Global Focus magazine

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St Petersburg University Graduate School of Management is one of Russia’s most internationalised and open business schools. Dean Valery Katkalo discussed the school’s philosophy and progress with George Bickerstaffe Famously, when Tsar Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov (Peter the Great) founded his new capital, St Petersburg, on the marshy Russian littoral of the Gulf of Finland in 1703 his intention was that it would open Russia to what he saw as the modernising influence of Europe.

Not surprising, then, that the city’s Graduate School of Management (GSOM), a faculty of St Petersburg University, is one of the country’s most internationalised and open business schools.

“Remember that the school is located in a city set up by Peter the Great as the Russia’s ‘window on Europe’, ” says Professor Valery Katkalo.

Professor Katkalo, friendly and self-effacing, has been Dean of the school since 1997 and played a major role in its creation in 1993.

He is also a ViceRector of St Petersburg University, the oldest academic institution in Russia and founded (again by Peter the Great) in 1724.

The GSOM SPbU (initially just the School of Management) was born in 1993, in partnerships with Haas School of Business, UCBerkeley and several international and local companies, led by Procter & Gamble.

The aim was to create a modern international business school to support the development of a market economy in Russia.

The school began with just four full-time teaching faculty (of which Professor Katkalo was one) and 33 undergraduate students.

Today there are more than 1,200 degree students (half are postgraduates) studying bachelor, pre-experience masters, Executive MBA and doctoral programmes plus nondegree executive education programmes.

WINDOW ON THE WORLD

Window on the World: GSOM St Petersburg by George Bickerstaffe

GSOM now has 65 full-time professors and more than 90 part-time and visiting Russian and international professors. It has partnership links, including joint programmes and double degrees (in Master in Management and EMBA), with some of the leading business schools around the world such as HEC-Paris, Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, WU-Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, and Aalto University School of Economics.

Professor Katkalo believes this growth is due to the combination of classical university traditions and innovative approaches to business education within the GSOM, specifically its strong commitment to the internationalisation of teaching and research, an emphasis on creating new knowledge, and strong ties to the national and international business community.

The school has had an international focus since its inception. The four original academics were initially chosen partly because they all had international experience. (Professor Katkalo studied undergraduate and doctoral degrees in economics at St Petersburg University and was a visiting scholar at Haas in the early 1990s where he was closely involved in helping to set up the partnership.)

1724 St Petersburg University, the oldest academic institution in Russia and founded by Peter the Great in 1724

The GSOM’s international status has been the result of a well-thought-out strategy based on progress on a number of separate but related fronts: rankings, accreditations, international partnerships and membership of leading international bodies in the management education sector. On accreditation, for example, the Association of MBAs (AMBA) accredited the school’s Executive MBA programme in 2008, the first time a Russian business school had received this accreditation for the maximum period of five years at the first attempt.

In another first for a Russian school, the Bachelor of Management programme has won EFMD’s EPAS reaccreditation, again for the maximum five-year period.

“EPAS was a very valuable learning experience,” says Professor Katkalo, “and though it’s a programme-based accreditation its value lies in synergies across the school.

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“For example, the emphasis on increased improvements in internationalisation certainly does not apply to just to one set of students.

Also, developing a well-functioning system of pedagogical review is not something that applies to just one programme but has potential synergies for programmes throughout the school.”

Today GSOM has over 40 of the world’s leading business schools and universities (from Europe, North and South America, and Asia) among its academic partners and runs student exchanges based on bilateral credit transfer.

In a further stage, in 1999, GSOM became part of the NEBSEN consortium with four other leading North European Business Schools (Copenhagen Business School, Stockholm School of Economics, Helsinki School of Economics, and the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen). Its aim was to increase the mobility of international students between institutions.

As the new millennium began, GSOM had created Russia’s first English-language ECTS-based masters programme. The school now offers four graduate programmes delivered entirely in English.

Another stage began in the mid-2000s. GSOM identified joining global associations of top business schools as a priority. This meant the general internationalisation of all programmes and activities of the school.

GSOM is now the only member representing Russia in CEMS (the Global Alliance in Management Education, formerly the Community of European Management Schools and International Companies), PIM (the Partnership in International Management), GBSN (Global Business School Network), EABIS (European Academy of Business in Society).It is also a member of other bodies such as EFMD, AACSB, GRLI and GMAC. GSOM has assiduously developed its links with the business community, both in Russia and internationally. Company executives are involved with the school through joint research projects, as guest lectures, courses, offering summer internship programmes and other activities.

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The GSOM Alumni Association is also strong, with over 4,400 graduates as members.

“We consider our systemic relationship with the business community as one of our key strengths,” says Professor Katkalo. “Since our beginnings in the 1990s we’ve been very lucky to have had a very strong Advisory Board.”

Indeed, the Advisory Board, which was set up at the same time as the school and was the first in Russia, has been highly instrumental in building business contacts. For its first ten years the Advisory Board was chaired by John Pepper, at the time President and CEO of the multinational group Procter & Gamble. Now Chairman of the Board of Walt Disney International, he remains closely involved with the school.

“John offered tremendous support, both intellectually and in terms of resources to the school in the early days,” says Professor Katkalo.

Today’s 33-member Advisory Board is one that many top business schools would envy.

Ranging from Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov to Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Management Board, Gazprom, and Robert McDonald, President and CEO, Procter & Gamble, it takes in the heads of some of the leading companies in Russia and the world as well as deans of top international business schools. These companies are active both in recruiting GSOM graduates and in supporting development of its educational and research programmes. For example, among recent initiatives strongly backed by GSOM corporate partners are Deutsche Bahn & Russian Railways Center for International Logistics and Supply Chain Management and PwC Center for Corporate Social Responsibility.

The GSOM has taken a further interesting step towards involvement with the business world that also neatly dovetails with its desire for international links and exposure. This is an enthusiastic and successful student involvement in business games (such as the ones organised by L’Oreal, KPMG, and Microsoft) that the school actively encourages.

GSOM teams have regularly won business game competitions at both national and global levels. This year, for example, a team of three GSOM students won the L’Oreal "R U HR?" Business Game International Final in Paris.

In 2006, as part of a national review of business education, the school was selected by the Russian government as one of two

new “pre-eminent” business schools in Russia (and renamed the Graduate School of Management in the process). A strong distinctive feature of St Petersburg University GSOM is that it follows the university model of a business school with a diversified portfolio of (mainly degree) programmes, including bachelors, masters, Doctoral and EMBA, with an emphasis on producing new knowledge, and developing its own body of professors with strong international academic recognition and strong corporate connections.

The other school is Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, a brand new start-up near Moscow and also backed by a group of Russian and international business leaders. It follows the so-called entrepreneurial model of a business school with no university connections and focuses on MBA/EMBA programmes, executive education and “learning by doing”.

According to Professor Katkalo, the idea is not that the two projects of developing worldclass Russian business schools will meet all

We have the ambition, of course, to be the top Russian business school with strong global standing

Window on the World: GSOM St Petersburg by George Bickerstaffe

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transition but about competing successfully in the global and knowledge-based economy.

He adds that “Russia is one of the few countries with huge potential for growth. It’s not only a player in the global market it’s also an emerging market itself. If you want to study change management or study how you manage in fast-growing markets Russia is one of the very few territories in the world where you can do both. So we should be one of the key providers and facilitators of these kinds of programmes.”

As for the future, the GSOM is preparing a new campus in the historic Mikhailovskaya Dacha in Peterhof, a series of palaces outside St Petersburg modelled on Versailles in France.

The 104-hectare site contains a number of historic buildings that are being renovated, restored and adapted to the needs of a modern business school. The work is expected to be complete in about three years.

Otherwise, according to Professor Katkalo, the emphasis for the moment is on consolidation. of the nation’s management education needs – he believes that would need “at least a dozen” – but to work out which model of business school suits the country best.

Whatever happens Professor Katkalo (pictured above) believes that a specific Russian approach to management education is likely to emerge, though he stresses this will need to focus on the future rather than the past and must embrace internationalism.

"Among the main foundations for GSOM’s further growth are world –class faculty development and research capabilities," he says. "Our faculty is well known for its teaching excellence and research productivity (measured by publication in A and B journals) and is growing at an impressive rate."

The school is well-known as the main producer of cases on doing business in Russia with about 360 cases and teaching notes in its collection out of which about 130 are already “As you know, Russia has historically been registered at ECCH. Another area where positioned between two worlds. This has GSOM has recently expanded is corporate certain cultural implications but it also gives executive education, with Russian Railways, Russia some real advantages,” he says.

Rosneft, Sberbank and IBM among its main “There are at least three things that we can clients. combine: the global advances in management "We have the ambition, of course, to be the thinking and practice, increased integration top Russian business school with a strong with Europe and, not least, the Russian global standing. Achieving that means we approach to management and education, have to continue to internationalise our which I would say is very humanistic and faculty, develop further our research people-focused.” capabilities and internationally recognised He points out that when the school started PhD programme, continue to work on our already strong international alliances and Russia was “a different country" which was so on," he adds. struggling with the transition from a socialist to a market economy. Since then a generation "It’s not like it was when the school started, has grown up that has only known market when we were trying to build a professional economics, has greatly increased business school in a very unusual international experience and is willing (and environment – a post-soviet country. Today via new technologies quite able) to compare it’s really about capitalising on what we have and question all elements of society. Today, achieved, moving forward and being on the Russia’s main challenge is not about leading edge of global trends.”