Mentorship is also a way in which BGA encourages business schools to break new ground as they seek to make a positive impact on business and society. Once assigned, they help schools form a measurement plan that fits their specific circumstances and aims, using BGA’s continuous impact model (CIM). The CIM features six areas against which schools can measure their impact, from intent, graduate achievement and value creation to ecosystem, society and academic scholarship. It is designed to allow schools to focus on areas where they are best placed to specialise, while encompassing all the necessary attributes for meeting international standards of quality.
The underlying belief for Hedenberg is that other methods of accreditation can sometimes be too prescriptive in their criteria and that this might even hamper innovation and the development of alternative models in management education.
BGA, on the other hand, takes the view that there is no single destination offering impact and value to a business school’s stakeholders and no single path to get there.
Imagine, for example, an entrepreneurial-oriented business school with no formal degrees that instead offers bite-size courses taught largely by practitioners to small cohorts.
Such a school might find it hard to secure recognition from many established accreditation bodies, but BGA’s CIM model can be adapted and tailored to its unique set of circumstances and objectives as long as it can demonstrate the quality of its educational offerings and the impact on its intended audience with the help of the CIM.
As Hedenberg postulated in his presentation at the Latin America Conference, accreditation doesn’t need to be purely a case of “my way or the highway”. It can also be an opportunity to help broaden the possibilities of management education and better serve both the business sector and society in general.