistic view of the enterprise in global networks The challenge for business schools is to produce students who have the skills, flexibility and training to compete in the new economy defined by globalisation, social responsibility and technological change.

The management educator must make choices regarding which to focus on and nurture in their students in order to produce impactful, practical managers

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Many capability models seek to identify and assess key managerial capabilities. In practical terms, a full range of capabilities (the exact balance will vary between organisations) would involve a combination of effective, efficient and reliable current operations (ie meeting delivery and efficiency targets), the ability to develop evidencebased, implementable policies and the more dynamic capabilities such as: • continuous improvement in effectiveness (as perceived by the customer/citizen) and efficiency • more robust systems and processes and improved risk management to reduce the likelihood of future crises

Strategy Strategy is a contested concept in the literature but is here defined as the ability of an organisation to:

• a more flexible, adaptive organisational culture and systems, seeking both to improve the response if a crisis does occur and to support and deliver new or reprioritised policies

• optimise outcomes in support of the organisation’s objectives within the constraints of time and resources

• t he ability to deliver more radical innovations, increasingly in collaboration with other organisations (delivery or alliance partners, for example) Most capability models focus primarily on what are usually recognised as the most crucial areas of capability: leadership, strategy and delivery (performance). These managerial capabilities include: Leadership The ability of leaders to: • envision, frame and communicate the big picture and be committed to working corporately, across boundaries and organisations, to deliver the right strategic outcomes e a role model, promote collaborative teamwork, •b foster innovation and creativity, and reflect on how to improve and drive the development of others • l ead others through the complexities of change by creating a shared vision of the future that all can understand and help deliver •b e open, honest and courageous and not flinch from delivering tough messages to colleagues

• make choices about what is best offered in terms of products and services and to whom, and through which processes and which partners in order to create public and customer value • act upon these choices Thus strategy involves: • a focus on outcomes • basing choices on evidence • building a common purpose Especially important are problem identification, policy development, strategic prioritisation and so on. Thus a broad set of people in the organisation and not just the top management team need to be involved in the gathering of evidence and analysis of options.

Performance delivery Performance delivery is defined as: • the ability of the leadership team to lead the implementation of agreed strategy through the collective action of a network of people and organisations This involves the need to:

•p ose tough questions and encourage feedback and discussion about their resolution

• formulate plans, assign resources and prioritise goals

Thus strong and effective leaders excel at:

• develop clear roles, responsibilities and business models

• s etting direction, intent and vision • i gniting passion, pace and drive • t aking responsibility for leading organisational change uilding organisational capabilities •b The leadership area thus focuses primarily on managerial and problem-framing skills. Creating strong organisational performance and delivery is also an important leadership outcome from a balanced scorecard viewpoint.

• manage performance The performance delivery capabilities of the top management team involve issues of performance management, problem solving and managing delivery across business units. The resulting higher-level capability judgements, however, may require insights and evidence from an even wider set of participants including those at the centre, various delivery and distribution channels, and so forth.

Dynamic capabilities and the business school of the future by Howard Thomas, Peter Lorange and Jagdish Sheth

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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A broad set of people in the organisation and not just the top management team need to be involved in the gathering of evidence and analysis of options

On balance, existing capability models are seen to be a good starting point for assessing key strategic execution skills. The focus on leadership, strategy and delivery capabilities sets out clearly the organisational change agenda.

The models may also help to identify common themes and capability gaps across organisations in areas such as resource utilisation, talent management and delivery/outcome assessment.

Nevertheless, the question remains as to whether identifying common capability gaps will subsequently lead to the development of dynamic capabilities.

David Teece, a renowned strategy professor at UC Berkeley in the US, believes the dynamic capabilities perspective with its emphasis on managing the “soft assets” needed for orchestrating resources inside and outside the firm can provide a framework for business school curricula. He suggests that the interactive aspects of managing across functions and the wider business ecosystem should be recognised and that three key elements (or clusters) of dynamic capabilities should form the anchors for a new curriculum.

Leadership and dynamic capabilities But Teece believes that dynamic capability development also requires strong innovative and courageous leadership. In a Financial Times column (Oct 24, 2010) UC Berkeley Dean Richard Lyons argued that leading in complex environments characterised by fast-paced technological change and global economic uncertainty requires what the sociologist J D Thompson described as “inspirational leadership”.

This concept was reframed during a major curriculum revision at UC Berkeley by the introduction of the archetype of a “path-bending” leader; that is, one who transitions from a philosophy of incremental adaption to a more innovative, anticipatory strategic leadership.

Lyons argues that “path-bending leaders are not just CEOs but people working at all levels in all kinds of organisations. Path-bending leaders need to know the fundamentals, such as problem framing, experimentation, influence without authority, managing ambiguity and other capabilities”.

In essence, path-bending leaders need to have courage and capabilities that produce “innovating” rather than “adaptive” behaviours.

These three clusters are:

Some emerging dynamic capabilities of the business school of the future It is also useful to examine the emerging dynamic capability requirements for the business school of the future. Of particular interest are:

• sensing – the identification and assessment of a business opportunity (involving problem framing, opportunity recognition and definition, and experimentation)

• the identification of relevant dynamic capabilities to attract and develop greater differentiation among faculty members so as to better address pressures for relevance and impact

• seizing – the mobilisation of resources to address an opportunity and capture value from doing so (involving making choices about revenue/ business models, idea valuation, and innovation and risk appetite)

• the importance of developing capabilities to monitor new competitors and to respond to these competitive challenges

• transforming – continued renewal (involving executing through managing ambiguity, conflict and governance mechanisms) for transformational change

• dynamic capabilities associated with future funding and fund-raising requirements given the diminishing willingness of the government sector to fund business schools and the fear of tighter economic situations. Both corporations and students are likely to have to contribute more

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As a result, the following might occur: Greater faculty differentiation There is likely to be a need for an increasingly diverse and more practically oriented faculty to meet increasing demands from business. Thus there will be a demand for faculty members with classical academic training (PhD) and careers (full-time professor at an academic institution) plus more applied researchers, teaching practitioners and innovative business practitioners.

To achieve continuous improvement in efficiency and effectiveness, and also increase teaching quality, it might be necessary for schools to develop a range of dynamic capabilities including: • creating an effective network of available “affiliated” faculty from both practice and from leading business schools • developing an ability to attract and nurture “affiliated” faculty by integrating them into programme offerings and linking them to core faculty • promoting continuous training in new pedagogical approaches involving both technology and experimental learning options • revising its organisational culture to encompass the management of faculty “networks” of core and affiliated faculty using social and digital media • stimulating the delivery of more radical innovations by demobilising old bureaucratic routines and fostering an open-minded attitude to experimentation in teaching methods. This might include changing the role of a professor from that of an orator, a communicator of knowledge in a "linear” fashion, to that of a “facilitator”

New sources of competition are rapidly emerging, partly from the academic sector itself and partly from those who have been our customers and partly as a result of new “blended” learning technologies

Dynamic capabilities and the business school of the future by Howard Thomas, Peter Lorange and Jagdish Sheth

New competitors Clearly, new sources of competition are rapidly emerging, partly from the academic sector itself and partly from those who have been our customers (corporate universities for example) and partly as a result of new “blended” learning technologies.

Business schools will have to monitor carefully and respond quickly to these competitive forces.

Various dynamic capabilities will need attention including, first, the concerns of customers and students over the efficiency, value, quality and effectiveness of our teaching. This calls for the following: • the ability to deliver programmes in a more cost-efficient manner involving such capabilities as outsourcing, blended learning, simpler pedagogy and creative, innovative designs for programme learning effectiveness Second, an understanding of the risks arising from new competition that require further capability development. This includes: • the dynamic capability to respond more quickly as well as being willing to innovate so as to compete more effectively against well-funded “for profit” competition such as the Apollo group and Hult University. There needs to be an openness to new ideas and approaches rather than a stubborn sticking with the status quo • the capability to offer customers and students value for money as well as a creative menu of options that provides appropriate personal customisation of learning • the willingness to implement alternative instructional approaches such as Moocs and blended learning, which requires an organisational culture ready to embrace change and creatively adopt these new approaches.

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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Finances The continuing tightness in funding models for business schools certainly requires innovative capabilities in designing new business models.

For example, the Lorange Institute embraces a business model that involves both high-quality delivery focused on practical concerns with cost efficiencies brought about through lower fixed faculty costs (ie no core faculty but “networked” part-time faculty) and associated overheads. In Porter’s (1980) terms this is both a “cost leadership” and a creative differentiation strategy.

This is just one example of a model to address the concerns of Kai Peters and Howard Thomas (Global Focus, Volume 05, Issue 02, 2011) about the continued long-term sustainability of many current rather “luxurious” business school models.

Other innovative business models may adopt closer modes of collaboration involving creative co-sponsoring of specific research projects with corporate clients as well as other practical funding partnerships requiring deep immersion with corporate and public-sector organisations.

Further, the creative design of joint ventures, alliances and even mergers with both academic and managerial institutions clearly requires new capabilities. These include co-ordination abilities, open-mindedness, continued communication and an atmosphere of trust in order to deliver quality outputs at high performance levels across merger or alliance partners.

Mergers such as SKEMA in France and AALTO in Finland show how to achieve strategic change, appropriate financial synergies and better capacity utilisation.

There are many lessons to be learned. The way ahead is likely to prove tough. But business schools will have to respond.

Many of the ideas in this article are based on the authors’ recent book The Business School in the 21st Century, Cambridge University Press, 2013

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Howard Thomas is Dean and LKCSB Chair in Strategic Management at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University.

Peter Lorange is President of the Lorange Institute of Business, Zurich.

Jagdish Sheth is the Charles H Kellstadt Chair of Marketing, Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta.

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Rethinking corporate universities by Thomas Sattelberger

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

Thomas Sattelberger, EFMD's VicePresident for Corporate Services argues that corporate universities must evolve from being socialisation and knowledge transfer machines to helping their parent companies undertake effective transformation

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ntil 20 years ago the big companies of the old "Deutschland AG" dominated the image of Germany. Whether Daimler, Siemens, Dresdner Bank, Hoechst, BASF, Thyssen, BMW or Bosch, successful German companies had a long tradition of large research budgets, stable business models, long-term customer relationships and a reliable legal framework in which to operate.

Digitisation has made value-creation processes intangible; innovations are increasingly dealt with through the backdoor; garage start-ups are growing into giants

They also had social mechanisms in place in order to assure the stability of their own culture. These were not just social agreements with “co-managing” unions but also ties of loyalty, even obedience, within their management teams.

The past two decades have called all this into question. Globalisation – not only in Germany but also in all so-called old economies – has led to a "re-measurement of the world".

Industrial behemoths are dying faster than ever, swallowed up or languishing in bureaucracy.

Digitisation has made value-creation processes intangible; innovations are increasingly dealt with through the backdoor; garage start-ups are growing into giants.

The large corporations of Deutschland AG, which carry with them the baggage of their history, have been travelling in dangerous waters. Compared to the many small speedboats and international giant liners they often look like Roman galleys.

Of the eight companies mentioned above, one has died, one survives only through state aid, two have had life-threatening crises and two have deteriorated significantly under global competition.

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20 years ago the big companies of the old "Deutschland AG" (Daimler, Siemens, Dresdner Bank, Hoechst, BASF, Thyssen, BMW or Bosch) dominated the image of Germany...

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...but today of these eight companies one has died, one survives only through state aid, two have had life-threatening crises and two have deteriorated significantly under global competition

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"Ambidexterity": nurturing core business and innovation Long-established large companies are usually characterised by different polarities: old and new businesses; established sales areas and emerging markets; efficiency programmes and innovation initiatives; centralised bureaucracy and peripheral dynamics of change; administrators and entrepreneurs; a dominant number culture and an experimental ethos.

This was popularised by Robert Duncan and James March as the concept of "organisational ambidexterity”. A company must be able to cope with two opposing issues equally well if it is to handle disruptive change.

To seize the opportunities of the present and systematically exploit the potential of the future demands two parallel organisational structures or mental maps, one for the full exploitation of the current business, the other for researching new business ideas.

Yet this is only effective in the long-term for a few. Dinosaurs either end up in a crisis situation and probably death, or are able to transform themselves radically.

The radical transformation needed is related to four things: • the paradigm shift needed in the minds of those in power • reform of the overall culture of the company, its responsiveness and resilience to disruptive changes, and its diverse capabilities consistently to find and fit into changing environments • the rebuilding of the whole organisation (and its employees) – as IBM did twice – to cope with the skills shift connected with a change of business systems in the face of radical technological breakthroughs or generational upheavals • incorporating diversity into the enterprise, not just in traditional categories such as gender and age but also in critical thinking. William Ross Asby's "law of requisite variety" states that "variety absorbs variety". This is fundamental for transformation.

Human resources management (HRM) can play a significant role in these transformation challenges since the response to the deeply engraved patterns within company structure and culture must acknowledge: • the significant increase in diversity in all its forms and dimensions while maintaining good cultural glue at the core of the enterprise • the radical improvement of individual and collective ability to adapt, especially in view of increasingly disruptive change

Signals, triggers and starting phases of transformation How do we recognise that transformation necessities exist?

Here are a few early signals of the endangered sustainability of an organisation: • Over the years, proven business models receive boosts from new technology but lose energy or become obsolete unless substitutes are found and commercialised • Competitors – often small –find better and/or completely different solutions • Internal corporate borders are closed and encourage isolation; changes in the external world are inadequately perceived in the inner world, let alone processed • Increasing isolation creates an overstressed internal climate within the company • Companies behave like a hamster on a wheel, meeting the challenges of tomorrow with responses from yesterday with the people of today • A period of cultural decadence begins, as in ancient Rome feasting taking place as the enemy stands at the city gates • Discontent in an organisation becomes overwhelming; revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries appear on the scene as well as “know-it-all” tradition-keepers; old versus new is debated openly in the decision makers’ offices and/or tacitly on the shop floor

CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES – DINOSAURS OR ON THE PATH TO 2.0?

Prototype and lab for organisational renewal and innovation

Cultural nucleus in organisational change processes

Platform and accelerator for implementing strategic top-down initiatives

Engine for collective standardisation

Company specific Professional and Management School for the development of individual competencies

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Lufthansa School of Business

GE Crotonville

McDonald's & Disney Universities

Motorola University & UniCredit Group Center

Rethinking corporate universities by Thomas Sattelberger

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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Finally, dramatic transformation has a number of ultimately shattering triggers, for example: a rapid "overturning" of the market models and technologies of an entire industry (such as print media); or a crisis degenerates a company into a cost-cutting machine.

Transformation can also be triggered by external events such as war, natural disasters, terrorist attacks or political interventions. Think of Angela Merkel's planned energy revolution in Germany.

For successful ambidexterity, freedom of thought and a trial-and-error approach are essential. It is not just about new or different thinking. An oracle of Delphi that proclaims (vaguely) what the future might look like is of little use.

Only when the people within an organisation are included will they adapt well to changes. This is especially true when employees are exposed without protection to disruptive change in the business.

But sugar-coating the change would be wrong. It is only when an organisation is aware that it has reached a dead end in its previous form that the pressure for change is converted into action.

Therefore successful transformation teams often encourage a "sense of urgency", creating an “artificial crisis" to raise alertness levels to that of an effective fire-fighting team The concept of " irritation" is vital for preparing transformation.

Here, the concept of the corporate university comes into play – but with a completely new meaning.

Only when the people within an organisation are included will they adapt well to changes.

This is especially true when employees are exposed without protection to disruptive change in the business

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Traditional corporate universities serve the status quo General Electric (GE) and Motorola are considered the pioneers of the corporate university approach.

They not only provided training for an exclusive cadre but also for the general run of employees.

Above all, Jack Welch, the long-time CEO of GE, revolutionised the procedure in the 1980s. In Crotonville, GE's campus 30 kilometres from Manhattan, it was "his" staff and "his" leaders that implanted “Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence“ – a variant of the Six Sigma methodology that was the defining mantra for change.

The challenge for Crotonville – and all subsequent corporate universities – was: • how will people perform better in existing structures and cultures?

• how can a worldwide organisation be streamlined from the top down with the help of its own cultural and educational centres?

• how can a company run faster, jump higher or wider and perform better than the others in the field but within the given business logic?

• how can homo-social reproduction, the ruling managerial and organisational DNA, be guaranteed?

The first German corporate university, the Lufthansa School of Business, which I founded, and centres at Haniel, Bertelsmann and Daimler followed the GE model from the mid-1990s and developed into efficient socialisation machines. Their mission was to serve both the selection and cloning of a ruling elite as well as the "massification" of proprietary content, processes and philosophies throughout the organisation.

But how should companies, facing radically different challenges, organise their learning?

The energy, media and print, entertainment, commercial and automotive industry followed the telecommunications industry: not evolutionary change but managing disruptive changes.

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GE Crotonville campus is 30 kilometres from Manhattan

Companies whose key task in dealing with future challenges lies in the transformation of their own DNA require neither cadre-training units nor mass-produced knowledge. Rather they require what we might call "laboratories" - think tanks and experiential testing grounds for behavioural change and experiments with alternate business systems and also areas where experimental business architectures, more democratic leadership cultures, new mental line-ups and unconventional service initiatives can be assessed.

Corporate universities 2.0 – laboratories for transformation If companies need to become not better but different in order to survive they require the intellectual and emotional freedom to experiment.

If traditional leadership must become different it requires space for personal experimentation.

Instead of standardised teaching, behaviour constraints and predetermined curricula, it is necessary to encourage the learning and interaction of people in terms of a complex habitat. From a variety of perspectives and judgments, laboratories allow decision makers to radically question traditional business models and creatively destroy and reinvent them.

In order to take account of the disruptive dimension, such a transformation centre must not just drive the development of new pictures of the future for business and people. It must also simulate and test new working environments where the effects of technology and innovation on the social microcosm and the creative behaviour of teams and individuals can be experienced.

If companies need to become not better but different in order to survive they require the intellectual and emotional freedom to experiment.

If traditional leadership must become different it requires space for personal experimentation

Rethinking corporate universities by Thomas Sattelberger

There is no question that developing corporate universities as engines for transformation is a challenge. Resistances must be overcome; old and comfortable thought processes must be left behind. But an "out with the old, in with the new" approach is the only way to revitalise and reinvent corporate universities

However, this new type of corporate university can only be successful if it gets the best out of people's raw talents and provides them with opportunities that enable self-examination and self-reflection.

Strategy, technology or professional competence are superficial whitewash when individuals persevere with outdated motivations, concerns and patterns of action.

In order to cure themselves of old patterns and let go of outdated paradigms, managers need to acquire alternative management skills – not only how to alter things radically in a new socialpsychological space but also to experience how they themselves undergo change. Classic group dynamics, gestalt therapy (a form of psychotherapy that emphasises personal responsibility and individual experience) and sensitivity training must be utilised as well as value clarification and dialectic self-discovery.

Since egocentrism, control addiction, lack of self-reflection and narcissism often lead to the derailment of careers, personal leadership style and behaviour must also be addressed: Who am I? What is driving me? What is my shadow? How do I seek and deal with power? How do I deal with differences and diversity? Can I serve those around me?

Sloan Professor Emeritus of Organisational Psychology Edgar Schein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge coined the concept of "upending experiences" in the 70s, where harrowing experiences "throw" human beings, managers and leaders from their retracted paths and pose powerful questions of their thought and actions.

For companies in transformation, the framework and life of a new values architecture, beyond pure economics, is essential. Enforcing individual responsibility, learning from mistakes, and the strengthening of character and integrity are vital parts of learning design.

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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Corporate empathy and societal responsiveness This leads to the final requirement for successful transformation. Society in general, all around the company, is also part of a modern “laboratory”.

A company is not a fortress, operating only within the inner circle of stakeholders and shareholders.

The outside world can, indeed must, take part in the new definition and positioning of a company on platforms that create encounters, controversial discussions and build bridges of understanding from inside to outside and vice versa.

Some companies demonstrate an "organisational blindness" with all the consequences that occur when the corporate sensory system fails and the enterprise and the outside world are too alienated.

Societal platforms help to see and feel the needs of humans and society. They offer the chance to reflect and develop a company's standing with its fellow citizens. Only if we are able to position companies in a more balanced way can we embed them in society on a more accepted and appreciated basis.

There is no question that developing corporate universities as engines for transformation is a challenge. Resistances must be overcome; old and comfortable thought processes must be left behind. But an "out with the old, in with the new" approach is the only way to revitalise and reinvent corporate universities.

Educational institutions aimed at transformation must respond to four challenges: 1. look for answers to disruptive changes in the business 2. question the traditional role of leadership and organisation 3. offer the individual the possibility of selfdevelopment 4. ultimately, put the societal usefulness of the business or company to the test Businesses must decide what they expect from their training centres. Should they be more advanced technical centres for pure knowledge transfer; should they be socialisation machines for the cloning of people; or laboratories to shape the future?

If one keeps in mind the challenges we face, the answer is clear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas Sattelberger has worked on the Boards of Directors of Lufthansa German Airlines and Continental AG since 1999 and from 2007 to 2012 Deutsche Telekom AG. He founded the Lufthansa School of Business as the first corporate university in the German-speaking world in 1997, and between 2005 and 2007 more than a dozen Continental AG universities in countries ranging from the Philippines to Romania. In 2010 he started Deutsche Telekom’s Telekom School of Transformation Project.

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EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES

Intended Learning Outcomes are a key aspect of programme accreditation yet they seem to cause many schools and programme directors considerable difficulty or even resistance.

Chris Greensted and Ulrich Hommel examine the issues

Intended Learning Outcomes: friend or foe? by Chris Greensted and Ulrich Hommel

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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ut simply, ILOs are a statement of what a student will know and be able to do at the end of a (degree) programme or at the end of each component course (module) of the degree.

This definition of ILOs is easy to say but it is not so easy to develop ILOs in practice.

In the “good old days�, programme designers used to write out the programme objectives and ask faculty members to write course objectives consistent with them. Faculty then developed a syllabus for their course and possibly a supplementary note on how the course would be assessed.

ILOs are a statement of what a student will know and be able to do at the end of a (degree) programme or at the end of each component course

There was an expectation that in this way the programme objectives would be achieved but there was no guarantee that this process would work. The problem with programme objectives is that they do not show how achieving them will be implemented and measured.

We can take an analogy from cookery. The objective is to bake a cake. The equivalent of the syllabus is the list of ingredients for the cake but with no measures given and no recipe. Different cooks will produce different cakes with the same ingredients and sometimes no cake at all.

Learning outcomes are essentially about performance and they are the implementation tools for the objectives. So it is necessary to have both objectives and ILOs. The programme objectives statement is likely to be quite short, stating what the programme is aiming to achieve and for whom.

To ensure a consistent cake from all the cooks there needs to be a recipe that includes measures and process. Even then, the quality of the cake may vary but at least the product is recognisable as a cake resembling the picture in the book!

Programme-level ILOs are derived from the objectives and serve as the starting point for the curriculum design. Then there should be a coherent structure of ILOs at programme and course levels. Achievement at programme level will ensure that the programme’s objectives are met while achievement of ILOs for each course will ensure that overall the programme or degree ILOs have also been achieved.

ILOs should not only be clearly written but their achievement should also be measurable in some form.

ILOs should not only be clearly written but their achievement should also be measurable in some form

For example, a Masters in International Marketing might have the objective of providing participants with a in-depth knowledge of marketing management from multiple perspectives and the skills to meet the challenges inherent in a dynamic international context.

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The programme ILOs might include (non-exhaustively): • Demonstrate a mastery of the knowledge and skills required for an entry-level position in international marketing • Identify, define and deal with problems that may arise in their future professional role as a marketer • Function effectively as a leader and as a member of a marketing team These ILOs may be seen as some of the abilities that a masters graduate should possess in order to be able to take on a specialist marketing role. In turn, these ILOs can only be achieved by undertaking a number of courses whose own ILOs will build up towards achieving the programme ILOs. However, each course also needs a syllabus showing the course content (what will be studied) and statements on teaching/learning methods (how the knowledge and skills will be imparted) and on assessment (how achievement of the ILOs will be measured).

Faculty / teachers – because they will see how their courses fit into the overall design in terms of links with other courses, including identifying potential reinforcing overlaps or redundancies.

ILOs provide a clear statement of the learning the teachers expect (or are expected) to impart to students. For courses taught by a team of teachers (especially when including adjunct faculty), ILOs provide a coherent mechanism for ensuring commonality of achievement by students. It also allows for the relatively smooth transition into the team of new faculty.

Quality assurance authorities – because an effective ILOs structure should ensure that a degree programme achieves its stated objectives.

The process for developing ILOs will vary by institutional practice and by types of degree and subject area. While there are no hard rules for the development process, there are a few principles.

Overall the structure of ILOs should ensure alignment between programme objectives, content, methodology of delivery and assessment methods and result in a coherent match between market needs and the “end product” – the graduate.

So, who uses or values ILOs? Students – because they will have (from the start of their degree) a fuller understanding of how a degree programme will enable them to achieve their personal goal of becoming, for example, a professional marketer or prepare them for future study or some other goal.

Employers – because they will understand the knowledge and abilities that they can expect a graduate would have on entering their organisation.

If these expectations are met, the reputation of the school will be enhanced.

Programme managers – because they will have a clear structure of how the programme and its courses fit together logically and how intellectual progression is achieved during the degree programme. ILOs provide a framework for programme design.

Overall the structure of ILOs should ensure alignment between programme objectives, content, methodology of delivery and assessment methods

Intended Learning Outcomes: friend or foe? by Chris Greensted and Ulrich Hommel

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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8

There should not be too many ILOs at either programme or course levels. Probably there should be no more than eight programme ILOs and perhaps six ILOs for each course

• There should not be too many ILOs at either programme or course levels. Probably there should be no more than eight programme ILOs and perhaps six ILOs for each course. Not all learning can be directly measured – for example some aspects of personal development – and so proxy measures need to be employed to verify learning achievements such as pointed and regular feedback from employers.

• The ILOs should be described by the use of doing or action verbs whose execution can be measured. Verbs such as understand are too vague and do not allow depth of learning to be specified. They would be better replaced by verbs such as explain or describe. It is possible to strengthen these verbs by qualifying adverbs in order to measure different levels of performance and progression.

• The process should be one of consensus or agreement since the resulting ILOs must satisfy the needs of the various users. It would be unwise for programme management to set the programme ILOs in isolation from the faculty delivering the courses since faculty probably do not like having ILOs imposed on them. Top-down does not work.

Equally, a bottom-up approach would lead to a disparate set of ILOs from which it would be impossible to define a coherent set of programme ILOs. A programme team approach seems to work more effectively so that the issues can be properly discussed and agreed.

• It should be clear how the course ILOs make a contribution to the achievement of the programme ILOs and there should be a mechanism for showing how they fit together.

This could be demonstrated by a matrix structure although there are also other devices.

• The assessment methods and their relative weight may vary across courses and will depend on the respective ILOs defined for each course.

The higher-education community has produced a rich knowledge base on ILOs, which is freely available in the public domain. Learning from best-practice examples is the most effective way of developing a workable system of ILOs. As discussed below, it involves much more than just identifying good ways of expressing ILOs. There are, of course, always objectors who may see ILOs as the foe or enemy. These are some of the arguments raised for not using ILOs: • In some academic cultures ILOs are an alien or unknown concept and there is therefore resistance to change – what is the point of ILOs since students already graduate with good degrees and are attractive to employers? This may be so but ILOs add value through the additional information they supply to students and employers.

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• ILOs are sometimes seen as a restriction on academic freedom, on what and how faculty teach. However, the specification of programme ILOs, defining the contribution of different courses and making the links between assessment methods and course-level ILOs, should be an iterative process that does not infringe upon the academic freedom of each teacher but allows for group discussion and involvement.

• Some faculty believe that knowledge for its own sake is enough and that one only needs to examine that knowledge. Unfortunately that does not show what the graduate will actually be able to do. ILOs may be too focused on employability, e.g. as the result of governmental pressures to ensure that graduates are productive in society (which ignores the value of knowledge for its own sake). That is perhaps a consequence of the move to mass higher education. However, ILOs cannot be achieved without knowledge; they do not downplay the value of knowledge but they do give it purpose.

• The process of developing ILO is sometimes seen as too bureaucratic and time consuming but it should be intellectually stimulating and enriching.

Many business schools are struggling to use ILOs effectively. The following are some examples of problems that arise in specifying ILOs. • A typical starting point of things going wrong is employing ILOs as a post-rationalisation device for existing teaching and learning practices.

Overly generic programme-level ILOs and omitting course-level counterparts are typically signs of programme managers aiming to tick the box in the early stages of external review exercises. When faculty is then confronted with the task of specifying ILOs, it is perceived as yet another bureaucratic layer keeping them away from their actual work. This indicates that faculty are not sufficiently communicating what should be accomplished in the programme.

I f, in contrast, faculty engage in a regular and in-depth dialogue about programme design and delivery, then ILOs will flow almost naturally out of these discussions. Faculty will then appreciate such a process as a way of structuring their discussions and going beyond the simple co-ordination of course content lists.

• There lies a danger in becoming overly obsessed with the measurement of achieved learning outcomes. It can lead to a culture where only those aspects that are explicitly quantifiable are also managed, implying that other important aspects of student learning fall off the radar screen. Programme managers should instead search for proxy measures (which may be very qualitative) to verify that students have achieved their learning goals. ersonal development, for instance, can P be discussed with employer representatives in face-to-face focus group exercises. The feedback could serve as an important input for comprehensive programme review rather than for the on-going evaluation of assessment policies and outcomes. Information on learning achievements may therefore be collected asynchronously and will then feed into different aspects of programme management. Adding complexity here is actually very desirable and can raise the effectiveness of ILOs considerably.

• Students frequently have a limited awareness of the meaning and relevance of ILOs. In order for them to perceive this information as tangible guidance for their studies, ILOs need to be linked to the students’ understanding of potential career paths and placement services. In other words, the proper use of ILOs from the students’ perspective requires an active engagement by career services from programme initiation to graduation. Admittedly, considerable staff support may be required but the rewards in terms of student satisfaction should easily compensate for the expense.

ILOs cannot be achieved without knowledge; they do not downplay the value of knowledge but they do give it purpose

Intended Learning Outcomes: friend or foe? by Chris Greensted and Ulrich Hommel

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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• Faculty sometimes tends to display a “we know best” attitude and may fail to recognise that alumni and corporate partners can help to make teaching a more rewarding experience overall. Carefully planned interaction points with HR managers, other functional specialists and alumni in relevant professional roles represent a motivational force for the “classroom”, which all too often remains underutilised. Stakeholder orientation contributes to the achievement of ILOs and can also help in designing them in the first place, for instance by including stakeholder perspectives in regular programme reviews.

Experienced faculty would say that the use of ILOs has considerably strengthened the coherence of their programmes and the component courses

• While the design of an ILO hierarchy may be straightforward for programmes without any specialisation options, it can become considerably more complex if students can choose majors and minors. In extreme cases, a general management programme may even serve as an umbrella for a host of specialised programmes without separate degree designations. In order to capture the richness of learning outcomes, it will be necessary to place an additional layer of ILOs between programme and course level, ie at major level.

To put it differently, business schools should not religiously stick to externally provided templates but rather work with a structure that really satisfies their specific needs.

Intended learning outcomes provide a clear structure that provides information on the programme objectives or goals showing how these are achieved through programme ILOs. In turn, these are cascaded down to course ILOs level, which then guide course level assessments. Many experienced faculty would say that the use of ILOs has considerably strengthened the coherence of their programmes and the component courses. ILOs have become friends of the stakeholders and not the foes foreseen!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Chris Greensted and Ulrich Hommel are Senior Advisors in the EFMD Quality Services Department.

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Business schools have reacted loudly to the challenges of globalisation. But has their reaction been effective or appropriate? Hellmut Sch端tte is not so sure

Globalisation: unfinished business for business schools by Hellmut SchĂźtte

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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usiness schools have existed for over a century and have remained structurally unchanged since the shake-up of the 1950s following the Ford and Carnegie foundations reports into them.

Today they are still faculty-driven, US-oriented or influenced, delivering residential programmes and are either autonomous of or little integrated into larger universities. As such they operate rather independently.

Business schools have, as a group, been amazingly successful. Very few businesses have been able to enlarge their clientele (number and quality of students) and increase prices (fees) as business schools have done for decades.

Meanwhile, national economies have become more intertwined. Many companies now have dispersed activities across the world or at least across their borders with neighbouring countries. The US has lost its economic dominance and the European Union (EU) its momentum. The continuing growth of the emerging markets, China in particular, is leading to major changes in global supply and demand.

Along with this comes increasing criticism of ideas, if not to say ideologies, made in the US: the belief in rational decision making, private rather than public initiatives, perfect markets, shareholder value and, last but not least, the concept that “the world is flat�.

100+ Business schools have existed for over a century and have remained structurally unchanged since the shake-up of the 1950s

Very few businesses have been able to enlarge their clientele (number and quality of students) and increase prices (fees) as business schools have done for decades

For an MBA or EMBA student in Beijing or Shanghai working for a successful, state-owned company, such ideas seem bizarre at best. From where they sit, macro-economic growth rates show that government-led capitalism and stakeholder interests can deliver results that are just as good, if not better.

Finally, issues of general economic interest such as resource shortages, climate change and environmental protection are no longer problems that can be tackled by individual countries alone; global co-operation is needed.

This does not mean that business schools have done nothing with respect to globalisation. Indeed, there is hardly a reputable school that does not claim, in its vision statement or advertising, to cater to a globalised world.

They recruit foreign students to ensure an international mix of participants, though it rarely makes a dent in the domestic complexion of the overall student body where the majority are still local.

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When schools organise MBA, EMBA or executive programmes abroad, they leverage their own “suit cased” faculty and attract outside students

The true benefit of learning about globalisation, the broadening of the horizon, the exploration of different business systems, the insights into a variety of different modes of operation, the experience of cross-cultural behaviour, the questioning of one’s own ideas as the only ones being “normal”, all of this can easily be eroded and become lost.

We all remember the large numbers of Japanese students attending top US and European schools in the past and reportedly learning “nothing of relevance” for their future careers. How much have business schools meanwhile adjusted to truly foreign students on their campuses where Chinese (and Indian) students have replaced the Japanese?

Faculty and staff also tend to be dominated by locals who have rarely spent a considerable length of time abroad. This is the “import model”, which is popular among deans as it is good for a school’s image and can be financially lucrative.

The alternative “export model” sends students abroad for short “discovery” missions, either as a group of co-students and faculty or individually on exchange programmes with other schools.

When schools organise MBA, EMBA or executive programmes abroad, they leverage their own “suit cased” faculty and attract outside students.

This extends the export of knowledge more systematically. It can also be financially attractive, especially when fixed costs for facilities abroad can be controlled.

What is common to both the import and the export model is that the centre of knowledge, the home campus, remains almost untouched from a conceptual point of view. The underlying assumption is that management is universal, and that the teaching of management can be standardised.

6%

According to Pankaj Ghemawat of IESE, only 6% of research published in the top 20 management journals and 6% of case studies used worldwide deal with cross-border issues.

A very large variation of partnership models and alliances between schools add to or complement existing internationalisation attempts. They range from outsourcing of single modules to dual-degree programmes that span the world. At best, they lead to cross-fertilisation between two institutions of different cultural background; at worst they rely on cost optimisation of non-integrated curricula.

The establishment of subsidiaries, often called campuses despite lacking faculty, has been the most pronounced move abroad. Costly and difficult to manage, it is an expensive exercise.

Few have tried this direct investment route, and even fewer have succeeded. INSEAD probably remains the best example of a school that straddles the world with two integrated fully-fledged “home campuses”.

Compared to multinational corporations (MNCs) with operations in many – often more than 100 – countries, the difference could not be more staggering. As MNCs struggle to devolve more power, try to reduce the dominance of headquarters and open up towards new ideas and initiatives of subsidiaries from the periphery, their close relationship with home-campus-centric business schools must lose its attractiveness.

Globalisation: unfinished business for business schools by Hellmut Schütte

Who is to blame? Faculty certainly has its fair share in perpetuating the domestic mind-set of business schools. While many non-American graduate and doctoral students spend some time in the US, Americans stay at home. Faculty exchanges and visiting professorships are rare and complicated. In academia one does not make a career by working abroad, though it is something multinational firms appreciate when it comes to promotions.

Obtaining tenure requires staying power in remaining in a given location. Researching local issues in management is easier and less costly than looking at cross-border problems. As a result we see academics in Singapore or Shanghai writing papers based on US databases because they are more reliable and the results stand a better chance of being published in US-based leading journals. Research (or knowledge creation) has remained the least globalised part in the value chain of business schools.

According to Pankaj Ghemawat of IESE, only 6% of research published in the top 20 management journals and 6% of case studies used worldwide deal with cross-border issues. Very few courses exist on international or global business or management.

In fact, in most business schools, the area of international business still struggles for full recognition as a discipline or department.

Why have business schools remained so timid and slow in their approach towards globalisation?

Why are they so reluctant to follow the lead of the companies that recruit many of their participants and provide them with the bulk of executives for financially rewarding training programmes? Why, in the words of Arnoud de Meyer of Singapore Management University, have they remained business schools rather than become schools for business?

There are many (good) reasons for remaining local, at least in the short-tem.

First, almost all business schools are geographically anchored and have started in a given environment with the help of local or national stakeholders. They often depend on government funding or local sponsorship, have a majority of local/national students, staff and faculty and as a consequence the support and backing of local or national alumni. Their constitution may bind them to their location and disallow ventures abroad. They are not born free.

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

Why have business schools remained so timid and slow in their approach towards globalisation? So reluctant to follow the lead of the companies that recruit many of their participants and provide them with the bulk of executives for financially rewarding training programmes?

Second, education is a regulated activity in many countries and running seminars abroad or setting up a subsidiary campus – let alone issuing degrees and diplomas abroad – requires permission. This is not always easy to obtain.

Third, as many companies and more recently academic institutions have discovered, going abroad requires funds, is costly and is risky. It normally takes years to see the first signs of tangible positive results.

And it requires people capable of challenging themselves, of bridging and appreciating national differences and having a vision.

Fourth, does every student of business have to have a global mind-set? What is the percentage of graduates who will ever deal with cross-border issues, let alone be on assignment abroad? The answer is that the percentage is small, very small.

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The difference between business schools when compared to multinational corporations (MNCs) with operations in many – often more than 100 – countries, could not be more staggering

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But it is a misleading question. How does a domestic company analyse and react to the potential entry of a foreign competitor? How many protected industries were cosy cartels before market liberalisation changed the informal domestic rules into international standards? Think telecom, think energy or infrastructure, retail or insurance.

And how does one judge one’s own performance without knowledge of international benchmarks.

This comparative perspective is required from today’s leaders. Sitting in a group capsule and thinking “us versus them” is not sufficient in today’s integrated world.

After all that has been said, what would be the right level of globalisation of business schools? This is obviously a question that depends very much on the background of the individual school.

Deeply anchored, long-established and famous schools with a large domestic market and a strong international image will probably stay “local” with a flavour of “global”. This applies to most leading US schools.

European schools are younger and not as well funded but operate in a naturally more international environment, reflecting the cross-cultural nature of the EU. Schools from the emerging markets are…emerging, growing fast, building up knowledge, reaching out in every respect. Not yet steeped in their own history, they should be able to develop new strategies of their own.

Interestingly, business schools do not like to be considered professional firms and consequently a comparison with consultants, auditing and law firms, market research companies and the like, is almost impermissible.

Of course, these firms are not academic institutions and do not award academic degrees or do academic research. But they are creating, assimilating and distributing knowledge along a similar value chain as business schools.

Not too long ago they were delivering local knowledge to local customers. After massive consolidation, the industry leaders now operate as multi-domestic firms in almost all business centres of the world, catering both to local clients and large multinational customers. Balancing the local/global dimensions and providing excellence in their service has made them important parts of business communities across the world.

How does one judge one’s own performance without knowledge of international benchmarks.

This comparative perspective is required from today’s leaders There is no reason why business schools could not develop in a similar way.

Globalisation of business schools has started but pales in comparison with the developments in industry in general and professional firms in particular. It is very much “unfinished business”.

Because of the expected resistance in longestablished schools, a radical new model of a mega-school without single roots has to come from an outsider who is born free from all the constraints under which traditional academic institutions work. This model could consist of globally dispersed activities connected through disruptive communication technologies and held together by a diverse network of dedicated professors located across the world.

Generating global insights and adjusting them to local conditions will live alongside crossfertilisation between various parts of the world and an un-dogmatic view of best practice.

This could be a truly global business school of the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hellmut Schütte is Dean of CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) in Shanghai, China. He is Professor Emeritus of International Management at INSEAD in France and the former Dean of INSEAD’s Asia campus, in Singapore. China is the tenth country in which he has lived and worked.

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

International Deans’ Programme 2014 “The best part of my IDP cohort has been meeting a global subset of leaders of business schools from all around the world, having the opportunity to compare the priorities and agendas of leaders of business schools. This is a valuable experience that – even in our e-connected world – is not yet possible without this very personal exchange of views and insights.”

Professor Per Holten-Andersen, President, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

> Gain unique insights into the multiple roles of deans of business and management schools in a cohort of around 20 participants from around the globe

> 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, and create new strategic alliances

> Engage in debates about issues under the Chatham House rule

Hong Kong: 1-3 April ‘14 Three Hong Kong business schools

Denmark & Sweden: 3-4 June ‘14 Copenhagen Business School, Lund University School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Lund

UK: 18-19 September ‘14 Saïd Business School, Oxford Imperial College Business School, London

@Londonabs

@EFMDnews

www.efmd.org www.associationofbusinessschools.org

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Jørgen Thorsell and Justin Bridge explore new perspectives on achieving immediate impact from executive development

Executive Development: A cry for immediate impact by by Jørgen Thorsell and Justin Bridge

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

Simply teaching theory as a one-way approach has been viewed by learning and development practitioners as the least effective way of preparing executives for success

E

xecutive development is no longer simply about offering learning that leads to new insights and changed behaviour. Today it is about creating immediate impact in support of change. The challenge is how executive development can keep up with the demands for successful leadership in times of rapid change.

The challenges of teaching business theory Well-documented theory should be the basis of effective executive learning whatever the choice of method. When best practices are studied carefully and academically “processed”, theory is what all business development should be solidly grounded in.

Executive development has come a long way over the past few decades. The toolbox has grown to include a rich assortment of different approaches. But how effective are those tools when it comes to preparing executives to meet the demands for radical changes? Are these tools right for what we need today? And how well are they meeting the needs for achieving immediate impact on job performance?

This article argues that tools are a hierarchy of effectiveness in terms of their potential for delivering immediate impact. This hierarchy is determined by how effective a tool or method is in offering learning that is truly relevant to the actual challenges an executive is facing at that moment. The higher the relevance, the more likely the method is to deliver immediate and sustained impact on job performance.

'20s

Harvard Business School pioneered the case method in the 1920s to address the deficits of theorycentred teaching

Figure 1 shows such a hierarchy, which is discussed in detail in the rest of the article.

Figure 1: The Impact Matrix

High

High IN-ROLE LEARNING

ACTION LEARNING PROJECTS

SIMULATIONS

Learning flexibility

Impact on job performance

REAL LIFE /REAL TIME LEARNING experiental learning

CASE STUDY

TEACHING THEORY

Low

Low Low

Relevance to actual job challenges

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High

The challenge is how to make theory useful precisely when it is needed in real life. Business schools have long taught theory in MBA classrooms and, generally speaking, “teaching theory” has been the preferred methodology for preparing students for a successful executive career. Even so, following graduation most students have felt a big gap between theoretical knowledge and becoming a successful executive.

Simply teaching theory as a one-way approach has been viewed by learning and development practitioners as the least effective way of preparing executives for success. That way of learning has consistently been rated lowest in attractiveness when we have studied successful executive development in recent years (Mannaz: Innovation in leadership development 2007, Mannaz: Global leadership development 2011, Mannaz: Preparing Chinese leaders for the global business world 2013).

Of all face-to-face learning methods, teaching theory has the lowest relevance to the reality of an executive’s life and thus the lowest impact on job performance. Today there are learning methods that are much more effective at securing the transfer of theory into new effective practice than raw lecturing.

The case method Harvard Business School pioneered the case method in the 1920s to address the deficits of theory-centred teaching. The case method involves debating interesting successful, or even less successful, business cases to extract learning in a challenging dialogue between the professor and the student.

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The method was well received due to its much higher appeal than one-way lecturing and its emphasis on diagnosing for decision making.

Thanks to the higher degree of relevance to the real business world and its engaging interactivity the case method has enjoyed long-lived success.

Although the case method was and still is more appealing to students than raw “teaching of theory”, it is challenged by the fact that in real life no single case will repeat itself. It hones analytical skills and may well influence shifts in executives’ business mindsets but it lacks immediate applicability.

Advanced corporate universities have made up for that deficit by using tailored cases that address relevant real-life business situations in order to achieve a higher level of relevance and applicability.

In other words, in most instances the relevance of case studies is still too distant from students’ own situations and thus does not really cater for most of the real-life situations executives will be experiencing in their own jobs. Thus the case method has relatively low immediate impact on everyday executive performance.

Business simulations “Learning by doing” is the foundation of business simulations, which became popular quite early in executive learning. Now computer-based simulations in particular offer a dynamic and intense learning experience. Simulations tend to excel in areas where facts and numbers play a significant role such as manufacturing and finance. Many students have learned much from the competitive landscape of simulations ranging from the basics of accounting to the more complex worlds of business development and change.

Simulations tend to favour “doers” in a competitive environment. They typically offer less space for reflection and theory sharing. As such, simulations are ideal for acquiring skills rather than being truly effective at creating learning that is relevant to an individual executive’s actual challenges.

As a simulation usually has little relevance to executives’ on-the-job challenges, the likelihood of immediate application and thus immediate impact is small.

Many students have learned much from the competitive landscape of simulations ranging from the basics of accounting to the more complex worlds of business development and change

Executive Development: A cry for immediate impact by by Jørgen Thorsell and Justin Bridge

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

CONFUCIUS CHINESE PHILOSOPHER

Action learning The Chinese philosopher Confucius says: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”.

In corporate life the inefficiency of “teaching theory” left room for new and more “doing” – orientated learning methods. Action learning is a significant example. Actual corporate projects are most often used for action learning and thus create a high degree of meaning for those involved.

However, action learning is often difficult to separate from everyday business projects.

Thus, the “learning” in action learning frequently does not receive proper attention and the method becomes quite inefficient from a learning perspective despite all the “action”.

Lack of room for reflections and theory is still the Achilles heel of this approach to executive learning. In addition, chosen projects tend not to be of real relevance to the learner and lack true wholehearted sponsorship. That has fostered frustrations in using action learning.

Action learning can only be highly effective as an executive learning approach when it is truly relevant to the learner’s situation and when it is fully backed by a committed sponsor. It is important for the effectiveness of action learning that highly qualified facilitators who can master sharing relevant theory and extracting meaningful learning supervise the actions. Only then does action learning get close to delivering immediate impact.

Experiential learning While action learning places its focus on action, with only limited room for reflection, experiential learning is grounded in learning through reflection upon doing. Where action learning favours skills training, experiential learning is best when emotions and feelings are most important for the learning.

In executive development, experiential learning is often based on experiments, for example role playing and group exercises where learners interact with the deliberate intention of living through a near real-life situation. Reflections and feedback from fellow peers and facilitators anchor the learning.

Experiential learning may still be at arm’s length to the executive’s own real world, however. Thus it is seen to lack full relevance for the learner’s everyday job challenges. From our studies of best practices in executive development, it appears that experiential learning has gained increased popularity over recent years.

This is likely to be caused by its particular emphasis on developing leadership skills, which become important in times of change. That calls for methods that are particularly strong in fostering behavioural change.

Although being at arm’s length from the learner’s own job situation, experiential learning demonstrates greater relevance for the learner than other methods described so far.

Facilitators using this method often hear how a session has been considered life changing.

Experiential learning is quite powerful when it comes to affecting one’s insight into oneself and impacting others’ behaviour. That makes it among the potentially stronger methods for achieving immediate impact.

Real-life real-time learning Where experiential learning does not necessarily address the actual job challenges that keep the learner awake at night, real-life real-time learning offers learning centred around exactly the issues most pertinent to the learner here and now.

Rather than offering “role plays” this method applies what might be called “real plays”. That means it is the learner’s own real-time job situation that is central to the learning process.

It is a method that requires good control of the facilitation process and places significant demands on the facilitator. The processes are typically systemic in nature, which means that the total ecosystem of the executive is the actual base for the learning. In other words, the process takes all aspects, personal as well as professional, into the process.

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The challenge of real-life real-time learning is its reliance on highly skilled facilitators who must master the unforeseeable context and be able to share appropriate theory when needed. In contrast to standardised skills training, where programmes are carefully detailed to guide the trainer minute by minute, facilitators in real-life real-time learning processes have little guidance except for the overall development process since content relies on the specific situations.

According to our studies of best leadership development practices, the real-life real-time learning method has become extremely popular lately due to its strength of being highly relevant for each individual learner. The method has proved to be powerful in creating immediate impact when both the executive and the executive’s team engage in the development processes.

In-role learning From our practice of leadership development and studies of best practices, we have noticed a significant new trend towards in-role learning, which brings learning into the workplace.

We see, for example, executive coaching getting much attention globally. Like real-time learning, executive coaching excels by being learner centric, real-life real-time based and thus focused strictly on relevant current issues. However, coaching is mostly focused on the individual executive and does not bring direct reports or the boss effectively into the learning process. This makes coaching something of a black-box learning experience, at least for the stakeholders around the coachee.

What we also see more of is a willingness to trigger deliberate learning on the job, which often involves key people around the executive. Intact team learning is an effective way of including various stakeholders in the on-the-job learning, which is often practised as various sorts of facilitated group coaching.

If the in-role learning is not facilitated, we have

Fast change requires fast learning and executives nowadays operate in a hectic environment with an overload of new challenges

experienced difficulty in motivating the executives and creating space for learning in a hectic job situation. Executives can feel great frustration at not having been able to meet on-the-job learning assignments and in these cases in-role learning loses its effectiveness.

In short, in-role learning is still in the early stages of development but it leaves us with hopes for an effective approach that is relevant to all stakeholders and is powerful in bringing immediate results.

A cry for immediate impact Fast change requires fast learning and executives nowadays operate in a hectic environment with an overload of new challenges. This demanding and complex reality calls for learning at a different pace and with much higher and immediate relevance to each executive. That has placed executive development in a situation that is more challenging than ever. Most of the classic tools, as we have seen above, do not meet those needs and new ways such as real-time learning and in-role learning are still in their infancy.

Our conclusion is that this cry for immediate impact and instant relevance seems to turn executive learning upside down.

In the past executive education was professor centred; today it is executive centred. In the past it was theory focused; today it is job-challenge orientated. In the past it was classroom teaching; today it is much more about facilitated, workplacebased learning. In the past learning was about theory learned by heart; today, executive learning is about instant relevance to the executive’s own current challenges.

In the past executives were developed in isolation away from their team; today, the entire ecosystem of the executives is involved and has become an important part of a shared approach to leadership development. In the past the mindset was long-term career orientated; today, executive development is an important search for how to satisfy the need for immediate impact with instant relevance to increasing performance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jorgen Thorsell is CEO, Mannaz.

Justin Bridge is Managing Director of Mannaz Asia.

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

1st EFMD Global Network

Americas Annual Conference The Role of Business Schools in the Americas The EFMD Global Network Americas Annual Conference has been designed for all those interested in management education and development. It brings together EFMD Global Network members, companies, educational institutions and other associations that have an interest in the Americas.

27–29 April 2014 Escola De Administração De Empresas De São Paulo Da Fundação Getulio Vargas

More information: info@efmdglobal.org / www.efmdglobal.org

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Scientific research, and particularly management research, is in dire straits, accused of lack of relevance and impact and an unhealthy preoccupation with theoretical and methodological rigor. Marco Busi suggests some solutions

Research that matters Thoughts on reinventing scientific (management) research

Research that matters: thoughts on reinventing scientific (management) research by Marco Busi

T

he original, noble purpose of universities was to conduct research that would contribute to advancing societal understanding and well-being. And being a scholar automatically implied doing research that matters, that influences the way people live, behave and work.

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A nasty virus is now threatening science’s fundamental role in explaining life’s events and bringing about the innovation we need to progress further

But a nasty virus is now threatening science’s fundamental role in explaining life’s events and bringing about the innovation we need to progress further, in business as well as society.

The enabling conditions Stakeholders inside and outside the scientific community have identified and understand well the enabling conditions that facilitate the spread of this virus: competitiveness of science, rewards and career progression systems based on bogus measures of quality, and the “publish or perish” mentality to mention but a few.

In fact, the very policies of a vast part of the academic and scientific publishing worlds – absurdly – feed the virus. As Ben Schiller neatly summed up in a 2011 Financial Times article: “[…] promotion is based on articles few managers read; and […] accreditation bodies and rankings providers count journal entries, and citations, to assess worthiness”.

The symptoms The symptoms of the virus are also clear to all: lack of relevance and lack of impact.

A prominent voice on this topic, the Journal of Management Inquiry, supports the argument that “a growing preoccupation with theoretical and methodological rigor [may] underpin the increasing generation of theory and research that is irrelevant to managers“.

This is a view firmly held by practitioners as well.

Schiller’s FT article quotes Dan LeClair, senior vice-president at AACSB, stating that: “[…] major donors are asking tough questions like ‘you have all these faculty members who you are very proud of, but can you tell me how this research has made a difference?’”

One of the most illustrious management thinkers of all times, Peter Drucker himself, was both a great defender of the importance of scholarly management research and a bemused observer of its remoteness from the very environment it is supposed to study and develop.

“Sure, we want and need research. But consider the modern medical school…The emphasis in medical school is not on…publication but on the ability to treat patients and make a difference in their lives.” he said.

As many readers will be well aware, though, that may be easier said (mostly by those outside the realm of academe) than done (mostly by those inside).

The cure to this virus is, in fact, not yet at all clear.

The good news is that it is now a top priority for many scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, who are coming up with several ideas and proposals.

In an article published by Global Focus back in 2008, Oxford’s Professor Andrew Pettigrew put forward a number of hypotheses about how this situation could be improved.

As Chair of the EFMD R&D Steering Committee and a then EFMD vice-president, Professor Pettigrew suggested that we should look at scientific rigor and practical impact as two sides of the same coin; we should build a quality network of relationships and work through “knowledge brokers”; we should focus on pursuing the right themes at the right time; and we should create environments for the co-production of research.

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RESEARCH THAT MATTERS

INSIGHT GENERATOR

INSIGHT INCUBATOR

(e.g. research practitioner)

(e.g. university company)

INSIGHT DISTRIBUTOR (e.g. journal publisher, editor)

ABOVE: The “Research That Matters” model

London Business School’s Professor Costas Markides has a different, perhaps more drastic suggestion, saying that “the first step to generate more innovation in academic research is to change our purpose or paradigm, which says that our goal is to publish or perish. It is not! Our goal is to generate ideas that help change the world, that create value. And if you don’t develop a new paradigm or use new mind-sets you are never going to have progress in academia”.

After studying how exemplary scholars in the management field as well as the hard sciences stay true to the “noble purpose”, in Doing Research That Matters, Shaping the Future of Management, I present my own hypotheses about how we could follow Professor Markides’ suggestion to develop a new mind-set. Here, I would like to present three: First, I propose that we must use a system thinking approach to understanding what we need to have in place in order to do research that matters; I then, second, propose an “individual thinking” approach to doing what needs to get done; and, third, I propose that we need a revolutionary move “from incrementalism to impressionism”.

Use system thinking to understand System thinking postulates that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly, the main hypothesis behind the “research that matters model” is that doing research that matters requires the convergence of the vision and values of three separate elements of the system of scholarly research: the “Insight Generator” – the person doing the research; the “Insight Incubator” – the university (or company) hosting the researcher; and the “Insight Distributor” – the entity distributing the researcher’s work.

Our collective objective, therefore, should be to ensure such convergence, where researchers, universities/companies and publishers/accreditation bodies all share the same view of research that matters and the same desire to generate insight that will change the way we view and act on certain problems.

Use individual thinking to start However, acting collectively is difficult: who should start embracing this new mind-set? Clearly, this is really a chicken and egg problem. My second hypothesis is that we should not be asking ourselves that question but instead adopt an “individual thinking” mentality and focus on what we can do as individuals to improve the situation.

Regardless of whether we are researchers, university leaders or publishers/reviewers/auditors if we are honest in our attempt to shape the future of management we must embrace our ethical responsibility and moral duty to work both introspectively – to learn how we can do better- and extrospectively – to do what we can to positively influence the other two elements.

Isaac Newton humbly noted how he was able to see further because he stood on the shoulders of giants. Similarly, to understand what we can do as individuals we may look for inspiration and guidance from those who did it before us.

Our goal is to generate ideas that help change the world, that create value Profesor Costas Markides London Business School

Research that matters: thoughts on reinventing scientific (management) research by Marco Busi

Because innovation is both conceptual and perceptual, would-be innovators must also go out and look, ask and listen Peter Drucker

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I refer to people committed to the goal of doing research that matters as “Futureers”, from future and engineers. These are the people who commit their lifetime to engineering the future, be that through advancing medicine, technology, management or whatever other field. They are neither the “pure academic” nor the “pure practitioner” type. They are just innovators.

As such, Drucker’s advice seems perfect: “Because innovation is both conceptual and perceptual, would-be innovators must also go out and look, ask and listen. Successful innovators use both the right and left sides of their brains. They work out analytically what the innovation has to be to satisfy an opportunity. Then they go out and look at potential users to study their expectations, their values, their needs”.

Studying the Futureers’ behaviour and approach to research may help us understand what the “right mind-set” looks like and what we can do to develop it and apply it. Doing so certainly enabled me to identify certain traits common to the “ideal” Insight Generator, the “ideal” Insight Incubator and the “ideal” Insight Distributor.

Join the revolution My third hypothesis is that we need to start a real revolution in order to reinvent science, especially management science.

We need a few brave individuals with the courage to move from today’s prevalent incrementalism to a completely new way of teaching and doing management research. A very good way to start this revolution is to adopt MacDonald and Kam’s Tinker Bell solution, which aptly suggests we should laugh at, rather than admire, research – and, more importantly, scholars – deemed “good” by traditional measures of quality and impact.

But I believe we need more than that. We must first admit that the virus has spread much deeper into the system than we want to admit. And then we must start changing management research the same radical way that the Impressionists changed painting and music in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Where the Impressionists embraced the principles of freedom of technique, we must embrace freedom of methodology; where the Impressionists changed the way people measured aesthetic beauty, we must change the way we measure research quality; where the Impressionists embraced a personal, rather than an “academic”, interpretation of the subject, we must have the courage to propose ideas that are anti-dogmatic; where the Impressionists sought the truthful reproduction of nature, we must seek to observe first-hand the phenomena we are studying.

Despite the ridicule and humiliation that the Impressionists endured, their perseverance led them, against all odds, to accomplish a revolution in the history of art, providing a technical starting point for future generations of artists. If my parallel holds then we as management researchers and innovators can expect to suffer much ridicule and face many hurdles but, if we persevere, we can also expect an everlasting legacy.

I fully agree with The Economist that “science still commands enormous…respect”. But that is not enough to turn a blind eye on problems that are clear to all of us. We should all work hard to cure the system of the virus.

Did I find a cure? No, I did not. But fostering the debate will undoubtedly lead to it.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr Marco Busi is CEO of Carisma RCT Ltd, a UK-based management research company and consultancy, editor-in-chief of Strategic Outsourcing, an international journal, and the author of Doing Research That Matters: Shaping the Future of Management, Emerald Group Publishing, 2013.

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Globalisation and technological developments are changing the business of business schools and presenting new opportunities to innovate says Kai Peters

Business schools face the future

Business schools face the future by Kai Peters

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A

plethora of challenges are impacting globally on the management education market, including the continuing evolution of online possibilities, the emergence of new providers, the role of for-profits, changes to public funding, a turbulent economy and cost pressures in the competitive environment.

Business school leaders are being forced to reflect on the long-term sustainability of their current business models and focus on refreshing future models. Some of the strategic options that are emerging include part-time and online education, altering the teaching/research focus, and developing the type and portfolio of services.

Business school leaders are being forced to reflect on the long-term sustainability of their current business models and focus on refreshing future models

30%

Unicon, a consortium of schools involved in executive education, reported that on average, revenues generated by executive education shrank by 30% in 2009 compared to 2008

Throughout Europe a range of business models already exist, largely because of a rich diversity of economic and educational cultures. However, economic uncertainty is testing almost all business school models as is evident through a range of mergers, of sales of schools to private equity providers and the disappearance in a variety of schools of what was once considered core – the MBA. Even when it is well established, executive education is even more unpredictable. Revenues can alter significantly within a matter of months when the economy lurches. Unicon, a consortium of schools involved in executive education, reported that on average, revenues generated by executive education shrank by 30% in 2009 compared to 2008. Revenues are only returning now to pre-recession levels.

Questions around the sustainability of current business school business models are already being raised, in particular the viability of researchintensive institutions, faculty costs and teaching loads, and the need to either raise tuition fees or increase scale by filling classes with larger numbers of students (EFMD Global Focus, Vol 5, 02, 2011).

However, business school deans can diversify and embrace innovation within their own businesses through collaborations with organisations with complementary approaches to achieve a more sustainable business model in changing times.

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Whereas some of the online providers have delivered at the value end of the spectrum, many are now powering the online MBAs and other degree programmes of traditional providers Virtualisation Business schools are in the business of recruiting, teaching, testing, awarding degrees and conducting research. But some providers are now clearly questioning how many of these resources need to be “owned” by the school.

For-profits Across the business school landscape, for-profits are either establishing themselves as alternative providers or are forming alliances with existing business schools. The levels of marketing spend by for-profits are eye-watering compared to traditional providers. It is not uncommon to hear of marketing budgets that are one-third of turnover, call centres employing hundreds of people and networks that involve up to a thousand agents.

At the online end of private provision, an interesting white label business is emerging. Whereas some of the online providers have delivered at the value end of the spectrum, many are now powering the online MBAs and other degree programmes of traditional providers.

Another variant is visible at Pearson, which is home to businesses including the Financial Times.

Pearson purchased Embanet, which specialised in the white labelling of online provision at the end of 2012. At the other end of the spectrum, Pearson entered the world of face-to-face provision in the UK to provide undergraduate business degrees alongside business schools.

One of the more controversial is Thunderbird’s alliance with Laureate Education, which is propelling Thunderbird into the undergraduate education market and seeking to set up additional campuses around the world. In many ways, this alliance highlights a whole range of issues – independence without resources versus dependence but with resources, charitable structures versus profit motives, high quality but with limited reach versus significant reach but fears over the potential reduction in quality.

As with the white label provision of on-line programmes, schools are seeking marketing arrangements with the likes of Study Group and similar companies to recruit students for their programmes. Other schools are working with validating partners when they do not have their own degree-awarding partners. Other schools still work on the basis of a fully virtual faculty model that takes advantage of the relative freedom and of the lenient contracts that many faculty members have at their own institutions.

Examples here range from smaller MBA programmes that employ flying faculty through to larger competitors such as Duke Corporate Education and Hult International Business School.

This trend is certain to continue.

Business schools face the future by Kai Peters

Knowledge companies Business schools and knowledge-based management consultancies such as PwC, McKinsey and Deloitte increasingly overlap. Just as consulting firms are venturing into the executive education arena, some business schools are delivering services traditionally offered by large consultancies – such as organisational change management consulting, development of coaching skills and strategy development.

Both consultancies and business schools are knowledge creating organisations that develop and apply intellectual capital to give value to clients and provide them with solutions.

There are already many examples of knowledge companies and higher-education institutions collaborating on programmes such as professional degrees, short courses and research reports. Whilst some business schools will continue to adhere to a more traditional model of management education, change is afoot. There are likely to be more partnerships and intersections with consultancies.

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Both consultancies and business schools are knowledge creating organisations that develop and apply intellectual capital to give value to clients and provide them with solutions

Financial challenges Although not all business schools are facing financial challenges, fault lines are visible. Traditional sources of income are less stable. Most public business schools around the world receive some form of direct and/or indirect government support to complement income from tuition, while private business schools rely chiefly on revenues from programme fees.

But government funding will not continue to expand educational budgets for ever. Examples to the contrary are already evident in many countries – with, for example, the UK now announcing limits on Student Loan Company largesse.

At the same time, student tuition fees cannot go on rising forever. Many MBA programme fees are likely to have reached levels that are not sustainable and raise a real question of value and fairness.

Income from executive education can be substantial, but is not in the reach of all schools.

Although some traditional models of business education will no doubt continue, significant changes are taking place and more hybrids are emerging as business schools seek to maintain their long-term competitive position by widening their outreach.

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ASHRIDGE EXPANDING INTO ADJACENT MARKETS Through partnerships with other education providers Ashridge Business School is extending its portfolio of programmes and providing a wider range of services in the education market.

Ashridge and Pearson College, part of the multinational publishing and education company Pearson Group, have formed a new partnership.

Pearson College, established in 2012, is the first FTSE 100 company to deliver degrees in the UK. The initial suite of joint undergraduate business degrees, the first step in the partnership, will run in 2014. The programmes will be delivered by Pearson College, validated by Ashridge, and jointly designed along with a network of other industry partners. It also means that for the first time Ashridge will bring its expertise and experience of the corporate world to undergraduate students.

The business degree will include regular lectures and seminars in London, work experience both within Pearson and other companies, residential stays on the Ashridge campus and an executive education module specially designed for final-year honours students.

Currently, Ashridge is chiefly known for its offerings in executive education, open programmes and its graduate degree programmes. Such new innovative partnerships have clear benefits. Undergraduate degrees offer business schools a predictable income over several years via course fee payments, in contrast to executive programmes, where the income is largely unpredictable from year to year.

The partnership with Pearson College means that for the first time Ashridge will bring its expertise and experience of the corporate world to undergraduate students

Although 70% of Ashridge’s annual income currently comes from executive programmes, in the future the aim is to earn 50% of revenues from longer programmes that can be taught at scale.

Ashridge has also partnered with Lorange Institute of Business in Zurich, Switzerland. Students who complete Lorange’s Executive Masters in Business Administration (EMBA) and Executive Master of Science in Management (MSc) will receive a dual degree, with certificates from both organisations.

This is enabling Lorange to award degree qualifications that are recognised throughout the European Union and internationally.

Ashridge secured degree-awarding powers in 2008, and the recently formed Academic Accreditation service provides a route for select organisations without their own UK degree-awarding powers to offer Ashridge-accredited degree-level qualifications in business and management.

Accreditation and degree validation is a wellestablished but occasionally controversial model of educational collaboration. For what it is worth, there are more students studying for UK degrees outside of the UK than in the UK. At Ashridge, we are not seeking to pursue the existing model of accreditation. We are seeking to establish partnerships where we can work on a multiactivity model including research, executive education, and faculty and student visits and exchanges with partners.

70% 70% of Ashridge’s annual income currently comes from executive programmes...

50% ...in the future the aim is to earn 50% of revenues from longer programmes that can be taught at scale

Business schools face the future by Kai Peters

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The development of partnerships with non-UK institutions is part of Ashridge’s long-term vision to widen its international impact in new and existing markets, and supports its strategy to increase the number of degrees awarded.

Such collaborations are widening Ashridge’s global footprint and creating new opportunities to increase brand awareness. There are wide-ranging changes, with education and publishing collaborating and colliding and lines of jurisdiction blurred.

New partnerships, for example with Pearson, which is pushing into digital learning, education services and emerging markets, improve the marketing capacity of business schools and help develop economies of scale over time.

Ashridge is home to Virtual Ashridge, an online learning platform that provides content including text, videos, webinars and audio books and supports the learning of over a million managers globally.

Ashridge also runs an eMiM degree programme (Masters in Management), which can be delivered virtually, but is proving to be a brilliant bedrock for customised blended qualifications within large organisations.

The value chain is in flux because of new challenges and opportunities. Ashridge is developing organisations and managers across the world through partnerships validation services, qualifications, accreditation services, online education, development programmes, consultancy and research. Partnerships, such as those with Pearson, offer new opportunities to harness the marketing clout of corporations, build brand awareness by reaching audiences across the globe, and refresh how Ashridge creates, delivers and captures value for a more sustainable future.

The development of partnerships with non-UK institutions is part of Ashridge’s long-term vision to widen its international impact in new and existing markets ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kai Peters is Chief Executive of Ashridge, a business school in Berkhamsted, UK.

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Johan Roos explains how Jönköping International Business School in Sweden is being reformed and reinvigorated

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ou are probably not very familiar with Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) or its Swedish name Internationella Handelshögskolan but our goal is that within five years you will be.

Having become its Dean two years ago, I have been working with my management team and faculty to put us on the path to having a global footprint far beyond our small size and remote setting in central Sweden. What we are doing at JIBS makes an interesting case for any business school leader who seeks to transform his or her organisation.

Happy 20th anniversary JIBS is among the world’s youngest business schools yet has achieved quite a lot in its 20-year history.

Founded in 1994, the pioneering faculty made good use of the freedom that came with having been set up as a limited company owned by a foundation.

Today JIBS has become one of the most international business schools in Scandinavia, attracting some 45% of its 1,800 students and 35% of its 140 faculty and PhD candidates from outside Sweden.

Our research groups in family business and regional economics are world renowned. Our undergraduate business education is among the top-rated programmes in Sweden. With as many PhD candidates as faculty members, JIBS has become a noted research centre, a fact mirrored in its culture of generous allocation of research time.

45% JIBS attracts 45% of its 1,800 students and 35% of its 140 faculty and PhD candidates from outside Sweden

PHOTO © daniel ekman

Capitalising on an entrepreneurial and international spirit, JIBS quickly established a strong research reputation, attracted PhD candidates from around the world and developed networks in entrepreneurship, family business and regional economics.

Making the good even better by Johan Roos

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The school’s regional stakeholders were increasingly asking for more engagement and more contributions at home.

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Meanwhile, the allocation of research time to faculty did not always result in corresponding outputs.

Increased competition for external research grants stressed our economic model. Furthermore, our teaching relied heavily on PhD candidates, which is not compatible with the requirements of international accreditation.

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To develop a more sustainable model that would better correspond to new external and internal realities, my colleagues and I have over the last two years begun to reform JIBS along its basic business dimensions. These transformations have already started to help renew the pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit of the school and are worth understanding.

PHOTO © patrik svedberg

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Founded in 1994 JIBS is among the world’s youngest business schools yet has achieved quite a lot in its 20-year history

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No resting on laurels When I took office, JIBS had just come through several turbulent years. The school’s financial resources were strained since it had worked up a large debt to its owner, the Jönköping University Foundation (JUF). The business model that made JIBS what it was had reached its limits.

JIBS faced significant challenges. From a strategic perspective, JIBS’ pioneering focus on internationalisation and entrepreneurship that had formerly set it apart no longer did so and this was not accounted for in the school’s strategic planning.

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Our research group in family business was recently ranked first in Europe and third in the world.

Our undergraduate business education is among the top-rated programmes in Sweden

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JIBS' strategy includes a commitment to be among the leading international business schools in the world, as such the business plan for 2012 included 72 priorities

Developing a focused and do-able strategy JIBS’ initial 1994 strategy was to deliver “internationally competitive management education.”

Over time, this straightforward mission evolved to include statements about excellence in research and education and a special focus on entrepreneurship and business renewal. The strategy expanded in 2010 to include a commitment to be among the leading international business schools in the world.

The business plan for 2012 included 72 priorities.

In becoming Dean, I saw a scattered pattern of objectives not clearly connected to an overall strategic direction.

One of my first actions was to ask each member of the management team to refine the elaborate business plan into a much shorter action plan.

We had to settle on only a few priorities for each department and function. We placed the short-list of actions on the intranet and each leader was responsible for updating his or her progress. This made our goals more visible to all colleagues and the leaders more accountable for their actions.

From this first step, it was vital to develop a focused and do-able strategy. We needed a few clear, strategy-driven priorities that aligned with stakeholder expectations. I put in place an open process to review the strategy, inviting all colleagues to discuss it.

A transparent organisation led by a small team The next step was to modernise our structure. The school had five very different departments, two of which mirrored distinct academic disciplines, while business administration was split between the other three.

By the end of my first year, the JIBS board of directors gave us a green light to implement a renewed strategy, which we summarised both in a document and in a one-page “strategy map".

To acknowledge and honour the fact that the new strategy was grounded in the successful past of JIBS, we labelled it “Back to the Future.”

Each department had developed its own management processes and approaches to reward teaching, research and external services, and each was a “black-box” in terms of its financial management.

• Strengthen our education • Improve our research • Increase our “footprint” in the broader society Each priority is manifested by a handful of three-year action points that, in turn, are translated into annual action plans with associated performance measures and clear responsibilities among leaders.

All of the above rests on three guiding principles we developed that reflect JIBS’ culture, spirit and commitment to its stakeholders: “International at Heart, Entrepreneurial in Mind, and Responsible in Action.” These guiding principles are what attract students and differentiate JIBS from its peers, as reflected in our marketing materials and student recruitment activities.

The first two principles were already brand statements for JIBS, especially “international” but in the new strategy we upgraded it from being just a focus area to an underlying value in everything we do. The third principle was an important new message that I wanted all faculty members to adopt and take to heart.

A few months earlier the founder of the UN Principles of Responsible Management Education, Manuel Escudero, talked about PRME during a staff meeting. A few months later in early 2013 we became PRME signatories.

Our task was to rethink what kind of organisation would best deliver the agreed strategy without being constrained by our existing structure and ways of working.

To test our new ideas, I consulted faculty throughout the process, particularly a small group of three highly regarded senior professors, all “founders” of JIBS.

PHOTO © patrik svedberg

We also outlined our three-year strategic priorities, which after the first annual update are:

In early 2013, two external experts – a leader of a Norwegian business school and a leader of a Danish higher education think tank – began working with the Associate Deans of Education and Research and me.

In addition, I met several times with each department. We shared a rough version of our proposal during a major full staff meeting, and adjusted it afterwards.

In May 2013, the board agreed to our proposal for a more collegiate and effective organisation, to be developed through such actions as: • Dissolve all departments since they neither reflected our focus areas nor helped deliver on the strategic priorities • Strengthen the education dimension, clustering the 20 study programmes into six programme groups, each led by a devoted faculty member working with a handful of colleagues

PHOTO © patrik svedberg

JIBS’ mission is now simply “To advance the theory and practice of business, with a special emphasis on Entrepreneurship, Renewal and Ownership.” These focus areas are intentionally broadly defined and are prominent in internal conversations and external communication. For example, in salary talks each faculty member indicates how their research, grounded in their academic discipline, strengthens these focus areas as well as the direction of their research in this landscape.

Consequently, departments had evolved very different cultures. For example, faculty in one department kept track of “overtime” in teaching, which was unheard of in another.

PHOTO © Jönkoping International Business School

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• Ensure that research centres focus on research and strengthen their link with the three focus areas of our mission • Increase connections with external stakeholders by establishing external advisory boards to each programme group and research centre • Streamline all management processes, such as budgeting, financial control, and ways of rewarding teaching time and external funding • Strengthen the role of the Associate Deans of Research and Education by assigning them budget responsibility for research and education

PHOTO © patrik svedberg

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Making the good even better by Johan Roos

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The management team in place when I took office included 12 people. Today the new leadership team includes just five members with distinct responsibilities for education, research, faculty and operations – all new colleagues recruited from within. The new organisation was in place

by July 1, 2013. Previous members of the JIBS leadership remain faculty colleagues.

Giving culture a friendly nudge JIBS has two EPAS accredited programmes, but aspires to join the small group of business schools accredited by both EQUIS and AACSB (we are not eligible for AMBA since we do not offer MBA programmes).

Those accreditations come with requirements that impose significant changes on us, like we have to increase qualified faculty time available for teaching. Over the last two years we have taken several initiatives to cultivate a stronger teaching culture and sent signals that it is both important and necessary.

Despite a strong research reputation, current financial realities mean we have to increase research productivity as well as external funding. To this end, we have staged intensive workshops for grant application writing, engaged more with national research councils, and brought in prominent role-model scholars to inspire colleagues.

We are also expanding our visibility, starting nationally. When I joined JIBS, few faculty colleagues were cited in the traditional press. Almost none wrote their own blogs or participated in Twitter and other social media.

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The management team initially included 12 people – today the new leadership team includes just five members with distinct responsibilities for education, research, faculty and operations

Now, with one of the three strategic priorities being to “increase the footprint” of JIBS in the broader society, I sent frequent signals that I wanted many more JIBS faculty to become sought-after experts and advisors to private and public organisations and the government and to have a presence in social and traditional media.

In 2013 we launched a project to attract, train and promote faculty members in the social and traditional media, which quickly garnered kudos in social media and in the Swedish national press, radio and TV. The possibility for faculty members to create and fuel the public debate is now also one of the questions I ask during development talks with professors.

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The possibility for faculty members to create and fuel the public debate is now also one of the questions I ask during development talks with professors So far, so good Although much work remains for us to make the good business school JIBS even better, I have learned a few things on the journey so far, including: • There is a thin line between vision and illusion.

Nice words and grandiose statements about the future may prevent change and even give some people the excuse to opt out of what needs to be done. At JIBS we have intentionally abandoned “vision” for a more concrete and action-oriented mission.

• Nobody is perfect. No matter how great an organisation is there will always be unresolved issues to deal with, especially when you come in as a new leader. At JIBS we have pulled our head out of the sand and constructively dealt with issues swept under the rug for more than a decade. We faced the problems, talked openly and avoided blame games.

• Keep in touch with the culture. The change management literature is full of advice but I think the best one is never let go of the culture. Easier said than done, it requires leaders to immerse themselves in the organisation in many different ways: publicly standing up; walking around; participating in coffee break chats; engaging “founders” and outside key stakeholders. Another way we kept in touch with the deep structures in JIBS was to recruit the new leaders reporting to me from the inside.

Conclusion In my years of experience at six business schools in five countries, I have witnessed first-hand how academic institutions do not change readily or easily, though they do adapt to the environment one way or another. The question is: do they adapt fast enough?

In the case of JIBS, I posit that the answer is yes.

Over the last two years, we have reformed the basic business dimensions of JIBS – strategy, organisation, leadership and ways of execution. And we have begun the much longer journey to cultivate a culture that better serves our stakeholders locally, nationally and globally.

Stay tuned… you will be hearing more about JIBS in coming years.

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education With business and management e Davies and Juli , coming under increasing scrutiny iness schools bus that Toni Hilton suggest some ways excellence al vidu can be structured to achieve indi

Building better business schools by Julie Davies and Toni Hilton

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he contemporary purpose of a business school is to develop and enhance the individual’s and the collective’s abilities to innovate. That means not merely creating, inventing, and imagining but also commercialising products and services and contributing to new theoretical knowledge.

More specifically, to achieve positive impact the role of business schools is to create and disseminate knowledge that can be applied to enhance the practice of professional managers, whatever their organisations’ purpose, scope, size or location. It is imperative that business schools foster an understanding of the human behaviours that both facilitate and impede the achievement of organisational and social goals.

At the same time, these need to support pressing concerns such as environmental and demographic changes, health, hunger, inequalities, ageing, poverty, geopolitical and technological shifts, and so on.

In this respect, business schools are key integrating actors and anchors within the academic world, the economy, and society more broadly.

Integration implies proactive engagement with collaborators and the designing of business schools that are institutionally and socially embedded while retaining a degree of self-determination.

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Business schools are clearly in the reputation business, with a strong focus on brand, journal citations, league tables, and the professional careers of staff and students. How can they make their mark?

Now that is a tall order. It is, therefore, unlikely that any one business school can be all things to all people. A large part of our argument revolves around the need for specialisation. It is by standing apart from the crowd, rather than through delivering to the “common denominator”, that we can achieve meaningful impact.

Business schools are clearly in the reputation business, with a strong focus on brand, journal citations, league tables, and the professional careers of staff and students. How can they make their mark?

Despite those who bemoan the unfulfilled promise of the project to professionalise management and the suggestion by Howard Thomas, Dean of Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, and others that business schools may have reached a “tripping point”, there is no denying that we have done well to professionalise ourselves.

This has been achieved through accreditation agencies and national business school bodies. In the context of criticisms about business schools’ isolationism in iconic buildings, disciplinary silos, decoupling from wicked interdisciplinary problems in society and being distinguished as “cash cows”, we argue for integration and further differentiation.

How do we innovate from within, encouraging experimentation, creativity and risk taking while assuring compliance with quality standards? How do we practise the critical thinking and responsibility that we profess? How do we communicate new forms of legitimacy based on academic entrepreneurship when many faculty members are so focused on journal publications and deans on the tyranny of rankings?

With diverse stakeholders, how do we build a shared sense of purpose and nudge scholars, administrative staff, collaborators, and co-creators (including our students) to a shared sense of purpose while differentiating ourselves from our competitors?

Clarity of purpose and positioning are imperative when seeking to build a distinctive reputation as a leading business school. There are risks attached to being different but these should be outweighed by the advantages of becoming known as the place to study or the business school to work with among a given target audience.

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Deans are frequently reluctant to risk current revenue streams, particularly if it means negotiating a period of investment in cultural and behavioural changes with the vice-chancellor

It takes courage to commit to standing out from the crowd, prioritising a particular direction and thereby rejecting others that might seem attractive or represent today’s portfolio. Deans are frequently reluctant to risk current revenue streams, particularly if it means negotiating a period of investment in cultural and behavioural changes with the vice-chancellor.

Identifying the different forms, purposes, sizes and locations of organisations provides an opportunity to segment in order to specialise. The nature of the relationship that a business school wishes to have with practice and practitioners represents an important strategic decision.

Business schools can differentiate themselves by selecting which types of organisation they wish to specialise in understanding and supporting. It would surely be possible to build a remarkable business school that prioritises regional or national needs. It would be a very different place to study or work at than a business school that seeks to build its reputation among global businesses.

The programme portfolio provides another opportunity to differentiate, particularly around postgraduate provision, given the proliferation of specialist masters programmes. Business schools can tailor these programmes to support particular industry sectors and/or organisational purposes.

Establishing a critical mass of faculty with the required specialist research, consultancy, and teaching expertise to ensure high-quality support can build reputation among a target market with strong intellectual foundations.

A key challenge for business schools is that they do not possess all the resources and capabilities necessary to create and disseminate knowledge that can be applied to enhance management practice. Hence they need to draw on the resources of other parties.

They also need to manage, and probably lead, collaborative activities beyond the provision of qualification-based education.

The employability agenda looms large.

Internships and industry placements need to be built into our programmes along with other activities such as international study opportunities and provision for life-long learning. Having a clear, differentiated position will assist in the identification of appropriate industry and international higher education partners to work with.

Knowledge creation is a socially constructed process within communities. Academics and practitioners differ in the type of knowledge that they deal with and exchange with business and management students.

The business curriculum provides explicit knowledge: that which has already been codified and documented and has become generally accepted theory. This provides a firm basis for students entering the workplace.

However, to hit the ground running students really need to understand how theory works in practice, to be exposed to experiential and inquiry-based learning. Students gain access to this tacit knowledge through observing, imitating, adapting and sharing experiences and sense making with practising managers. This is then the real value of academic and industry collaborations from which all parties benefit in both the short- and long-term.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF: (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) BENTLEY UNIVERSITY; REGENT’S UNIVERSITY, LONDON; LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Building better business schools by Julie Davies and Toni Hilton

The 2013 innovation report from the Association of Business Schools (ABS) in the UK recommended that business schools adopt distinctly defined roles. For example, some may focus on the local economy, others on international outreach, specific industry sectors, commercialising university-generated technology, innovating in pedagogy or consulting, or on a research-led multidisciplinary model. We are acutely aware of dense clusters of business schools in some parts of the world and we have been impressed by just how clearly such business schools have distinguished themselves from each other.

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Around Baker Street underground station in London, a cluster of three highly distinctive business schools co-exists –London Business School, Regent’s University, London, and Westminster Business School

In Boston, a higher education Mecca, in some places you can throw a rock from one school and it hits another. Yet the business schools are very clearly differentiated from each other.

For example, Babson College is well known for business and entrepreneurship; Bentley University is an EQUIS-accredited business university with a focus on the arts and sciences; Harvard Business School has lead the way with its case method model; MIT Sloan collaborates closely with engineering and science; Boston University School of Management offers many MBA dual degrees; and Northeastern University’s D'Amore-McKim School of Business has a strong cooperative education programme of work experience.

The English Midlands also has a high density of business schools at Aston, Birmingham, Birmingham City, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham Trent, Nottingham, and Warwick Universities.

Even in Sherlock Holmes’ territory, around Baker Street underground station in London, a cluster of three highly distinctive business schools co-exists.

London Business School delivers masters level, PhD and executive development programmes for the post-experience market with a first-class reputation. It is solidly positioned as a provider of excellence at the forefront of global business research with “world-class thought leadership faculty and research.” In the same park land, the Business and Management Faculty at Regent’s University, London, focuses on full-time undergraduate and pre-experience postgraduate programmes. Westminster Business School across the road is a full-service business school with a well-established reputation among professional

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bodies and the government economic service. It has developed a reputation for corporate education and research-based consultancy, particularly within the public sector. Contrasting with the other two business schools, Westminster Business School students tend to be local with the vast majority domiciled within the Greater London area.

Westminster Business School is also committed to a widening access agenda and offers a comprehensive range of bursaries to capable students from lower income families.

Mergers such as those at Aalto, Manchester Business School, Skema, and Paris Dauphine’s strategic alliance within PSL Research University Paris have allowed for critical mass and new sources of competitive advantage.

Being different requires the courage of conviction and a degree of risk taking and learning from failure.

To use a favourite Peter Lorange phrase, “strategy means choice” – about what type of business school you want to be, your identity, what you are definitely not going to do. Do you want, for instance, to be more “business” than “school” or vice versa in balancing your portfolio and expectations about your short- and long-term objectives?

Some business schools focus on international expansion without much regard for their local community. But demographics and social and geopolitical changes demand an appreciation of local needs. Where a business school is located still matters. In conclusion, while Russian President Vladimir Putin argued in The New York Times against exceptionalism on the grounds that it creates superior behaviours, we suggest that everyone can be excellent on their own terms.

We spend so much time assessing students, now we can reassess ourselves on how we make significant positive impact.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Julie Davies is Deputy Chief Executive of the Association of Business Schools in London: jdavies@the-abs.org.uk Professor Toni Hilton is Dean of the Faculty of Business and Management, Regent's University, London: hiltont@regents.ac.uk BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ferlie, E, McGivern, G and De Moraes, A (2010) “Developing a public interest school of management”, British Journal of Management, 21(S1): 60–70.

Khurana, R (2007) From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Putin, VV (2013) “A plea for caution from Russia. What Putin has to say to Americans about Syria”, The New York Times, 11 September.

Thomas, H, Lorange, P and Sheth, J (2013) The Business School in the Twenty-First Century: Emergent Challenges and New Business Models.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Mary Gentile explains how a new pedagogical model is helping to integrate values into the business education curriculum

The Holy Grail Educating for values-driven leadership across the curriculum and giving voice to values

The Holy Grail: Educating for values-driven leadership across the curriculum and giving voice to values by Mary Gentile

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or those business educators working in the field of values-driven leadership development, finding a way to integrate attention to values and ethics across the curriculum has long been the“Holy Grail”.

Stand-alone, dedicated ethics and corporate responsibility courses can be valuable. They can act as signals of commitment and significance as well as curriculum-development engines for materials and approaches that could then migrate across the core. But the concern has always been that these critical issues may be marginalised at best or actively contradicted in other courses at worst.

For these reasons, a new and innovative pedagogy for values-driven business called “Giving Voice To Values” (GVV) was created a number of years ago.

This was driven by research on how behaviour change really happens and by an examination of the actual experiences of managers who had effectively enacted their values.

It was also based on respect for the challenges that faculty face when trying to integrate this sort of topic into the traditional business disciplines such as accounting, operations management and so on.

Objections to the integration of values and ethics across the curriculum In almost three decades of work at some of the world’s leading business schools, I have yet to encounter a faculty member who did not hope his or her students would become responsible and ethical business professionals.

And yet, these same educators often voiced deeply held resistance to the explicit integration of values and ethics into their teaching. For example, they would point out that they were not trained as philosophers but rather as experts in finance, accounting, marketing or general management.

They would argue that the last thing they wanted to do was to force their own values/ethics onto their students, both because they believed this would be inappropriate and/or because such “preaching” would be ineffective anyway.

Additionally, their intellectual integrity led them to the conclusion that in many instances the “right thing” to do was actually not so clear. And, finally, their syllabi were already packed with the concepts, analytics and tools of their own discipline and they felt an obligation to make sure they turned out students who were knowledgeable and skilled in those areas.

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They argued that inserted discussions of ethics often took up valuable class time with no clear deliverable or “take-aways” for the students. After encountering these same objections over and over, it was clear that they were not only deeply held but that there was a great deal of merit in them as well.

So what is giving voice to values and how does it respond to these objections?

Giving Voice To Values (GVV) was driven by research on how behaviour change really happens and by an examination of the actual experiences of managers who had effectively enacted their values

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GVV was developed both as a response to research findings that suggested that “rehearsal” – literal practice – was an effective way to influence behaviours as well as an answer, hopefully, to the faculty resistance outlined above.

That is, instead of framing the conversation about ethics as an intellectual debate, suited only for the classroom – one that too often, albeit unintentionally, devolved into a schooling for sophistry – GVV frames it as one of action and implementation.

Instead of asking first, foremost and only “what is the right thing to do?” in a particular situation, GVV starts from the premise that in many (not all) situations, we know what we believe is right but we do not believe it is possible or feasible to get it done.

So GVV asks some new questions: “Once we know what is right, how do we get it done? What do we say? To whom? In what sequence? What will the push-back be and how will we respond to that?

What data do we need? How might we re-frame the problem?” And so on.

Core principles of GVV include not only the asking of this “new question” – we call it the “GVV Thought Experiment” – but also: • A focus on how (rather than whether) a manager can raise values-based issues in an effective manner—what he or she needs to do to be heard and how to correct an existing course of action when necessary • Positive examples of times when people have found ways to voice and thereby implement their values in the workplace • The importance of self-assessment and a focus on individual strengths when looking for a way to align one’s individual sense of purpose and that of the organisation • Opportunities to construct and practise responses to frequently heard reasons and rationalisations for not acting on one’s values • Practice in providing peer feedback and coaching By shifting the focus in this way, GVV also begins to address faculty concerns. The GVV exercises and case studies end with a protagonist who knows what he or she believes is right so the conversation is not one of philosophical debate but rather of implementation. The tools, concepts and arguments that students apply and develop are based not on John Rawls or Aristotle but rather upon the vocabulary, frameworks and analytical tools of the discipline in which the GVV scenario is being discussed.

The time spent on these discussions and exercises yields action plans and scripts and involves literal practice with the tools the faculty are trying to

Instead of asking first, foremost and only “what is the right thing to do?” in a particular situation, GVV starts from the premise that in many situations, we know what we believe is right but we do not believe it is possible or feasible to get it done

The Holy Grail: Educating for values-driven leadership across the curriculum and giving voice to values by Mary Gentile

convey. And faculty members are no longer in the role of preaching but rather of guiding a discussion of feasible approaches and applications of the core principles of their respective disciplines.

So how does this look in the classroom?

This GVV pedagogy and curriculum has spread rapidly, with pilots in well over 500 sites and is growing around the world. It is being increasingly adapted and adopted in businesses as well as business schools.

A new book, Educating for Values-Driven Leadership: Giving Voice To Values Across the Curriculum has just been published as part of the United Nations Global Compact Principles for Responsible Management Education Collection.

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The GVV pedagogy and curriculum has spread rapidly, with pilots in well over 500 sites and is growing around the world

The book sets out to illustrate how the GVV pedagogy can and is being used both across the core business courses and also across cultures.

Following an initial introduction to the Giving Voice To Values approach, each of the subsequent 12 chapters is written by a faculty member who has piloted GVV in his or her own teaching and discipline and who describes the approach taken and learning objectives targeted; materials used; student responses; benefits and challenges; as well as possible new opportunities. Disciplines represented in this book include: Economics, Accounting, Human Resource Management, Public Sector Management, Leadership, Negotiations, Ethics, Social Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and Management; and the contexts discussed include undergraduate, graduate and executive business education programmes in the US (including the US Air Force Academy), as well as India and Australia.

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The book’s power lies in the fact that the faculty represented are trained in disciplines other than ethics. In his chapter, “Giving Voice To Values in the Economics Classroom”, Daniel Arce, an economist, explains: “….GVV does not require stepping outside of the normal functioning of the classroom for an “ethics break” unrelated to the course material.

Indeed, it purposefully does not require that non-ethics faculty educate students in the constructs of normative decision making. although it acknowledges and is complementary to the foundation provided in dedicated ethics courses."

And as Subhasis Ray, a marketing professor at Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar, India, writes in his chapter: “Beyond the concept itself and its cases, GVV’s achievement is to bring ethics out of the Business Ethics curriculum."

And as many of the authors explain, they find the action-orientation of GVV (as opposed to a predominantly philosophical and theoretical approach to ethics) to be a good fit with business education. Accounting professors Steven Mintz and Roselyn Morris comment: “Typically accounting professors rely on the use of traditional moral theories to provide the basis for values judgments.

The problem is the discussion of what to do stops there and not with the critical issue of how to do it…We use the GVV approach to provide the bridge between ethical intent and ethical action."

MIT professor Leigh Hafrey explains: “I adopted ….

Giving Voice To Values (GVV) in the classroom for the same reason that many others have: I needed something that would allow both me and my students in various graduate business programmes to ground the metaphysics of our ethical debates in action."

These comments are heartening but the true value-add in this collection is its demonstration by the diverse array of authors that the Giving Voice To Values pedagogy and curriculum does, in fact, offer a new pathway towards the “Holy Grail” of business education – the integration of values-driven leadership development across the core curriculum.

Typically accounting professors rely on the use of traditional moral theories to provide the basis for values judgments. The problem is the discussion of what to do stops there and not with the critical issue of how to do it…

FURTHER INFORMATION

Giving Voice To Values was developed by Mary C Gentile with The Aspen Institute as incubator and along with Yale School of Management, founding partner. It is currently based and supported at Babson College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, US. The Student curriculum is available for free download at www.GivingVoiceToValues.org. There is a faculty-only website with teaching notes and cases available to faculty upon request from Mgentile3@babson.edu. The books, as well as other videos, related articles, interviews and media reviews are available at www.MaryGentile.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Mary C Gentile is Director, Giving Voice to Values, and Senior Research Scholar, Babson College. She is also Editor of Educating for Values-Driven Leadership: Giving Voice To Values Across the Curriculum. Business Expert Press, New York City, 2013.

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A new book warns of troubled times ahead for business schools unless they embrace disruptive change says Rachel Edgington

Graduate management education in

Graduate management education in disruptive times by Rachel Edgington

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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I

n the late 1990s, Andy Grove, cofounder of chipmaker Intel, described a strategic inflection point as "an event that changes the way we think and act as a result of action taken by a company, or through actions taken by another entity, that has a direct impact on the company.”

Eastman Kodak Company encountered just such a strategic inflection point in 2012. Kodak had dominated the photographic film industry for 121 years and was one of the most powerful companies in the world. But in 2012, after two decades of financial struggles and increasing competition, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The world of photography had shifted rapidly into a new era of digital technology and Kodak failed to anticipate its explosive growth, even though it had invented the core technology used in digital cameras. Kodak had the capability to compete in the digital market but found itself becoming irrelevant as it failed to change course during a strategic inflection point in the industry.

Business schools around the globe are today facing a similar strategic inflection point as management education is besieged by rapid change driven by multiple market forces—increased competition, technological advances, customers, suppliers, and regulation.

121

Kodak had dominated the photographic film industry for 121 years and was one of the most powerful companies in the world. But in 2012, after two decades of financial struggles and increasing competition, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

A new book, Disrupt or Be Disrupted: A Blueprint for Change in Management Education, examines these disruptive forces that are challenging the very core of management education. The book provides an historical perspective, analyses today’s world of management education and provides a scholarly framework for change.

Disrupt or Be Disrupted: A Blueprint for Change in Management Education from GMAC

At the beginning of the book, J C Spender and Rakesh Khurana examine a previous period of transformation for management education; one that started in 1959 and ended up shaping the development of the modern business school we know today.

They argue that only by understanding how schools arrived at the status quo can they reposition themselves for the future.

In 1959, the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation sponsored highly influential reports on the then state of US business education (written respectively by economists Robert Aaron Gordon and James Edwin Howell and Frank Pierson and others).

The reports’ conclusions were clear—if American business schools were to fulfil their mission as professional schools, they needed to recruit and develop a more discipline-oriented faculty, properly trained in social science theory, research and formal modelling.

The “prescription” of curricula grounded in engineering and systems analysis— where mathematics, formal modelling and statistics were central—was rapidly disseminated throughout the business school community and became the new blueprint for business schools in the US and globally. By 1964, the quantity of business school research and the number of newly founded journals in which it was published began to rise rapidly—a trend which has both persisted and accelerated. Research and refereed journal publication quickly became the emerging profession's measure of academic quality and capability.

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Lyman W Porter and Lawrence McKibbin, authors of a 1988 follow-up report, warned that many business school faculty were “distancing themselves from the problems that managers faced… instead they focused on advancing their disciplines…”

Although the original reports certainly intended to promote greater emphasis on the disciplines, they were not intended to persuade business schools against preparing managers to deal with practical problems. Yet that was what was happening.

Erich Dierdorff, co-editor of Disrupt, and three of the book’s co-authors build a case for the value of management education at the individual, organisational and broader societal levels. But, they argue, current business school models are failing to fulfil these value propositions. Spender and Khurana conclude that if the vicious cycle revealed in the Porter-McKibbin report is to be broken and our industry is to move in new directions, then we need to rethink, once again, the process of faculty selection, preparation, and development.

The authors of Disrupt or Be Disrupted: A Blueprint for Change in Management Education certainly believe we are at a strategic inflection point that will determine the future value and relevance of management education. Which market forces will change management education at such a magnitude that they transform the very essence of how business schools operate?

• If someone asks you who your competitor is, do you have an immediate answer, or are you unsure? Would everyone in your school agree with you? Is your key competitor about to change?

If you are not crystal clear about who your key competitor is or if there is disagreement, it is a strong signal that change is occurring. oes a company that really mattered in the past •D seem less important today?

No one doubts that when media rankings of graduate business schools were first published, they signalled a high-magnitude change in how schools operated. Rankings quickly became a high-stakes game and fundamentally changed how schools allocated resources, rewarded faculty and selected their applicants. There were anecdotal reports that administrative and admission directors were fired if the school slipped in its rankings.

33%

According to a GMAC survey in 2012, only 33% of graduate business school applicants used media rankings as a source of information...

28% ...but percentages range from a low of 28% in the US...

46% ...to a high to 46% in India based on citizenship

What is truly interesting is that the “customer” has quietly stopped paying attention. According to a survey of mba.com registrants conducted by the Graduate Management Admission Council in 2012, only 33% of graduate business school applicants used media rankings as a source of information.

(Percentages range from a low of 28% in the US to a high to 46% in India based on citizenship).

This generation of applicants has access to a wider array of information sources such as forums, virtual information sessions, social media and a growing array of school resources than did applicants in the early 2000s, and they actively use them.

Michael Hay’s chapter in Disrupt guides the reader through this transition from the old to the new (which could take years, maybe decades). Hay articulates the need for schools to break away from outdated models and challenge the assumptions underlying their current programmes.

He cites four key forces that make such repositioning vital for future success: • evolving needs of industries, business stakeholders and the changing nature of business careers • competition from new international business schools • increasing competition among schools and changing user demand driving new business models and innovations in educational programmes • increased competition for the best faculty and students, which creates pressures on school funding

Media rankings signalled a high-magnitude change in how schools operated. Rankings quickly became a high-stakes game and fundamentally changed how schools allocated resources, rewarded faculty and selected their applicants

Graduate management education in disruptive times by Rachel Edgington

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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Deans, because of the essential role they play in implementing major changes affecting the school’s future, must be absolutely focused on overcoming obstacles to change, no matter what the source

Hay says that schools need to answer strategic questions about what their school will look like in the future. Deans, faculty and other stakeholders need to ensure they have a clear plan to move the school to the target position and are ready to engage the stakeholders whose support they most need for successful execution.

Deans, because of the essential role they play in implementing major changes affecting the school’s future, must be absolutely focused on overcoming obstacles to change, no matter what the source.

Hay lays out the strategic questions schools need to ask themselves to clarify their future positioning and provides examples and methods to developing aligned, internally consistent answers. He further sets forth a framework for clarifying the school’s future positioning, stresses the importance of mapping how a school will move to its target positioning, and offers recommendations for securing the stakeholder engagement required for effective execution.

Dierdorff and his colleagues offer four key imperatives that lie at the core of how schools will need to conceptualise the future of graduate management education if they want to ensure its value:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• better define and differentiate among the variety of degree programmes offered

Rachel Edgington is the Market Research Director at the Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC®). She worked with editors Brooks Holtom of Georgetown University and Erich Dierdorff of DePaul University to produce the GMAC book, Disrupt or Be Disrupted: A Blueprint for Change in Management Education (Jossey-Bass/Wiley), on which this article is based.

• recognise and expand current espoused values

FURTHER INFORMATION

• increase the effectiveness of how graduate business schools provide their training

• fulfil the promise of management as a profession

For more information about the book, author bios, chapter descriptions, and video interviews with authors please visit GMAC’s Disrupt or Be Disrupted website gmac.com/disruptbook.

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101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 BIG DATA IS ABOUT TO BECOME BIG BUSINESS, BUT ONLY, SAY SUZY MOAT AND TOBIAS PREIS, 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 IF WE CAN TRAIN ENOUGH DATA ANALYSTS AND ALERT MANAGERS TO ITS GROWING IMPORTANCE 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 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TRAINING TOMORROW’S

ANALYSTS

Training Tomorrow's Big Data Analysts by Suzy Moat and Tobias Preis

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101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 echnology is becoming ever more deeply 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 interwoven into the fabric of society. Our 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 interactions with the internet and other In further research, we demonstrated that such 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 large systems that support our transport, our online data could even be exploited to predict 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 shopping activities and much more are generating future decisions in a crucial real-world economic 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 an avalanche of data, documenting our behaviour arena: the stock market. With our collaborator 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 at an unprecedented scale.

Professor H Eugene Stanley, we found that 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 changes in search volume for search terms on According to computer giant IBM, the world is 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 Google can reveal early warning signs for stock churning out 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 market movement [Preis, Moat, Stanley, Scientific day. (In US, Canadian and modern British usage 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 18 Reports 3, 1684 (2013)]. .) a quintillion is 10 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 In US, Canadian and 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 modern British usage Our results showed that more financially related Analyses by the McKinsey Global Institute underline a quintillion is 1018, 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 search terms such as “debt”, “stocks” and “portfolio” the benefits business may reap from these data and according to 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 are better predictors of subsequent stock market sets by gaining new insights into how their computer giant 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 IBM, the world is movement than less financially related search customers are behaving now and how they may 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 churning out 2.5 terms such as “culture”, “kitchen” and “home”. behave in the future. Their projections point to quintillion bytes 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 a need for 190,000 more workers with analytics of data every day 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 Similarly, we showed that changes in the number expertise and 1.5 million more data-savvy 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 of views of financially relevant Wikipedia pages managers by 2018 in the US alone in order 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 may hold clues to future stock market moves to realise these gains.

010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 [Moat, Curme, Avakian, Kenett, Stanley, Preis, 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 Scientific Reports 3, 1801 (2013)].

Data was once used primarily as a historical 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 resource to look back on events. As humans, Our analysis detected an increase in the number 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 however, we constantly use the “historical data” of views of financially relevant pages before stock 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 we have collected through our own experience Projections point market drops. From laboratory research, we 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 to a need for 190,000 of the world to try to predict the future behaviour already know that humans are more concerned more workers with 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 of others – for example, when others will be most analytics expertise about losing €5 than they are about missing an 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 likely to use the roads, causing traffic; or whether and 1.5 million more opportunity to gain €5. One possible explanation 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 a previous business partner can be trusted in the data-savvy managers for our large-scale results is that traders may invest 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 by 2018 in the US alone future to deliver on time. more time and effort searching for information in order to realise the 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 data insight gains before they are prepared to sell their stocks at The vast amount of detailed, real-time, large-scale 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 a lower price. data we are now collecting is making it possible to 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 automate, improve and extend these predictions 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 In this way, data from Google, Wikipedia and by applying computing power to detect relevant 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 similar online resources can reveal insights into patterns that a human brain alone would not have 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 the early stages of collective decision making— been able to find.

010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 here, the decision to buy or to sell. Our results 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 provide evidence that it is possible to exploit the Every day, over one billion search requests 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 Every day, over digital traces left behind when internet users search are answered by Google.

In a recent study, one billion search 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 for information to predict subsequent actions taken we exploited the global breadth of Google data requests are 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 answered by Google in the real world. and uncovered evidence that internet users 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 from countries with a higher per capita gross 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 Not just internet data hold these sorts of secrets. domestic product (GDP) tend to search for more 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 In many cases, the data gathered by companies information about the future [Preis, Moat, Stanley, 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 on a day-to-day basis can be exploited to Bishop, Scientific Reports 2, 350 (2012), Figure 1].

101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 anticipate future customer behaviour and needs.

Our results suggested that there may be a link 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 between online behaviour and economic decision 101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 making around the globe.

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T

10

18

190k

1bn

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10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 TABLE 1: Future orientation index 2012 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 ATED 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 BE UPD MAP TO 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 The world of business needs more “data scientists” 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 and analysts to make similar predictions which 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 companies and other organisations can act on. ratio of google searches for '2013' to searches for '2011' during 2012 for 45 countries 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 Many businesses are aware of this, and the number 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 Analysis of more than 45 billion Google searches performed during 2012.

The colour code depicts the ratio of searches that included "2013" to those of openings for such positions is growing.

10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 that included "2011" in a given country during 2012. The country with the 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 highest future orientation index in 2012 was Germany At Warwick Business School we have set up a new 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 Based on Preis, Moat, Stanley and Bishop 2012 module to provide the training needed to get 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 ahead in this new race for jobs. This new module 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 For example, in collaboration with the Metropolitan will be integrated into a total of eight of our 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 Police (the police force in London, UK) we have masters programmes at Warwick Business School 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 analysed large collections of crime data to detect as we see it as a core part of the future of business 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 early warning signs of subsequent crimes before that upcoming managers and executives need 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 they happen. Previous studies by our colleagues to understand.

01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 Professor Kate Bowers and Professor Shane 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 Successful analysis of such huge data sets requires Johnson have shown that the occurrence of 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 a range of skills. Crucial to success in this area is the a burglary results in a short-term increase in the 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 ability to ask the right questions of the data probability that another burglary will occur on the 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 – something that grows from a fascination with same street. Such insights can be captured in 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 human behaviour and a solid grounding in core predictive policing systems that aim to deploy 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 business training. The answers to such questions police to areas before an offence occurs – 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 can, however, only be unlocked from these rich and initial evaluations of these systems have 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 data sources when researchers are equipped demonstrated a reduction in levels of crime.

10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 with a wide toolbox of quantitative skills.

Studies by colleagues in the US have shown that 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 Our new module will pass on knowledge of large-scale data on both long distance travel by 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 mining, processing, analysing and visualising large 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 air and local commuting can provide similar vital data sets. It will illustrate the value of predictive 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 insights for those in charge of the allocation of analytic skills using examples ranging from 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 medical resources. By integrating such data elections, riots and outbreaks of disease to 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 sources, predictions of human travel behaviour economic and financial instability as well as 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 can be notably improved – leading to improved 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 big data business success stories to date. predictions of the spread of epidemics. Such 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 findings have clear consequences for decisions The age of big data has arrived. The world of 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 about where vaccines and other such resources business and the economy at large stand to 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 should be distributed. gain great profit from these new data sources 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 if we ensure that researchers with the right 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 combination of skills are trained. Our new module 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 aims to provide such training to students. We wait 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 in anticipation to see what these skills lead them 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 to achieve.

01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 Suzy Moat is Assistant Professor of Behavioural Science and 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 Tobias Preis is Associate Professor of Behavioural Science and Finance, both at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

SOL

“Sustainability is one of the key issues for the 21st century, and this is an exceptional collection that will be of great value to business schools and companies all over the world” Professor Eric Cornuel, CEO and Director-General, EFMD

the sustainable organization library

An international online collection of nearly 400 book and journal volumes in sustainability, social responsibility, governance and related areas – now in partnership with EFMD

To celebrate the inclusion of EFMD research in the Sustainable Organization Library, we are pleased to offer EFMD member organizations a FREE TRIAL ACCESS and a special MEMBER DISCOUNT RATE. SOL is available as an outright buy-to-own purchase, or on annual subscription/rental. Contact sales@gseresearch.com.

• SOL features around 5,500 chapters and papers on sustainability, which can be searched and downloaded individually.

• SOL can be used to support academic programs of teaching, research and study. It also contains numerous case studies.

• SOL content can be used in reading lists, course packs and similar.

• SOL is a particularly useful resource for practitioners on executive education programs.

• SOL can be used as a basis for the formulation and demonstration of sustainability strategy and mission; and to support practical initiatives such as waste reduction or energy-saving.

• SOL works on multiple devices, including tablets and smartphones.

To set up a FREE TRIAL, or for a quote at an EFMD Member special discount offer rate, contact sales@gseresearch.com.

GSE Research Publishing, Leigh House, Varley Street, Leeds LS28 6AN, UK Tel +44 113 386 9278 Fax +44 113 386 9277 www.gseresearch.com www.greenleaf-publishing.com Offices in the USA, India and UK.

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Andrew Rutsch chronicles how Spanish bank BBVA is using its learning centre, Campus BBVA, not only to facilitate development but also to engage people with the company brand, values and strategy

– LEARNING REBRANDED AT BBVA

Collaboration that Brings Strategy to Life – Learning Rebranded at BBVA by Andrew Rutsch

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n an environment that is increasingly disrupting industries and even countries, organisations are struggling to respond.

Not surprisingly, in the learning and development (L&D) space the impact of training on job performance is considered successful in only 15% or even fewer cases. From a larger perspective, only one in three corporate development initiatives is considered successful (Sirkin, Keenan & Jackson 2005). If you were the chief executive of your organisation, what would you do to tackle this challenge?

Against this background, the recent EFMD CLIP Sharing Best Practice Workshop hosted by Spanish banking group BBVA in October 2013 in Madrid, Spain, showcased an encouraging example of the power of purposeful collaboration in the workshop, How the firm engages internal and external stakeholders around its brand and strategy through its Campus BBVA.

56%

BBVA generated 56% of its revenue in emerging markets and 44% in developed economies, with strong positions in growth regions such as Mexico, Turkey, South America and China

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11.65 The banking sector is undergoing fundamental change Today’s banking business is not the same as it used to be. It is marked by

BBVA generated an operating income of €11,655 million that allowed it to absorb loan-loss and real estate provisions without having to sell key assets or change its business strategy

• greater global competition driven by the economic recession • bad practices by a number of banks causing considerable damage to the sector’s image • technologies reinforcing transparency and influence of media and customers • socio-demographic changes due to ageing workforces and generations with new values • increasingly stricter government regulations

Only one in three corporate development initiatives is considered successful. If you were the chief executive of your organisation, what would you do to tackle this challenge?

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

BBVA has fared remarkably well in this very difficult environment. It has continued to grow since 2010, creating net employment in Spain and avoiding costs to the government. In 2012 it generated 56% of its revenue in emerging markets and 44% in developed economies, with strong positions in growth regions such as Mexico, Turkey, South America and China. It generated an operating income of €11,655 million that allowed it to absorb loan-loss and real estate provisions without having to sell key assets or change its business strategy.

The BBVA strategy and journey is built on strong pillars This is the result of a strategy based around three pillars – principles, people and innovation – on which the group has been building its competitive advantage for a long time.

Its principles of integrity, prudence and transparency translate into specific commitments in terms of regulatory compliance, standards of conduct, responsible commercial practices and effective corporate governance.

People are its most important element because they determine how BBVA carries out its business. In 2012 and 2013, it carried out specific actions in the social, scientific and cultural areas, such as in microfinance, financial literacy and employment programmes.

Innovation and technology are critical to competing in the new environment.

They require transforming distribution models and generating new contents, products and services.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF: BBVA

Leading BBVA requires enacting the future – together BBVA’s strategy and journey are driven by its vision – to work for a better future for people. The bank believes that its development is linked to the prosperity of its employees and the people who live in the societies and countries where it operates and, therefore, it seeks to contribute to build a better future for all of them.

The group has evolved its brand positioning and corporate identity to make life easier for its customers. Simplicity is the response to this ambition. BBVA wants to change banking by offering products that customers understand, through which they can manage their money efficiently, and know down to the last detail what they are signing.

This stakeholder-centric view and ambitious journey requires a focussed approach in engaging over 113,000 employees across the globe in bringing the BBVA brand and strategy to life – in partnership with its customers. It means to create this way of working through open workspaces, above-average investments in technology and tools, communications and so on that facilitate collaboration and development across functions, levels and boundaries.

Campus BBVA – a key platform for engagement and growth One strategic lever in this process is Campus BBVA, the group’s knowledge and learning centre opening up activities to external stakeholders and designed to strengthen its brand and business in order to be the global reference in the financial industry.

The targeted segments of Campus BBVA – employees, clients, potential clients and potential recruits – translate into a number of offerings: • A state-of-the-art training and development offering for its employees • Exclusive programmes co-branded with other institutions for key clients • Knowledge forums on topics in finance, economics and so on to attract potential customers • Joint projects with Employer Branding to attract potential recruits Hence, the role of Campus BBVA is not only to facilitate development but equally to engage people around the company brand, values and strategy, to create a sense of pride and rally them around the purpose of the organisation. Its tagline – Update yourself – applies to all stakeholders such as managers, employees, recruits and clients.

BBVA wants to change banking by offering products that customers understand, through which they can manage their money efficiently, and know down to the last detail what they are signing

113k

Bringing the BBVA brand and strategy to life is an ambitious journey that requires a focussed approach to engage over 113,000 employees across the globe

Collaboration that Brings Strategy to Life – Learning Rebranded at BBVA by Andrew Rutsch

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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One conclusion from the BBVA workshop was for L&D not to talk about learning since it is typically linked to training – which is largely insufficient in an environment that requires collaboration and development

The way forward – purposeful interaction that drives outcomes The BBVA approach points to the increasing convergence of of L&D, HR, Communications, Technology and other functions when it comes to facilitating stakeholder engagement and business growth.

76% The BBVA team satisfaction score was 76% in 2012, up by 3% compared to 2010

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BBVA is recognised by the Great Place to Work organisation as one of the 25 best multinational workplaces

Creating collective impact – some first encouraging results This collaboration across organisational boundaries, driven by the firm’s vision, brand and strategy, has led to some initial impact: • Awareness of the BBVA brand and its reputation has stabilised or improved in most countries in which the bank operates • The sustainability analysis agency SAM granted the bank a top score, well above the average for the financial sector. This agency evaluates the companies listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index • “Best Global Bank to Work”, recognising BBVA by the Great Place to Work organisation as one of the 25 best multinational workplaces • “Best European and Spanish Company in Leadership Development”, according to Fortune magazine • The BBVA team satisfaction score – 76% in 2012, up by 3% compared to 2010 with the most valued aspects related to the treatment of people, the sense of pride and above all the potential for future growth.

One conclusion from the BBVA workshop was for L&D not to talk about learning anymore since it is typically linked to training – which is largely insufficient in an environment that requires collaboration and development across all functions and levels.

This suggests rebranding learning into collaboration that brings strategy to life. Engaging and supporting internal and external stakeholders around a purposeful relationship that responds to their development needs will make the difference.

Corporate functions pursuing initiatives that do not integrate with others and trying to prove their business value will fail.

The latest EFMD CLIP Sharing Best Practice Workshop hosted by BBVA created much insight and interest into how rebranding learning into purposeful interaction that drives outcomes is critical in today’s environment.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Andrew Rutsch is a consultant to Capgemini University and currently studying an Executive Doctorate in 'Strategic Leadership and Collaboration in Knowledge-Based Organizations’ at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, US. He is co-founder and facilitator of the EFMD Learning Business Partner Special Interest Group and author of several publications on enterprise learning and transformation.

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Mahmood Zaidi and Thomas Norman report on how team teaching and virtual international student teams have proved vital ingredients in a successful international EMBA

Transferring western management knowledge to China by Mahmood Zaidi and Thomas Norman

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hina’s recenat economic performance has been extraordinary. It has driven a considerable increase in demand for management talent in both foreign and domestic firms at every level— from supervisors to CEOs. In this kind of environment skill shortages can be a major bottleneck for economic growth. The Chinese government has devoted a significant amount of effort and financial resources to developing management education, including forging many partnership with foreign MBA programmes.

The MBA has its origins in the US but it is now recognised worldwide as an effective way to develop an internationally competitive pool of managers. The traditional MBA, as well as Executive MBA programmes designed for more seasoned leaders, have been introduced relatively recently in China but they have matured quite quickly.

One Executive MBA programme of note takes an innovative approach, which respects the character of the Chinese environment and the skills of Chinese faculty by marrying their best practices with those of the faculty from a major American research university. The schools involved are the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and Sun Yat-sen University's Lingnan (University) College.

The programme is unique by virtue of two combined features: team teaching and virtual international student teams.

This was the first EMBA programme in China taught in English in which all courses are led by faculty members representing schools from both countries.

This programme was among the first batch of joint initiatives approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education and the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council in 1999. The EMBA programme in China was part of the American school’s strategy to establish a constellation of three or four EMBA programmes in partnership with top business schools abroad. It built upon knowledge from the Carlson School's "partnered EMBA programmes" in Austria and Poland with, respectively, Vienna University of Economics and Business and the Warsaw School of Economics.

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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The mission of the China EMBA programme was to provide comprehensive, market-based business management education to Chinese managers and entrepreneurs. Students attended weekend classes twice each month on the Chinese school’s campus over a two-year period. The language of instruction was English. Carlson’s Executive MBA programme was used as a basis for quality control of the programme and the standards for selecting Chinese faculty, students, examinations and grading were identical to the American programme. Finally, the teaching performance of the American faculty in the Chinese programme was part of their annual evaluation.

One of the key features of this EMBA programme, team teaching, has been used for a long time in other disciplines but its use in management education is relatively recent. Team teaching forces faculty members to adjust their course planning and classroom management as they collaborate to meet learning objectives.

The faculty of both schools jointly developed each course with individuals from Carlson acting as lead. American faculty were responsible for working with counterparts in China on the development of the syllabus, course design, grading and reporting the final course grades to the registrar of University of Minnesota. This type of team teaching approach was a new idea in the Chinese classroom.

The use of team teaching was appropriate for a number of reasons.

First, there is a demand for indigenisation of management education in China.

Students and employers are demanding the use of “China-context specific” cases in Western EMBA programmes. Using teaching teams composed of a faculty member from both Carlson and Lingnan is ideal for this situation as it allows the programme to adapt its curriculum to the local cultural and business environment.

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A survey of the Chinese EMBA programme’s graduates indicated that students appreciated the opportunity of working in diverse teams and learning how to work collaboratively to solve problems

Second, faculty members of both schools are enriched by the transfer of knowledge that takes place both inside and outside the classroom. Team teaching thus leads to the professional development of the faculty of both schools.

Lingnan faculty members were able to observe how management education is delivered in a marketbased economy such as the US. Carlson faculty benefitted by gaining up-to-date knowledge about management practices in China.

This “train-the-trainer” approach helps expand management knowledge in several ways. Faculty members from both institutions can use their newly acquired skills in teaching their students, share new knowledge with their students and develop global and multicultural perspectives in teaching and research.

Recent studies report that both faculty and students regard team teaching as a great success. One study found significant improvement in student achievement in team-taught EMBA courses. This may occur because students are receiving different teaching approaches and perspectives on topics.

The second important feature of the Chinese EMBA programme is the use of global, virtual student teams. The teams were formed in the second year of the programme and consisted of a mix of EMBA students from this programme along with the Carlson's local EMBA class and its partnered EMBA programmes in Poland and Austria.

Under the guidance of a faculty member from each business school, each virtual team was required to develop a business plan for a new product or service for an overseas market. At the end of the programme, a two-week international residency required of all the EMBA students was hosted at the Carlson School campus.

71%

Graduates felt that their “overall experience with the programme was satisfactory” and a high number (71%) felt their programme was a top EMBA programme in China

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The first seven cohorts of the Chinese EMBA programme graduated 32 students per year on average

During the residency, the previously formed international teams presented their assigned case, made site visits to American companies, attended classes, built their own international networks and participated in university graduation ceremonies.

The use of virtual teams inculcates three important skills needed by executives: developing a learning community; improving collaboration; and knowing the processes involved in the co-construction of knowledge.

Learning in virtual teams is continually evolving. A survey of the Chinese EMBA programme’s graduates indicated that students appreciated the opportunity of working in diverse teams and learning how to work collaboratively to solve problems.

As they learned how to work effectively in their virtual teams, they bonded across four cultures.

This is a benefit to China, as large employers value employees with the skills needed to work in multicultural teams.

The first seven cohorts of the Chinese EMBA programme graduated 32 students per year on average. About half of them responded to a survey on the effectiveness of the programme and the unique features of team teaching and virtual team collaboration.

Transferring western management knowledge to China by Mahmood Zaidi and Thomas Norman

EFMD Global Focus: Volume 08 Issue 01 | 2014

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Demographically, survey respondents were enrolled with a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent and were largely from the Pearl River Delta region. They were divided between senior leaders (president, director, regional manager) and middle managers. Most of them worked for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), multinational companies or were entrepreneurs.

Nearly all of them had 10 or more years of work experience with an average of 14 years of overall work experience and six years with their current employer. Just under one-third were female.

Nearly all graduates felt that their “overall experience with the programme was satisfactory” and a high number (71%) felt their programme was a top EMBA programme in China. A larger majority of these students expected to add important people to their network via the EMBA. The virtual student team project was an important design element in meeting these expectations and, after graduation, a majority of students reported satisfaction with the quality of people added to their network from their classes. The team teaching method was praised by more than 80% of the graduates.

Graduates were also asked to “compare their expected and perceived returns on their investment in this EMBA degree”. About half were satisfied or very satisfied with the “cost-to-benefit ratio” of their EMBA degree. Less than one-tenth were dissatisfied.

The graduates felt that the most important attributes of the programme were teaching quality and overall instructor quality.

Overall, faculty members from the Carlson School were perceived as having a positive attitude toward teaching. They also were rated higher on communication skills and expertise in international business. Local Chinese professors were considered superior in their expertise on Chinese business.

Both faculty types scored well on showing respect to students.

In summary, this EMBA programme has created a decade of students generally satisfied with their studies who subsequently advanced in their careers in terms of promotion and compensation as they help to build the Chinese economy.

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Nearly all of survey respondents had 10 or more years of work experience with an average of 14 years of overall work experience and six years with their current employer

This EMBA programme has created a decade of students generally satisfied with their studies who subsequently advanced in their careers in terms of promotion and compensation as they help to build the Chinese economy

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr Mahmood A Zaidi is a Distinguished International Emeritus Professor, Emeritus Professor of Human Resources and Founding Director of International Programs (Now Carlson Global Institute) Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, US. ( mzaidi@umn.edu) Dr Thomas J Norman is Associate Professor, College of Business Administration & Public Policy, California State University, Dominguez Hills, US. FURTHER READING

Cohen, Malcolm S and Zaidi, Mahmood A (2002), Global Skill Shortages, North Hampton, MA: Edward Edgar Publishing Inc. Zaidi, Mahmood A and Norman, Thomas A, (2013), “Transferring Western Management Knowledge to China: Perceptions of Graduates from an American Executive MBA Program, Frontiers of Business Research in China, 7(1): 82-105

The graduates noted that the team teaching philosophy and the use of virtual international student teams were valuable experiences. Executives who completed this EMBA degree were satisfied with their educational experience and found both the first hand and virtual experiences with instructors and students from different cultures helped them to build their professional network globally.

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Volume 08 | Issue 01 | 2014

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Global Focus Volume 08 | Issue 01 | 2014

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Voice to values Making ethics the right thing to do

BSIS A new way to assess local impact

Corporate Unis Forget cosy courses; it’s time for transformation

Big data It’s why we need to recruit big brains

Exec Ed How to make sure the tools really work

Research Why it still has to matter