business education Archives - GlobalFocus

What does it mean to have a ‘profession’? Ansgar Richter explores the evolution of the concept, and how business schools can develop future-proof education for professionals ‘To educate future generations of professionals’ is an important aim of many business schools. A significant proportion of their graduates end up in more traditional professions such as accounting…

Sotiris Karagiannis, Saša Žiković and Ivana Marinković discuss the demands and design of MBAs For almost two decades MBA programmes have offered up-to-date education on burning business topics while giving students access to prestigious networks with job opportunities. But as COVID-19 emerged, leading inevitably to paradigm shifts in numerous dimensions, businesses were forced not only…

As the world grapples with the COVID-19 crisis, a debate is arising across the globe regarding university education and, more specifically, management education. By Samir Dani, Colin Rigby and Emma Bonfiglio The higher education sector has worked rapidly throughout the crisis to adopt a digital learning environment to enable continued learning. This emergent approach has…

Exploring the new relevance of innovative teaching formats for sustainability education in business schools by Carmela Aprea and Laura Marie Edinger-Schons Today we are facing urgent sustainability issues like climate change, species extinction, or food and water scarcity which threaten no less than our very existence as humanity. Despite some reductions in CO2 emissions, recent…

While backward design has been widely accepted as the ‘right’ way to proceed when designing new courses or units, John Mullins and Arun Pereira argue that, for some business schools, an alternative approach, which they call effectual design, may potentially be a superior approach to course design It has been widely accepted in recent years…

During a global pandemic when business school leaders are preoccupied with virtual learning, budgets, and student bubbles, where do doctoral programmes feature on the list of priorities? Ask Julie Davies, Nicola Palmer, Elena Braccia, Karen Clegg and Mark Smith Far from being the Cinderella of business schools, we believe that doctoral researchers are key to…

“Formulista, cautelosa, aburrida e ilegible”. Dennis Tourish lo encuentra difícil entender los trabajos de investigación de la gestión de empresas

Hacia un modelo liberal de educación gerencial Howard Thomas defiende la integración de las artes liberales en la educación gerencial, de modo que el énfasis de los planes de estudio existentes en la perspicacia tecnológica y analítica se equilibre con las aptitudes de pensamiento crítico e inteligencia ética necesarias para el juicio administrativo

Peter Lorange dice que la introducción de una mayor flexibilidad y agilidad en la educación ejecutiva y permitir a los expertos, instructores, colaboradores, profesores y estudiantes aprender de forma simultánea, unos de otros, son los ingredientes esenciales en la construcción de un futuro seguro para la educación en gestión

La Academia SDG: Una iniciativa global que ofrece educación para avanzar en los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (SDG). Florencia Librizzi informa

One thing the world is not short of at the moment is predictions. Stuck at home for recent months, many people have had a lot of time to think about the future of business education, and much more besides. So why would you want to read another set of predictions? Seven years ago, EFMD and…

Business education worldwide has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Martin Lockett looks at the challenges faced by business schools and the opportunities that are now emerging No one imagined that 2020 would be a year of massive disruption in business schools. But as the year started, the first cases of COVID-19 were becoming public…

Strategy education is under siege. It is heavily criticised both from outside and from within. As a way forward, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink makes the case for teaching integrative strategy methods and illustrates what such methods could look like The traditional way of teaching strategy is to make students learn a significant number of analytical frameworks —…

Boston University’s Questrom School of Business is creating an innovative approach to identifying co-operative ways to improve business education. By Paul Carlile, Steven Davidson and Howard Thomas The Business Education Jam Global Symposium was held at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, in November 2019. This unique collaboration brought together 31…

Johan Roos says we must learn how to make best use of the input of academics and scholars to recover from an unprecedented pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic is testing every thread in the fabric of humanity – our personal lives, families, jobs, communities, companies, nations and the entire world as we know it. What is…

The SDG Academy: A global initiative offering education to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Florencia Librizzi reports Business school education and sustainable development Sustainable development is without a doubt, the greatest challenge of our time. In 1987 the Brundtland Report Our Common Future introduced the concept of sustainable development as “…development that meets the…

Agenda 2030 is the new global roadmap for public policies. Alain Tord explains The 2030 Agenda was adopted by heads of member states in September 2015 at the special summit for sustainable development. It features 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted by 193 states, the universal programme for sustainable development addresses environmental, social and economic…

Educational institutions globally are facing major challenges, a function of tectonic shifts in the techno-socio-economic landscape and the digital revolution occurring in Industry 4.0, ushering in the shift from an industrial to a knowledge economy. Atish Chattopadhyay explains what might be in store IFIM Business School, Bangalore, India, in association with National Human Resources Development…

Are business schoolsdoing enough

What do you mean by a “sustainable future”? A sustainable future is one where the demands on the business leaders of our highly complex and interlinked world will be reconciled with the demands of “new” citizens (among them the Millennials and their successor generations – many of whom might indeed be business leaders in…

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Diversity is not just about gender and nationality it is also about the reasons that students study an MBA. Stuart Robinson explains. The drive for diversity is a key issue for many business schools. Most business school professionals would agree that it is important to have a diversity of gender, nationality and socioeconomic background…

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Howard Thomas argues the case for integrating the liberal arts into management education so that the existing curricula emphasis on technological and analytical acumen is balanced with skills of critical thinking and ethical intelligence necessary for managerial judgment. My focus here is on undergraduate business programmes, even though the plea for the stronger adoption…

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‘Formulaic, cautious, dull and unreadable.’ Dennis Tourish struggles to understand management research papers. Many decisions in organisations are taken in spite of evidence that they do more harm than good. Consider the use of stock options as a compensation strategy. Originally intended to align the behaviours of managers with those of shareholders, unintended consequences quickly…

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At the EFMD Special Interest Group (SIG) “Innovation in Leadership” kick-off in March 2018, I called for our group to help innovate leadership in the context of rapid digital transformation and ambiguous globalisation. A year later, the SIG facilitators, Nigel Paine and Roger Delves, note that the challenges faced by the 12 companies involved…

Flexible_future

Peter Lorange says that introducing greater flexibility and agility into executive education and allowing experts, instructors, contributors, professors and students to simultaneously and easily learn from each other are essential ingredients in building a secure future for management education. Higher education in business and management has functioned in more or less the same way…

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Business schools face increasing calls to expand their focus to educating for personal strength and well-being. Jeroen Kraaijenbrink outlines a nine-step programme that helps students—and staff—deal with the stress they face in today’s society. Ever since their creation around a century ago, business schools have had a strong focus on helping students develop their…

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As more and more Chinese students study internationally, business schools must look at how they enable graduates to obtain jobs in China. Martin Lockett and Xuan Feng look at the challenges facing students, employers and business schools A decade or two ago, foreign graduates from mainland China were rare and highly sought after by…

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Ad Scheepers identifies good practices in the use of Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET). Student evaluations of teaching (SET) are widely used in higher education to assess course and teaching quality. SETs serve as an information source for teachers to be able to improve their teaching, provide information for students to select courses and…

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Thomas Bieger and Ulrich Schmid outline a straightforward approach to dealing with the increasing challenge posed by print and online media Excessive travel expenses; professors with conflicts of interest between private consulting and research; misconduct of alumni in management positions; offenses against scientific integrity; students questioning the political correctness of professors in classroom discussions. These…

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For those involved in STEM research and the publishing industry, the last year has been all about Plan S and its potential impact on both constituencies. But what are the consequences, unintended or otherwise, for business schools and their research programmes? Simon Linacre lifts the lid on Plan S and what might be in store…

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Chris Pitelis calls for a re-imagining of business education and business schools so they can help build a better and brighter future. Business education is relatively young, about 140 years old. It started as a case study-based approach with little by way of conceptual foundations. Nevertheless, it has become very successful. Circa one in…