Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.
The role of the Dean at a business school is tantamount to the responsibilities of a CEO in a company. Or so it is becoming, given the increasing expectations that different stakeholders of business schools have about their respective dean’s performance. A significant fact is, for example, that the descriptions of the intended profile in recent dean’s job vacancies emphasize managerial components over those traditional academic qualities. But do b-school deans actually distribute their time in analogous ways as CEOs do?
An interesting article ("Three-Year Forecast") published this year in Biz Ed states what b-school deans consider their strategic challenges for the future in parallel with their predictions about the future evolution of management education. The article includes an intriguing chart with data about what deans consider their three major pressures which they are facing as heads of their business schools. The results are the following:
Pressures on the Dean |
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(Source: 2004 AACSB International Strategic Management Survey)
From this chart it could be deduced that, on average, deans devote most of their time dealing with their faculty members. They also dedicate a significant slot of time to the search of new income for their schools: probably dealing with program managers, potential donors and public institutions –in those cases where the school is a recipient of subsidies. What surprises me is the uneven distribution of the reviewed deans’ time between the different internal and external stakeholders of the school. It is significant, for example, the weight given to the management of the external relations of the school. Would this be comparable to the priorities of CEOs?
Most of the opportunities for b-schools lie beyond their ivy-covered walls. This should have consequences in how deans deal with their pressures.
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