BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
T he new Director of the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB), Catherine Duggan, believes that Business Schools can play an important role in rebuilding in the wake of Covid-19 – and that they have a special responsibility to take the lead in crafting healthier and more equitable societies and economies. Duggan is only the second woman in the history of UCT GSB to hold the position of Director and her appointment brings to an end a lengthy recruitment process. Duggan’s overarching vision for the School is to support UCT GSB’s record of academic excellence, expand its use of technology to enhance the scope, reach, and flexibility of its offerings, increase its engagement across the African continent, and reinforce its long-standing commitment to developing and teaching insights that are relevant to business. In this interview, Duggan talks about her background and expertise in the region. She also discusses her plans for the School and the impact she hopes the School can have on both South Africa and Africa as a whole. Does your background of growing up, studying and working in Europe and the US give you a fresh perspective, compared to those who hail from the region, on the challenges facing business, and by extension, Business Schools in Africa? While it is true that I grew up in the US and have worked in Europe, I think my perspective has been most influenced by the breadth of my experience in Africa. In more than two decades of working on the continent – and in more than 20 countries – I’ve studied a comparatively large number of sectors and markets. I’ve lived in villages and looked at commodities’ supply chains from end to end; I’ve studied financial markets from illegal moneylenders and microfinance institutions to banks and fintech; I’ve looked at consumer goods, telecommunications companies, multinationals, regional players, and informal markets, as well as minerals, oil and gas, and agriculture. And, of course, as a political scientist by training, I’m constantly looking at politics and economics and how those dynamics influence the business environment. It would be reasonable to say that I’ve constructed my career around a continent, rather than around a management field. That certainly makes me unusual, at least at a Business School. I’m often asked why I’m so committed to Africa. While I have personal ties to the continent – members of my family have been doctors and educators on the continent for three generations – to me, I see the future in Africa. The continent is going to be more and more important, in global terms, for the
rest of our lives. And there is an energy and an optimism on the continent, much of it driven by a very young, very innovative population, that I don’t feel anywhere else in the world. There’s also so much to learn about global business by looking at business in Africa. In certain ways, the challenges I’ve seen businesses face on the continent – and the approaches that separate those that thrive from those that do not – are more similar than they are different, even across countries and sectors. The most successful African firms and business leaders I’ve met have a flexibility, adaptability, and holistic understanding of things that are second to none. They also have approaches to identifying opportunities, thinking about risk, and managing stakeholders that managers around the world would do well to learn. Honestly, in this moment in the US and Europe, when we have so much political and economic uncertainty and newly salient questions about the relationship between business and society, I think it is genuinely important to be able to say: there are places where companies have seen things like this – and more challenging than this – before, and here’s how they figured out how to thrive in those complex environments. I think my perspective combines some of the best of western business education, which I gleaned from my time at Business Schools in the US and Europe, with what I have learned by being on the ground in some of the most dynamic markets in the world. What has been your biggest challenge in your career journey? I’ve spent a lot of time in my career wrestling with choices between things that I knew were right for me and things that other people thought I should do. Early in my career, a lot of that struggle was over issues like teaching style: when I started at Harvard Business School, years ago, I was often told not to be too loud, not to take up too much space at the front of the classroom, and not to be too opinionated as a professor. That didn’t work for me. That’s not who I am, and that’s not the kind of professor I want to be. I’m half Asian, and it’s also not the example I want to set as a woman of colour. It was a struggle to give myself permission to teach my own way, but once I did, I hit my stride and it really worked for me. What are the biggest challenges facing international Business Schools? I think the main challenge that should keep all of us up at night is how to prepare our students for the increasingly complex world in which they’ll spend their careers. Our MBAs will be more global and manage more things – often, at the same time – than previous generations. To take global supply chains as an example, our students need to understand not just logistics, but also
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