DAY 3
Thirty years of the MBA in China – and looking forward to the next 30 MBA education in China has developed over 30 years, and there are currently 243 MBA university programmes. AMBA has been working in China for 15 years since Zhejiang University was accredited in 2006. Significant progress has been made, including developments in member Schools’ international strategy and effective international networks, high-quality faculty development and curriculum upgrading and innovation, plus excellent teaching and student talent cultivation. Important social responsibility initiatives, active industrial partnerships and continuous impact and sustainability evaluation have also been undertaken, and there has been concerted participation by Chinese member Schools in AMBA & BGA international events and collaborative initiatives. In this session, deans from Chinese AMBA-accredited Business Schools gave their perspectives on best practice and high-standard development strategies, as well as sharing their predictions for the future. We will feature a detailed narrative of the session in the September edition of Ambition , but here are some highlights. Fangruo Chen Dean, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai JiaoTong University ‘Going forward, I think the biggest challenge for Business Schools is to demonstrate our value proposition to society at large; the value we can create for society and for our students. ‘We should be mindful of this because we have a lot of competition. Companies have their own universities and their own organisations and institutions offering something similar to the MBA. ‘The value proposition is the key. This is something we should focus on over the next 30 years, or even longer. I think, for Business Schools, there are two things that we must do. One is research, the other is teaching. But the core is really the research because it is knowledge creation. Knowledge creation is something that we can teach our students which will hopefully help them to succeed in real life. Research is the most fundamental part, in my view. We need to do responsible research now. What is responsible research? I think different Schools will
have their own interpretations. At Antai, we think responsible research is really practice-based research, addressing real problems and challenges, even though the findings might not be immediately publishable in academic journals. On the one hand, we still want to publish in journals – to retain the academic part of it – but on the other, I think we need to create a new direction. Even in the short term, we are producing products that might not look like what we have published in academic journals. We should be more open and more inclusive and supportive of new ideas and new forms of knowledge creation so that we can have breakthroughs, develop more useful knowledge, and teach this to our students. I think this is the way forward.’ Fan Wang Assistant President and Dean, Business School, Sun Yat-sen University ‘Responsibility and sustainability is very important, not only for MBA and EMBA programmes, but for all of our programmes. The other issue is that at the very beginning, we ended some of the core course, or removed selective courses such business ethics, as we didn’t think that was enough. ‘Maybe the better way is [to reconsider] the content that they use. If [Business Schools] put some of the [trending responsible management] content into the curriculum for each of their programmes – for example accounting professionals moving into the finance profession but being made aware of how accounting and finance can make use of sustainability – the company can be healthy for the long-term, not only for the company level, but for the region and the country level.’
FANGRUO CHEN
FAN WANG
Are we there yet? How far are Business Schools from achieving diversity and equality? In order to advance fair and equal business practices, leaders leaving business education must
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