Year: 2015

Business School Graduates, Key to a Sustainable Future

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Takeaway on recent article Business Because by Seb Murray, B-Schools Embrace Sustainability to Give MBAs Careers with Social Impact

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For businesses, sustainability often depends on the triple bottom line managing financial, social, and environmental responsibilities. While juggling these responsibilities is difficult to achieve in practice, recent developments have encouraged global businesses to embrace sustainability. The new global climate agreement set in Paris this year, along with the United Nation’s post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals are just two of many major pushes toward a more sustainable world.

Even with these positive developments, there is still much work to be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition toward clean energy. Companies often introduce new business operation plans at the executive level, but leaders do not always have the skills and knowledge necessary to drive sustainable development. For this reason, the focus is now being directed toward business school students.

“Business schools are educating tomorrow’s business leaders, and sustainability must be part of that future,” urges Tima Bansal, Canada research chair in business sustainability at Ivey Business School. Bansal is a leader in the field, and she believes research is crucial to show companies they can be both profitable and good for the community. “Companies are increasingly realizing that sustainability must be a central part of business.” With a sustainable business plan, companies tend to be more adaptive and innovative and run less financial and reputation risk.

This is especially true now that business school graduates are searching for more meaningful careers and long-term success. Students across the globe are rushing to pursue an education in sustainability. Business schools like Copenhagen, Cornell, Mendoza, and Carnegie Mellon are pioneers in meeting this demand, offering courses such as sustainable finance and green real estate.

For now, this grassroots approach seems to be the most effective way to achieve a greener, more sustainable future.

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Kelly Song is the Programs Summer Intern at the Global Business School Network

Digital Colloquium with Guy Pfeffermann

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Last week, our CEO and founder, Guy Pfeffermann, led a digital colloquium on the State of Business Education in Developing Countries for the Center for Global Enterprise. All members of the Global Scholars Program, over 70 universities across 57 countries, were invited to join the conversation and submit questions for Mr. Pfeffermann to address.

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Honoring Thomas J. Bata’s Legacy

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guyThomas J. Bata would have turned 100 last year. He was a visionary who improved the lives of hundreds of millions by putting functional affordable shoes on their feet, half a century before people started talking about “basic needs” or “social enterprise”. Our friendship was one of the best things in my life.

Last week, his spirit and values were celebrated in Kenya, a country he loved dearly. The Bata Legacy Award challenged entrepreneurs 35 and younger to identify a community need in East Africa and propose a creative, viable business solution that embraces the values that guided Bata throughout his career.

The Bata Shoe Company has a remarkable history. Tom’s father founded the company in the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1894. In his words, “Half of the people in the world are barefoot and only 5 percent of mankind are properly shoed. We see how little we have done so far and how great a task is waiting for the shoemakers of the world.” His son took the reins in the mid-1940s, when much of the world was in ruins. Tom radiated energy, warmth and fostered no-nonsense common sense. To him, business was a tool Ð perhaps the main tool Ð for raising standards of living by creating jobs; educating thousands of employees and their families; and by meeting some of the population’s most basic needs.tom_bata

A central aim of the organization was to expand in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. One of Tom’s favorite anecdotes was the story of two Bata salesmen who traveled to Africa. After a week, one cabled back: “Returning home, no use continuing, nobody here wears shoes.” The cable received from the second salesman read, “Opportunities unlimited, everyone barefoot.” Of course, the second salesman got a promotion. At that time, in 1946, the company estimated that only one out of every hundred people in Africa wore shoes; by 1966, that figure was one in ten. Tom often emphasized in interviews that shoes in tropical areas provide important protection against parasites and other health threats: “Why are the feet of millions of people in India and Africa, and indeed everywhere in the tropics, attacked by hookworm? Why are some of the worst sore diseases and infections carried from village to village? Because of the naked feet of people living in unsanitary conditions.” Foot and skin diseases have dropped by as much as 80 percent among those who wear sandals or shoes over a period of time.

Tom and I met in 1988 when I became Chief Economist of the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation. We shared the conviction that business can be a major tool for improving living conditions in the developing world. Our professional conversations focused mainly on business-government relations and once in a while I would get a phone call out of the blue, and Tom would ask what I thought of such or such country’s prospects. Tom was the kindest person: he traveled from Toronto to talk to the 20-some IFC economists, and brought with him a suitcase packed with shoe samples of various kinds. When he was 90 years old he spoke forcefully about the importance of management education at a GBSN breakfast on the occasion of the World Economic Forum’s Africa Summit. The last time we spoke was when I took a snapshot of a Bata store in Mombasa in 2007 and sent it to him; he called, and asked: “was the store clean?” I assured him that it was spotless.

Like most genuinely great figures, Tom was not driven by ego. I cherish one of his business cards, which read: “Thomas J. Bata. Shoe Salesman.” I miss him dearly.

For more information, visit batalegacy.org

Congratulations to the Winners!

First Place awarded to Stawi, Runner-Ups were GreenChar and Karibu

Guy Pfeffermann is the Founder & CEO of the Global Business School Network

UNCTAD Business School for Impact Program Launches 1st Round of Summer Internships

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UNCTAD’s Business Schools for Impact has just launched its first round of summer internships for business graduates who want to make a difference. Some 20 internships are available in 12 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with businesses ranging from start-ups to mid-sized, and commercial entities to social impact firms and foundations. These internships are intended to give impact-minded students an opportunity to make a difference, while gaining valuable experience in the field. Participating businesses are small with limited resources. Interns will therefore have a rare chance to immerse themselves in helping find real solutions for substantive challenges facing small business in the developing world.

More information about the project here

GBSN Program Spotlight: A Broader Definition of Business

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The Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) published a blog by Amanda Bullough & Marti J. van Liere, which highlights a recent GBSN Program with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN).

A Broader Definition of Business

Business education should include lessons from market-based approaches to international development goals in developing countries

In a global economy, it makes good business sense to invest in sustainable development. Business students who understand this have the potential to become the world’s future business leaders. However, if one were to ask the typical business school graduate how to tackle development goals or what mechanisms work best, he or she probably wouldn’t be able to answer thoughtfully.

That’s a problem. If business school graduates can’t think critically about creating lasting, large-scale social change through market-oriented, inclusive business models, how can they be effective contributors to an increasingly inclusive economy? How will they navigate the necessary partnershipsÑworking with different players that have varying special interests, whether companies, NGOs, communities, or government entitiesÑto address international development goals?

A few organizations and business schools have embraced this idea, and their experiences are worth considering. The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is an example. GAIN is an international organization that launched at the UN General Assembly in 2002 to tackle human suffering caused by malnutrition through efforts to improve access to high-quality, affordable, fortified foods and supplements for children older than six months, and for pregnant and lactating women. Malnutrition has a direct relationship with physical and mental growth and development of children, and therefore impacts school performance, adult productivity, and ultimately the economic development of a countryÑenough reasons for a business student or a business leader to take an interest in nutrition, as it impacts their bottom line.

Seven years since the start of the GAIN Maternal Infant Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN) program (directed by one of the authors), a comprehensive picture of the success and effectiveness of the different GAIN business models is starting to emerge. To create that picture, GAIN engaged the Global Business School Network (GBSN), a nonprofit that aims to improve the pool of management and leadership talent for the developing world, to perform an assessment of five of its projects, located in Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya and South Africa, and the Indian States of Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. These projects aim to increase the availability and accessibility of affordable, high-quality, nutritious diets for children aged between 6-24 months in low-income households.

GBSN engaged MBA students from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, along with faculty mentors, to review the assumptions on which the business cases were built, to determine which investments were most strategic, and which investments across the value chain resulted in improved implementation.

Twenty-five students gained consulting and real-world experience in reaching low-income consumers with low-cost, high-quality products. Subsequently, GAIN worked with GBSN to develop a teaching case that would help students understand the challenges of market-based approaches to nutrition for consumers at the base of the income pyramid, and allow students to walk in the shoes of GAIN directors.

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Higher Education Included in Sustainable Development Goals

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guyThe Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank are attracting thousands to Washington, DC, this year, an unusually large number. This year is particularly important for international development because it ushers in the United Nations’ new “Sustainable Development Goals (2016-2030)” as the “Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015)” come to an end.

The draft SDGs may be good news for developing world universities, including business schools. Higher education was not mentioned in any of the MDGs eight goals, but only primary education. That should not necessarily have prevented development agencies, such as the World Bank and regional development banks, from focusing on tertiary education, but in fact, universities were neglected these last 15 years. Don’t ask me what was in the minds of the MDGs’ drafters when they excluded secondary and higher education! Perhaps they believed that primary schools could grow happily without teacher training colleges?

I remember Larry Summers speaking about the MDGs when they were launched. He saw their great advantage in focusing attention and attracting funding. He also warned, wisely, of the risk that development bureaucracies would regard the list of eight goals as limitative, to the detriment of other key drivers of prosperity. This is exactly what happened. Indeed at one point all expenditure proposals at the World Bank had to be linked to achievement of the MDGs (including, ludicrously, budget requests for office computers and such).

The number of goals has more than doubled from MDGs to SDGs and the breadth of most goals is far wider. Primary education is no longer singled out in SDG # 4: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all.” In short, the “development community” (government aid agencies, international financial institutions, foundations and other non-government organizations) no longer faces political/bureaucratic obstacles to focus on expanding and improving the developing world’s universities.

Official development institutions were quick to pick up the new clues. The World Bank’s web site features a tertiary education page which asks “why is tertiary education important?” and states that the World Bank gives priority to “improving the quality and relevance of tertiary education”. The African Development Bank issued a flagship report entitled: “Strategy for Higher Education, Science and Technology.” The Asian Development Bank has recently issued a spate of interesting research about higher education, which will be presented at GBSN’s Tenth Annual Conference in Manila, November 4-6. One of their key findings is that the “quality (and relevance) of education and training appears to be much more of a binding constraint than the quantity of students.” They note that the “coexistence of significant demand for professionals, relatively high tertiary unemployment rates, and fairly long times to fill professional positions suggests skill mismatches between the labor market and the tertiary education system.” This will sound familiar to you, but until recently did not figure prominently on the radar screen of major players in the development community.

For leadership, management and entrepreneurship educators of the developing world, this is good news.

Guy Pfeffermann is the Founder & CEO of the Global Business School Network

Business Education Should Focus on Relevance

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This article by Bibek Banerjee of IMT, Ghaziabad was published today by Business World

Management education plays an essential role in today’s dynamic business environment because of the positive consequences associated with the curriculum and pedagogy practiced in B-Schools. For schools to be competitive, it is very important to consider how much balance is required in loading the curriculum with theories from the ‘western’ world and those from the ’emerging’ world. Over the last decade, India has witnessed an exponential growth in terms of number of institutes imparting management education to aspirants. With rapid globalization and technological changes in the business world, the importance of management education keeping pace with the shifting fault lines of relevance has never been as deep as it is in today’s times.

In the context of India, business education has been largely concentrated at the ‘post-graduate’ level; while business degrees in the under-graduate levels are still at a formative stage. Nearly all top B-schools are stand-alone autonomous institutions and the government funds only a handful of B-schools, like the IIMs. The private schools are autonomous and predominantly fee-financed and therefore, Indian B-schools are in constant pressure to offer tangible value propositions to students in terms of ROI on their education.

The successful B-schools tend to balance strong curriculum with students’ career in both the immediate and the medium term. Predominantly, the prime role of Indian B-schools has been to (partially) resolve industry’s managerial talent problem. However, in recent years, some B-Schools like IMT Ghaziabad have focused on customized programs for individual organizations with uniquely blended action-oriented curriculum and pedagogy to develop managerial capabilities in-house.

As management education faces a call for significance in the contemporary scenario globally, Indian B-schools are not unaffected by the contextual impulses of the markets they serve. Research is one of the vital elements that require utmost focus in B-Schools. Lately, top B-schools in India have witnessed a timely move to focus on peer reviewed scholarly research. But, there is a prime need for Indian B-Schools to create a forum that upholds the relevance of scholarly publications in the Indian context. At the same time, merely filling the system with an over emphasis on quantity (of publications) is also a matter of great concern to maintain the credibility of the context.

Additionally, closer interface with the Industry, Government, NGOs, and Policy Research Institutes is necessary. Customized Executive or Corporate Education is a great interface that can contribute significantly in increasing management institutions’ contribution and relevance. Working up to the post-experience segments is a relatively new foray in India. Leveraging participants’ experience as avenues to embellish the curriculum is a great opportunity for excellent B-Schools. Good B-Schools often integrate industry inputs into the curriculum through guest lectures, live-projects, internships, case research, action research, and customized business simulations. In addition, the rapid emergence of quality minded Indian institutions seeking international ‘accreditation’ is changing the business education scenario for the better. The tangible benefits of accreditation (such as AACSB, SAQS) are many, and it includes increasing the credibility and esteem of Indian management schools worldwide. It is great that the quality minded B-schools, which are trying to create lasting value in Asia, has bought into this fact.

The growth of schools that are willingly self-selecting into driving continuous improvement processes through global accreditations is a significant development. On the other hand, it is also encouraging that international accreditation agencies have begun to take a more grounded point of view on the contextual issues around quality standards in Asia Pacific in general and India in particular. Avoidance of ‘western codes’ of quality and relevance (in favour of contextually relevant standards) does not seem to be as blasphemous as they used to be. B-schools should continue to push the accreditation agenda aggressively in the coming time. After all, if McDonalds and Burger King can customize their burgers for relevance in India, why should Indian B-schools not customize their curriculum and methods for relevance for the markets they serve?

The B-schools need to customize pedagogy far more specifically than taking either a national or a regional point of view. While there are elements of standard pedagogical tools, every B-school has an opportunity to stamp its creative value on uniquely customizing its position.

The campus location is one of the important elements that play a role in this whole process of pedagogy. For instance, the choice of pedagogy for Entrepreneurship & New Business Models may differ depending on the location of the institute (large metropolis vs a smaller town). Access to faculty and markets may moderate the degree to which a school can innovate on their curriculum. IMT’s location in the Delhi NCR region gives it an advantage in collaborating with strategic partners (practitioners, policy makers, and industry experts) to source live projects that students work on. While some projects are analytical and require mining and analysis of secondary data, others require significant amount of qualitative research and limited amounts of primary data collection. For instance, IMT Ghaziabad’s location in the Delhi-NCR allows us to improvise on our pedagogy to build one-on-one interfacing with industry leaders and client organizations, organize field visits and engage in action research. The ‘operating model’ of the education system is also important in this context. In India, the autonomous quality minded B-schools are inclined towards ‘residential on-campus system’ where students and faculty live on a mid-sized campus. This co-habitation set up allows a great scope for experiments that cannot be achieved while having commuting students and faculty.

The relevant curriculum and pedagogy have to be synced with a balance between some standardization and some customization. The measure of customization may largely depend upon the unique elements of the respective contexts including location, the operating model, and the targeted student segment. The unique elements to India are scale and cost. Intensifying the contextual relevance of the curriculum and the pedagogy is harder if the scale is too big. One of the major western standards that do not work in India is clearly pricing – quality has to be affordable.

The synthetic platforms of online engagement do not seem to be a perfect substitute for human engagement in India. The leadership vision and the role of the faculty are paramount in this balancing act. There is a significant role of the academic leadership in creating a coordinated system of motivation that makes everyone accountable for their respective roles. This includes strategic investments, collaborative outreach with the industry and other stakeholders, objective and subjective evaluation of research output and their relevance and impact on the education system. Business education has to have a sense of service to the local community through which it can be a great catalyst to unleash the potential of the economy. Quality business education must focus on bringing growth, wealth and development in society at large by developing entrepreneurship, creating jobs, nurturing innovations and improving quality of life for all.

Click here for the original article

Bibek Banerjee is the Director of GBSN Member School, IMT, Ghaziabad

Smith School, UMD MBA Students Win Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition Case Competition

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guyLast Friday I was privileged to take part in an uplifting show of creativity and analytic brio by five competing teams of MBA students. They came to Washington DC at the invitation of the University of Maryland Robert H Smith School of Business’ Center for International Business Education and Research. The Smith School is a member of GBSN’s Executive Board. Each of the teams Ð ranging from three to five students Ð had ten minutes to present recommendations based on a highly complex case, followed by ten minutes of questions and answers with the jury of five, of which I was a member.

The case focused on the question: “Do private enterprises and market practices have a place in solving malnutrition?” GBSN has been asked by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (http://www.gainhealth.org/), a major international nonprofit development organization, to harness its worldwide network of 70 leading business schools in order to research the issue in five environments where GAIN is active: Ivory Coast, Kenya, South Africa, and India (Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan). Student teams from the Tuck School of Business (at Dartmouth) fanned out to the four countries and produced the underpinnings of the case, which was written by Nancy Brandwein and Amanda Bullogh.

The student teams were asked what they would recommend to GAIN management.

The competing student teams had to master the enormous complexity of each of the five environments, and try at the same time to come up with recommendations that make sense across specific situations. They did a marvelous job. I was really thrilled and hugely impressed by all of the team presentations, and the jury had a very hard time deciding which team would receive the first and second prizes.

The winner was one of the two “home teams” of the Smith School. Like the other teams, they presented an excellent framework, which GAIN can use in order to enhance nutritional outcomes. In my opinion, the winning team conveyed a “real world awareness” which went beyond generic conceptual frameworks, and that is why I gave them my vote. The winners of the second prize, amazingly, had flown to Washington DC all the way from Seattle (University of Washington). But all the team presentations were impressive.

I came out of this very well-organized event, feeling very happy, because I had seen once again how highly-motivated MBA students can make a real difference in tackling some of the most intractable problems in international development, among which infant malnutrition surely ranks very high.

Congratulations to the students and to the organizers!Guy Pfeffermann is the Founder & CEO of the Global Business School Network

HEC Paris and WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Join the Network

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GBSN is proud to announce the acceptance of two new schools into our network. We welcome the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business and HEC Paris to our growing list of member schools. These schools join a network of over 70 world-class business schools that spans 32 countries in 6 continents.

GBSN works with our member schools to build management education capacity for the developing world through cross-border networking, knowledge sharing and capacity building programs to strengthen local business education. For faculty, students, businesses, NGOs, foundations and governments, GBSN is a resource for innovation, collaboration and growth. By fostering these connections, GBSN helps schools and faculty at different stages of development learn from one another. This dynamic network catalyzes new ideas, cultivates partnerships and disseminates knowledge around the globe. Network activities include:

  • GBSN Annual Conference and Members Meeting
  • GBSN Summits
  • Webinars
  • Panel Discussions and Special Events
  • Online Community
  • Working Groups
  • Peer Mentoring

GBSN activities provide a multitude of online and live networking and learning opportunities for management educators to connect and advance their knowledge and careers. As members, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business and HEC Paris will have the opportunity to participate in GBSN’s robust network, share knowledge and perspectives with peers around the world, and engage in capacity building programs.

wu_wien_logo_smallThe WU Vienna University of Economics and Business is GBSN’s first member school in the country of Austria. The institution joins GBSN with hopes to broaden its scope of social responsibility. Due to its size and wide range of expertise, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business will contribute to various programs supporting GBNS’s mission. In alignment with GBSN’s recent and upcoming summits, WU focuses on solving key economic, societal and ecological challenges by teaching responsible business practices. WU intends to build on its existing partnerships to increase its capacity building capability. In addition, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business will help increase visibility for GBSN and other network affiliates in the international community.

“Being among one of the larger universities in business and economics in Europe also means to have a special responsibility to our society. This goes far beyond the responsibilities we, as higher education institutions, naturally have towards our students, our faculty and our administrative staff.”
Ð Dr. Christoph Badelt, Rector, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business

In the recent years, WU has taken several steps towards developing and integrative and practice-oriented business education with a strong international focus. The main idea of this approach is to prepare students who are able to tackle the challenges of business in a globalized world by keeping the three dimensions of sustainability in mind: society, environment, and economy. As such, topics like sustainability, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and social entrepreneurship play an important role in WU Vienna University of Economics and Business’ study programs.

hec_paris_smallHEC Paris is committed to retaining its socially-conscious republican ethos, which has been at the heart of the school’s identity since its foundation in 1881. They firmly believe that excellence and openness are not mutually exclusive. HEC Paris joins GBSN to engage in networking opportunities, knowledge sharing and international partnership development, with a specific focus on the African continent.

“We are very aware of our responsibilities towards society and so our institution has multiplied initiatives that promote ethical behavior as well as corporate responsibility. We believe that these are essential for sustainable development. GBSN membership would offer us networking opportunities and encourage HEC community members to collaborate as a means to generate prosperity in developing regions.” – Francois Collin, Director of International Affairs, HEC Paris

HEC Paris is excited to be involved in cross-cultural knowledge exchange and collaboration. In addition to the new partnerships it will gain through GBSN, HEC Paris has 127 international partners.

GBSN is excited to welcome these two new schools to our growing network.

Brennon Thompson is the Communications and Event Planning Intern at the Global Business School Network

How Do Company Executives See the Quality of Business Schools Around the World?

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guyHow do company executives see the quality of business schools around the world?

The World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey gives us an answer.

Each year more than 13,000 business leaders rate the quality of business schools on a scale of 1 (worst) to 7 (best). The average for 146 countries falls neatly in the middle of the range, at 4.2. The chart shows regional variations.

Has the perceived quality of business schools changed over the past few years? The world average score has remained remarkably stable between 2007 and 2014, but masks considerable variations. Scores improved remarkably in Portugal, China and Italy, and declined in India.

Let us focus on scores for Sub-Saharan Africa. The second chart shows averages for Sub-Saharan Africa (for all countries and for the ten most significant economies).Both trends are positive, which is consistent with what we know from GBSN’s work on the continent. A decade ago, only a handful of good-quality business schools existed outside South Africa. Today, thanks largely to unstinting efforts by private sector pioneers of business education, an increasing number of quality business schools have grown in quite a number of African countries. In Zambia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Namibia, Kenya and Ghana, scores improved by 20 to 50 percent; progress has also been achieved in Cote d’Ivoire and Uganda, while ratings for South Africa and Nigeria don’t show much change over time. I like to think that GBSN has contributed somewhat to these improvements.

Guy Pfeffermann is the Founder & CEO of the Global Business School Network

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