Globalization and the development
of B-School curriculums August 20, 2005:
When John Thornton left Goldman Sachs, and started
to teach at Tsinghua, Beijing
's elite university, he gave an interview to
the Financial Times August
22, 2003 (www.ft.com). Thornton
said "(The
decision to teach at Tsinghua) was logical. There are four big themes
in the early 21st Century: the emergence of China,
the turmoil in the Islamic world, the disgraceful way the
world treats Africa; and the environment. China
is the only area where I believed I could make a significant
impact".)
How does one develop curriculums to deal with these
issues?
Tsinghua's needs are different from a new B-School
in Eritrea.
In designing a B-School
curriculum, management educators know that there are basics of accounting and
corporate finance and the management of information systems
which have universal value.
However,
beyond that they are in a world of customized curriculum design
(CCD). CCD and other
forms of data-mining and knowledge management are some of
the most potentially valuable areas for venture capital firms to
explore as new investment opportunities. The world's major news sources
are seeking ways to commercialize their archives and intellectual
inventories; wikis and blogs are creating new forms of information
and knowledge management. Screening these new sources
of content provides intriguing models for new B-School curriculums. From the perspective of the
globalization of B-Schools, CCD represents a significant
opportunity. A
library of case studies and business situation analysis
can be created and then utilized for specific educational
"missions". Otherwise, we
will end up using boilerplate materials in contexts
and situations where they do not apply.
In international development policy making, those
involved are increasingly coming to realize that it is imperative
to create specialized B-Schools in emerging economies if
one is going to maximize the potential for economic growth.
In assuring that an emerging
African country with prospects has a chance at managing
globalization and creating the preconditions for its own
sustainable prosperity, it requires an indigenous B-school
with a capacity to produce economic innovators and political
leaders appropriate to the context.
(For the purposes of this memo, Eritrea
is a good example.) The B-School then becomes the hub which connects Eritrean business
organizations and activities to the global economy, the
way a North American B-School serves as a transmission-belt
between the next generation of business leaders and
its broader economic environment .
There are at least four things which are clear from the perspective of B-School
activities and those concerned with the practical management
of the global economy:
(i)
The MBA curriculums of major global
B-Schools have tremendous significance for global economic
activity. They have succeeded in creating
a network of leaders conversant with "best practices" and
"investment trends". In
an ethical environment, these MBAs have the skills
to create win-win deals and back innovative entrepreneurs. They have developed a capacity
to create and assess new business models. They have knowledge
of hundreds of deals and deal-makers. The B-School credential is
of such value that when an investor arrives in Istanbul
and meets an MBA from a well-respected B-School, he or she
has a way to relate and communicate that facilitates negotiations. Because of the power of this
"elite" network, it is necessary for advocates of globalization
to be constantly vigilant that the economic activities they
are creating have widespread benefits and are not just being
conducted for a small elite.
(ii)
B-Schools can ensure that best
practices can be shared in a number of activities, from
how to manage culturally diverse firms to how to ensure
oil revenues are productively reinvested. At a mouse click, we
can learn about the best practices in technology commercialization
from Swiss science parks, Silicon Valley
venture capital firms and Japanese corporate labs. Latin American business leaders
learned from B-School analysis of privatization and
capital market behaviour in the 1990s. There is a similar impact
today on how well-managed forms of social entrepreneurship
can create value in Africa. The sharing of best practices
and the development of business models that are customized
to local situations is now a commonplace of global business.
(iii)
Within these MBA networks, certain trends and "paradigms"
become accepted, setting a global agenda which needs to
be constantly reassessed.
The techniques we use are built on "paradigms" where
large numbers of people in decision-making roles share certain
assumptions about "value-creation" or globalization". At the beginning
of the academic year 2005-2006, the most important global
"trend" is the management of the rise of India
and China
and the constantly changing role of emerging markets in
investment calculations. Those in B-Schools whose role is
to develop a "broader perspective" need to develop a paradigm
appropriate for the economic agenda of the next
few years. The first wave of globalization
did not adequately deal with the issues of how capital-market
led globalization would create the preconditions for sustainable
prosperity in, say, Malaysia. It also did not
deal with the issues raised by the economic investment power
of countries like India
and
China as they emerge
as global players themselves. Global B-Schools are the only
institutions where a new framework or "paradigm" can be
developed. This time it needs to address the concerns
of those who have to manage domestic industries in periods
of volatile international capital market activity as well
as those in investment banks rightly concerned about transparency
in investment actvities.
(iv)
B-Schools are not like chemistry
departments. They
do not exist to search for new compounds. They are designed to interact
with the practical world, where many ideas are to be found.
In that sense, B-Schools are more like geologists,
prospecting for the best resources.
The
imposition of categories of "research" borrowed from other
disciplines has put the competitive advantage of B-Schools
at risk, and is really one of the key reasons there is an
emerging backlash against B-School products. B-Schools
being designed to advance the economic agenda of emerging
economies have a special
responsibility to inoculate themselves against abstract thinking. That is one of the responsibilities
of being part of global elite.
If the
first thing Eritrea
needs as an institution for effective development is a strategic
plan for its domestic business education, what should an
Eritrean B-School curriculum look like? B-Schools have created
a framework for talking about new business models, assessing
value-creating propositions, fostering economic growth based
on market discipline, and bringing together managers who
have been exposed to a variety of concrete case-study oriented
"simulation" experiences. This framework has to be
applied to a different agenda.
The best new B-Schools in this global context will
be the ones that successfully address these generic issues
while organizing their educational experience to serve a
specific local market. Customized curriculums with
organized information from global media sources will produce
specific kinds of case studies, one which will lead local
business students to develop a framework appropriate to
their objectives. Here is a cut at ten cases,
the discussion of which could produce a composie mix of
skills and knowledge appropriate to a young Eritrean business
leader:
(i)
a
comparison of successful entrepreneurial activities in an
emerging market-context with transferable relevance
from Zambia,
Kenya, or Kazakhstan. www.honeycareafrica.com
provides one type of example ;
(ii)
adapting cooperative Islamic financing sources like
the Somali hawala to provide entrepreneurial finance
with transferable expertise to microfinancing strategies
in Bangladesh
or Jamaica;
(iii)
wireless telephone entrepreneurs in different countries,
building an entrepreneurial sector in Ethiopia,
Kazakhstan,
Bangladesh, www.vodacom.cd is an example;
(iv)
the
development of successful stock exchanges even at an early
stage with limited liquidity with transferable best
practices from Accra
or Tallinn
www.mbendi.com gives insights into
www.gse.com.gh ;
(v)
developing institutional investors to facilitate the
development of an efficient capital market with transferable
expertise from Kuala Lumpur
to Lagos - how to create domestic financial
institutions capable of international activity;
(vi) best practices for management of microfinance
loans in terms of performance of investments;
(vii) management of cross-border activities in
zones where there has been recent nation conflict;
(viii) management of appropriate health care measurement,
monitoring and distribution capabilities in areas of
low-penetration medical care;
(ix)
Understanding
the strategic planning of Malaysian, Indian, Chinese and
Korean foreign investors based on
their performance in markets like Sudan,
Uzbekistan
and Kazakhstan e.g. www.petronas.com.my
.
(x) Transparency International rankings and their
impact on foreign investment
rates, www.transparency.org .
This
is an attempt developing a curriculum for a Business
School which
is targeted for the economic development of a particular
country. All of these case studies
have relevance to the next generation of Eritrean business
leaders. Many are transferable to other countries experiencing
a similar challenge for developing efficient local capital
markets and successful entrepreneurial businesses. It is once more
a question of how knowledge can be efficiently and effectively
organized.
Cases,
follow-up video interviews, on-line commentaries and discussions
make possible this kind of educational strategy.
Because
B-Schools are now expected to do so much, it is not surprising
that there are easy criticisms of any specific B-School
for the things it doesn't do.
A decade from now, someone will write that the implementation
of the end-of-poverty agenda failed because of deficiencies
in B-Schools. And
hopefully, someone else will write that poverty was dramatically
reduced and the conditions for sustainable prosperity introduced
in a number of countries around the world because of the
success of B-Schools in developing innovative products for
this new market need.
A B-School
serving local needs will develop new courses or programmes. A fundamental question
is how to increase agricultural productivity
in African markets. The virtual team that needs
to be assembled to solve this particular challenge is one
which would do applied research on issues of entomology. Applied entomology and
science-based agriculture applied to a new green revolution
could increase protein-yield per acre and dramatically advance
the cause of the eradication of global poverty. A great B-School
will be able to put together a "course" on "Increasing Productivity
and Competitiveness in African Agriculture" without worrying
about artificial boundaries between disciplines. It would involve agricultural
chemists; people capable of coaching managers of agricultural
cooperatives, trade analysts conversant with the manner
export markets have been limited for African agricultural
product. The case materials for
a programme like this could come from other emerging market
African economies.
Just as a financial media editor would assign a journalist
to look at cacao production in Ghana and the genesis of
an African domestic food processing industry in Ghanaian
chocolate products, the difficulty of exporting
Burkina Faso cotton into protected G8 markets, the opportunities and challenges presented by
growing Chinese herbal medicines in east African agricultural
land, a strategic
management of an Eritrean B-School would require that materials
be generated and distilled from these experiences and taught
as part of an ongoing curriculum
.
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