1 EFMD Global Focus | Volume 07 | Issue 01 2013
Volume 07 | Issue 01 2013
In focus Business schools are slowly, painstakingly (and often painfully) adapting their strategies and business models to cope with the new reality that is emerging from the financial crisis. Like ancient icebergs or glaciers they are creaking and groaning as they make the necessary adjustments. Articles in this issue of Global Focus (along with other matters) look at three key areas of this strategic change – globalisation, sustainability and the rise of a Chinese model of management education. In our cover story, “The business of change” (p08), Garth Saloner, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business, explains why the school has embraced sustainability as both a business objective and a teaching approach. “Some of the world’s biggest problems – education, environmental sustainability, healthcare, country governance, and access to food and clean water – are not just technical challenges; they are business, leadership, and management challenges,” he writes. “Those of us in the field of business education know that today’s students are eager to address these types of challenges.” Another American dean, the long-serving Paul Danos from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, also writes about the way his school is expanding and developing opportunities for students to experience globalisation first hand (p24). He concludes: “[T]wo of the most effective tools that can be used to globalise the learning experience relate to the most fundamental building blocks of a business school: its students and faculty. With students, the key is to not only assemble a diverse class but also to provide ample opportunity for the members of the class to share and learn from one another. With faculty, it is important to identify and hire individuals who are not only at the forefront of their respective fields, but also effective at eliciting and incorporating disparate viewpoints in the classroom.” Finally, another world-renowned dean, Professor Cheng Siwei of the Management School of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, offers his thoughts on the future of management education both in China and in the world (p28). He argues that the most important thing for the future in China is that it needs management based on people and on the creativity of people.
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First, he says, China must realise that, economically, people are its most valuable asset. Second, it needs to train people and raise their skills. (“There is no superior company without superior employees,” he says.) Third, it must set up common values across an organisation so that every employee can share them. We hope you find these articles and others in the magazine useful and entertaining.