Vol.07 Issue 01 - '13 Archives

Languages and Communication: a New Challenge for Management Education

Jane Kassis-Henderson and Philippe Lecomte argue that globalisation means that communication is about more than learning a foreign language. Since the mid-1990s business schools have undergone major changes due to the globalisation of the higher-education market. These changes are characterised by the development of academic research, the process of internationalisation of campuses and faculty, and…

Progressive Teaching Ensures Business School Competitiveness

Teaching all too often receives a lower priority than research and funding. This is a strategic mistake, argues Torben Jensen, since better teaching is essential in order to future-proof business schools in the competition for accreditation, funds and talented students. At the School of Business and Social Sciences, a broad business school at Aarhus University…

African Futures

Derick de Jongh, Director of the Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, was the Chair of the EFMD Africa Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, last October. He believes that South Africa and the continent generally is on the verge of a huge explosion of growth, fuelled by abundant…

What Alumni Want

Alumni can be a great resource to help a business school’s marketing messages. But, says Andrew Crisp, they must be properly motivated to do so. As a high-flying executive in an international business with an MBA degree, what do you yearn for – reducedprice tickets to a theme park? Probably not, though that was the…

Rise of the Dragons

Jean-Paul Larçon and Geneviève Barré chronicle the development of Chinese management education and economic transformation since 1984. The 1980s saw the start of modern management education in China. To accompany economic reform the Chinese government launched an initiative with the specific objective of improving the quality and effectiveness of business management through the development of…

Fit for Purpose: Putting Sustainability into Practice in a Business School

David Grayson provides more detail on how Cranfield School of Management in Britain is incorporating sustainability. There has been an increasingly vocal debate in recent years about whether management education is fit for purpose. The publication of the 50plus20 report in June 2012 by an international group of business school academics published under the auspices…

No Pyramids in China

Cheng Siwei, one of China’s leading management education scholars, says that the country’s economic future depends on a flexible empowered workforce without organisational pyramids. Interview by George Bickerstaffe. Professor Cheng Siwei is one of China’s leading economic, financial and managerial scholars as well as a noted chemical engineer and expert in such esoteric areas as…

Globalising Students

Paul Danos describes some simple initiatives business schools can take to advance the globalisation of their students. Globalisation is one of those era-defining phenomena that demands the attention of anyone who wants to understand the world. Conveying that understanding is what business schools try to do day-in and day-out and thus there is no need…

Growing talent in growth countries

Novartis and EFMD share research and ‘best practices’ for developing and managing talent in emerging markets. Novartis Corporation and EFMD recently hosted a leadership and talent development workshop in Basel, Switzerland. The event brought together learning leaders from different industries and corporate business schools. Together they shared best practices for leadership and talent development in…

Towards a Coherent Portfolio of Quality

Chris Greensted explains how the three EFMD quality improvement systems (EQUIS, EPAS and EDAF) are now designed as a portfolio. The overall mission of EFMD is to act as a catalyst to promote and enhance, excellence in management development in Europe and worldwide. Given that there are reputedly more than 13,000 business schools in the…

The Business of Change

Business schools must change if they are to serve theirstudents and society well, says Garth Saloner, Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business. Just over a year ago Stanford Graduate School of Business in California took the unusual step of launching an institute aimed at poverty alleviation. When most people think about relieving poverty, the…

The Social Contract with Business: Implications for the MBA

Jopie Coetzee outlines his ideas for what an MBA could look like in the future. In 1987 Peter Drucker said that business scholars and business leaders will take 50 years to figure out the meaning of business as an organ of society. Taking up Drucker’s challenge was an eight-year safari of research, reflection and writing,…