Ashridge Business School MBA
Helping Students To Be Alexandra Skinner speaks to Kai Peters » Introduction
Q
You have the ‘triple crown’ of accreditations from AMBA, EQUIS and
the AACSB, a great honour and something that less than one per cent of management schools can lay claim to. What does this mean for your students and how does this enhance your programmes?
These accreditations are rigorous processes that involve assessment of numerous aspects of the school and its programmes. Typically, this involves the business school submitting an in-depth self-analysis report for scrutiny to these bodies, followed by a visiting panel and the consequent interviewing of current students, staff, alumni, corporate clients and employers. Together, these accreditations demonstrate the high quality of our activities – both in the UK and worldwide. For example, AMBA accredits programmes of study, chiefly MBAs.
AACSB looks at all academic programmes. EQUIS looks at all programmes as well as executive education. Benefits arise in a variety of ways. The self-assessment process brings Ashridge’s academic community together to reflect on our performance, and to define targets for coming years. Peer reviews allow us to benchmark our programme against other high quality programmes. Finally, the actual accreditation communicates the quality of our MBA programme portfolio to candidates around the world and tells employers of the high standards at Ashridge. As competition for the best students intensifies, endorsement by accreditation bodies is a must if a business school wants to be known as a leading institution that delivers excellence. KAI PETERS
Q
Ashridge Business School aims to develop managers’ knowledge,
skills, behaviours and practices in order to enhance their leadership potential, personal success, that of their organisations and of wider society. Please can you further expand upon how this is brought into your pedagogical approach?
Through the Ashridge MBA and our other programmes our students learn how to make changes and get results. We are focused on helping our participants discover how to find real answers to the challenges they face in business today. Our MBA has been recently redesigned to provide an integrated approach to learning. The programme is centred around five key themes of the global business environment, managing the organisational lifecycle, creating value, business in society and leading change. The themes are underpinned by a mastery of the three fundamentals of people, performance and processes. All our MBA programmes go beyond theory by giving participants the opportunity to put into practice all they have learned via a ‘live’
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