DeansTalk - business management education

Recruiting Competition Heats Up

First paragraph from article of the Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2007.

The M.B.A. job market has continued to heat up this year, resulting in multiple offers and heftier salaries for many lucky full-time graduates. Jeffrey Rice, executive director of career services at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, may have the best perspective on the recruiting scene because of his additional role as president of the M.B.A. Career Services Council. By keeping in touch with the council's members -- about 350 career-service officials and 40 corporate recruiters -- Mr. Rice closely monitors hiring trends.

M.B.A. Track columnist Ron Alsop recently talked with Mr. Rice about the bullish job ...

Podcast - CIO Roundtable Update

Following up on the information we posted about last week's roundtable in Prague on doing business in emerging markets, we spoke with Tuck professor Eric Johnson (right of photo) about the meeting, the main lessons learned, and his thoughts on how activities like this can inform future research and shape business school curriculum:

Click here to hear Professor Johnson's overview of the roundtable series, their choice of Prague as a loc ation and emerging markets as a topic, and the ways these sessions inform future research and teaching. (~4.5 minutes)

Click here to hear Professor Johnson summarize some of the main themes and take-aways from the Prague discussion. (~3.5 minutes)

Are American MBA textbooks the norm?

Dear readers, do you agree with this Indian Professor with reference to your own country?

The Times of India article:
"The lack of good Indian textbooks leads to students getting an 'American view' of management," said Vijay Kapur, professor of Marketing"

The American view of management is too bureaucratic, confrontational and rigid, with too much emphasis on the individual. This can lead to adverse consequences in an Indian scenario, which values moderation, relationship and trust.

Is this a fair comment?

New MBAs receive up to $92,360 to start

Bloomberg News - May 20, 2006, 1:06AM

Students finishing Master of Business Administration programs this year are being offered base salaries as high as $92,360 for the first year of employment, up 4.2 percent from the average $88,626 received by the Class of 2005, a new survey says.

More than two-thirds of jobs taken by MBAs in the Class of 2006 came with average signing bonuses of $17,603, up slightly from the previous year, according to the study released Friday by the Graduate Management Admission Council, a McLean, Va., research organization that administers the Graduate Management Admission Test.

After demand for MBAs declined in the softened economy that followed the 2001 terrorist attacks, employers and recruiters are now seeking the degree-holders to fill jobs in areas ranging from investment banking to marketing.

"The MBA continues to demonstrate its strong value proposition," GMAC President and Chief Executive Officer David Wilson said in a prepared statement. "In a knowledge economy, leadership and management demand a complex portfolio of skills and talents. A selective MBA program gives its graduate those skills."

Tags(clickable): GMAC

Biz Ed | - "The EQUIS view on multiple accreditation schemes"

Julio Urgel, Director of EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System)

Santiago Iñiguez's comment on new accreditation schemes provides an excellent occasion for me to contribute to this extremely interesting blog for the first time. The convenience of having the possibility to choose from different accreditation systems, each of which struggles to provide better overall contributions than the rest, is as desirable as for any other good or service. Can you imagine a world with just an auditing company? No need to describe the situation, right? The possibility of choice is always better than its opposite.

Tags(clickable): EQUIS ,  accreditation, Julio Urgel, AACSB

Biz Ed | - "Three innovating Business Schools"

Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.

I would like to take up the point Professor Iniguez makes about the increasing respectability of Executive MBA degrees and to ask why that might be.

Last week I was chairing a session at the EMBA Council meeting in Barcelona and in preparation for that I looked through my cuttings book at the articles I have written on the subject over the past decade.

What struck me forcibly was a series of articles I wrote exactly 10 years ago. The first was about Duke's Global Executive MBA, the second about Chicago setting up its European campus in Barcelona and the third about Kellogg's plans to set up a series of joint degree programmes around the globe.

I believe it was the innovation that these three schools showed a decade ago that has helped the EMBA degree become the degree of choice for many executives. By comparison, the style and format of most full-time MBA degrees has changed little in the past 50 years.

While the full-time degree has been designed for the benefit of faculty, the EMBA has been designed for the benefit of the participating executive. And it is clear that executives are prepared to pay through the nose for that.

Tags(clickable): europa,  Della Bradshaw, Duke, EMBA

Management Education | - "Strategy means choice"

Peter Lorange, IMD President.

In his contribution on 11 October, Kai Peters rightly states that schools that concentrate on the segments they can be successful in will surely do better than those who want to do everything.

I could not agree more. Strategy means choice. Not only in business but also in educational institutes. In the short term, choices that break with tradition may be painful but I firmly believe that in the long term they pay off. Of course, choices must be made consistently and must be based on a clear strategy, shared and supported by the whole institute.

IMD, our Lausanne-based International Institute for Management Development, focuses on learning for executives in international businesses and we continuously remind ourselves that that’s the business we are in. If we don’t, our clients will, as we have seen in the past!

Since 1993, IMD has tripled its income, has erased all its debt, continues to be self-funding, spends 25% of its cost base on research and development and attracts some of the world’s best faculty. Why? The only answer is: relevance for and focus on developing international businesses leaders, or in our own words, "real world real learning."

To stay relevant, we continuously check the value of our research, development and programs with our core customers--the 175 companies that make up our Learning Network. We meet these clients on an individual basis but also, twice a year, we invite them to our Business Advisory Council, a forum in which they give us input on their current business dilemmas and feedback on our activities. They help us revamp existing programs, test ideas for new programs and add to our research agenda. This means that our professors are challenged to continuously provide good research and development output and to speedily integrate fresh insights into programs. Their work must be relevant, first and foremost for our customers and second for their academic peers.

IMD has ruled out academic departments, tenure and title hierarchy and offers performance-based bonuses, all of this to be sure to create cross-disciplinary academic value that our clients can understand and appreciate. Our members of faculty value our flat organization and the freedom to work across disciplines.

Sometimes strategy means "No"

People have asked me why we do not have a PhD program. A PhD program calls for enormous amounts of resources, which we simply do not have. Above all we are not prepared to offer the many specialized courses needed for such a program. Nor are we prepared to supervise PhD students who ultimately turn out to be unable to meet IMD’s high standards. There are many places that are much better suited for a PhD program than IMD. However, we are systematically hiring Post-Doctorates, young academics who already have their PhDs and who have proven to be good. They work with our faculty on their research and the good news is that they deliver!

I have also been asked why we do not open a campus in Asia, like many of my colleagues have. We do have a research center in Shanghai, China, and we will soon open a second center in India, but we will not have an IMD campus in Asia. We believe that both Asian executives and executives from other places around the world are best served by one meeting place with maximum diversity. A place where they can meet professors and peers, exchange successes and failures and learn from a wealth of global, rather than regional, experience.

With its own approach to learning, IMD is perhaps unlike other business schools. While we are fully aware that our nonconformist model will not necessarily work for all executives or all companies, all the time, I do think it illustrates the need for all business schools--including IMD--to continuously pose this general question: "Who are our customers and how can we serve them best?" Even if the answer means saying no sometimes or making tough choices that break with traditions. Strategy means choice indeed and this may be more true today than ever!"

Management Education | - "Business School Segmentation"

Kai Peters, Chief Executive, Ashridge Business School

I've been reading through the comments that have been made in all kinds of directions, and some of the mail that has been sent to me about research and relevance in particular. I apologize up front for how long this is, but I think some clarity on the multiplicity of goals that can be ascribed to business schools are at the root of many of these debates. By clarifying a little, I hope to generate some reflection.

Managerial needs change over time. These changing needs have profound consequences for providers and consumers of business education, yet they are not sufficiently considered by the schools themselves in their provision of programmes nor in their selection of faculty. This lack of alignment is one of the causes of the soul searching which has been affecting business schools in the past few years, and which is exemplified through articles ranging from Mintzberg’s comments concerning the lack of a practice orientation, Pfeffer and Wong’s articles concerning misdirected and irrelevant research, Ghoshal’s criticism of the teaching of misguided free-market dogmatism, and Bennis and O’Toole’s critique of insufficient impact.

It is my belief that one can identify four basic ingredients within business education and that these components are required at different levels and with different intensities for managers depending on the career stages at which they find themselves. Schools which take these differing needs seriously can position themselves along a continuum of provision. There is a caveat, however. I do not believe that schools can easily serve all of the needs of participants across the whole range of career stages. To do so, schools must be large, and they will have profound challenges in faculty selection and faculty allocation. Few succeed.

Success in management comes from balancing these four ingredients. At a basic level, managers must be functionally competent. They must understand the fields of finance and accounting, marketing and strategy, IT and economics, operations and human resource management.

Staying the Course in Management Education

Yash Gupta, Dean of the USC Marshall School of Business, Robert R. Dockson Dean’s Chair in Business Administration

In much the same way that corporations are being driven to produce immediate returns for stakeholders, many management educators seem compelled to generate instantaneous responses to public criticism. As institutions specializing in intelligent management, we can’t afford the classic marketing mistake of knee-jerk reactions. Our schools are in business for the long haul and we must maintain the breadth of and integrity of our objectives. This doesn’t mean we accept current levels of achievement or that we resist change. Staying the course is rooted in a vision that bolsters and builds upon our unique strengths and hews to these fundamentals.

Leverage what we do best.

In their eagerness to respond to criticism, many business schools have tried too hard to act like businesses rather than acting like business schools that know and understand their mission and assets. Recently, business schools have imported ideas from the business community like hands-on learning programs, but without the benefit of theory. This is the wrong approach. Learning on the job is a centuries-old practice, but one the best business schools in the world cannot possibly match. In a business school, students are free to experiment and err without financial peril. Business schools should provide the "safe laboratory" to take concept and theory, convert them to strategies and tactics, and finally implement them for a "reality check."

Emphasize soft skills.

We are often told that the "soft skills" of leadership, teamwork, and swift decision-making are missing in business schools. Some have argued that these are un-teachable elements but I submit these can be taught and reinforced. We must add these elements to the classroom, not only as separate courses, but as fundamental themes.

Strengthen and expand the hard skills.

Even if we enhance our training in the soft skills, it’s still a given that no one wants fewer "hard skills. Beyond the basics – finance, accounting, marketing, etc. -- we must add a fundamental understanding of economics and international trade.

Broaden our entrance requirements.

Graduate education starts with the premise that entrants have absorbed the foundation of communications and mathematics needed for management. Business schools must broaden and raise entrance requirements. The singular stress on scores (e.g., GMAT), is dangerously narrowing the spectrum of managers we produce. At the same time, however, we must not turn aside applicants who lack outstanding leadership and teamwork backgrounds. If we accept so-called "soft skills" as essential to management, business schools must infuse each course with these skills

Add another dimension to case studies.

How can we compress the knowledge process? In effect, by smarter teaching. The case study approach has been our classic teaching tool but it needs drastic overhaul. Nearly a century old, it remains effective but at the same time is primitive. Technology, thoughtfully applied, can bring a new era to cases and the teaching methodology. Using simulations and computerized models to build three-dimensional, interactive laboratories will more realistically replicate the marketplace.

Integrate breadth of knowledge beyond the business school.

Classic business tools must be welded with fields too often dismissed as separate and exclusive of business -- the arts, humanities, history, environmental, political, and cultural studies. In the end, the top-flight managers are the individuals who can link "hard" and "soft" skills, and who possess a macro-understanding of the global environment.

Obviously, all of us want our business schools to be relevant and attuned to changing needs and environments. It is our opportunity—and indeed our obligation—to create educational experiences that exceed our "customers’" wildest dreams.

Bologna Process | - "What will the Bologna agreement mean for the MBA in Europe?"

Della Bradshaw, The Financial Times Business Education editor.

I was fascinated to read some of the comments made by German academics in Professor Danos's posting from his meeting in Germany. One question that really interests me about the Bologna agreement is what effect it will have on the MBA degree in Europe.

Professor Kieser from Mannheim University says that European governments assumed that under the new bachelor/masters system only 20 to 30 per cent of bachelor graduates would study a masters degree straight after their undergraduate programme.

So, what will happen to the other 70 per cent?

The traditional five-year degrees in continental Europe have always meant that most university students are 24 or 25 before they graduate with their first degrees. This means they are not eligible for the US-style MBA programmes at the age of 27 - the average age for entering an MBA programme - because they do not have the appropriate work experience.

If they enter the workplace two years earlier, will the MBA become an attractive option for them?