BizDeansTalk- Deutsch

America v Europe, BizEd Alumni | - "Alumnus of both schools"

James Tatum, previous student of Dartmouth College and MBA Instituto de Empresa.

As an alumnus of both the American school system, namely Dartmouth College, and the MBA program at Instituto de Empresa perhaps I can provide a shareholder’s view to this fascinating conversation between the Deans...

America v Europe | Research | - "Comment on Dean Danos' post of June 17"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

At the end of his post Dean Danos raises the question: “What is the relationship between cutting edge research and relevant courses?” I think it’s important to ask ourselves the question: What exactly is cutting edge research? Traditionally, there has been a taxonomist effort to distinguish between academic and applied research, theoretical and clinical knowledge, speculative and pragmatic thinking. The tension between those two broad types of intellectual contributions has upgraded the status of academic research at the expense of applied studies. A recent article in HBR by Bennis and O’Toole How Business Schools Lost Their Way questions this conventional approach of how research should be conducted. Basically, they assert that business schools have adopted an inappropriate and ultimately self-defeating model of academic excellence because they assess their performance almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research. Their accusation is causing lots of debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Is it sound?

America v Europe | - "North American and European Models for Business Education"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Business schools across the globe have considerable similarities in curriculum design and courses taught. One reason could be that global businesses call for strong common threads in how accounting, finance, marketing and the other business fields are covered, or that the course materials are produced in a global publishing regime that has few boundaries, or even that most professors have similar training and there is significant communication between professors in a field.

One of the big areas of difference across regions is in the sources of revenues. Top North American schools have significant annual gifts and endowment incomes and high tuitions. North American state-supported schools also get government subsidies, and they too have moved to higher tuitions. European schools have a few examples where revenue sources are similar to North American top schools, but most are largely state supported, with annual giving, endowment income and tuition currently making up a smaller percentage.

Another area of considerable difference is in faculty focus, where most top North American schools' professors aim their research at scholarly journals and they are rewarded for refereed publications. In other parts of the world, there seems to be more emphasis on publications that are accessible to a wider practitioner audience.

I don't believe that the North American faculty model will change much any time soon, though economic pressures seem to demand at many schools the adding of adjunct faculty who do not do as much primary research. I think that most of the growth in management education will come from outside of North America, and I predict that those schools will employ fewer PhD's and more adjuncts, primarily based on cost considerations but also to achieve what is believed to be a more practical set of offerings.

Interesting questions for future discussion are: “What is the relationship between cutting edge research and relevant courses?” “Will faculty prestige continue to be identified with refereed publications?”

America v Europe, Current-Affairs | - "Venus and Mars"

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School.

Venus and Mars; is how some view European society and thinking as opposed to that of America (it’s debatable if that includes Canada or Mexico). This metaphor has been used to illustrate the different general abiding attitudes on opposing sides of the Atlantic vis-à-vis social issues, philosophy and religion etc. Does this same paradigm apply to management education?

Some differing cultural and structural features are at the root of this confrontation between the two different archetypes of American and European business schools. In America prevails a shareholder culture, universities rely heavily on the income generated by their endowments and the MBA market is the biggest and the most homogeneous worldwide. In Europe, there is a dominant stakeholder culture, management education is still very fragmented and there is a coexistence of various business school models. ( A difference of opinion | Economist.com 4/5th paragraph). If I were to choose a word to define higher education in Europe it would be “diversity”. The size of the American education market and the resources available to business schools result in more research-oriented faculties and in a more decisive role of a school’s brand name. As regards sources of revenue, business schools in our continent rely almost entirely on the revenues generated by their activities and, in the case of public universities, on state subsidies.

Let’s give credit to where credit is due: Management Education was invented in America. In fact, the first MBA in history was launched by Dartmouth University, my co-blogger’s stomping ground. However in Europe, the flourishing of business schools only occurred in the late 1950s. Many business examples demonstrate that being the pioneer does not necessarily ensure continuing as the benchmark in the long run. The Wright Brothers first flight heralded a subsequent US lead of the aviation industry for the rest of the century. However, Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturing consortium, has overtaken Boeing in the past years.(Financial Times: Boeing/Airbus)

Analogously, it seems that in the last decade European business schools have caught-up with their American counterparts and have lost their historical inferiority complex. Della Bradshaw, the renowned journalist of the Financial Times and co-blogger, might agree with me having written articles like European schools make a move up the table in her Business Education section.

Despite the two differing models of management education, the trend is, irreversibly, towards convergence: it is a consequence of globalisation. Will the descendent of Venus and Mars take more after its mother or father?