Z General - Business Schools Archives – Page 18 of 32

June 7, 2021June 9, 2021

Today’s education: global commodity and catalyst for cultural diversity

Hands up in the air against a map of the world. Business Impact article for today's education: global commodity and catalyst for cultural diversity

The great shift online during Covid-19 culminated in an ‘international learning village’ which offers rich potential for the further development of educational models, says Berlin School of Business and Innovation’s Kyriakos Kouveliotis

Covid-19 has helped to show the world how important education and research truly are.

Each year, in May, the UN’s World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development raises awareness of diversity issues around the globe and promotes an understanding of different cultures.

Even though cultural events and initiatives have been put on hold for months, the way countries had to co-operate in tackling the menace of the pandemic, co-ordinate their emergency and contingency plans and evaluate the effectiveness of their actions has showcased the biggest experiment of global solidarity and alliance in the history of humankind.

It is apparent that the domain of education was greatly affected. However, not only did it respond effectively, but it also came out stronger. It embraced cultural diversity in the most productive way and at a time when it was most needed. In a matter of days, global educators had to switch from traditional teaching to online. They had to improvise, innovate and become global. What was expected to happen in years or decades took place instantly. The world was transformed into a global education hub, an ‘international learning village’. This change was cataclysmic.

The end of constraints?

It is expected that the future of education, not in some years but soon, will eliminate the classroom, as well as the borders between countries and all the stereotypes for acquiring knowledge. Technology can turn our entire lives into learning experiences.

Some scholars have argued that 100 years ago, higher education seemed on the verge of a technological revolution. The spread of a powerful new communication network—the modern postal system—made it possible for institutions to distribute their lessons beyond the grounds of their campuses. Anyone with a mailbox could enrol in a class. Classes now are global, and the student community is composed of different nationalities and backgrounds. Education today has literally abolished international borders and rediscovered itself as a global commodity. This commodity is accessible to all, round the clock, regardless of geographical or other constraints.

This rediscovery is based on education’s use of all the latest innovative developments of technology and modern methodologies, such as open learning, social media, mobile learning, blended learning and augmented reality. As a global commodity, modern education commodity brings a new stream of positive thinking regarding cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Today, educators should be able to:

Recognise and achieve goals and ambitions, especially in response to global challenges
Enhance their knowledge with a global perspective
Recognise that they belong to an international community and use this understanding effectively to understand multiculturalism
Practice their skills and creativity beyond their regional environments

In this framework, what we need in modern education is a didactic model that achieves the following changes in learning dynamics:

From teacher-centred to student-centred learning
From the transmission of knowledge to the building of knowledge
From passive and competitive learning to active and collaborative learning

In this way, the individual international student becomes the centre of the educational process.

Incentives for developing multicultural initiatives

The legacy of what global education has already achieved during the pandemic created a cross-cultural revolution. The new innovative and modern didactic methodologies that were adopted have led to greater knowledge of the world around us and assisted us to cope better with it.

Salman Khan, Founder of online education platform, Khan Academy, once said: ‘This is the information revolution. It’s crazy that every other field is getting revolutionised except education.’

As education continues to shift from national to international, countries have strong incentives to build the skills of their populations through higher multicultural training initiatives.

At the same time, the explosive growth of online education raises an important question – will traditional didactic methods continue to attract students at the same pace as in the past, now that the world has seen the creation of a new international and multicultural audience? I think we all know the answer already.

Professor Kyriakos Kouveliotis is Provost and Chief Academic Officer at Berlin School of Business and Innovation (BSBI).

May 18, 2021June 9, 2021

Making lifelong learning a natural extension of an MBA

Lifelong learning opportunities shouldn’t feel forced – instead, they should feel like a natural extension of the programme. Tim Banerjee Dhoul talks to the Director of the Anáhuac MBA, Guillermo Zamacona, and programme alumna, Pilar Brogeras, about where the responsibility lies for graduates’ continuing education

‘Doing what I do, you know that people need development – all the time. You need to be on your toes for whatever’s coming,’ says Pilar Brogeras, a Managing Director at executive search firm, Stanton Chase, and an MBA alumna of Universidad Anáhuac México in Mexico City.

‘What I see is that when you’re working, you’re in this one lane and it’s pretty easy to lose sight,’ she continues. ‘Sometimes, you’re just running and running like a hamster on a wheel. I think that is where these [lifelong learning] programmes can slap you on the face and be like, “hey, you have to keep it up, you have to keep pushing and gain a little bit of perspective,” because organisations do not always give you the opportunity or the tools to realise where you have to develop.’

‘For me, it’s more of an internal motivation – it starts with you, but I do think that universities have to do this work of putting in place programmes that really respond to the needs of companies and professionals. They have a responsibility to put in place a platform that can allow you to reach whatever it is that you want to reach through those programmes because they have a very strong network of players and strategic alliances.’

‘A responsibility from both sides’

Guillermo Zamacona, Director of the Anáhuac MBA, agrees that Business Schools have a responsibility for their graduates’ continuing education: ‘It’s a responsibility from both sides. I think it’s our responsibility as a Business School to be creative enough and to have the right strategy to make it feel natural so that the alumni and the students get involved.

In this sense, much of the work revolves around not only creating the right opportunities, but also facilitating the engagement of alumni. ‘We’ve developed a lot of channels, from academic and social events, to challenges and WhatsApp groups – a really big agenda, both within the MBA programme and in terms of lifelong learning,’ Zamacona explains. ‘We have tried to develop it in a way where it doesn’t feel like they are doing something extra where they have put it in their diary and it’s like, “ugh, today I have to go to this”. We’ve been trying to do it more naturally so that the networks get more efficient and the alumni get more valuable courses and activities.’

Network ‘efficiency’ comes when alumni interact and work with each other automatically in the years after their graduation, as if it were a natural extension of the programme. In the process, they can also continue learning from each other.

‘It’s great to see that our channels are generating this,’ says Zamacona, giving a recent example of spotting – casually, on social media – two alumni collaborating outside the School’s official channels. ‘I saw their picture and it was great to see that they were working together on a new artistic project, especially because it was nothing that we have done directly… I wish I could charge a fee for every business that is created among our alumni and our network.’

Gaining traction

A self-confessed bookworm with a background in communications, Brogeras says she enrolled in the Anáhuac MBA because she wanted to broaden her skills and knowledge through a programme that balanced hard and soft skills. ‘For me, it was very important to have the overall picture of how an organisation works…what I do is place talent – maybe I’m not the specialist in a role but I understand the main challenges.’

She then took full advantage of international opportunities that arose because of her MBA, attending short programmes at Harvard Business School and EADA Business School in Spain in the year she graduated. More recently, she secured a scholarship for a highly selective executive education programme aimed at preparing female leaders for board roles. Run by Banco Santander and known as the Santander W50, Brogeras attended the programme at UCLA Anderson School of Management, having received notification of the opportunity from her alma mater. ‘These [opportunities] were not necessarily from Anáhuac, but they were a result of the educational offer of Anáhuac,’ she says.

Lifelong learning opportunities offered directly by her School have progressed rapidly in recent years, in Brogeras’s opinion. ‘To be super blunt, when I was there, I think there was not a lot of interest post-graduation. It was more ‘thank you’ and ‘bye’,’ she confides. ‘So, I think it has taken a while to get some traction, but all the work [Zamacona] and the team has done has started getting the attention of many of the alumni.’

‘We offer all of our students the chance to join the alumni association when they graduate and all of them say “yes”,’ says Zamacona, referencing cohorts from the last six or seven years in particular when asked about the current take-up for the School’s lifelong learning opportunities. ‘They sign and become part of the association. But [in terms of] really being involved, we have around 1,000 alumni… I would say that [engagement] is gradual. The three years after graduation around 75% are involved with all of these activities; the next three years, 50%; the next three years, 25%.

Brogeras, who sits on the alumni association board, concedes that her fellow MBA alumni can be ‘tough cookies’, saying: ‘For someone that graduated maybe 10-15 years ago, there was nothing, and now there’s this bunch of activities. But they probably still feel a little disconnected from the programme as it’s been such a long time. I think it’s sort of like carving stone and being there and being there and eventually they will come back.’

Cocreated activities

Nominated for an AMBA Excellence Award this year (with the winner yet to be announced at the time of going to press), the lifelong learning programme at Anáhuac’s Faculty of Economics and Business is designed to cover a full range of activities – social, academic, spiritual, cultural, communitarian, and physical – deemed necessary for ongoing career success. These opportunities, Zamacona advises, are all cocreated with its stakeholders: ‘For example, we have quarterly seminars and, this quarter, we had a three-day seminar, after which we launched a survey. In that survey, we asked what alumni want to know in the next quarter. With those answers and some other inputs, from the alumni association or from the professors or students, we create the next agenda.’

When asked how the peer-to-peer learning that is so integral to MBA programmes can be replicated at alumni events, both Zamacona and Brogeras talk about the importance of an event’s format and setting.

‘It’s not like we invite all our alumni to a lecture on finance, or with the CFO of Miniso,’ Zamacona says, referencing a recent example of an event featuring an alumni and c-suite manager with the Chinese retail multinational offering insights into doing business with Asia. ‘It’s a one-hour talk, then 30 minutes of Q&A and then an hour and a half of networking with him and all of the other participants. It’s a balance between academic and social.’

‘The right people with which to connect’

Brogeras agrees on the importance of activities’ social aspect, saying that she values, for example, the opportunity to sit down and have a coffee and a chat with other participants before going to see such talks. She’s also big on the value of that traditional benefit of joining a leading Business School’s MBA programme – the network you gain access to as a result.

The network – or rather, ‘putting in place the right people with which to connect,’ has, for Brogeras, been a clear highlight of what’s been on offer from Anáhuac since her graduation from the programme in 2014. ‘Through your network there is so much to leverage, in terms of perspective, mentoring, or just information you want to understand more about, relating to the sector you’re working in,’ she reasons.

Seven years on from her MBA programme, Brogeras says she’s in touch with fellow Anáhuac MBA alumni a couple of times a month. ‘I have one who was from the MBA, but from a couple of generations [cohorts] before me. We were together in the W50 programme – we’re very close and we even started doing some business together. Another friend is in Deloitte and has done a lot of stuff, so I reach out to him every now and then,’ she says by way of example, before adding that she remains in touch with people from the Harvard and EADA programmes she attended at the time of her MBA.

A couple of times a month is also the average frequency with which the School facilitates a point of interaction for alumni, a get together, or other lifelong learning opportunity, according to Zamacona.

Such regularity seems particularly apt at a time of uncertainty for global business and society. The Covid-19 pandemic, for Brogeras, has certainly upped the need for MBAs to look at ways of upskilling and reskilling: ‘Now it’s hit us that we have to change the way we work and the way we
do business. Business models have changed considerably, so it’s very important for us to remain aware of where we might need to develop ourselves if we want to keep our jobs.’

This article originally appeared in Ambition – the magazine of the Association of MBAs (AMBA).

May 10, 2021June 28, 2023

Management education’s approach to sustainability is broken – here’s how to fix it

Bamboo bridge over a river in a hot tropical jungle. Business Impact article image for management education's approach to sustainability is broken- here's how to fix it.

Management education’s approach to sustainability is broken – here’s how to fix it

The true meaning of sustainability has been distorted and business schools are as much to blame as big business. Lars Moratis and Frans Melissen offer a three-pronged path towards a better approach for those in management education

Over the past decades, business schools have been heavily criticised for neglecting their societal role – both from within the institution and by outside stakeholders. Often-heard critiques have targeted business schools as pursuing a too narrow and rigid scientific model of management, teaching capitalism as the only form of organisation to their students, and surrendering to rankings and the market.

Others have accused business schools of being complicit in the wave of corporate fraud scandals that took place around the tum of the century and have pointed at their role in the 2007-2011 financial crisis. One 2009 research paper from Temple University’s Robert Giacalone [now at John Carroll University] and Donald Wargo even posited that business schools were at the roots of the global financial crisis because they promulgated theories, such as profit maximisation and materialism, that made it easy for business managers to eschew ethical behaviour in favour of short-term profits.

Dubbed ‘academies of the apocalypse’, business schools suffered an existential crisis and were urged to reflect on their societal role. An important outcome of the resulting soul-searching efforts was that business schools across the board increased their attention to business ethics, CSR, and sustainable business. Their efforts to integrate these topics into management education have ranged from offering electives and mandatory standalone modules to making these topics part and parcel of foundational strategy, marketing, and management courses.

The next crisis: conveying the wrong message

Now, business schools do not seem to be critics’ target of choice when looking for the causes of, and culprit behind, the Covid-19 pandemic – perhaps because the pandemic has manifested itself primarily as a health crisis and, by implication, it has been governments’ handling of the spreading virus that has been the news of the day since March 2020. While, at first, it may appear that all this has little to do with educating managers and business leaders, in reality it does – albeit not so much in terms of rapidly switching to online modes of delivering management education.

This becomes clear when reviewing business school faculty’s discipline-oriented interpretations of the business consequences of Covid-19, or the way they are overhauling curricula by emphasising the importance of risk management and changing their business models to demonstrate their relevance. In fact, the Covid-19 pandemic has catapulted business schools into an existential crisis yet again, and the silence about it is deafening, both by critics and business schools themselves. Moreover, sustainability is not part of the solution for this crisis – it is part of the problem.

The problem with management education’s provision of sustainability is that it has tended to convey the wrong message to students. For one, management students have been taught that corporate responsibility for sustainability is supra-legal, implying that what is not against the law, is neither unsustainable nor unethical behaviour. In addition, students are being taught that being profitable is a social responsibility in itself, if not the primary responsibility of business.

Pandemic parasitism

It may hence come as no surprise that online reservation platform, Booking.com, which has boasted billions in profits over the past few years and has brought back some $4.5 billion USD in stock in 2019, requested and received financial support from the Dutch government as part of the latter’s Covid-19 emergency stimulus package. In a similar vein, large companies in the fashion sector decided to cancel their summer collections, all in line with the contracts they have with factories in low-income countries that produce them, burdening the latter with the costs of massive numbers of unsold products. Within such narrow interpretations of responsible and sustainable corporate conduct, not behaving irresponsibly quickly becomes outright pandemic parasitism.

A second example can be found with Amazon. While launching a US$2 billion USD Climate Pledge Fund in June 2020, Amazon apparently failed to provide for adequate protective measures for its warehouse employees to ensure safe and sanitary working conditions during the pandemic. In the same period, according to a Financial Times report, the company boasted over US$400 billion USD in additional market cap and hired some 175,000 new employees to keep up with spiking online shopping.

For reputational reasons, companies may be keen to jump on board the climate bandwagon in order to prevent being labelled a laggard on today’s most challenging societal issue, but a healthy workforce and good employee relations (the ‘inner’ side of sustainability) are part of the same course – even though this may be far less visible to the public and not nearly
as mediagenic.

A more nuanced instance of pandemic parasitism is the online campaign that Unilever ran for its beauty brand, Dove, over the past months. The company used iconic images of worn-out nurses and doctors, marked by the protective equipment they had worn for hours and hours while treating Covid-19 patients – arguably intended to demonstrate that the company cares for these healthcare workers and to support the message that they provided free products for the pandemic’s heroes. Whereas this could easily qualify as opportunistic corporate behaviour and one could question why such an engagement would need to manifest itself as a brand campaign, management students are familiarised with such behaviour under the sustainable guise of cause-related marketing.

Teaching all too shallow conceptions of the roles and responsibilities of companies with regards to sustainability implies that business schools should share in taking the blame for such examples of corporate behaviour in times of social upheaval.

A deeper crisis: a culture of institutionalised exploitation

The existential crisis for business schools that the Covid-19 pandemic reveals runs considerably deeper than these examples, though. This becomes clear when Covid-19 is seen for what it is: a symptom of a systemic crisis. Essentially, the pandemic boils down to a deeply disturbed and unsustainable relationship between humans and nature that is fuelled by an obsession with growth and short-term economic gain, firmly rooted in a neoliberal worldview.

Central to this worldview is colonising nature, depleting natural resources, seeing human beings as production factors, reducing animals to raw materials, and seeing society as serving corporate interests. It is a worldview that propagates a culture of institutionalised exploitation. Privatising profits and socialising costs are the name of the game. Societal challenges are, first and foremost, business opportunities. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty are inevitable collateral damage. This worldview has become so normalised and pervasive in contemporary business culture – and reproduced by business schools – that it has distorted the true meaning of sustainability: ‘sustainability’ is no longer a form of social criticism or a notion that exemplifies the importance of building an ecologically sound and equitable society for current and future generations alike, but is framed within a political ideology that essentially runs counter to it.

No wonder that this has led business schools to adopt and create a language of popular sustainability newspeak that includes concepts such as ‘environmental profit and loss accounts’, ‘true pricing’, ‘ecosystem services’, ‘the business case for sustainability’, and ‘nature-positive economic recovery’. In fact, sustainability only seems to be acceptable when it has a business case, hence protecting the regime’s vested interests, be they: reducing operational costs; the ability to attract and retain talent; developing new markets; and/or building or restoring corporate reputation. This has given rise to an obsession with the concept of ‘green growth’ in business, government and NGO circles – a fallacy which revolves around ever-growing economies without fundamentally changing business models and economic models.

However, as Professor Steve Keen of University College of London’s Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security has recently argued, the neoclassical economics of climate change are appallingly bad, with economists being overly optimistic about the economic damage from climate change. As he writes in a 2020 paper in Globalizations: ‘If climate change does lead to the catastrophic outcomes that some scientists now openly contemplate, then these neoclassical economists will be complicit in causing the greatest crisis, not merely in the history of capitalism, but potentially in the history of life on Earth’. Speaking about catastrophic outcomes, the 2020 report, Fatal calculations: How economics has underestimated climate damage and encouraged inaction, concluded that ‘the economic damages by not acting may be so large as to be unquantifiable’. When that is the situation, why worry about building a business case? Additionally, despite policy rhetoric, there is no empirical evidence on resource use and carbon emissions that supports green growth theory.

How business schools can step away from current approaches to sustainability

With business schools being part and parcel of the factors that have caused the systemic crisis producing the Covid-19 pandemic and some of the pernicious corporate behaviour that emerged amid it, management education needs to take a radical step away from the dominant way it approaches sustainability. There are three courses of action in this direction that business schools should take:

1. Management education should make ‘critical studies’ a central part of its curricula

Through critical studies, students can scrutinise the assumptions that underpin what is considered to be ‘normal’ corporate conduct, successful business models, and contemporary business and society relationships. Critical scrutiny of these assumptions will also strengthen students’ understanding of existing power structures in economy and society and the political nature of sustainable development.

This may include studying degrowth – defined by economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel, in the book Less Is More – as a socioeconomic approach towards restoring the balance between the global economy and the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human wellbeing. Engaging in critical studies would also include a thorough reflection on the roles and responsibilities of business schools, the worldviews that govern their knowledge production and dissemination activities, and what direct and indirect impacts business schools have on society.

2. Management educators should stimulate their students’ moral imagination in order to envision new ways to address moral problems and find solutions for our world’s grand challenges

Moral imagination challenges us to build empathy and solidarity with those who might not be considered parts of our community – for instance, precarious workers, future generations, and natural ecosystems. This resonates with what philosopher, Mark Johnson, writes in his book, Moral Imagination, that we, ‘must be able to imagine new dimensions for our character, new directions for our relationships with others, and even new forms of social organisation’.

To develop this ability, creating and experimenting with new narratives about the role of business and society to ignite novel courses of action is crucial. Management educators should neither refrain from confronting their students with controversial opinions and stances, including those from other scientific disciplines, nor from initiating debate. Art can play an important role here, as it possesses the capacity to create meaning and stimulates us, ‘to see more, to hear more and to feel more of what is going on within us and around us. Art is shocking, provoking and inspiring’, as former MIT Sloan management professor, Edgar Schein wrote. Based on such insights, Slovenia’s IEDC-Bled School of Management has set out to integrate the arts into management research and teaching, exploring an arts-based pedagogy and artistic business learning inspired by poets, philosophers, architects, and dancers.

3. Business schools should engage in systemic activism

Systemic activism, as opposed to issue-based activism, recognises the complex and interconnected nature of modem problems and assumes that change is necessary on many levels. The way the Covid-19 pandemic has unfolded, touching virtually all realms of life, is a vivid illustration of this. As is the climate crisis, which has impacts on poverty, which affects gender equality, which affects education, which affects decent work, and so on. Moreover, research shows that the global north has contributed 92% of CO2 emissions in excess of planetary boundaries, while the global south, that will experience the worst consequences of climate breakdown, has only contributed 8%.

Systemic problems eschew single-issue solutions – they require a rethinking of economic, political, social, judicial, and cultural systems. Business schools should embrace the moral and political agenda that underpins the transition to a sustainable economic model and make campaigning for furthering that agenda their priority.

A deeply moral question

Of course, one could argue that business schools should take a neutral position towards challenges of a moral and political nature as ‘independent’ institutions that produce and convey management knowledge. It should be recognised, however, that taking a neutral position is also enacting a political agenda, particularly in the face of the rampant ecological and social breakdown, in which business plays an important role.

Sustainability is not a concurrent perspective on corporate strategy, but a deeply moral and political question about how we want to live. In any case, who would say that teaching and research are value-free? Discussions about the hidden agenda of management education should sound all too familiar to anyone working in a business school. Here, too, silence is violence. Business schools should push themselves to identify the leverage points for societal change – and given the fact that they are the proverbial spiders in the web when it comes to understanding the impacts of the role of business in, and on, society, this should not be too difficult. Management educators, in turn, should recognise the potential of activism as a source of rich learning experiences.

Business schools should acknowledge that because, as Indian novelist, Arundhati Roy wrote in 2020: ‘Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.’ We should enter the new reality as soon as possible. That cannot be done in silence. The post-pandemic business school is activist.

Lars Moratis and Frans Melissen are holders of the Chair in Management Education for Sustainability, a joint initiative of Antwerp Management School and Breda University of Applied Sciences. They are also co-creators of the concept of ‘sustainability intelligence’.

This article was published in 2020 in Th&ma Hoger Onderwijs and was adjusted for publication in Ambition (the magazine of BGA’s sister organisation, AMBA) before its appearance here.

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April 12, 2021June 9, 2021

What do students want and expect from the future of education?

The future role of technology and faculty, the importance placed in international study options, growing societal concerns, and perceived strengths and weaknesses in higher education – EDHEC Business School reports on a survey of students in France, the UK, US, India and South Africa

The pandemic has pressed Business Schools and universities to offer students online courses, generating questions about the role of the teacher, how knowledge is transmitted, and the importance of international study options.

The thoughts and perceptions of students in these areas and more were highlighted in EDHEC’s 2020 OpinionWay survey on the future of education, which collected the thoughts of more than 5,000 students across the UK, US, France, India and South Africa.

The future role of the teacher

Among the major transformations in higher education, the adoption of new technologies is seen as positive in the UK (94%), but also in France (87%), India (98%), US (92%) and South Africa (99%). All of the countries also agreed that the introduction of new technologies will change the way professors teach. However, there is a significant contrast among countries in terms of their perception of digital’s impact on the role of teaching staff and how they convey knowledge.

While 56% of French students think the primary role of educators tomorrow will be to hand down knowledge, students in the UK (51%), US (48%), India (55%) and South Africa (62%) think professors will focus more on teaching the right methods for self-learning through new technologies.

In response to the question of how knowledge will primarily be conveyed in the future, students in the UK (42%), US (44%), India (41%) and South Africa (55%) expect it to be mostly through the use of computers, tablets and smartphones. However, among French students, only 21% see education moving in this direction, whereas 41% think the future of knowledge transmission lies in a combination of augmented teaching staff, robots and humans.

What’s clear is that new technologies must help Schools deliver a rich education, giving students greater flexibility and allowing teaching staff to concentrate more on their students.

It is therefore not surprising that the survey revealed a strong belief that remote learning will become more prevalent. Tomorrow’s teaching will be much more than a physical place with a course and a teacher – Schools and universities need to position themselves as platforms and not just as campuses.

Social concerns are rising among students

The survey also shows a high level of interest among students in the social issues of tomorrow. Therefore, it is imperative that the higher education industry reflects on how education can adapt to meet this need.

Quite commonly, the first concern of students is social inequality, closely followed by the preservation of the environment. Regarding these two issues, the proportion of interest among students are relatively unanimous at between 39% and 51% in every country surveyed. Elsewhere, priorities differ. There is a strong desire to raise awareness of gender inequalities in France (40%) and India (30%) but the equivalent figure among UK students is rather lower, at 21%.

When asked how education can help raise awareness of environmental conservation, the top answer among students in the US (cited by 44% of respondents in that country), South Africa (43%), India (41%) and the UK (40%) is ‘by funding and helping projects to preserve the environment’. The most popular response among those in France (cited by 35% of respondents in that country) meanwhile, was ‘by adapting its programmes’.

Higher education and the challenges of a changing world

Overall, students in all of the countries surveyed have a positive image of higher education. They judge higher education as being able to cope with the multiple challenges that are shaking up the economic environment and, more broadly, our societies.

Among the perceived strengths of the higher education system are the diversity of courses on offer and the variety of subjects taught, which guarantees openness and adaptability for the younger generations. But students in all locations point out two areas for improvement: being more international and linking better with economies.

Unsurprisingly, there are some differences between countries. For example, professional integration into economies is seen to be an area of strength in the UK education system (cited as such by 75%), and the US system (cited by 72%). An area for improvement for the US, meanwhile, is accessibility – only 42% of students polled in the North American country think that the education system is open to the largest number of people. The equivalent figure among students in South Africa is comparable, at 40%. These rates are much lower than those expressed in the UK (60%), India (77%) and France (50%).

The possibility of expatriation during studies: an asset for students

Sadly, the Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically affected the number of international student exchanges that can take place, although what is reassuring is that the chance to study abroad during a course is still highly regarded among students and considered to be a real asset.

Of course, attitudes do differ. For example, around 30% of students in the UK and US think that spending part of their higher education course abroad is not a necessity, but this is only true for 13% of students in South Africa, 11% of students in France, and 9% of students in India.

Likewise, in response to the question: ‘Do you think that it is better for a student in your country to do all or most of their higher education abroad?’, students in France were almost unanimous – 85% gave positive responses. The equivalent figure among those in South Africa was also high, at 79%. However, the proportion of positive responses from those in the UK, US and India were markedly lower, albeit still high enough to conclude that studying abroad is deemed as being important.

Commentary from EDHEC Business School, France.

April 1, 2021June 9, 2021

The continuing quest for knowledge

Lifelong learning research from AMBA & BGA shows that more than a third of graduates have sought to continue their education beyond their studies, and outlines their areas of interest. David Woods-Hale reports

From quarantined students to a rapid migration to online teaching and learning, business education experienced its fair share of disruption in 2020.

Yet, during this tumultuous year, AMBA & BGA was able to carry out a 360-degree portfolio of research, looking at the perspectives of Business Schools, employers, students and graduates as they sought to acclimatise to the conditions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The research delved into the need for greater technological innovation – both in terms of course delivery and digital skills – and explored respondents’ views on how successfully the business education landscape is evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of stakeholders at all levels.

This section of the research focuses on the views of 2,110 MBA graduates, surveyed in the spring and early summer of 2020, on their satisfaction with their MBA and their continuing relationships with the Business Schools at which they studied, in relation to lifelong learning and their continuing development.

Graduate satisfaction, post-MBA

Graduates’ sense of satisfaction with their MBA qualification was gauged in an earlier part of the year’s research. Encouragingly, 71% of those polled were either ‘very satisfied’ or ‘fairly satisfied’ with the impact of their MBAs on their careers to date. At the other end of the scale, 10% were either ‘fairly dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’.

Following this, participants were asked for their opinion on the areas in which they believed the MBA had added the most value to their career prospects. Among respondents, 88% agreed that they have ‘gained substantially more skills to help them do business better’ as a result of completing the MBA. Meanwhile, 81% agreed that ‘the skills they learned during their MBA have helped them be more mentally resilient’, and 74% believed ‘they have been able to develop all the business-related skills they wanted’ as a result of completing the qualification.

In terms of salary expectations, graduates were less sure as to how far their MBA has made an impact. Just over a third (23%) neither agreed or disagreed that ‘they felt equipped to reach the salary they wanted to achieve in the future’ – and 11% actively disagreed with this statement.

When the sample was segmented to only include the findings for MBA graduates that had completed their qualification less than a year before taking the survey, the results revealed a higher level of satisfaction, compared with the rest of the sample. In all the areas measured, recent graduates are either one or two percentage points higher in agreement that they had achieved the outcomes listed, on account of completing their MBA programme, than those that graduated more than a year ago.

Survey participants were also polled on the difference that their MBA made to them in terms of their behaviour in the workplace. The top answer, cited by 68% of MBA graduates, was ‘I was more conﬁdent about myself’, followed by ‘I was better at resolving problems by ﬁnding new solutions’ (62%), and ‘I was more prepared to work in a highly competitive environment’ (58%).

‘If I were to do an MBA again…’

Graduates were asked: ‘On reflection, if you were to do an MBA again, which of the following aspects would you like to see more of, or improved?’ and were provided with options ranging from ‘better quality of teaching’, to ‘more confidence building’.

Overall, the largest proportion of respondents (54%) said they would have liked ‘more networking opportunities’; 37% would have liked ‘more knowledge and skills specifically to help them start a new business’; 34% would have liked ‘more content on how to run a profitable business’; and 31% would have liked ‘content that was more appropriate to the industry in which they work’. At the other end of the scale, the smallest proportion of respondents (22%) would have liked ‘better quality of teaching’. In an open-ended question, graduates were then encouraged to share other thoughts as to what they would like to see more of in their MBA programmes, if they were to study for the qualification again.

Answers were diverse, but responses comprised the following:

• Case studies that inspire students to find solutions and help in developing a way of thinking.

• More practical case studies with a current or recent focus, relevant to today’s and future industry needs.

• More information about new disruptive businesses.

• To shed more light on current local and global challenges, and how to
handle them.

• More technological updates and a means to learn how to improve
business skills in such a fast-paced technological environment.

• Equip me to manage jobs that don’t yet exist and to look more into the future.

• Develop emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence.

• More practical experience of running an SME, or starting an SME.

• Greater oversight of managing a business’ finances.

• The reality of the job market and how to understand that an MBA doesn’t put you at the top of the food chain.

Remaining ahead of the skills curve

Business changes continually, as do individual career paths, so in a volatile world MBAs must keep abreast of evolving trends and issues constantly, and make sure they are nurturing and enhancing the skills they need continuously, in order to succeed in their career trajectories.

With that in mind and considering these postgraduate reflections, Business Schools have an opportunity to remedy knowledge gaps in their alumni by keeping contact with graduates and offering access to lifelong learning in a variety of ways.

The survey therefore sought to find out graduates’ views on the subject of lifelong learning as well as the means and frequency with which they are currently accessing it from their alma mater, as well as other Business Schools and further providers in the market.

To start off with, participants were asked if they had accessed any lifelong learning opportunities through the Business Schools from which they graduated. Lifelong learning opportunities were defined as courses, modules and other initiatives related to MBA study that graduates can complete or attend after completing their MBA and throughout their careers. Just over a third (34%) of participants had accessed lifelong learning post-MBA from their own institution.

Participants were then asked to share some information, in open-ended questions, about the nature of the lifelong learning options they had accessed. Formats cited included executive education programmes, masterclasses and alumni weekends, while topics cited included ethics, presentation skills, mentoring and negotiation.

Satisfaction with lifelong learning to date

Considering the myriad of courses and lifelong learning initiatives in which MBA graduates had partaken, the survey moved on to examine their levels of satisfaction with the options accessed.

Almost three quarters of alumni who had taken part in postgraduate lifelong learning opportunities from Business Schools said they were either ‘very satisfied’ (32%) or ‘fairly satisfied’ (41%) with what they had completed or attended. Less than 3% reported dissatisfaction with lifelong learning provisions undertaken.

Areas of interest for continued learning

Graduates were subsequently asked which subjects they would be most interested in, if their Business Schools were to offer additional management programmes to its MBA alumni.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the rapid evolution of the technology sector, MBA graduates are most interested in tech-related refreshers. The most popular topic cited by respondents was data analytics for managers (47%) closely followed by digital strategy (45%). Other popular topics among survey participants, included strategy execution (42%) global leadership (41%) and global strategy (39%).

Topics and modules that are most commonly core elements within traditional MBA programmes were of less interest to the survey sample as a whole, in terms of postgraduate lifelong learning or refresher courses. Less than a fifth were interested in completing additional management programmes with a focus on economics (19%) supply chain management (17%) strategic HR management (16%) business ethics (16%) statistics (15%) or accounting (12%).

Survey participants that selected ‘other’ were prompted to share what they would like to learn more about in their pursuit of lifelong learning. Answers put forward mirrored some of the courses that other participants had already completed (as evidenced earlier in the report), with suggestions encompassing diversity, project management, philosophy, presentation skills, crisis management, financial modelling, conflict resolution, game theory, branding and design, as well as culture and intercultural business.

Conclusions

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that business continuity and success depends on leaders who know what they want to achieve and understand how they can make a difference in the world.

In conditions that remain volatile and uncertain, businesses are crying out for a new breed of leader to future-proof economies and innovate through complexity. This new breed of leader needs people skills, as well as focus – and this presents Business Schools with the challenge of developing these game-changing traits and relevant skills both while studying on a degree programme at the School and – as this survey confirms – throughout their future careers and lives. This challenge provides an opportunity for traditional business educators – Business Schools – but also for the corporate world and other training providers, who represent growing competition to Schools’ provision of executive and custom education. With adaptive learning and AI also emerging, ‘business as usual’ is no longer sustainable. Traditional Business Schools cannot continue without embracing fundamental change.

Having said that, this piece of research demonstrates that graduates, for the most part, are satisfied with their MBA experience, hold a high opinion of what their School has offered them after their graduations, and have ambitions to continue to grow and hone their skills.

The test which the Business School community will have to collectively pass is to take this thirst for ongoing development and compete – or collaborate – with the corporate world strategically, effectively and quickly.

This article has been adapted from a feature that originally appeared in Ambition – the magazine of the Association of MBAs (AMBA).

March 29, 2021April 28, 2023

Strategy is not just for organisations

People need to plot their course for the future as much as firms, and using the same processes deployed by organisations can help develop your career strategy, says Saïd Business School’s Kathryn Bishop

Sarah works in the head office of a UK retailer, and has been frantically busy over the last few months, as her employers have moved their business online. They’ve made rapid changes, opening up new distribution and delivery methods and investing heavily in web design and data collection. This was all new to them – and to Sarah, too. She has had to learn fast to oversee these new developments, and work closely with people in partner organisations whom she has never met and whose work she doesn’t really understand. It’s been a demanding year, and it doesn’t look as if things will ever go ‘back to normal’, or return to the way they were.

As we come out of the pandemic, Sarah is wondering what to do next – and so are her employers.

She has proved to herself that she can adapt and pick up something new quickly – and this could help her to make a transition into completely different role. Could this be the right time for her to pursue her interest in film, maybe by working for a media distribution or streaming business? Or should she stay where she is? After all, online retail is here to stay and there will be plenty of new developments in the months ahead.

Sarah needs to plot her course, decide whether to make a move and to time it to best advantage. And that’s precisely what organisations will need to do, as consumer behaviour continues to change.

Defining new strategies

Strategy teams inside organisations are gearing up for the work ahead, researching new market trends and devising possible new operating models. They are also thinking about the right time to implement these plans.

So, as they sharpen their pencils and get to work, there are parallel questions for each of us: what are you going to do next? Where do you want to work in the next few years? Is this the right time to change employers or even to move into self-employment? And if you are forced into making some changes because of post-pandemic pressures, how will you decide what to do?

Applying strategy ideas to yourself

This is the what, when and how of strategy: what to offer the market, and when – and how best to make these changes. There’s a why, too: has the organisation’s purpose, its reason for being, changed in this new context? All those questions apply to Sarah, and to all of us, as we try to manage our working lives for the next few turbulent years.

‘Strategy’ is a word with multiple definitions but here’s one: ‘a set of guiding principles which when communicated and adopted in the organisation generates a desired pattern of decision making.’ Having our own set of guiding principles will make the next few years easier to navigate.

Start with a focus on the present, and then look forward

For individuals, these principles come from your view of both the present and the future: where are you now, and where do we want to be? To develop your own strategy for you, start where organisations typically start: look at your current skills and resources and see what’s working well now, and what’s not going so well.

Add to that a view of your ideal future – where do you want to be in five or 10 year’s time? – and you will have a much better basis for deciding on your next step. For example, Sarah might conclude that her aim is to be promoted into a much more senior role and that therefore she’d be better off capitalising on her current experience and networks and staying where she is.

It’s easy to ask these questions about your possible future options, but they are often hard to answer. The tried-and-tested strategy processes used by organisations can help you develop your own answers, so that you are ready to make the choices and seize the opportunities which lie ahead for all of us, as we move into our next normal.

Kathryn Bishop is an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and Chair of the Welsh Revenue Authority. She is also the author of Make Your Own Map: Career Success Strategy for Women (Kogan Page) – written for women, but containing ideas that will work for everyone.

BGA members can benefit from a discount on Make Your Own Map, courtesy of the Book Club. Please click here for details.