BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
programmes, master’s programmes, PhDs, MBAs, EMBAs, executive education, and a DBA programme. It’s a full spectrum of programmes and the scale is increasing as we speak. The international dimension is also developing very rapidly, but it has been impacted by Covid-19. We have a few programmes that relate to international students and have established programmes and partnerships with overseas Schools. We’ve seen a huge development in business education in China in general – and at Antai College in particular. You can measure this in terms of faculty, students, alumni, and various international outreach programmes. ZW: Fangruo, at the AMBA & BGA Global Conference in Istanbul in 2019, you gave an interesting presentation on how business education can be linked with industrial sectors, and industrial sector upgrading, as well as how business education can be embedded into industrial innovation. Can you share any recent progress, given the Covid-19 challenge? FC: The goal is to connect theory with practice. We know this is an ‘old’ topic, but we have a new way to push this goal one big step forward. There are two models of research: one is discipline-based and the other is industry-based. Discipline-based research is the traditional model. As Business Schools, we have various disciplines – finance, economics, accounting, marketing, management, operations, and so on. These are discipline models of doing research and we want to build on top of this traditional model with another layer – another model of knowledge creation. We called this
industry research. Horizontal research is discipline-based, and vertical research is industry-based. In 2018, we established the Institute for Industry Research, and we want to use this platform to promote industry research within the Business School. This initiative was supported tremendously by our alumni. It’s almost as if our alumni base was ignited by the idea that the School is using industry research as a strategy. Faculty support has also been huge. We have 180 faculty members and, of these,110 are participating in various industry research efforts. We have 30 research teams looking into different industries, including healthcare, energy, finance, and accounting. This is not just a research effort, it’s a research effort to connect theory with practice. We’ve created teaching programmes in connection with industry research – courses focused on various industries, so people interested in particular industries can share their experience. We also have professors and industry leaders to teach in those courses. The initiative has brought us closer to other parts of the
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‘In China, most students say that they don’t like online teaching and consider face-to-face teaching to be much better’
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