business schools Archives - GlobalFocus

Kai Peters and Howard Thomas wonder how long business schools can survive the growing complexity of their industry Increasingly, universities and, relatedly, business schools have become more complex and complicated – with multiple activities, multiple locations and multiple audiences. For example, state-wide higher-education systems exist across many US states including California, Texas, Virginia and Illinois…

How a leading Hong Kong business school responded to both social and health crises. By Tam Kar Yan The COVID-19 pandemic has forced extensive experimentation with online teaching globally. Such experimentation started earlier in Hong Kong than in many other regions due to the social unrest in late 2019. This was followed closely by the…

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed our world. And though the preparation, rapid response, and early vigilance of the universities and the government in Singapore was admirable. Richard Smith looks at the challenges still ahead After noting the early actions in January, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that Singapore was the “Gold Standard” for managing…

The experience of Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), in India in facing the disruptions caused by COVID-19 by Harivansh Chaturvedi, Ajoy K Dey and Nimisha Singh The sudden and disruptive nature of COVID-19 rendered the famous quote of the Chinese general and military strategist Sun Tsu that: ‘The supreme importance in war is to…

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…

What_digitalisation_means_for_universities

Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger explains how one of Europe’s leading universities is surfing the rising tide of digitalisation. The process of digitalisation has evolved rapidly. Early on, digitalisation was often limited to converting analogue data to digital media (from vinyl records to CDs, for example). Today, however, the discussion about digital transformation revolves around concepts such as…

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…

Intentional_impact

Paul Beaulieu explains how, in response to a new wave of social demands, business schools should adopt a more comprehensive and responsible social engagement. This may pave the way for the emergence of a new generation of business schools. A new wave of social pressures and requests is infusing the higher-education milieu. Around the…

Living_with_sustainability

Percy Marquina outlines how a leading business school in Peru embraced sustainability. Peru is the fifth-top ranked country in entrepreneurial activity in the world according to the Global Entrepreneurship Report 2019. This level of entrepreneurship is nourished by the strong cultural roots and characteristics of its inhabitants, who are in a constant search for…

What_should_business_schools_be_for

Howard Thomas and Kenneth Starkey report on a new initiative that looks to business schools to re-orient themselves to a challenging new future. Much has been written about the future of the university, diagnosing management and business education either as a symptom of the decline of higher-education values or as a tonic for those…

A_new_B_in_B_schools

André Sobczak urges businesses schools to embrace sustainability. In January 2019, Audencia Business School in Nantes, France, hosted a new year’s event of the association of responsible business leaders in Western France. More than 200 CEOS from local SMEs focused on the forthcoming French legal status for “companies with a mission” that is largely…

Ulrich Hommel and Ben Woods argue that business schools should look beyond conventional risk management systems to the strategic build-up of organisational resilience Business schools (and their parent universities) have made significant strides in recent years towards establishing sound risk management systems. They are more proficient in defining their appetite and tolerance for risk and…

Marianne Lewis argues that deans need to adopt a ‘paradox’ approach towards the tensions involved in leading a business school Tensions pervade schools as they do industry, wider society and our personal lives. Consider a common priority list of a business school dean: Build an academic institution that creates knowledge, inspires learning and impacts practice…

The contemporary purpose of a business school is to develop and enhance the individual’s and the collective’s abilities to innovate. That means not merely creating, inventing, and imagining but also commercialising products and services and contributing to new theoretical knowledge. More speci cally, to achieve positive impact the role of business schools is to create…

Johan Roos explains how Jönköping International Business School in Sweden is being reformed and reinvigorated. You are probably not very familiar with Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) or its Swedish name Internationella Handelshögskolan but our goal is that within five years you will be. Having become its Dean two years ago, I have been working…

It is one of the oldest and most common complaints – management schools are great at giving good advice to others but themselves rarely practise the management skills they preach. But it can be done. Loick Roche and Sabine Lauria explain how. Back in 2007 Robert Sutton, professor of management science at the Stanford Engineering…