ASIA PACIFIC DEANS & DIRECTORS CONFERENCE
educators should provide a service rather than merely a product, as well as “a two-year experience that will change lives for the better.” Students don’t come for knowledge, but for wisdom, he remarked, meaning that “schools must change from knowledge providers to talent incubators”. Motivation and self-awareness are key, avowed the Chulalongkorn dean, noting: “how to convince people to work with you is a primary skill”. Puriwat said he admired the vision of fast food chain McDonald’s, “the brand as an experience”, and urged schools to reflect on how they might go about creating “a legacy that is world-class, collaborative and innovative”. Talking about the rise of AI, he noted: “we do not compete with robots, we compete with those who make the robots” and he added a caveat concerning the rise of new technology: “If you do not disrupt the digital, the digital will disrupt you”. He concluded with a prescient adage from Abraham Lincoln: “The best way to predict your future is to create it”. Cultural dimensions of global leadership Dr Hassan Abu Bakar, dean of the Othman Yeop Abdullah Graduate School of Business at Universiti Utara Malaysia, used his session to make the case for ensuring that a school’s training programme doesn’t just focus on leaders’ communication skills, but also on their ability to understand and value shared cultural dimensions. There are four dimensions in total, according to Bakar: community embeddedness, a focus on respect, conformity and future orientation. The first revolves around individual affiliation and the social network; the focus on respect deals with hierarchical roles within the workplace and society; conformity refers to staying in line with cultural norms and morality; while future orientation is about the importance of future life goals to past and current goals. Cultural skills need to be embedded into the curriculum as part of the MBA training, so future leaders can be sensitive to culture and treat everyone not just as a representative of a particular race, but as a unique person. Schools must learn to “embrace the differences between individuals” commented Bakar, referring to the example of a 78-year-old student who is enrolled on an MBA programme at Othman Yeop Abdullah. Strategic thinking is also essential, he continued, noting that Malaysia is a relatively small country of around 33 million, yet it can lay claim to having 26 public universities and 300 private ones, meaning that “the MBA market is very competitive”. Responding to a question from the floor about the importance of soft skills, the Othman Yeop Abdullah dean referenced a school for underprivileged children, largely made up of the offspring of undocumented immigrants who are not eligible to benefit from government-run education. This is organised as part of the CSR (corporate social responsibility) programme on the school’s MBA course, with students teaching the children English and learning how to interact and engage with them.
Huazhong University’s Zhi Yang spoke about the importance of publishing academic articles
Students developing real-life business skills was a recurring conference theme
Pipop Udorn outlined the practical initiatives at Thammasat University
The audience members represented a broad spectrum of institutions
| 27 Ambition | FEBRUARY 2024 | 27
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