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EFMD
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The Economist provides Europe’s business leaders, current and future, with timely insight that helps them to succeed in today’s complex global marketplace.
please contact Philip Wrigley on +44 (0) 20 7830 7000 or [email protected].
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“My schedule makes me travel all around the country and even globally for more than
200 days of the year,” he says. “During this time, I get to meet some of the most successful
and influential minds in the country. Some of the corporate organisations I am in
touch with are UBS, Tata Group, Maersk-Line, HDFC, Coca-Cola, HSBC, Standard
Chartered, Accenture and others. I am currently working with an annual budget of
more than $200,000 and have a team of three talented indiv iduals working with me.”
Mr Gupt thinks the experience he is getting in AIESEC w ill help him to reach his
future goal – to work with one of the major global consultancy firms.
“I feel the consultancy field has a great future and this surely is the right t ime to enter
it,” he says. “With my experi ence in AIESEC I feel I am on t he right track.”
e large network that AIE SEC has developed makes it quite easy to get in touch
with one of i ts lo cal ch apters, which are current ly pres ent in more tha n 1,100 leading
universities across the world.
Students can access a large pool of opportunities, starting from th e global internship
programmes in technolog y, management, education or development in any of
AIESEC’s 100-country networks to being a part of global teams working on issues
such as entrepreneurship, HIV/AIDS, CSR or ot her current issues in society.AIESEC memb ers also lead teams that organise some of the world’s biggest youth
forums, facilitate the global internship programme and are in touch with some of t he
leading organisations in the corp orate and non-corporate sectors. Some of the leading
organisations that AIESEC currently works w ith on a global level are Pw C, UBS,
Alcatel-Lucent, DHL, TCS, Inbev and ABN AMRO among oth ers. All of these
organisations take on AIESEC interns through the global internship programme
to help with the management of their core processes throughout the year.
“We rely on AI ESEC to bring great talent to our organisation, a company t hat does
business just about every where in the world. Our leaders benefit from the insight
AIESEC interns bring to taking programmes we run in certain countries to ot herparts of the world,” says Microso’s Mr Bean.
e international network that AIESEC ha s developed over the past 60 years has
taken the association from war-torn Europe to all regions of the world, including
most recently the Middle East and North Africa. e original intention of fostering
“cultural understanding” between European countries a er the war is still largely in
place, though on a much big ger scale. Over the past couple of years A IESEC chapters
have been opened in Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Afghanistan and Iran to name only a few.
Jonas Li lienthal, part of the tea m lead ing the expansi on of A IESEC to Ir an, says that
“it is important for AIE SEC as a non-political org anisation to enhance contact
between Iran and the rest of the world”.
Challenging the way indivi duals see the world is one of AI ESEC’s principles and
allows youth to open their e yes to the world beyond what is merely presented to them
in the media and to be more global ly aware citizens. In doing so, AIESEC members
and alumni are making a positive impact on societ y – role modelling change agents
for the future.
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EFMD
One of the themes running through this issue of Global Focus is leadership – how to
inculcate it into students on programmes such as the MBA degree, how to teach it to
practising managers and how to ensure that leadership is exercised in a responsible way.
A remarkable unity of opinion about leadership is emerging – that it must be global
and that it must be responsible.
In an interview on page 8, Dipak Jain, Dean of Kellogg Business School in America,
argues that the key f unction of the MBA now is not just to teach business skills butto create responsible global leaders, echoing the report on page 26 by Anders Aspling
and Mark Drewell on two years of the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative.
And John R Ryan, the new President and CEO of t he Center for Creative Leadership,
one of the world’s top leadership training institutions, says on page 22 that CCL’s new
Advancing Global Leadership programme is a response to t he growing challenges of
leadership in a global societ y.
“People who are involved in global leadership positi ons are today facing greater
complexity in their roles, whether it’s at the mid-level or hi gher in their org anisations,”
says Mr Ryan. “And they need to be able accurately to perceive new situations they
face, culturally as well as organisationally, with the people they interact with, and theyhave to adapt their leadership style accordingly.”
Finally, it is clear that tomorrow’s leaders are also taking the initiative themselves. On
page 62, Michelle Gallant, Vice-President Communication for AIESEC International,
the world’s largest student organisation, describes how a leadership development
platform for youth that AIESEC runs, called the AIESEC Experience, off ers practical
opportunities to lead a team, project manage and work in an international environment.
With over 23, 000 memb ers from around the wor ld AI ESEC off ers over 5,000
leadership experiences each year at the local, national, regi onal and international level
that help develop leadership skills but also cultural sensitivity, team management and
entrepreneurial skills.
Global, responsible leaders are essential to the f uture of our soci ety. Perhaps we can
take some comfort from the many initiatives featured in this issue.
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In focus...
Talking shopExcellence in Practice Award 2008New Chair for E UALEURAM 2008 ConferenceEFMD Advisory Services 2008
Life at the top Dipak Jain, Dean of Kellogg, talks to George
Bickersta ff e about business school governance, thefuture of the MBA, demographics and staying ontop of the rankings
Making the most of IT Martin Curley describes an attempt to develop
an industry-wide model to assess the business valueof IT
Do business schools need formal quality
assurance systems? Yes they do, says Chris Greensted. But they need
to be done properly
Taking the lead John R Ryan, President and CEO of the Center
for Creative Leadership, one of t he world’s topleadership training institutions, talks to GeorgeBickersta ff e
A leading force
Anders Aspling and Mark Drewell report ontwo years of the Globally Responsible LeadershipInitiative
Entrepreneurship and European growth Tea Petrin outlines why fostering entrepreneurship
is the key to maintaining and developingcompetitiveness within Europe
Is the world open? Richard Straub argues that ‘openness’ is the defining
quality of 21st century globalisation
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Leading the players in cultural changeTo manage culture you have to understand whoplays what role in sustaining, c hallenging andshiing i t says Sharon Turnbull
e role of MBA programmes indeveloping corporate executives
Ulysses Kyriacopoulos outlines how business
schools and MBA programmes can developtomorrow’s leaders of industry
Teddy bears, snow and the sex lifeof crustaceansAndrew Crisp looks at the findings of a new studyinto what makes a great business school website
e executive education challenge John Gilkes outlines the key results of the 2007
EFMD Executive Education Survey and ponderstheir implications for the future
Doing well by doing good A European project has shown that helping the
environment and encouraging profitable smallbusinesses can go hand in hand. David Watkinsexplains how
Rigour, relevance and rapprochement Pierre Berthon and Bob Galliers argue for a rethink
of academic research into business problems
AIESEC’s 60 years of activating leadership Allowing young people to take active leadershiproles is proving an important adjunct to academicprowess says Michelle Gallant
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EFMD Advisory Services – successful2007 looking forward to 2008
Excellence in Practice Award 2008Partnership in Organisational Development
Jonathan Slack new Chair of theEuropean uality Link (E UAL)
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e Bologna process is gaining momentum and impacting business and managementeducation proiders right across Europe
Calls for papers
EURAM 2008Conference
2007 European FacultyPioneer Awards
Job opportunities acrossthe EFMD network
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Emerald/EFMD outstanding doctoral research award winners
Emerald and EFMD announce the winners of the OutstandingDoctoral Research Fund Awards 2007
EFMD
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Emerald is pleased to pledge our ongoing supportto outstanding scholarship in the fi eld of Doctoral research in business and management
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All business schools have three missions: knowledge creation, knowledge diss emination
and knowledge certification. Knowledge creation is achieved through research; knowledge
dissemination through teaching; and knowled ge cer tification through the bestowing
of degrees.
In each of the three functions, both rigour and relevance must be present. Knowledge
creation requires that research is accessible to a broad audience. Knowledge
dissemination necessitates that the skills professors teach are appl icable to students.
Knowledge certification requires degrees to be relevant in today’s business world.
Kellogg focuses on producing responsible global leaders. We regard the MBA not
just as a busines s degre e but a s a way to promote lead ership within student s, providingthem with the knowledg e and resources to give back to the world. As such, we want
students to leave Kellogg with strong technical skills and a holisti c understanding
of business that can be applied across many fields and functions.
Yes. Since our objective is to produce responsible global leaders, Kellogg has worked
to solidify an approach that helps us achieve this.
Our foundation consists of four platforms. We describe the educational
component as Intellectual Depth. For this to be successful, it must be coupled with
an Experiential Learning component. Just as medical students take part in residency
programmes, business schools should have similar business residency programmesfor students to practise the theories and concepts taught in the c lassroom. At
Kellogg, Experiential Learning is an important part of the curriculum. Whether
students are helping to take life-saving drugs to market through our Global Health
Initiative programme, or serving as ex-officio board members for non-profit
organisations as part of our Board Fellows Program, they are constantly gaining
real-word, hands-on experience.
Our third platform at the Kellogg Scho ol is Global Perspective. Globalisation is
a force of gravity, and American schools cannot a ff ord to be US-centric. To help
students develop a global perspective, we’ve included a global course requirement
across all of our M BA programmes to ensure students have the broad expo sure theyneed to succeed in to day’s business world.
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e fourth platform fo cuses on Leadership and Social R esponsibility. We want to
instil in students the desire to eff ectively lead and give back bot h inside and outsideof the classroom.
So skills create hard impressions. Most students don’t get their MBA for the core
courses but are instead motivated by a strong electi ve base and unsurpassed faculty
that can provide them with the tools and knowledge to succeed. e Kellogg School’s
competitive advantage lies in it s world-class faculty, diverse coursework, emphasis
on team learning, and a culture of col laboration and innovation.
We have restructured the Office of the Dean to include a third senior asso ciate dean,
David Besanko. David is now senior associ ate dean for academic a ff airs: planning and
external relations, which gives him responsibilit y for the key administrative areas of
the Departments of Alumni Relations and Development, the Career Management
Center and the Marketing and Communications Department. He will join Sunil
Chopra and Kathleen Hagerty, who continue their roles as senior associate deans
for academic a ff airs, with Prof Chopra overseeing curriculum and teaching and Prof
Hagerty managing facult y and research.
No business school has this sort of model, and our motivation behind the restructuring
was p eople. Business s chools have several impor tant cons tituenc ies: students, facult y,alumni, corporate partners and recruiters, and media – people like you. ese are the
major stakeholders and I wanted to make sure that each falls under the purv iew of my
senior associate deans.
In business schools, academics need to b e incorporated into the organisational design.
You can out source functions but you cannot outso urce leadership or accountabilit y.
Business schools have to be customer-centric and our new model ensures this will
remain the case at Kellogg.
It is also important for succession planning as business schools ought to b e
institutional-driven and not individual-driven. I can rotate the three senior associate
deans across functions so th at each gains diverse exp erience. For example, DeanBesanko has previously served as senior associate dean for curriculum and teaching.
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e concepts espoused at European and US schools are the same, but
sometimes I feel as though European schools emphasise g lobalisation
more than US schools. I believe that schools based all over the worldcan come together in a p ositive way, creating a unified global
conceptual framework. EFMD can facilitate this movement.
Kellogg is a strong believer in collaboratio n and has certainly set a
precedent by pioneering the teamwork mo del. My current priority
is to create additional collaborative research centres for the school.
For example, one of the key issues facing the world, particularly
Europe, is immigration. As a subject it encompasses economics,
sociolog y and other disciplines and I would like to c reate a centre for
demographic research that brings these diff erent disciplines together.A strong portfolio of centres will provide students with enhanced
opportunities for Experiential Learning.
To facilitate this, I have established a taskforce to explore the
possibility of a new Kellogg building that can accommodate our
growth initiatives.
To remain at t he top, an organisation c annot be complacent. Instead,
it must demonstrate continuous innovation and progress.
Kellogg will remain on the world sta ge—especially as we continue to
innovate by becoming a centre for collaborative research and learning.
In fi ve years , I wan t Kellog g to be known not j ust as the best bus iness
school in the world but also the best business school for the world.
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Indeed, many argue that CIO really stands for “career is over”. But given the right
tools, the CI O could become an o rganisation’s “Chief Innovation Officer”.
is is what the Innovation Value Institute (IVI), based at the National University of
Ireland (NUIM), aims to do. IVI, co-founded by Intel and NUIM, It will help CIOs
manage IT as a utility to deliver value and then to really exploit IT as ‘Innovation Technology’.
e IVI consortium is a cross-industry communit y with, currently, some 40 members
including Intel, Microso, SAP, Google, Chevron, BP and consultancies such as
the Boston Consulting group, Ernst and Young and the Butler Group. ere are
six principal groups represented within the consortium: professional associations,
academia, analysts, enterprise, public sector and eco-s ystem.
is distinctive collaboration is provi ding a unique environment for the synthesis of
leading industry best practices and pioneering academic output, training and education,far beyond what any one entity could hope to achieve by itself.
It operates on a system of open innovation, a concept based on the idea that in a world
of widely distributed information, organisations cannot a ff ord to rely entirely on their
own knowledge but instead would benefit from sharing ideas and knowledge with
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INNOVATION
AHEAD
other entities. Together, this collaboration wil l facilitate major advances much f aster
and with higher qualit y than any one organisation could hope to achieve by itself.
IVI’s vision is to transform the way organisations get value from IT, through researching,
developing and disseminating an empirically proven and industry validated IT best
practice model. Its mission is to develop a unif ying approach for managing the value
of information technology investments and to validate that these approaches havea broad applicability across diff ering industries and contexts.
Already IVI consortium members are seeing value. e CIO of the Irish Utility ESB
and an early adopter of output from the IVI says “the collective intelligence of the IVI
consortium has added fundamental value to us and we are using the outputs to blueprint
our business and determine key improvement actions”.
To address the need for an over-arching IT business value framework, IVI, under the core
themes of IT Value and IT Innovation, will advance methodologies, tools and practices
that will enable organisations to optimally manage their IT capability to answer the needs
of improved IT value deliver y and IT-driven innovation. Initially, IVI is focusing on extending
the development and dissemination of the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF)
.IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF)TM
e IT-CMF enables senior executives and IT specialists to adopt four inter-related
strategies – Managing the IT Budget, Managing the IT Capabilit y, Managing IT Like
a Business and Managing IT for Business Value (Figure 1).
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Within each o f the four IT strategies, t here are fi ve levels that are us ed
to assess an IT organisation’s level of maturity and improve the outcomes
and processes by which it operates and the business value it generates
by advancing to the next level.
e generic maturity levels (inspired by SEI’s Capability Maturity
Model for so ware development) are: Ad hoc (or no process es), Basi c,
Intermediate, Advanced and Optimising. Figure 2 combines t he four
strategies and the maturity levels.
Managing the IT Budget
Managing the IT Budget is critical to delivering current and future value.
e IT-CMF looks at the practices and tools, whic h can be used to
manage an IT budget so costs are reduced and funds freed to invest in
innovative IT solutions that deliver better value and performance. As
you can see from the Managin g the IT Budget strate gy, th e path toa sustainable economic model begins with controll ing and managing
costs to allow for greater funding in IT investment.
Managing the IT Capability
e IT capability is what information technology and IT organisations
can do collectively for a business. e IT-CMF demonstrates how
to manage the capabilit y of an IT organisation by managing IT assets
through the value chain and developing core competencies. It also
describes some tools available to measure that capabil ity. A properly
managed IT capability leads to t he continuous development of new
strategic applications to deliver sustainable economic advantage.e Managing the IT Capability strategy charts the rise of IT from
a technology supplier at Level 2 to it s full maturity at Level 5 w here
it off ers corporate strategic capability.
Managing IT for Business value
Managing for IT Business Value involves linking I T investments
to overall business benefits. e IT-CMF outlines the core business
practices and tools required to optimise an IT organisation’s business
value. ese practices and tools include Total Cost of O wnership
(TCO), Return on Investment (ROI), the Business Value Index
(BVI) and Portfolio Management. e Managing for IT Business
Value strateg y provides a structure for a n IT org anisation to mo ve
from managing IT as a technolog y project to regarding IT as a
portfolio of investments that generate value for the entire business.
Managing IT like a Business
Managing IT like a Business means running IT like any other business andthat involves shiing the focus from technology and production to a focus
on customers and services.e IT-CMF describes the internal processes
required to move an IT organisation from a technology to a service orientation
that provides customer-driven solutions to business problems. As an
organisation makes this change and moves up the Managing IT like a
Business strategy, it allies itself more closely with the organistation and its
overall business objectives.e transformation to running your IT organisation
like a business is complete when IT moves from a cost to a value centre.
IT-CMF views the eff ective management of the IT function within
a firm as focusing on these four major strategies, with the IT budgetessentially the input to the production process, the IT capability as
Managing ITlike a Business
Managingthe IT budget
Managing ITfor BusinessValue
ManagingIT Capability
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the production engine and IT value as the output. Managing IT l ike
a Business sets strategy and closes the loop by provid ing the feedback
mechanism for adjusting inputs to optimise the output value. ese
four strategies should be aligned to the organisation’s overall businessstrategies and the business context it op erates within. (Figure 3)
While the IT-CMF provides a methodology and roadmap to help
IT and business executives deliver and demonstrate more value from
IT, it wil l also provide a more detailed and integrated approach for IT
and business practitioners.
e IT-CMF is currently being designed to help organisations better
manage how they engage in measuring the business value of their IT
investments, choosing the best IT investment proposals, delivering
competitive advantage and managing IT investments for optimal
business value. Ultimately, the IT-CMF will help organisations
achieve more business value from IT through adopting a structured
improvement approach.
e IVI also administers a Professional Diploma and Certificate in the
subject area of Managing and Measuring Information Technology for
Business Value.
ese two courses meet the ch allenge of how to quantify t he business
value of IT head-on by extending the definition of business value
beyond productivit y and showing how to measure business value,
choose the best IT investments, deliver competitive advantage andmanage for optimal IT Business Value.
Both the one-day certificate and three-day diploma courses are accredited
by the National University of Ireland.
To date, IT and business executive audiences in over 20 countries
have received versions of these courses. Additi onally, both courses
are available to other academic institutions for deliver y within their
education programmes.
It is in such areas that partnership with EFMD c an be crucial to
the dissemination of t he IT-CMF model to a wider community,
particularly through the EFMD’s extensive network of business
schools and corporate members. e Innovation Value Institute hopes
to build a strategic relationship with EF MD and member business
schools to achieve adoption of new curricula that will advance the way
executives and companies achieve more value from IT and ultimately
achieve more commercial success.
As technology is increasingly a core source of competitive advantage
in business, leaders who adopt IT as ‘Innovation Technology’ and
adopt systematic approaches to improvement will likely lead and
achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Adoption of the I T-
CMF can help drive a structural improvement in how organisations
can get ahead through the use of IT. More details are available at
http://ivi.nuim.ie/
ManagingIT like aBusiness
Managing theIT capability
Managingthe IT budget
Business StratgeyBusines Context
Managing ITfor BusinessValue
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So do all sta ff strive for quality or is there a need for formal “quality
assurance” (QA) systems to facilitate the journey to perceived high
quality? Some rather negative quotes that may be heard around
business schools include:
Qu al it y as su ran ce is so oo bo ri ng !
I am /w e ar e pe rf ec t – it ’s th e ot he rs th at ar e th e pr ob le m! We have a Quality Department (aka the quality police) for that
QA st uf f so it ’s no t my jo b or re sp on si bi li t y!
Competition and quality management
Business education today is a global industry.e days of relatively
cosy local markets with captive student populations are disappearing
fast as international competition comes to our doorsteps. ere is only
one way to survive in such competitive markets and that is to off er very
high-quality products or programmes.
So what does high quality mean to a business school? Current wisdom
suggests that a business should “delight” its customers so perhaps a business
school should delight its stakeholders.
is can only be done by having a hig h-quality culture or ethos
that pervades all the activities within a school. It has to be a way of
life and not a one-off project for the uality Department or even
for those responsible for accreditations such as E UIS or EPAS.
e development of a quality culture can only come by being led,
promoted, supported and acted out by th e Dean and by his or her
management team.
A key way to do this is to have a formal management system for the
pursuit of excellence and the management of qualit y improvement,
which shoul d lie alongsi de the other management sys tems for research,
teaching and learning, marketing and financial management.
e system should specify standards, set key performance indicators,
have a measurement system for these, require regular reporting, and
be taken seriously as evi denced by management actions such as
celebrating success and taking remedial action in less successful areas.
Of course the concept of achieving high quality is a moving target
and can never be achieved. e management system should be
designed so as to take the schoo l to ever higher levels of qualit y.
e UK uality in Business Education project ( uBE)
e UK is known for having an over-regulated higher-education
system subject to reviews by a plethora of bo dies (see Figure 1).
Internally, universities carry out p eriodic revie ws of departments
including business schools whi le, externally, teaching systems are
assessed by the QAA and research by the Funding Councils. Inaddition, business schools may choose to obtain accreditation from
professional bodies such as the accounting institutes, marketing and
HR institutes, and finally perhaps international accreditation from
EFMD, AMBA or AACSB. Revie w and accreditation overload!
e uBE project was established with government funding
to research issues of quality in business schools and to propose
methodologies for improvement and tools to help make t hose
improvements actually happen. uBE developed an interactive
Road Map (see Figure 2) to help Deans identify where their schools
Business School
HEFEC
Research AssessmentExercise
EPASEuropean/Globalany business and
mgnt possible
EQUISEuropean/GlobalHolistic, coveringall school’s activities
Subject reviewProgrammevalidation andreview
AACSBUS/GlobalProgramme focus butcovering all businessand management in
whole institution
AMBAUK/GlobalMBA and PEMM
ProfessionalUK/Globaleg: CIPD, accw,CMI, BSI etc
UK regulatory quality assurance
International whole school accreditation
Accreditation and quality influences
University
Programme-specificaccreditation
QAA
Institutional auditDATS to 2005
HEA
National Student Survey
Institution
Programme / Module
Review / Evaluate
i i ii i ii i i
i i i i | i
’ i i i i i I i i i i i i i i | ’ |
i iI i i i i |
i i i |
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lay on the quality spect rum and hence to identify tools th at would take
them to the next level of performance. is structure is best seen on the
uBE web: ww w.qube.ac.uk.
EFMD accreditation systems
EFMD off ers four accreditation systems, all of which have the major
objective of helping institutions to improve either across all their activities
or in specific areas.
– E UIS – whole-school assessment against a set of international
standards for the full range of a school’s activities
– EPAS – assessment of one or two specific programmes or sets of
programmes against standards that include those for quality assurance
– CEL – assessment of non-degree programmes off ered primarily
through technolog y enhanced learning
– CLIP – assessment of corporate universities or equivalent
E UIS has not previously set explicit standards for quality assurance
but these are included in the new Standards and Criteria document that
came into force in 2007. EPAS is designed to review QA mechanisms
as shown in t he EPAS Value Chain model (Figure 3) which underpins
all the EPAS Standards and Criteria. Basically, QA mechanisms shouldpervade all the stages of programme design, delivery, outputs and review
but without being too heav y handed. A number of key QA issues arise
in each phase.
Programme design
Programme initiation: A programme will oen be initiated by a faculty
member with a particular interest in the subject area but it is unwise
to let that one person design and run the programme. Apart from
the “falling under a bus” syndrome, programmes b ased on “bees in
bonnets” can oen look peculiar when vie wed from outside and may
not have a real market or may not produce employable graduates.
Programme design process: A wide range of stakeholder vi ews should
be brought into the design process. Stakeholders include faculty
members, potential students (market research), potential employers,
and the parent school and university. A robust process for gathering
those views and debating how they should b e translated into a sound
academic programme probably needs some form of formal programme
committee, which should also be ta sked with overseeing the running
of the programme and its reviews.
Aims and lear ning outcomes: ere should be clearly stated aims and
intended learning outcomes (ILO) for the programme that state who
it is for and what the graduates will know and be able to do at the endof it. ese become the basis for quality assurance of the delivery and
the outputs of the programme. Initiall y they are the basis for the desig n
of the curriculum and a ssessment processes.
Programme approval: Programmes should have to be approved not
only by the programme committee but also further up the organisational
framework. is is to ensure that the programme fits with t he school’s
strategy and programme portfolio, that it is seen to be academically
rigorous, that there is likely to be a market b oth among students and
employers, and that there are sufficient resources to market and run
the programme. In some instituti ons and countries, approvals have
to be obtained at university and state level as well.
Programme changes: Aer periodic review, programmes will need
some form of changes, major or minor, which will usually be undertaken
by the programme comm ittee. However, major changes should al so
be approved at a higher level.
Programme delivery
Student quality:e quality of t he student intake should match the
target market and be able to achieve the ILO for the programme,
which in tur n means t hat they should meet employ ers’ expectations.
Teaching quality: Teaching should be evaluated not only by studentsbut also by some programme management oversight, wh ich may
Current position
Key indicators
Action required
Processes, productsand roles, to reachthe next level
Change management
Building a qualityculture in teachingand learning
1 Unsatisfactory 5 Extraordinary2 3
i i i i
i . .
i i i i
ExcellenceExemplar status
Quality pays for itself
Recognising thequality problem
No systems to measure/manage quality
Highlight currentfailure and opportunitiesfor survival
Set goals, createa quality policy
Define roles andresponsibilities
Identify stakeholdersand understand theirneeds
Convince senior management (e.g. VC, deans). They help
sell to staff colleagues, who try to
engage students and other stakeholders.
Develop teaching andlearning deliverables thatmeet their needs and ours
Benchmark against ourcompetition, updatequality policy as required
Seek out good ideas (e.g.use EQUIS, BMAF subjectcentre, HE Academy)
Share good practice
Manage risk
Benchmark against thebest in the world (e.g. viainternational accreditation)
Foster innovation
Extend the system toaffiliates/suppliers(manage the brand)
Harvest benefits
Celebrate success
Develop a process thatis capable of deliveringthe product sustainably
Use the process to deliverand improve the teachingand learning deliverables
Audit/review (e.g. useAMBA criteria). Incorporatelessons learned
Reward and supportgood practice
Tackling the qualityproblem
Fragmented/ineffectivesystems
Implementing qualitysystem
Quality process inplace. Compliance
Enhancing quality
Quality embedded inthe culture
4Satisfactory
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involve peer observations, sta ff -student forums and individual discussion
with facult y.
Assessment qual ity: While faculty m embers are capable of setting
assessments of an appropriate standard, it is necessary to have some
management oversight to ensure consistency of standards and to either
agree planned overlap or to remove duplication. Furthermore there
should be some oversight of t he marking or grading process to ensure
consistency and fairness.is might mean some random sample second
marking or even, as in the UK, total bl ind double marking and the use
of external examiners.e assessments should test whether the programmeaims and ILO have been achieved.
Programme outputs
Student work quality: A formal QA system for the assessment
process should ensure that the quality of student work is appropriate
to the level of the degree and that the I LO are met.e quality of
projects or theses c an be an issue here. An examination board should
be established to manage the process of decid ing progression from
one degree stage/year to another and for the degree award. is allows
for transparency and can take care of specia l circumstances.
Programme review Annual revie w: All programmes should go through some form of
annual review overseen by the programme committee. is enables
small changes to be made for continual improvement of the programme.
Periodic review: Programmes should also be subject to major review
involving all stakeholders on a periodic basis (say fi ve year s).is will
ensure that the programme stays relevant to t hose stakeholders and
that major changes in t he environment are reflected in the programme
design. Major changes should undergo a high er-level approval process.
Such reviews should also allo w for the fact that the programme may b e
no longer viable or relevant to the stakeholders and should be removed
from the school’s portfolio.
Learning from EPAS reviews
Over the past two years of reviewing 15 programmes, the good
programmes have generally shown the characteristics discussed above.
However, less good and failing programmes demonstrated the reverse
of those characteristics. One generally observed problem area has
been that programmes have been weak in the internationalisation of
the student learning experience.e other problem areas have been
more systemic and could have been resolved by having formal quality
assurance systems. is leads to three main recommendations from
the EPAS learning to date:– Implement a formal QA process
– Establish Programme Committees responsible for the initial design
and operation of the programmes
– Establish a higher-level board to approve the design and any major
changes and to monitor the operations including periodic reviews.
Conclusions
uality systems do not have to be boringly bureaucratic but they do
have to have a degree of formality to be credible and eff ective. However
they should have a light touch (wit h sanctions!).
uality systems have to be promoted and supported by senior
management.
External review and accreditation can identify unpalatable truths
and provide a catalyst for change as well as a lever for acti on.
Working in a bus iness school that i s recognised as of hig h qual ity
is morale boosting and satisfying to all.
i
Institutional, National and International Context
National HE System, regulatory and frameworkEuropean HE Area (Bologna) – when applicable
Institutional context and objectivesProgrammes to be assessed
Teaching faculty, resources and facilities
EPAS Criteria
Quality Assurance Processes
Programme Design
Programmeobjectives
Target market andintended graduateprofile
Marketing andpromotion
Intended learningoutcomes
Programme coverageand content
Delivery modes
Assessment methods
ProgrammeDelivery
Student entry
requirements andselection methods
Pedagogical methods
Quality of pedagogyand learning materials
Personaldevelopment inc.work based learning
Internationalopportunities
Corporate interaction
ProgrammeOutcomes
Assessment output
Graduate quality
Career / jobs
Alumni
Reputation
i
i i
i i i | i i i | i | i ii i i | i i i i i i | ii i i i i i ‘ i ’ | i i | i | i . i . .
i i i i i | i || i |
’ i i i i i iI i i i i i i ’ i | i i | I i i |
i i i | ’ | i i
I i i i i | i i i i | i | : i i i i i i i | | i i | i i
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Previously, Ryan, a former US Navy pilo t and Vice Admiral, served for seven years
as president of three diff erent institutions of higher education: the State University of
New York Maritime College; interim president of the University at Albany, a doctoral
institution with 17,000 students where he famously lived in the student dormitory
during his presidency and donated the first three months of his salar y for student
scholarships at Maritime and Albany; and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Ryan graduated from Annapolis in June 1967 with his t win brother Norbert Ryan Jr,
also a former Vice Admiral. He received a Master of Science in Administration from
George Washington University in 1975.
e Center for Creative Leadership was begun in 1970 by H Smith Richardson Sr,
founder of the Vick Chemical Co, and the Smith Richardson Foundation Inc provided
its initial financial underpinning.e Foundation — and several generations of the
Richardson family — have remained generous supporters of CCL’s work, which
aims at promoting leadership through courses and programmes for individuals
and organisations as well as research and publications dedicated to leadership issues.
CCL’s European headquarters is in Brussels under the leadership of Rudi Plettinx.
I think eff ective leadership involves at least three key components: setting direction,
creating alignment and gaining commitment. It’s important that leaders set a direction
and then encourage people to follow in that direction. e best people do it well andothers not so well.
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What people most w ant in a l eader is someone who is authent ic, who they can trust.
People now are educated, intelligent and well read and they see through people who
are maybe not as genuine as they should be. Authentic leaders start with the courage
of their convictions – they’re not holding polls or taking sur veys.ey obviously listen
to people’s views and integrate them but they also have to set the vision and the direction.
ey have to understand what direction their particular organisation needs to go in.
Creative leadership involves people thinking beyond the boundaries that limit individualsand organisations and if you think about that it extends beyond the ty pical skills that
are associated with routine leadership. Business schools teach p eople how to analyse
data, coach employees, run projects and so on but at CCL we try to go beyond that and
teach people to be innovative. And we do that through three elements: assessment,
challenge and support. e unique thing about CCL is t hat we have been doing that
since we were founded in 1970; we have been focussed on it for the l ast 37 years.
People who are involved in global leadership positi ons are today facing greater
complexity in their roles, whether it’s at the mid-level or higher in their organisations.And they need to be able accurately to perceive new situations they face, culturally as
well a s organ isationall y, with the people t hey interact with, and they have to a dapt
their leadership style accordingly.
What we’re tr ying to do wit h Advancing Global Leader ship i s a three-phas e approach.
Every AGL session involves participants in three locations: Brussels, Singapore and
America. Prior to the programme, participants complete a set of assessments and will
work on an assignment with their cross-continent learning partners. Ever yone will leave
with an action plan for add ressing h is or her global leadership chal lenge and wil l have
the opportunity to continue working with a coach to apply what he or she has learned.
We were ver y encoura ged. We’ve just finished our first AGL and there were 40 people
involved globally with about15 in both Brussels and Singapore and it was a great exercise.
We really opened up the eyes and imaginations of people who were managing the tensions
and opportunities between headquarters and local needs.
It’s the t ype of th ing that happens ever y day around the world. What we’re try ing to
do is help m en and women prepare for those kinds of opportunities. You know as well
as I that both in Europe and America, and to a lesser extent in Asia, that whether we
call it right-sizing , down-sizing or up-sizing we have taken away a lot of the mi ddle-
management opportunities in organisations where people could grow and develop
these kind of skills as a leader. And so as we get ready to lose my generation of baby
boomers we have another generation that needs experience that it cannot now get
in the workplace and so we are off ering it through the AGL.
Yes.is is my third career. I was in the militar y, then ten years in academia and now
in a not-for-profit organisation. All of them had many overseas challenges for me.
I would say that leaders today have to be, number one, more self-aware, number two
more culturally aware and number three b e able to learn on t he job, be continuous
learners. And that’s ever-more true in this global societ y we are all part of.
Only the best businesses. Let me put it this way. One of my mentors and heroes was
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Peter Drucker. He used to say that a leader has th ree responsibilities.
First, he or she is responsible for direct results. I don’t think there are
many business people wh o don’t understand that.
Where they fa ll down is in the second t wo things th at Peter always
talked about. He said t hat leaders are responsible for enhancing and
sustaining the culture they are part of. And the third thing, which I
think is becoming more and more important, is what we call talent
management. All of us have to be on the loo k-out for new talent. Andit’s not just about finding the right men and women for your
organisation – it’s about keeping tho se you already have.
We wil l be concentrating on t wo broad areas. Fir st, I t hink we are the
best in the world on individual leadership development. We have some
great programmes and we are going to continue those. e other area
we are moving onto is more cu stomise d progr ammes an d what I woul d
call corporate leadership development.ere I think we will focus onthree broad areas: strategic planning, corporate culture, and talent
management and “sustainment”, a term that encompasses not onl y talent
recruitment and development but also retaining talent for the long term.
We also want to be more international than we are. Las t year we had
21,000 individual leaders we worked with and over 3,000 organisations
in about 120 diff erent countries. But a particular focus for us now is
expanding our operations in Europe and Asia. One of my mandates
from my board of governors is to touch more lives globally. We have
been nominally a global organisation but in my opinion in the past
we have been too focussed on North America and that’s not the way
ahead for us.
I think the military is just another opportunity for leadership – though
it probably comes at an earlier age. I graduated from Annapolis as a pilot
and I was leading 50 people basically as soon as I was out of school. But in
the military you also learn how to be a follower. And I think you are more
sensitive and aware as a leader if you have been a follower – you know
what it’s like to take orders or to have someone else directing the action.
I don’t think militar y leadership is diff erent to business leadership. But when you’re in a combat situati on or y ou are away from your f amily for
six months I think that gives you a diff erent perspective on perseverance
or what real adversity is. But you don’t need to be a military person to be
a great leader; there are plenty of military people who are lousy leaders.
First of all, you have to commit to it. You can’t be a leader if you’re not
going to work at it, practise it. You don’t become a good footbal l player
unless you practise and you don’t become a good leader unless you
practise.e best way to become a leader is to want to do it, to read
about it, look for a mentor or a coach, go to a programme l ike CCL
and then practise those skills. Behaviours are very important in becoming
a leader.
It’s a bit North A merican-centric but to me t wo people stand out.
One is Abraham Lincoln. He was a man who was capable of bringinginto his cabinet people who had absolutely opposed him b efore,
who s aid he wasn’t fit to be President even. I admire him because
he did his homework, he led by example, and he had great character.
en there is a woman who you don’t oen hear talked about as heroic
or a great leader and that’s Eleanor Roosevelt. She was born into a
wealthy family but was orphaned when she was ten and had a terribl e
childhood. She became the person who really started the Civil Rights
movement and the women’s rights movement. She had tremendous
compassion for the poor and she help ed the entire world. She was
chair of the UN committee that dra ed the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. What I really admire is that she d idn’t take opinionpolls to see what people thought about there, she just did what she
thought was right.
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Previous General Assemblies have been held at INSEAD,
CEIBS and Leeds Metropolitan University/Oasis
School of Human Relations. ese meetings of the
whole community a re arranged twice a y ear and theyare a follow-up and review of all ongoing activ ities,
an introduction of new partners and a start-up of new
actions, an opportunity for the hosts to highlight their
engagement and work on corporate global responsibility
and globally responsible leadership, and a forum where
all partners learn from the hosts and the specific context,
experience and environment they represent.
Aer the two first years of its “Call for Engagement”,
the GRLI community can celebrate being a globally
recognised productive and influential force regardingthe development of global responsibility.
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GRLI achievements so far include:
Advocacy
e GRLI is now recognised as a vanguard group leading change for a globally
responsible society by its fo cus on what we can and must do to develop a generation
of globally responsible leaders.
It has been a catalyst for the recent initiative by the UN Global Compact on Principles
for Responsible Management Education (PRME) (see Box 1) and it is today invited
to and actively partic ipates in major events, conferences and high-level gatheringsaround the world.
It is engaged in developing a reporting system on Global Responsibility for learning
organisations.
Foundation
GRLI has this year stabilised its unique governance structure by creating a foundation.e
foundation secures its independence, transparency and provides clear roles for all partners.
Research platform
GRLI has f rom the start had a focus on concept development. In the “Call for
Engagement” there is a presentation of a new purpose for the corporation. Currently,
work is proce eding regarding the f uture of management educ ation – “Reframing thePurpose of Management Education and Development”.
In parallel, other research initiatives have been taken. e Center for Creative Leadership
(CCL) (see page 22) is, for example, leading a large international project on globall y
responsible leadership. Other clusters within the communit y are planning further
action research.
Publications
e report A Call for Engage ment is available in four languages – English, Chinese,
Spanish and Portuguese – from the website ww w.efmd.org/grli. In relation to this first
report many publications have been produced. Two books stand out: Should Prometheus
be Bound? Corporate Global Responsibility (Palgrave McMillan, 2005) by Philippe de
Woot , and Learni ng fo r Tomorrow. W hole Person Learni ng (Oasis Press, 2007) by
Bryce Taylor. Moreover, many published articles in renowned journals either come
out of or are linked to the GR LI work.
e next major publications will be R eframing the Purpose of Management Education
and Develop ment and Shar ed Ex per iences & Achie veme nts – Tales on GR L.
Momentum
GRLI is steadily growing and receives regular applications for partnership.
Being a unique and leading community of action, it wil l limit its size. e current
number of partners –around 60 – wil l increase to a maximum of 120 in order tomaintain efficiency, eff ectiveness, tightness and the unique format for boosting
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engagement and producing action. Box 2 (right) lists the current partners of the GRLI.
Uniqueness
ree main dimensions characterise the uniqueness of the GRLI
– Its fully global representation and outreach; including diversity of a ll kinds
– Its combination of diff erent organisations – mainly businesses and learning
institutions; it is fundamentally driven by th e challenges and dilemmas
of the business community
– Its entrepreneurial action orientation; think big , act small, start now
We have recently returned f rom an in tensive 2 4-hour workshop with the executive
management of Petrobras in Brazil. GRLI, in collaboration with Petrobras’ partnerFundação Dom Cabral, has started a process where th is important international
company aims at integrating the concept of globally responsible leadership into its
overall management training.
Global responsibility is already a key pil lar in the Petrobras business strategy and José
Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo, President of Petrobras and Deputy Chairman of the UN
Global Compact, has personally taken the initiative to define the globally responsible
leadership concept in the context of Petrobras and to develop a methodology for new
leadership within the corp orate group.
e next General Assembly will be held in Mumbai, India, where we will be welcomed
by Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research in April 2008.Our Indian colleague, representing a country where the conditions are ripe for
sustained growth, says: “It’s now time to look up at t he sky and time to fl y! It’s the right
time for the GRLI m ovement to hoist its b anner in the world’s largest democracy”.
e GRLI started wit h a vision of a vibrant g lobal force. It has now become a reality
through the multiple ongoing indi vidual and collective actions on the g round by all
the GRLI partners.
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For 6 years, with the support of the European Commission, the European YoungEntrepreneurs Awards reward the most interesting business projects carried out bystudents or young researchers.
Again this year, a panel of professionals (head of firms, journalists, scientists…), willsingle out the candidates who have demonstrated both imagination and creativity intheir approach, whatever the product or activity. All students can take part in thecompetition, individually or as a team, whether in the framework of their institution
or not.The project can be in conception phase, in-progress or already launched.
Please return the application form at the latest Friday 1st February 2008
NEW THIS YEAR !
So as to help the candidates in the development of their project, thirty Europeanfinalists will be invited to participate free of charge (travel, accommodation) in the 12th
edition of the European Forum for Innovating Young Enterprise (Innovact 2008, 18th and19th March 2008, in Reims - France). There, they will meet 4 000 professionals from20 different countries, as well as 200 European innovating young companies.
The prize winners will receive financial allocations up to 3 000 euros and will benefitfrom an information campaign.
The Awards ceremony will be held in the frame of Innovact on 18th March 2008.
Application form is available on the Internet -
www.letudiant.fr, www.innovact.com or www.lors.fr
Contact - Amandine Bebi, [email protected]
List of prize winners 20061st Prize - CLÉMENT FOREST AND ALEXANDRE HOSTELLER – FRANCE, ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE, AND CANCER RESEARCH INSTITUTE, STRASBURG.
ECHOGRAPHY SIMULATOR FOR ECHO-GUIDED TREATMENTS.
2nd Prize - SYMONS GERHARD - ENGLAND, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. CAMSTENT BUSINESS CREATED FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF CORONARY ARTERY
"STENTS" THANKS TO A NEW BIO-REPELLENT BIO-POLYMER DESIGNED TO PREVENT THROMBOSES AND SAVE LIVES.
3rd Prize - NICO VELOOP - HOLLAND, EINDHOVEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY. VALIDUS PROJECT TO COMBAT COUNTERFEITING OF MEDICINES.
STUDENTS: TAKE PART IN THE
EUROPEAN YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS AWARDS
INNOVACT 2008
C a l l f o r
c a n d i d a t e s
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Here, the availability of entrepreneurs to bring these capabilities together
is of the utmost import ance.erefore, the efficiency of the market in
solving allocation problems is obviously tied to individuals’ capabilities.
e challenge is the development of a consultative relationship between
universities, research institutions and industry.is means co-operation
between education and training institutions, on one hand, and engineers
and production managers on the other, leading to an increase in thestock of entrepreneurial knowledge.
is further creates the need for the development of institutions that will
be able to stimulate continuous consultative relationship between buyers
and sellers as well as institutions producing entrepreneurial knowledge.
Examples of such infrastructure are op en networks, clusters, business
and university incubators, centres of excellence, technology parks,
and networks of venture capital, experimental laboratories and the
like. e innovation process is interactive and complex. Technological
advance is not a linear process of independent research activities.
Recognising the importance of entrepreneurship as one of the concretemeasures for strengthening European competitiveness and thus the
potential for growth, indicates that the view that entrepreneurship does
matter to the improvement of the human condition has come of age.
Even mainstream economists are finally realising that it is absurd to talk
about economic growth and not pay any attention to the people and
institutions most responsible for growth: entrepreneurs.
However, mainstream economics has contributed very little to the
understanding and explanation of the role of entrepreneurship in
growth. It is a paradox that t he academic study of entrepreneurship
has not been developing mainly within the field of economics butby scholars in the fields of business and management and lately
also in engineering and social science.
e prescriptions of mainstream economists for government
intervention in order to facilitate growth have almost completely
overlooked the role of entrepreneurs in this process and have therefore
not considered any policy instruments to foster entrepreneurship.
As Stiglitz has noted in his book Wither Socialism? the best that
countries can do is to experiment with various pol icy solutions and
try to learn from best practices in other countries, though in diff erent
countries this may be achieved under diff erent institutions and systems.erefore, the appropriate process of finding the optimal policies for
maximum growth and entrepreneurial society is not to waste time
on formal economic models of entrepreneurship and growth but
to set up institutional conditions for polic y experimentation.
Policy makers, even if they are highly trained economists, are not actually
relying on economic growth models but are looking at the positive
experiences of high-growth countries and are trying to
adapt such experiences to their particular
circumstances.
One of the recent studies commissioned by the European Commission
gives examples of polici es that were instrumental in bringing the
competitiveness of certain regions within countries to a level hig her
than the overall competitiveness of a countr y and to a higher level
than the overall competitiveness of the EU.
e evidence suggests that the role of public policy has been subtle but
critical for achieving fast growth and superior competitiveness. Examplesof such regions are Oberbayern and Darmstadt, Germany; Eterea Ellada,
Greece; Ile de France, France; and Niederoesterreich, Austria.
e policies provided infrastructure that supported business innovation
and thus competitiveness and growth. is enabled firms to become
successfully integrated into a global competit ive environment and
to be better equipped for harnessing human knowledge.
e key factors promoted by the polic y can be grouped into the
following categories:
– Development of modern physical and telecommunication
infrastructure– Development of dynamic entrepreneurship and strong
entrepreneurial culture (a high level of firm creation)
– Development of infrastructure supporting and stimulating a
consultative relationship between universities, research institutions and
industry and technology transfer in medium-sized and large companies
– Development of an excellent research and higher-education
institutional base, with emphasis on industrial coll aboration
(with well-organised networks, especially science-based ones,
clusters in bio-technology, electronics and engineering, sci ence
research institutes, agencies and institutions supporting innovation)– Supporting the internationalisation of firms – opening up regions
to competition across the single EU market, removing barriers
to trade and entrepreneurship.
Because eff ective public policies stimulating competitiveness and growth
combine knowledge from many diff erent areas such as engineering,
economics, sciences, law and so on in a pragmatic way, their eff ectiveness
depends on a culture of trust.
Public policy cannot be developed in the absence of strong public-
private partnership, which in turn cannot be developed without a
culture of trust. Knowledge is most eff ectively used in a trustingenvironment. For example, clusters and networks could not flourish
in a non-trusting environment. Trust is needed between partners,
between employers and employees, between b oards and shareholders,
and between state and citizens.
Trust, as Jorma Oll ila, Chairman of the Board of Royal Dutch Shell
and Chairman of the Board of Nokia Corporation, said at the
Innovation Lecture 2006 held in e Hague is “...
a mother of entrepreneurship
and a father of
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Richard Florida 2 instead opposed the notion of “spikiness” to the assumed flatness
of the world, suggesting that there were geographical points of concentration
such as centres of innovation, of skills, patent filings and of energy consumption.
In short, he argues that location still matters.
ese two diff erent lenses for looking at our world and making sense of it as far as
scenarios for economic and social development are concerned are both importantand valuable.
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Yet I believe there is an additional p erspective that we
should not ignore. e idea of “openness” is emerging
as a dominant attribute of key developments in our
economic and social f abric. We talk about open
societies, open innovation, op en standards, open
ecosystems, open source and op en architectures –
all using more or less consciously the foundationalthinking from 20th century systems theor y.
It was the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanff y 3, one
of the most acute minds of the 20th centur y, who
established the foundations for a General Systems
eory showing t he importance of a “systems view”
and giving us a vocabulary and the scientific
foundations for dealing with systems.
We look at increasingly complex interrelationships
between connected elements in systems at diff erent
levels. e traditional logic focusing on cause and eff ectis insufficient to deal with today’s systemic issues – be
they in human, electronic, ecological or biological systems.
We tal k abou t systems all the t ime bu t how much d o
we use von Ber talanff y’s thinking? When we talk about
closed systems we should remember that they are
isolated from the environment (organisation-wise
we tal k abou t bureaucracy and “silos”) a nd are subject
to the law of entropy or decay.
Open systems, by contrast, receive inputs from their
environment, work with those inputs and return themto the environment in modified form as outputs.
Closed systems are in a way “machine-like” and open
systems “living-organism-like” with significant
elements of self-organisation.
Open and closed world views
Our world was dominated in the second half
of the 20th century by the dichotomy between
communism and capitalism. While the world has
“opened up” with the advance of globalisation
and global integration during recent decades, we see even within o ur western societies t he ri
between open and closed philosophies and
concepts enduring and in some cases even widening.
Openness is associated with values such as tolerance,
individual freedom, lifelong learning, participation,
empowerment and co-operation as opposed to
typical c losed-world values of command and
control, top-down management, centralised and
bureaucratic governance, over-regulation and
collectivist dominance over individual freedom.
In today’s world of b usiness we experience every day
what openness means and what benefits it brings to
bear. Monopolies or near-monopolies are examples
of the closed world as are traditional hi erarchies with
their burgeoning bureaucracies and disconnected silos
as typical manifestations.
Democratic values in business
Hence openness seems to be tied to fundamental
democratic values. Closed social systems remind us very
much of the time of the Iron Curtain….and of old-style
autocratic enterprise governance.e “rediscovery” of
democratic values and their power in business is reflected
in recent business literature such as Democratizing
Innovation (von Hippel)4,e Wisdom of Crowds
(Surowiecki)5 and showed up in a new report of
the Arthur W Pages society in the context of
democratising channels of communications.
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Yet the way openness and democratic values show up
in management literature and research reminds us
not so much of the “voting democrac y” but rather as
vibran t, part icipative d emocr acy co mbined with a dose
of horizontal meritocracy – you earn your voice and
your space in the comm unity based on your experi ence
and contribution to the common good. Al so, openenvironments are a fertile breeding ground for broad-
based innovation.
ese ideas and values are not new – why are they
now getting new l ife? Human kind has equipped
itself during the last 15 years with a new electronic
infrastructure that can potentially connect ever yone
to everyone else and therefore has a limitless potential
to create new social systems at all levels. is
infrastructure for communication and interaction
has become extremely robust and is increasingly “highperforming” (thanks to broadband). We see explosive
growth of new interactive capabiliti es and usage.
e rise of social net working sites, virtual worlds,
blogs, wikis and 3D Internet give us a first idea of the
potential of the “interactive and collaborative web”
dubbed Web 2.0. Now we h ave the infrastructure and
tools to operate in new ways in open systems. While
many of the thoughts about openness and the need for
more open social systems have been around for some
time, this new infrastructure and new tools acceleratethe movement. Hence technology contributes and
enables us increasingly to give life to many of the values
we have been as piring to.
e big technology cycles
Carlota Perez6 , a Venezuelan scholar and expert on
technology and socio-economic development, has
demonstrated the recurrence of typic al phases in the
fi ve major technolog y cycles starting with the Industrial
Revolution of the 19th centur y. She argues that these
cycles have a duration of approximately 50 years.eystart with the eruption of a new technology, followed
by period of frenzy (“Gold Rush”) that leads straight
into a bubble.
efi ve cycles to date have in common a new technology
leading to a paradigm shi that fundamentally impacts
the way we see the world, how we live, how we organise
our societies and our enterprises, how we work and so on.
Perez talks about an installation phase and a deployment
phase following the bubble t hat in turn leads into
something good – a “Golden Age” that finally reaps
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the benefit of the new technology, spawning a huge wave of innovation.
Perez has demonstrated that digital technology is now reaching
the phase of “deployment”. e benefits, which are potentially huge,
are starting to show. While all the major c ycles have shown a similar
pattern, there is no doubt that they also have diff erent characteristics.
Even though there is now a great opportunity for innovation and
value creation there is no reason to be complacent about this – the world
is more turbulent than ever, the systemic interdependencies may showin positive and negative ways – just take for example today’s financial
markets.e speed of change is putting enormous pressure on all actors.
Yet a maturing and standardising open technology infrastructure
provides an unheard of potential for innovation in products, services,
business models and even at the societal level. With services taking the
lions share of value creation in our advanced economies (between 70%
and 80 % of GNP and employment) a transformation of our economic
activity is in prog ress, which requires not only a new enabling fabric
but a diff erent set of skills and comp etencies than were required
in the industrial economy.Impact on business
e new technology capabilities enable new organisational and
operational models. e corporation is shiing from a hierarchical,
monolithic, “multinational” model to one that is horizontal, networked
and globally integrated.
Because the operations and responsibilities of organisations can now
be componentised, “virtualised” and distr ibuted over an ecosystem
of business relationships, work can be located wherever it makes most
sense, driven by the imperatives of economics, expertise and open
business conditions. is creates new challenges for companies tomanage their identities and reputations.
In this environment companies can no longer g uarantee life-long
employment.e social contract between employee and employer
has changed in a highly competit ive and fluid open world. But, equally,
new employees may not wish to be locked into a long-term employment
relationship. In order to attract and retain key talent companies must
contribute to equipping their employees for this new open and global
environment.
Empowerment of employees and users
At the same time, employees are getting more autonomous.e riseof the knowledge worker poses new challenges to HR. e balance
between the need to regulate and manage professionals’ activities and
their need for autonomy is difficult to achieve.
Talented professionals with knowledge enjoy a technical superiority and
relative independence vis-à-vis the organisation.ey tend to relate more
to their peer-communities and professional associations than to the firm.
What they need most is interest in the job, challenge, fun and freedom.
e new generation entering the workplace (Generation “Y ”
or Millennials) perfectly reflects these new “open” attitudes.
Open innovation taking centre stage With regard to new Web 2.0-enabled ca pabil ities for empl oyees,
business partners and users to get involved with companies in new
ways, innovation its elf is changing fu ndamenta lly. Innovat ion is
becoming a more open process – “open innovation” has become
a catch-phrase with a lot of reality behind it.
Power is shiing to users, who can make themselves heard when
they have concerns but who are also increasingly contributing tothe innovation value chain to the point of becoming the innovators
themselves. Innovation is moving from company-controlled labs into
open space. “Living Labs” are becoming a strong movement in Europe
to provide an environment for open innovation and services creation.
A European Network of Liv ing Labs w as announced under the
Finnish EU Presidency in 2006 7.
Towards a “perfect storm”?
An open world is a world of great opportunity and challenge. It requires
changes in our individual behaviours and attitudes and it demands
major institutional adjustments. Business and academia will haveto find much better synerg y to face the challenges of tomorrow’s
world. Best academic thinking and best enterp rise practice are
required to develop the “perfect storm” towards an open wo rld.
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Employee questionnaires may be useful as a preliminary gauge of
attitudes prevalent in your workplace but they are unlikely to give you
a detailed picture on which to base your acti ons. How then to gauge
the “real” feelings out t here?
As a culture change programme progresses, a range of diff erent behaviour
patterns begin to emerge. Many of these, however, are not visible o n
the surface. What are these responses, why do these diff erences occur,
and how can you recognise th em?
e players
Players can be mapped using two key dimensions (see Figure 1, right).
By committed I am referring to the commitment of an individual to the success
of the organisation.e term critical refers to an individual’s willingness
to ask searching questions (these may be either positive or negative).
Using these dimensions, my research has uncovered six key groups (see
Figure 2, overleaf). I first discovered these when undertaking an in-depth
cultural study of a major global organisation. Since then, I have found
these players in all of the many other organisations I have studied.
ese roles are not fixed; they can shi. Indeed, the good news is that
you ca n influence how they change through strong and focussed
leadership strategies. Your skill in doing so is the key to any change
programme’s success.
e Evangelists
Evangelists are common in many organisations. You can recognise them
by their intense loyalty and their tendency to take all corporate messages
at face value.ey are highly committed, but deeply uncritical – andalways very keen to adopt and implement any new initiative that comes
their way.eir expectations of their leaders are very high, and they are
unquestioning in their followership.e Evangelists would not dream of
questioning their leaders’ judgment, but nor would they feel comfortable
asking probing questions to clarify their understanding. is group are
content to follow.
You might then be lured into thinking that the Evangelists are an easy
group to lead and pose little trouble. But beware. e Evangelists can
seriously impede your judgement.
Evangelists will tell you what you want to hear and it is ver y temptingto believe that your cultural change initiative is taking root much more
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quickly than it is in reality. Because of their, oen unrealistic,
expectations both of their leaders and of the pace of c hange, they can be
easily disappointed if you are unable to live up to their hopes or if they see
that you are a er all fallible.
e Actors
Equally uncritical, but much less committed than th e Evangelists, thisgroup might not be easily distinguished from them at first glance. Both
groups will lead you to believe that they have fully accepted the “company
line” and bought into your v ision. However, although the Actors may
act identically to the Evangelists, they feel very diff erently. Actors are
chameleons with well-developed thespian skills. ey want you
to believe that they have bought into the corporate message
because they fear that to dissent would bring reprisals.
Actors are very prevalent in “fear” cultures but much
rarer in cultures where challenge is encouraged.
Actors appear to change their allegiance to newideas very easily. ey do not engage very much or
identify very strongly with the organisation. eir
true feelings when exposed, however, are usually
of deep scepticism or detachment. is is a group
that is hard to detect, because they cover their true
feelings so successfully. You wil l, however, find that
they occasionally drop their guard with trusted
colleagues or in social situations.
Many Actors have revealed to me during my research that
they adopt this tactic as a result of a fear of losing their jobs if they
do not appear to conform.ey can be influenced but the danger is that theymay capitulate and become “evangelistic” in their behaviour. If you find that
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you have a large number of Actors in your organisation, you should start by asking yourself
why people feel that they cannot voice their honest opinions.
e Untouched Professionalse Untouched Professionals are usually law yers, accountants, research scientists
or indeed any professional whose loyalty lies with their profession rather than their
employer. ey oen have high market value and view the organisation as a place that
hosts them in pursuing their profession. ey feel untouched by programmes that sell
values, visions and missions , since t heir own val ues and v isions are deeply emb edded
in their professional identities.
Committed to their roles, but much less to their employer, this group is unlikely to
engage with the programme, remaining ambivalent and showing only a pol ite passing
interest in the changes you are introducing.
In other words, they can see the merit of cultural change but a s professionals they do
not think that it applies to them. ey expect their leaders not to bother th em with it
and if asked to attend associated events will assume it is for appearances only.e problem
they pose is the potentially negative impact of their ambivalence on those around them.
e Criticalinkers
An important group for the success of any change programme – and a crucial
sounding board for any leader to test their ideas and judgment on – the Critical
inkers are critical, questioning, but also hig hly committed. is means that
their ability to be critical is likely to be constructively focussed.
ese are the members of your organisation who think most deeply.ey
are not afraid to ask awkward questions. You can trust t hese people bec ause
they will tell you honestly what they feel and because they reall y do want what’s best for the organis ation. Critical inkers are loyal but if they feel
that you are making a mistake they will tell you, while remaining constructive
about how to put it right.
Not surprisingly, organisations rarely have enough Criticalinkers. You may
not always recognise their value, of course, as they can be demanding and
challenging, and even question your judgement at times. But this may be an
important safeguard. If you do not have any Critical inkers in your team you
are totally dependent on your own judgement.
e Sceptics
is is usually a large group. ese people will be found “sitting on the fence” in theearly stages of any change programme.ey tend to observe and watch their colleagues
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and superiors very carefully before deciding whether to accept or reject
any new initiative. ey do not have strong feelings or beliefs of their
own, and are the most easily led of the players.
e Sceptics oen become Actors if put under pressure (or if their
scepticism is driven underground by authoritarian leadership) and if
you do not pay attention can be easi ly influenced by any negative views
around them to undermine cultural change. On the other hand, with
consistent positive leadership, reinforced by positive role modell ing,
they can be persuaded to support their leaders’ endeavours.
e Sceptics are an imp ortant group for leaders to pay attention to,
particularly in the early stag es of cultural change. Stronger employees
with more vo cal opinions will have a bi g influence on the Sceptics.
e Open Cynics
e Open Cynics are both critical and uncommitted. Organisations rarely
contain many of these, since openly cynical behaviour is known to be “career
limiting” in most arenas.
So who are these people?ese are strong individuals with strong personal
agendas.ey have oen come to believe themselves to be untouchable,
sometimes possessing a skill or expertise that the organisation cannot do
witho ut. Or t hey may somet imes be so near to retirement that they no
longer fear reprisals for speaking their mind.
is group, for various reasons, know that th ey are untouchable. Unlike
the Criticalinkers, their loyalty is to themselves and so they set
themselves up as self-proclaimed rebels – oen saying what others donot dare. ey are very oen attention seeking – their motivation is to
be heard and recognised.
ey can be damaging to a change agenda, as they can be a strong influence
on Sceptics. On the other hand, if c arefully managed, they are a useful
group for any leader seeking to understand the concerns around the
organisation.ey oen speak with passion and hold strong beliefs and
so it is worth giving them discussion time. If they do “convert” to your
perspective they will be staunch allies and their conversion will send out
an extremely powerful message to the less vocal and less visible Sceptics.
Having acknowledged that not everybody in your organisation hasresponded to change in the same way, what can you do about it, and how
can you ensure that you engage with and motivate each group in the way
that you lead the change process and beyond?
My research has shown that these responses are not static and can shi – sometimes slowly though oen dramatically– so it is cruci al that you
keep a close eye on the movements of th ese behavioural patterns in
response to your leadership. If you are not in touch with these patterns, you
will not be able to take the appropriate actions to steer your programme.
If you lose touch with the feelings of th e people you will b e in danger
of allowing their responses to shi in directions that will b e counter-
productive to sustaining the change process.
One of the most successful strategies for influencing groups of managers
to shi in the d irection you need is to enhance their self-awareness by
showing them Figure 2 and asking them to tr y to categorise their own
teams. Prompted by the model, most managers c annot resist reflecting
on themselves and their own response to change before going on to
reflect on others. By providing a language for addressing this emotive
topic, the model has frequently prompted some ver y valuable group
discussions, oen within senior management teams.
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e business world is changing at a rate that would have been unimaginable
in the past. Rapid advancements in technolog y, changes in customer
behaviour and higher expectations from financial investors are placingtremendous and oen paradoxical demands on the top management
of corporations.
Dealing with such change forces us, as business leaders, to modif y the
way we organis e and operate al l the time. Our role in the 21st centur y
is to take advantage of our continuously changing world. If we do that
we can t hen thr ive in amazing new ways.
In today’s hypercompetitive environment our customers want our products
and services:
Free (at the lowest po ssible price)Perfect (with no defects and no chance of returns)
Now (with immediate delivery)
Although cheaper is not alw ays better, faster always is. I believe that we
all need to accelerate in order to take advantage o f this faster-moving
world. Every aspect of our business and all connected organis ations,
suppliers and clients, operate and change in real time. Targets for success
also keep changing.
In other words, whatever we did that made us successful in the recent
past will most probably not be enough to make us successful tomorrow.
We shou ld not condition ou r vie w of tomorrow by what we do today.
We all understand that our market value depends on our abilit y to create
more value for our customers all the time. I am sure that this also applies
to every business school.
e explosion of the Internet means that customers are more informed
and more demanding. In my company, S&B Industrial Minerals, we try
to connect on-line with most clients and some key suppliers. We all need
to collect and process more information on our customers and identify
areas to improve th e level of customer satisfaction. We are developing
a coherent customer-support system that will also facilitate all
transactions from order processing, billing and collection.
Consider the following thoughts. e diff erence between products
and services blurs. In other words, at least in my business, every off er
we make has both a tangible and an intangible eco nomic value fo r
our customers. What is worth noting is that the intangible part of
every off er a customer receives nowadays is becoming mo re important
or just as important as the tangible part, the product itself.
In the digital world, says Nicholas Negreponte, “one size fits all” will
be unheard of. Customisation is the trend and we have to find a way to
further customise the off ers we make to every cl ient, addressing their
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specific intangible and tangible needs. Customisation is al so a way to
reinforce my company’s strategy, as stated in our mission to be in the
specialties and not in the commodit ies business.
e term “customer service” is probably the most shop-worn phrase
of the 1990s. Everybody in business today is committed to delivering good
service and this makes it more difficult to diff erentiate ourselves from our
competitors. Every shareholder, banker and investor understands that thefuture of every business depends primarily on quality of management.
uality of management means qualit y of decisions and efficiency
of implementation. is is where business schools start to play a ver y
important role.
Admission decisions should take into account patterns of accomplishment
beyond academic ability that might indicate the potential for success in
business. Management and leadership ability are qualities that admission
officers should value. Success is almost inevitable if the selection process
does not compromise on quality of admissions. Every school can then
teach good analytical skills. Obviously the chances of better-quality
decisions increase if character and skills are coupled with experience.
Employers continue to value the core ski lls and competences that
an MBA course confers upon f uture corporate executives.e
set of formal techniques to appraise investments, analyse financial
statements, understand product costs, segment a market or develop
a personnel evaluation system remain essential tools for every
manager. Nevertheless, these skills – imp ortant though they are —
are increasingly seen as only the tip of what is exp ected of an MBA.
Beyond the toolbox of techniques, an MBA programme should develop
so behavioural skills that are becoming more decisive in the quality of
implementation of any decision. Most failures have to do with the poor
implementation or lack thereof of what appeared on paper as a good
decision.is is why all good business schools emphasise the need for
team work and the development of emotional intelligence. A manager
also needs good communication and leadership skills a s he or she bydefinition cannot do the job alone but has to manage a team of people.
I understand and I am comfortable with the vision shared by most
EFMD members, reflected in the nature of their MBA programmes:
– European in inspiration; global in scope
– Diversity as a source of richness
– Business has a tremendous opportunity to shape a better world
Each element of this compelling visi on is also expressed in the value-
creating attributes that corporate executives now develop.
European in inspiration; global in scope Without a global p erspect ive, neither corporate executives, no r the
firms they help to build, can sustain competitiveness, even in the short
run. And the global scope of a mo dern MBA should ensure that
students’ mindsets are primed to always consider the worldwide context.
Making an impact beyond domestic borders has long been a hallmark
of EFMD and its E UIS quality a ssessment and accreditation system,
so it is especially appropriate that this v ision continues to inspire
MBAs. We should never undervalue the European inspiration that
underpins this global scope, an inspiration born from democracy and
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plurality, from a respect for both logi c and art, for both thinking and
doing – hal lmarks of Greek culture for 25 centuries. Today’s MBA
programmes should be designed to accelerate the global careers of
executives by teaching them how to manage, source, sell and compete
in multicultural environments around the world.
Diversity as a source of richness
I believe li ke most of you that diversit y is a source of richness. Workingalongside fellow students from a wide range of national, ethnic and
sectoral backgrounds, MBA students learn to appreciate the ric hness
which diversit y of experiences brings. Diverse teams generate enhanced
creativity, a wider variety of problem-solving approaches and usually
better-quality decisions.
riving on the richness of diversity is another of the attributes a modern,
multi-cultural MBA delivers.ere is no one “right mo del” of an MBA,
a business school, or a business corporation. Only by embracing
diversity can the b est, and most innovative, solutions for a given
context emerge to lead the corporation forward.Business has a tremendous opportunity to shape a better world
When I served as President of the Federation of Greek Industries I always
supported the idea that good and responsible business practices will make
our world better for all. erefore I appreciate EFMD leadership in
practical developments focusing on business as a force for good, best
illustrated perhaps through its Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative.
e ever-increasing emphasis which all of us place on corpo rate social
responsibility is also a ke y element of MBA education, which, at its
best, balances the teaching of management skills with the development
of strong personal values and business ethics
MBA students should discover that corporate social responsibility
is a key integrating element of m anagement practice and theor y, thus
emerging as leaders who fully appreciate the potential the y have for
engaging in sustainable socio-economic development.
In conclusion I hope t hat I have reinforced statements that I am sure
you al ready kne w and some of you have put into practice through
variou s activities. Pleas e continue the goo d work raising the st andard
of management education in Europe by setting high standards,
benchmarking and seeking mutual cross-border learning.
This is an edited version of Ulysses Kyriacopoulos’ final address to the 2007
EFMD MBA Confe rence held in At hens in Ap ril 2007.
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Get the website wrong and not only is a large part of the marketing budget
wasted but your reputat ion ma y decl ine quickly a nd international ly.
Websites have beco me ever -more important in ed ucation in recent
years. Studies suggest as many as 7 0% of prospective students f ound
websites useful when de cidin g where to stud y and more than 50%
described websites as their most important source of information
about business schools. (e Business of Branding 2007)
But what makes a great business school website and why is it so important?
ere’s plenty of advice available, from bo th a design and technical
standpoint. Indeed, go on to Google and search for what makes a great
website an d there a re around 80 mill ion responses.
But there’s far less information about w hat specifically makes a great
business school website, hence the Association of Business Schools
in the UK asked CarringtonCrisp to research best practice with regard
to business school websites.
rough 19 interactive focus groups the study, titled WebWorks,
sought the vie ws of 270 prospective students, undergraduates and
postgraduates about 18 business school websites. Each site was
assessed across 40 criteria with ten of these producing an overall
ranking for each site.
e most impor tant thing for any website is its audience. A website is
like any other form of marketing; it’s a communication tool and so what
you are saying and who you want to say it to are of great importance.
e home page of a website is like the most expensive piece of realestate in a city but instead of just putting luxury flats on the site, you
need to build mixed use, appealing to a variety of diff erent audiences,
and still turn a profit.
A great business school website manages to deliver an appealing mix
of information for diff erent audiences while not falling to the lowest
common denominator and simply producing something bl and and
unappealing. A great site not only works on the home pa ge for
diff erent audiences, but also helps these audiences to quickly reach
the information they want – in most cases that is course details.
e top two sites in the WebWorks study were Bradford University
School of Management (http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/management/
external/) and Cass Business School (http://w ww.cass.city.ac.uk/).
Although diff erent in style, both sites made it ver y easy for the user to
quickly reach the information they wanted from the site home page.
One of the most important findings across the study was the
preference among website users to search sites rather than use
navigation.
Each site tends to use slightly diff erent language to describe similar
courses. Rather than learn a new language on each site th ey visit or
spend time working through navigation, users indicated that they
search for phrases they understand and then work from the search
results. A site that provides easy access from the home page to key
course information will be b etter received than a potential competitor
that has complex navigation and makes poor use of the home page.
A poor home pa ge can be characterised in many ways – cluttered
layout, lack of a search engine, weak identity – but th ere was one item
that almost all study part icipants agreed on: don’t put the Dean on
the home page. O f course it’s important to welcome new visitors to
a website, especially prospective students, but the home page isn’t thebest place.
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A link to a welcome message can be usef ul but the face of the Dean adds little to the
impact of the home page, g iving no reasons for a site visitor to dig deeper into the site.
e key is creating “stickiness” – reasons for a visitor to stay with a site, explore the depth
of the site and to attract the visitor to turn a virtual relationship into a physical link.
Stickiness is key given the extent of information on the web about business education.
A search on Google for the term “MBA” will return over six million possibi lities. Not
all of these will be about business education; a recent search for “MBA” produced onthe first page of results links to the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Mountain
Bothies Association. (“Bothies” are small huts in the Highlands of S cotland where
walke rs can take ref uge.)
A potential student knows that i f they link to a site on the web and it doesn’t capture
their attention then there are many more schools to consider just a couple of clicks
away. Some studies have suggested that site users c an click away wit hin four seconds
of landing on a pa ge if the y can’t find what they are lo oking for.
e main reason for pursuing a business education is career enhancement. More than
50% of undergraduates frequently state that they study business to get a better career,
whil e among masters students the drive is more explicit, w ith over 80% su ggest ingthat their motivation is based around improved earnings potential.
Despite the acknowledged career motivation of many students, some schools hide
away behind password protection the very information t hat those visiting their site
want to know ab out – career ser vices and alumni.
Career aspects of a website can provide details of which employers come to c ampus,
destination statistics for recent graduates and information on how a school helps its
students with their career search. An alumni section can bring careers to life, providing
real examples of graduates and what they have gone on to do post-graduation.
One of the best alumni examples in the study w as at Leeds University - http://
lubsww w.leeds.ac.uk/alumni/index.php?id=354 (their alumni pa ges were rankednumber one in the study). e alumni pages provide list s of students who have set up
their own businesses and then ha s links to the websites of these businesses. One
enterprising graduate has set up a ski holi day business in Japan (w ww.WeLoveSnow.
com) and on the webcam on his site the snow could be seen falling in Japan.
If a school puts enterprise and internationalism at the heart of its branding, there can
be few better examples of this than such an a lumni display.ere is the added benefit
that this is ver y real and doesn’t suff er the slightly cynical view that some prospective
students take of case studies on websites, suspecting they have been written by
a marketing copywriter with a graduate name and picture added a erwards.
Information on careers can be similarly powerful thoug h it can also cause confusion.A search for careers on one site in the study threw up the first result all about the
career research of an academic into the sex life of crustaceans.
Accuracy is vital, particularly when it comes to news and fees. Out of date news that
hasn’t been refreshed for six months will quickly suggest to a site visitor that there
is little going on at the scho ol and what is happening cannot be of much interest.
Similarly, fee details for last year will provide a reason for a prospective student to
either discount a school or move on to another site bec ause they are unable to make
an accurate comparison across a number of school s.
Another aspect of news is press relations and websites can be an important tool
to help build contacts with the media. Oen a press office has only a small sta ff and if they are unavailable an opportunity to place a stor y could be missed.
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ere were several questions on my mind: Why were we all joiningthis rush to be more international? Will the total global market for our
services continue to grow? Will we eat into each other’s competitive
space and margins? How will our industry look in 25 years time?
In 2005 the steering committee charged with designing the Annual
EFMD Executive Education Conference had decided to undertake a
survey to map the D NA of the membership in Europe. When I joined
the committee later that year I volunteered to take on the co-ordination
of this survey. Having recently entered the world of executive education
I felt this would further my own knowledge of the sector.
I also wanted to build on the first survey by making it m ore user-friendly and of more value to members. I saw the oppo rtunity to
produce a survey that stimulated members to reflect on the key strategic
challenges they faced.
At the 2006 and 2007 conferences I presented the survey findings and
was able to start to identi fy trends. is year we also carried out li ve
market research in the conference room to validate t he findings of the
survey. I have been impressed by the degree of openness among delegates
and their preparedness to discuss and share their key strategic challenges.
I will return to those questions but first let me share the key findingsfrom three years of this survey.
Size, status and services
A wide diversity of organisations participated in the 2007 survey. In
terms of size, 20% had revenue from executive education of less than
€500,000 and less than 500 total participants. At the other end of the
scale, nearly one-fih of the 61 organisations that participated had a
turnover from executive education activities in excess of €15 million,
derived from more than 5,000 participants.
e ownership and governance of diff erent institutions also varied
considerably. Nearly half were integrated within a university, whereas28% were independent private schools.
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ere also existed a very wide d iversity in the relative
proportion of chosen delivery channels, with some
organisations focussing largely on open-enrolment
programmes and others dedicated to customised
programmes.
Becoming more international is a common
aspiration
e questions designed to gain information about
institutions’ international scope and aspirationsproduced some interesting results. Over half derived
less than 10% of their income from outside their
home country (over two-thirds less than 20%).
However, 85% expected the percentage of activity
from outside their home countr y to increase over
the next three years. ere was thus a picture of
a largely domestically focussed group with a high
aspiration to play on a wider stage.
Partners wanted
We continue to se e an increase in partne rships withother academic institutio ns. Two-thirds reported being
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in formal partnerships with other institutions, one claiming to have more
than 20 such arrangements. An impressive 95% of organisations expected
their partnership activit y to increase during the next three years.
One question we failed to ask was whether t hese partnerships had
generated real added value, that is that their b enefit exceeded the time
and eff ort invested in making them work. We had discussed this very
subject at the Executive Education Conference in Cape Town in 2003
and heard plenty of evidence to suggest that getting a real commercial
return on partnerships continues to be a c hallenge.
A myriad of approaches to supplying services
Consultancy continues to be an important activit y in a small number
of organisations but stil l represents less than 10% of income in 84%
of those surveyed.
e expertise areas that are most prevalent in our European schools
continue to be leadership and strategy, both of which are present in
around 90% of cases.
ose that have formal alumni programmes (43%) are making more
use of them, with over 90% now reporting the holding of regularalumni meetings and 78% facilitating their alumni’s access through
a website portal.
e trend towards the establishment of separate e-learning facilities
appears to have flattened out at around 40% of institutions.
Private consulting – friend or foe?
One of the mo st emotive subjects raised at recent conferences has
been private consulting by facult y. A large percentage (78%) of
organisations reported allowing private consulting, in over half the
cases more than 30 days per year. When we discussed this in Marseille
there was a distinct polarisation bet ween institutions who felt thatprivate consulting made a positive contribution to keeping their
faculty refreshed and commercially aware, whereas others saw the
practice as an unhelpful historical burden, which added further
complexity to the competitive landscape.
New clients for old
e questions on the nature of client relationships produced no major
surprises and most organisations continue to work across both public
and private sectors to varying degrees. e most interesting fact for me
was that in any one year on avera ge 70% of work comes f rom existing
clients and 30% from new clients. is le me thinking about whether we gave sufficient attention to retaining existing clients given that it is
much easier to win further business from them than to w in new clients
in an increasingly challenging marketplace.
Does contract size matter?
ere continues to be a very wide range of contract size in the area
of customised executive education. Eight instituti ons reported a
maximum contract size of less than €250,000, whereas at the other end
of the scale one organisation reported that 65% of its revenue came
from contracts worth more than €1 million. I noted that organisations
took a very diff erent strategic positioning in this respect, some choosing“not to get out of bed” for contracts worth less than €100,000.
I want it cheap and I want it now!
e 2007 survey sho wed an interesting trend in terms of the average
time from programme design to programme deliver y.is has reduced
considerably from previous years, with 28% of organisations now
reporting an average time from design to deliver y of less than three
months.ere is a definite trend toward clients demanding faster
solutions.
e survey also suggested that we are starting to see some resistance to
fee levels. When I tested this in the conference room the great majorityof delegates supported this view. ere has also been a reduction in the
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average number of participants taking part in customised programmes,
with 44% of organisations no w repor ting an average participation level
of less than 20 people.
Mature or ageing?
e trend in open enrolment is also towards a lower number of
participants on programmes. I tested with the conference delegates
whether this was because o f a desire for sma ller programmes or directly
due to a failure to fill programmes.ere appeared to be quite diff erent
views on this iss ue among delegates. Some were convinced that open-enrolment products were slowly dying whereas others saw levels of
demand holding up well in their local markets. Is this now a mature
market with minimal growth or is it ageing into continuous decline?
On reflection
Now to return to my earlier reflections.e rush towards internationalisation
is a natural response to the changing needs of our increasingly global
customers. It is also a sensible strategic direction given the relative
undersupply of executive education in the emerging economies.
However, such an approach is not necessarily right for al l, especially
those institutions of modest size with limited resources. Adoptinga niche position, whether in terms of geographic scope or product
off ering, can be a key diff erentiator in a crowded marketplace.
e competitive landscape continues to change at a fast pace, with
new entrants easily able to leapfrog the modest b arriers to entry. It is
scary that many have relatively few fixed costs compared to traditional
business schools. Is there room for everyone to sur vive and thrive?
I doubt it. Will th e industry need to rationalise and restructure?
I predict that it will.
When EF MD car ries o ut the 25th iteration of this sur vey – in 2029 by
my calculation – you should expect the world of executive educationto look quite diff erent. e only constant factor will be “change”.
I will leave readers to reflect on the strategic implications of the survey
for their organisation and for them personally. I hope that you find the
results of this survey enlig htening or at the very least cause for you to
pause for thought.
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us it was that in the early years of this millennium the European
Union decided that it wanted to halt – and then reverse – the loss
of biodiversit y by 2010 while at the same time ma king Europe
the most entrepreneurial and innovative region in the world.
ese two aspirations were respectively enshrined in the Gothenburg Declaration
and the Lisbon Agenda. At the time, business growth and environmental sensitivity
were perceived to be unl ikel y bedfellows; but as these respective a gendas have pl ayed
out what at first appeared to be probable ground for conflict instead turned out
to be a potentially fertile so urce of a whole new range of business opportunitiesas well as suggesting new g rassroots models of corporate good c itizenship.
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One recent EU project – Probioprise – brought together business and environment
experts from the networks of the EFMD, Fauna and Flora International, and the European
Bureau for Conservation and Development to explore t he extent to which Europeansmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) could help deliver the Gothenburg and
Lisbon promises simultaneously.
e acronym Probioprise stands for pro-b iodiversity enter pr is e . But what exactly is
a pro-biodiversity SME? is, of course, was the first question the Probioprise team
asked itself. e formal answer was that “a pro-biodiversity SME is one which is
dependent on biodiversity for it s core business and contributes to biodiversity
conservation t hrough that core business”.
But beyond that dry definition a more interesting answer emerges through lo oking
at the activities of some of the 100-plus organisations that participated in the project.
ese ranged from land-reclamation schemes, through high-tech takes on traditionalindustries such as forestry, to the development of interesting foodstuff s and ecotourism.
Four ‘typical’ enterprises
In a sense, one of the joys of the project was th at there turned out to be no “typical”
firms; but here goes…
– Imobiente is a consulting and landscaping micro-firm based in the Algarve region
of Portugal. Part of its work involves reconstituting landscapes damaged by current
civil engineering projects such as roads and dams. But it also works wit h foresters
and other landowners on much lo nger-term projects designed to mitigate some of
the poor ag ricultural practices that devastated much of Portugal in the early part of
the 20th century. is involves managing the complex interactions of soil structures,micro-organisms and an understanding of the sequence in which plants become
established in reconstituted landscapes.
– Oh! Légumes Oubliés has de veloped a range of businesses on an old family farm on
the outskirts of Bordeaux. As its name implies, it produces a range of heritage vegetables
and processes them in a variet y of ways for sale in France and beyond. On site is an
education complex and shop, which has become a well-known tourist destination
in its own right.
– Koli National Park in eastern Finland, hard up against the Russian bo rder, has for
many years sought to meet its environmental objectives through initiating small-
scale, economically viable p rojects that it then hands on to private-sector SMEs todevelop independently. Over the past 15 or so years this has helped c reate a critical
mass of SMEs in an economicall y underdeveloped part of Finland. Koli calculates
that it has directly or indirectly stimulated the creation of about 250 new firms.
–Nordic Shell is a recent start-up operating in Sweden and Norway. It grew out of an E
U project on the biological management of pollutants. Waste water with high levels of
nitrates stimulates the production of algae when it drains into the sea. e resulting algal
bloom can suff ocate fish and other seafood. Nordic Shell creates mussel beds in positions
where the muss els ca n feed on the a lgae before they bloom. It derives its income b oth
from selling high-quality mussels and from the local authorities onshore, which
would other wise have to red uce the nitrogen content of water discharging into thesea under the conditions of the European Waste Water Directives.
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What these firms have in common is the generation of profitable income streams
through the application of biological knowledge in innovative contexts: the magical
Gothenburg + Lisbon combination.Some outcomes from the project
Since a project focusing on the constraints and opportunities a ff ecting pro-biodiversity
enterprises was novel, the Probioprise project was, of necessity, exploratory in nature.
How many firms that are currently pro-biodiversity, let alone how many might become
so, is unknown.
is meant that robust quantitative studies were difficult to construct. Instead the
team focused on qualitative approaches using expert workshops and case study
writ ing to obtain fewer, but deeper, responses in order to pose key questions for
future, more extensive work. Indeed, one of the key objectives of the study was to
suggest a research agenda that could be explored further by environmentalists andbusiness analysts working together.
One way of summarising this agenda is in terms of three key issues:
– Which enterpr ises should one stud y and seek to engage with?
– What is the role of pro-biodiversity SMEs within the general European policy context?
– And what kinds of polic y-related questions can we now address on the basis
of experience gained through the Probioprise project?
Which enterprises?
A definition of pro-biodiversit y enterprises is obviously important, and by no means
easy, but perhaps less obvious is the appropriate level of analysis. Depending on thesituation, analysis of all SMEs, all S MEs in a sector or all SMEs at a site of part icular
scientific importance might be the choices.
en there is the question of whether one should “preach to the converted” in policy
terms by focussing attention on firms already doing a good job of balancing economic
and environmental outcomes or aim at encouraging the laggards to do better? For
some purposes, other options such as a supply chain analysis might be appropriate.
General EU-level policy considerations
Although the key issue of compatibility between the Lisbon and Gothenburg
agendas, and moving towards their synchronicity and convergence is the most
obvious one, the scope for attention to be g iven to pro-biodiversity enterprises inother contexts is also clear.ankfully, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is
now evolving in a way likel y to minimise, and possibly even reverse, previous adverse
impacts on biodiversity: sometimes the loss of biodiversity in the managed landscape
is too easily overlooked.
However, beyond this the study al so raised issues in areas as diverse as regional polic y,
social polic y, education and training, and managed networking. Some policy issues
seem best approached at the EU level and others at the national, regional or m ore
local level.
e study did not address the way in whi ch these polic y levels interact but repeatedly
identified bemused owners of SMEs who could identify conflicts between policyobjectives at diff erent levels.
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For example, a farm diversifying into rural education and tourism by opening an
education centre with a café and shop might find itself subject to new sets of regulations
and incentives relating to health and safety, retailing, educational accreditation, tourismstandards and restrictions on new buildings.
Building towards new research.
Probioprise identified examples of both regulations and incentives being used to pursue
policy in many environmental areas. Moreover, regulation can be a ver y eff ective
inducement to innovation, although the path may not be as predictable.
e Nordic Shell case, for example, showed how the desire to clean up urban waste
water led eventu ally to the formati on of a firm supplying both a biological solution
to the supply of the relevant environmental service and high-quality foodstuff s.is
could never have been predicted by those dra ing the original waste water Directives
in Brussels. Further studies might identify simi lar examples and even patterns thatcould directly influence more eff ective policy making.
One unexpected outcome was the scope for further research from a really d iversified
set of discipl ines, including many represented in European business schools. us the
experience of Nordic Shell raised issues worthy of further study by economists and
finance specialists as well as political scientists. e long time scales over which the
operations of Imobiente take eff ect could engage the attention of economic historians
as well as environmental scientists. Koli and Oh!Légumes Oubliés raised issues of
interest to geographers, tourism scholars and family business specialists among others.
Finally, many firms involved in the Probioprise project try to combine profit making,
delivering social benefits, and conserving/enhancing biodiversit y. Delivering such a“triple bottom line” involves a complex balancing act. Much more needs to be known
about how SMEs c an be created and sustained to do this successfully.
is involves work on the motivation of founders and managers, how they can best
be trained, how such multi-objective firms are best organised, what support
mechanisms are needed and so on. As wit h other issues, the project deliberately raised
many more questions than it could answer. However, further work in this area could
have beneficial spill-over eff ects for other kinds of environmentally oriented firms,
for social enterprise, and for understanding and support for SMEs generally.
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Indeed the EFM D’s E UIS accreditation guidelines strongly urge
institutions to demonstrate the practicality o f their research. And this
advice has led to some universities integrating and dissolving traditional
academic departments and blurring disciplinary boundaries. In addition,
we see a number of interd isciplinar y mana gement j ournals beginning
to flourish – journals that speak to both p ractitioners and academics.
An overview of the research process and its drivers is provided in Figure 1
above. From this we can begin to rethink the process towards some sortof rapprochement.
Figure 1 illustrates the mutually dependent nature of research and
practice that is too oen missing in the academic landscape. We argue
that, to quote Lewin (1945), “nothing is so practical as a good theory”.
Academic research in an applied field such as business should be appl ied .
It should stem from fieldwork and be tested in the field. Its impact should
be measured less by the number of citations in academic journals and more
by the impact it has on practice.e relative impact of primary and secondary
factors in Figure 1 needs to be carefully rethought.
Please, though, allow us one caveat. Let us not confuse practical lessons with the many superficial “best practice” claims found in the practitioner
literature. Best for whom? When? And in what context?ese questions
require posing – and answering – if the theory is indeed “good”.
Mark Twain said: “To ever y complex problem, there’s a simple solution
that doesn’t work”
Let’s treat the complexity of today’s business environment with the
seriousness it deserves. And t his requires serious, boundary-spanning
research that draws from and impacts on business practice. What is missing in the rigou r – relevance debate is jud gment. Aristot le
identified three components to excellence: techne – the cra of the
practical; episteme – the science of knowledge; and phronesi s – the art of
judgment. Busin ess excels at techne – academia at episteme . Sadly, all too
oen, both fail at phronesi s . It is this t hird missing element– judgement
– that is most needed in today’s world.
ACADEMICSTHEORY
PRACTICE
UNIVERSE OF POTENTIALBUSINESS RESEARCHPROBLEMS
Informs(primary)
Informs(primary)
Informs(secondary)
Informs(secondary)
Deductive
Subset of problemsselected for research
Inductive
PRACTITIONERS
Primary impact Secondary impact
Explanatory /Predictive Power
Selectionby top Journals
Research
“That’s interesting” Theoretical fit
Practical fit
“That’s useful”
“That’s logical”
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AIESEC, the world’s largest student organisation with a presence in
over 100 countries, instead argues that practical work experience is
an essential complement to academics. e leadership development
platform for youth that AIESEC runs, called the AIESEC Experience,
off ers practical opportunities to lead a team, project manage and workin an international environment – elements that employers are seeking.
AIESEC has been off ering such experiences to students for over half
a century – it will celebrate its 60th anniversary this year. An estimated
800,000 members have had the opportunity to be part of AIESEC
throughout its history and many AIESEC alumni have gone on to be
heads of state, top CEOs or business executives.
Martin Bean, General Manager – Education Strategy, Products and
Solutions for Microso and an AIESEC alumnus, says he would not be
where he is today without the experience he had in AIESEC. Bean was
President of AIESEC International in 1986-1987 and responsible for
leading a global organisation in his early 20s.
Today AIESEC has over 23,000 members from 1,100 universitiesaround the world and off ers over 5,000 leadership experiences each year
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at the local, national, regional and international level. Divyanshu Nagpal,
21, Manager – Branding and Public Relations of AIESEC in India, sums
up the experience he has enjoyed so far in AIESEC:
“My experience with AIESEC has been extremely enriching, where I haveput my theoretical knowledge into practice. I have played a large part in
carrying out national marketing campaigns in India. I have met top executives
of some of the leading organisations, worked on challenging projects,
travelled to places around the world and have friends from across the globe.”
rough the integrated experience that AIESEC provides, members
not only develop their leadership skills but also cultural sensitivity, team
management and entrepreneurial skills. One of the ess ential components
of the AIESEC Experience is going on an international internship, allowing
members the opportunity to live and work abroad in their field of study.
Internships are facilitated by AI ESEC members, fromfindingorganisations interested in taking international interns, matching them
with qualified students interested in going on exchange as well as
cultural preparation and reception for the intern when they arrive.
“Living and working in another country is one of t he most incredible
learning opportunities I have ever experienced,” says one student who
spent six months working in Turkey on an AIE SEC internship. “e
level of responsibility I was given at the Chamber of Commerce where
I worked was incredible. I learned so much, though the day-to-day
interactions with my co-workers and the local people in Gaziantep is
what taught me the most. Being in a countr y where you do not speak thelanguage is naturally challenging but finding solutions to how to work in
such an environment enhances your creativity, innovation and problem
solving skills. I am sure these experiences will only benefit me in my
future career.”
Sampreeth Reddy, President of AIES EC in India, ag rees that theexperience he is gaining in AIESEC is very worthwhile in terms of his
future career.
At only 22, Mr Reddy is currently h andling a team of 14 memb ers at
the national office and overseeing the activities of 15 diff erent local
chapters across the country. Coming from the technology city of
Hyderabad, he has a degree in engineering and looks for ward to setting
up his own entrepreneurial venture in the f uture.
“It feels great to be a ‘Global Indian’ and travel the world as the brand
ambassador of the country,” he says. “ere were days when I used to
learn in school that it is a great responsibilit y to represent your countryin an alien environment.rough AIESEC I have lived this responsibility
and now want to play a more important role in impacting global
thought when it comes to youth issues.
“I have friends from 100 diff erent countries and I know top executives
from 74 diff erent global and national organisations. I have travelled to more
than 20 countries and have been a part of the biggest youth congregations
around the world.”
Advait Gupt, Vice President External Relations for AIES EC in India,
is currently living a comparable unique experience. Also 22, Mr Gupt
has experienced life in the corporate world first hand, great experiencea er finishing his degree in business administration in Mumbai.
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EFMD
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