Business Impact covers the big challenges facing global management education as the world asks more of its future business leaders.
THE MAGAZINE OF THE BUSINESS GRADUATES ASSOCIATION (BGA) | LEADERS NEVER STOP LEARNING | FEBRUARY-APRIL 2022
BRIDGING THE DIVIDE WHY POLITICS MUST PERMEATE EVERY ASPECT OF BUSINESS SCHOOL CURRICULA
PLUS: • DEVELOPING IMPACTFUL LEADERS • AMBA & BGA EDTECH RESEARCH
• THE FUTURE OF THE BACHELOR’S IN BUSINESS
AMBA & BGA GLOBAL CONFERENCE 2022 Lisbon, Portugal 15-18 May 2022
AMBA & BGA has chosen the magnificent Portuguese capital Lisbon as the venue for the AMBA & BGA Global Conference for Deans and Directors 2022. Our conference programme will include some of the world’s leading Deans and CEOs who will present on the issues most prevalent to Business School strategy.
For more information, visit: www.businessgraduatesassociation.com/ bga_events/amba-bga-global-conference-2022/ The programme will be complemented with fine dining and world-class networking in some of Lisbon’s most iconic and awe-inspiring venues.
Sponsored by:
campus
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
Moving politics beyond optional add-on status Why politics must permeate every aspect of the curriculum to bridge the divide between business and politics
Embodying the change Business Schools can do more to develop leaders that embody the change needed in the business world, say David Lewis and Jules Goddard, co-authors of Mavericks
The future of bachelor’s degrees in business Adapting to evolving student demands
3
CONTENTS February-April 2022
32 0 Money talks
04 Editor's letter 07 From the CEO 08 Cover story: the interrelationship between business and politics Politics can no longer be an optional add-on to standard business teaching and businesses must accept that they are part of our panoply of
20 Bachelor’s degrees
political institutions, says Joe Zammit-Lucia, author of The New Political Capitalism 14 Developing impactful leaders What makes the difference between those that simply complain and those that endeavour to make things better? David Lewis and Jules Goddard, co-authors of Mavericks , on developing leaders that embody the change needed in the business world
Business Schools should see evolving student demands as an opportunity to change their offerings for the better, says Jordi Robert-Ribes, CEO at EDUopinions 24 AMBA & BGA research Business School leaders on tech innovation in the pandemic and changes to Schools' long-term strategy, in new research
Chicago Booth’s Michael Weber on teaching the importance of effective communication 36 0 Tailoring the journey Highlights from an AMBA & BGA roundtable on the student experience and customisation 42 Guest column Pursuing purpose
A
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
EDITORIAL
Elsewhere, we hear of the importance of injecting philosophical thinking into the way Business Schools teach, which in turn will help shape modern-day management and organisational practice. The questions generated by the discipline of philosophy are of particular importance to executive education, for David Lewis and Jules Goddard, co- authors of Mavericks , as they seek to further our understanding of how Schools can develop leaders that strive for positive change in the world (page 14). ‘Not because there is a clear formulaic answer that we can teach,’ they write, ‘but because these are the questions that define the paradoxes and dilemmas of leadership.’ In his discussion of the disconnect between monetary policymakers and the general public (page 32), Chicago Booth’s Michael Weber also emphasises the importance of taking an interdisciplinary approach. For Weber, this will, ‘allow future leaders to draw on insights across many different fields, such as psychology, behavioural economics and macroeconomics as well as marketing, to design policies that not only work in theory, but also reach ordinary households in practice.’ Therein lies the potential for more effective policies and ultimately, real impact. Tim Banerjee Dhoul,
Content Editor Tim Banerjee Dhoul t.dhoul@businessgraduates association.com Art Editor Laura Tallon Insight and Communications Executive Ellen Buchan e.buchan@ businessgraduates association.com Director of Marketing and Communications David Woods-Hale d.woods@businessgraduates association.com
C orporate
The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of business education
Business Development Manager Victor Hedenberg v.hedenberg@ businessgraduatesassociation.com Senior Marketing Executive, BGA Shareen Pennington s.pennington@ businessgraduatesassociation.com BGA Account Manager Ben Maheson b.maheson@ businessgraduatesassociation.com Head of Commercial Relations Max Braithwaite m.braithwaite@ businessgraduatesassociation.com Commercial Partnerships Manager Emily Wall e.wall@ businessgraduatesassociation.com Finance and Commercial Director Catherine Walker Director of Accreditation and Director of BGA Services Mark Stoddard Chief Executive Officer Andrew Main Wilson Executive Assistant to the CEO Amy Youngs a.youngs@ businessgraduatesassociation.com General Enquiries info@businessgraduates association.com
4
4
The idea that business education must be interdisciplinary in nature certainly isn't new, but its promotion has been growing in currency. In response to the big global challenges of today, there are continuing calls for further fields to be better encompassed and integrated into curricula. In a climate of polarisation, Joe Zammit-Lucia urges Business Schools to push politics’ interrelationship with business to the very centre of curricula, rather than to leave it languishing as an optional add-on, in our cover feature of this edition of Business Impact
(page eight). In particular, the author of The New Political Capitalism worries that simply layering ESG perspectives onto standard business thinking could do more harm than good when it comes to developing the mindsets of future business leaders. Business School students must be prepared for a new reality in which businesses recognise that they are, ‘part of our panoply of political institutions,’ Zammit-Lucia argues, adding that this, ‘requires a deep understanding of the political way of thinking and its incorporation into all aspects of business purpose, strategy and operations.’
Content Editor, Business Impact
Copyright 2022 by The Association of MBAs and Business Graduates Association. All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without the permission of the publisher. While we take care to ensure that editorial is independent, accurate, objective and relevant for our readers, BGA accepts no responsibility for reader dissatisfaction rising from the content of this publication. The opinions expressed and advice given are the views of individual commentators and do not necessarily represent the views of BGA. Whenever an article in this publication is placed with the financial support of an advertiser, partner or sponsor, it will be marked as such. BGA makes every opportunity to credit photographers but we cannot guarantee every published use of an image will have the contributor’s name. If you believe we have omitted a credit for your image, please email the editor.
Take advantage of AMBA & BGA’s free webinar series for Business
School leaders
AMBA & BGA is working with Business Schools
and business education leaders to develop a raft of fresh online content in the form of live interactive webinars, especially tailored for Business School leaders, decision makers, and professionals. In addition to our growing virtual and hybrid conference programme, our one-hour webinars (all of which can supplied as recordings to all
Topics include: Education technology Business School innovation Lifelong learning Career development Leadership skills Building partnerships Regional updates And much more.
registered delegates), offer perfectly bite sized insights from industry experts.
For more information visit www.businessgraduatesassociation.com/events/events-webinars/ Make the most of your coffee breaks, and keep up to speed with the trends in the business education arena.
RESEARCH AND INSIGHT: STAY AHEAD OF THE TRENDS IN BUSINESS EDUCATION
Over the past 18 months, AMBA & BGA’s Research and Insight Centre has produced a wealth of groundbreaking new research and compiled reports citing views from MBA thinkers, practitioners, faculty, and leaders across the globe on the issues that matter most in business education. Recent AMBA & BGA research has investigated Business Schools’ attitudes to poverty, rankings, climate change, and education technology. We have analysed MBA career trajectories, graduate success in the new normal, application and enrolment figures across a spectrum of programmes, and employer and student perceptions of lifelong learning.
We also seek to collaborate with Business Schools and corporate partners in order to further enhance AMBA & BGA’s research offering.
If you are interested in partnering on research, joining one of our roundtables or focus groups to delve into the findings, or even sharing your thoughts on what topics you would like AMBA & BGA to explore, then please contact research@associationofmbas.com
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
I t was my great pleasure to welcome 352 virtual guests to the AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards in January. These were our largest-ever Excellence Awards featuring 59 finalists and I'm delighted to use this opportunity to share some highlights of the winning entries with you. NEOMA Business School (France) scooped the Best Innovation Strategy 2022 award, in association with Barco, for the ‘NEOMA Business School Virtual Campus’, which aims to provide a place where studying, teaching, meeting, and chatting can take place virtually. IE Business School (Spain) won Best Lifelong Learning Initiative 2022, in association with Kortext, for ‘Turn It Around – Alumni Engagement’. IE Business School designed a virtual toolkit to accompany students and alumni, with online learning content showcasing alumni making a difference in the world. International Business School Suzhou, Xi’an Jiaotong- Liverpool University (XJTLU) (China) won Best CSR and Sustainability Initiative 2022 for ‘15 Ways in 15 Weeks’. This semester-long initiative drove sustainable and positive behavioural change at the Business School. International Management Institute (MIM-Kyiv) (Ukraine) won Best Business School Partnership 2022, in association with Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) with BookChef Publishing House. Through this partnership, MIM-Kyiv brings an international agenda to Ukraine; and helps Ukrainian businesspeople gain access to business books – and even meet some of the authors in person. Centrum PUCP Business School, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Peru), won Best Culture, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative 2022, in association with McGraw Hill Education, for ‘Word of Women Academy’. Through eight courses, 650 women were trained in a free programme. EGADE Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), won the coveted BGA Business School Impact Award 2022 for ‘Sustainable Wealth Creation Based on Innovation and Technology (SWIT)’. This model is a sustainable wealth creation framework based on disruptive innovation and enabling technologies. We also celebrated BGA’s third anniversary on 21 January 2022. Since BGA’s launch, the network has welcomed 195 Business Schools as BGA members and accredited 20 Schools. As the BGA movement, of which you are a very valued member, moves from strength to strength, I would be pleased to welcome you all in person, to our AMBA & BGA Global Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, from 15-18 May 2022. During the event, world-class speakers will address: innovation; hybrid teaching; lifelong learning; responsible management and sustainability; diversity, equity and inclusion; partnerships and alliances; student experience and wellbeing; and faculty development. The conference will also provide great opportunities to connect with fellow Business School leaders and I will look forward to seeing you there. www.businessgraduatesassociation.com/bga_events/ amba-bga-global-conference-2022/
7
BGA's third anniversary: celebrating success As BGA celebrates its third anniversary, AMBA & BGA CEO, Andrew Main Wilson , unveils the winning Schools in the AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards 2022, and looks forward to this year's Global Conference, to be held in Lisbon in May
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
HOW BUSINESS SCHOOLS CAN BRIDGE
8
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
Business Schools can no longer afford to ignore the intimate interrelationship between business and politics – and they must go beyond layering ESG perspectives onto standard business thinking – says Joe Zammit-Lucia , author of The New Political Capitalism
9
THE POLITICAL DIVIDE
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
T he cultural gulf between business and politics remains wide and persistent. ‘Business is business and politics is politics and never between shall meet,’ according to American journalist, Suzy Welch. Yet this perspective is not only outdated, it has also never been true. disciplines that have been brought to bear on business education have not included politics. Harvard academic and management guru, Tom Peters, explained in a 2021 Financial Times article how he was ‘angry, disgusted and sickened’ at how McKinsey & Co., his first employer, and its army of clever MBAs ended up paying nearly $600 million USD for their part in the US opioid scandal: ‘Business Schools typically emphasise marketing, Traditionally, Business Schools have operated in disciplinary silos and the finance and quantitative rules. The “people stuff” and “culture stuff” gets short shrift in virtually all cases.’ Politics is what people stuff and culture stuff is all about, yet many Business Schools continue to have a kind of blind spot about the close interrelationship between business and politics. This blind spot carries through when students embark on their business careers. One chair of a major multinational company had just come from a meeting with fellow chairs when we met for a coffee and a chat. He told me: ‘We were discussing politics. We came to the conclusion that politics operates to a totally different logic from business. And, quite honestly, we don’t understand it.’ This put me in mind of CP Snow’s renowned 1959 Rede Lecture on the divide between art and science [as published in the 1961 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution ]: ‘I felt I was moving among two groups – comparable in intelligence… who in intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common that instead of going from Burlington House or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might have crossed an ocean
… They have a curious distorted image of each other. Their attitudes are so different that, even at the level of emotion, they can’t find much common ground.’ Why does this gulf exist? Is Welch right that business and politics should never meet? Or, by ignoring political issues, are Business Schools leaving a huge and important gap in fulfilling their educational duties? To explore these questions further, we need to understand what we mean by ‘politics’ and what we mean by ‘business’, and their roles in our societies. What is politics? It is often thought that ‘political’ equates to partisan politics, the increasingly grubby nature of political campaigning, or the shady world of lobbying for self-interest. Yet politics is not that. Politics is the mechanism by which we decide collectively the kind of society in which we wish to live. That is something in which every one of us has an interest and about which we have views – often visceral and strongly held. Politics is ‘a great and civilising human activity,’ as Bernard Crick put it in his seminal work, In Defence of Politics . Crick argues that establishing a functioning political order that recognises different views, different preferences and even different truths, marks the birth, or recognition, of freedom. Politics is about people’s belief systems. ‘Politics is a battle of ideas, in which participants attempt to control the narrative through tapping deep-rooted values and beliefs, rather than invoking objective self-interest,’ says University of Edinburgh Professor, Christina Boswell, in a 2020 blog for the British Academy. In this reading, politics is primarily about identity and culture. People develop political views and allegiances based on their own visions of themselves – much as they choose some brands in an attempt to make a statement about who they are rather than for the brand’s functional value. Taking these definitions and perspectives, it is clear we all have political interests. We
10
‘The role of business is, like all other institutions, to participate in the process of creating a better society’
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
all care about the kind of society in which we live. Given that, how come so many businesses continue to declare themselves to be ‘apolitical’, seemingly trying to absolve themselves of any role in how our societies work? How is it that so much business education continues to ignore politics? What is business? To get to business, let’s start with economics. There was a time when economics was recognised for what it is – a branch of politics. There is no economic theory or decision that is not political in nature which is why we all used to talk about the political economy. All the great economists, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to JM Keynes, had political thought as a central part of their economic work. All of this was swept away when economics developed 'physics envy' and wanted to turn itself into a mathematical science. Neo- classical economics dismissed social, political and institutional factors (things not easily subject to turning into elegant mathematical equations) as being ‘exogenous’ to how markets operate, rather than accepting that they are integral to how markets function. The fiction of ‘homo economicus’ took off and the narrative around human beings was turned into one of a bunch of automatons making so-called ‘rational’ decisions based on their own economic self-interest. In other words, economics was extirpated from the political context in which it belongs. Where economics went, business followed. The artificial (and highly damaging) separation carried through to business thinking, which saw itself as belonging in the economic realm rather than the political realm. Over time, neo-liberal economic thinking infected the business perception of itself and its role in society. Milton Friedman’s seminal 1970 article, ‘The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits’, poured scorn on the idea that business had any wider responsibility to society other than making money for shareholders. This idea spread like wildfire. It was welcomed by the business community
because it simplified their lives, giving them a single target to work towards – shareholder value. Eventually, the idea became embedded in executive compensation programmes and linked exclusively to short-term stock price performance. A number of Business School curricula are still stuck in this paradigm – highly damaging and outdated as it is. The job of business is to maximise profit and deliver money to shareholders, many still claim. The world has changed Economist and former Dean of the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, John Kay, puts it like this in a 2021 article for Prospect magazine: ‘Business has lost political legitimacy and public trust by pandering to an account of itself that is both repulsive and false. The corporation is necessarily a social institution, its success the product of the relationships among its stakeholders and its role in the society within which it operates.’ This perverse view that business has of itself is the legacy of neoclassical and neoliberal economic thinking – thinking that has also caused huge social, environmental and economic damage and that none of us, including Business Schools, can afford to continue to perpetuate. Things are changing. Fast. We are entering a new era – what I describe as 'The New Political Capitalism'. It is an era in which business is rightly seen as being embedded in our social fabric. Where businesses recognise that they are political actors, through their power and their capability of having a significant impact on the sort of societies we live in. ESG modules are insufficient From pressures to address environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, to how we deal with climate change, to the rise of what some have called ‘political consumerism’, to the changing nature of globalisation due to new geopolitical tensions, political questions are increasingly integral to continued business success.
11 11
‘Politics is the mechanism by which we collectively decide what kind of society we wish to live in’
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
Yet, layering ESG modules onto business- as-usual curricula, as many Schools do, is an insufficient response. ESG is but a part of the political aspects of business, aspects that go much deeper to reach the very way we conceptualise what business is all about. If students go away believing that it's ok to keep thinking how we’ve always thought, keep doing what we’ve always done, and that today's context asks only that businesses are a little bit nicer about it and tick all the boxes around ESG, then these modules could end up doing more harm than good. This new era requires businesses to accept that they are part of our panoply of political institutions and to become increasingly reflexive about their political roles. This requires a deep understanding of the political way of thinking and its incorporation into all aspects of business purpose, strategy and operations. Business School students need to be prepared for this new reality.
own employees, interviewed this week in the Financial Times , said they supported Mr Trump’s policies.’ Why? Getting back to our previous quote, from the University of Edinburgh’s Christina Boswell, politics is about, ‘tapping deep-rooted values and beliefs, rather than invoking objective self-interest’. Trump tapped those values whereas management might have imagined that the workforce would blame the President for a bad decision while considering their own decisions perfectly 'rational'. A perfect example of the difference between thinking in narrow financial terms and thinking politically. What seems right from one perspective seems utterly mistaken from another. In the Harley case, so-called ‘business- focused decisions’ went against the value system of its employees. In other cases, employees’ political views end up driving business decisions. In 2018, Google took itself out of the Maven contract with the US Department of Defense after a staff outcry against the company agreeing to let its AI technology be used for military purposes. Yet more politics. Dropping out of the contract put paid to potential future work that could have earned Google some $10 billion USD over a decade. Earlier that year, employees at both Microsoft and Salesforce had protested against their companies' work for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in opposition to President Trump's policies that separated children from their parents. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella (an MBA alumnus of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business) issued a memo to employees with an explicitly political title: ‘My views on US immigration policy.’ In it,
Politics drives performance Let us look at some examples of
how political thinking is driving business performance. When former US President, Donald Trump, slapped tariffs on imported steel, Harley-Davidson (Harley), an icon of US manufacturing, decided to shift some of its production out of the US – a business decision. US workers were going to lose their jobs. One worker, interviewed by the media during this process, understood that he might lose his job and was asked whether he thought Trump had made the wrong decision in imposing tariffs (the business view). His response surprised the TV interviewer. ‘Yes, I know I might lose my job. But it was still the right decision. We must stop others exploiting America through unfair competition.’ His ire, in as much as there was any, was reserved for management rather than Trump. At the time, the Financial Times also interviewed a number of Harley employees and, in June 2018, reported: ‘Many of Harley’s
12
he denies that Microsoft was working on anything that related to the child separation policy.
The memo opens with politics: ‘Like many of you, I am appalled at the abhorrent policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the southern border of the US.’ He
‘This new era requires businesses to accept that they are part of our panoply of political institutions’
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
went on to describe the government policy as ‘cruel and abusive’. These are examples of a reactive approach to political issues. Managers are forced to address political questions related to their businesses because of employee pressures. Others react to investor pressure. Others still are finding that, in what has been described as a ‘politicised brandscape’, their customers are choosing brands based on the political meaning – is it ‘green’, does the supply chain use forced labour, is the company contributing to social wellbeing? Some companies and brands have had political thinking embedded within them for some time, maybe it has even been the basis on which they were founded. Patagonia, for example, was founded on the basis of a love of the outdoors and the consequent environmental activism of its founder, Yvon Chouinard. Environmental politics is built into the company’s DNA. Patagonia runs regular events in its stores, focused on environmental issues, and supports the production of activist films. It focuses obsessively on reducing its environmental footprint from how it manages its supply chains to a focus on the durability of its clothing to reduce over-purchasing and consequent waste and resource use – a stance that is, or at least was, nigh-on heretical in the fashion business. It has launched a programme called Worn Wear, encouraging its customers to buy used clothing rather than new and offering to fix worn clothing for nothing to discourage people from buying new. It ran an initiative that connected its customers to environmental groups. Patagonia has even refused to sell its clothing to corporations that do not prioritise the planet. In 2017, when former President Trump decide to shrink the size of his predecessor President Barack Obama's national monuments, Patagonia’s website was changed to feature an explicitly political statement upfront which declared ‘The President Stole Your Land’. During the 2020 US election campaign, Patagonia doubled down on its political assault on climate deniers by adding labels to a line of shorts stating, ‘Vote the Assholes Out’. The tagline was not new, but it had particular relevance during the 2020 election. Pictures of the hidden label went viral on social media
and the politically labelled shorts sold out in no time. These are only a few examples. From the geopolitics of operating in China, to the politics of climate change, to diversity, human rights, and many other issues, politics is becoming all pervasive. How some Business Schools are adapting In the era of the new political capitalism, Business Schools can no longer afford to ignore the intimate interrelationship between business and politics. Their duty is to prepare students for the reality of the world they will be operating in once they leave the sheltered world of academia. And some are stepping up. Stockholm Business School and Copenhagen Business School offer courses on business and politics. HEC Paris has recently announced a collaboration with Sciences Po to bring expertise on geopolitics to its business teaching. Others are also moving in this direction. To address the relationship between politics and business, Business Schools need to go beyond layering ESG perspectives onto standard business thinking. What is required is a wholesale re-think of how the very concepts of ‘business’ and ‘markets’ are looked at. Markets, local or global, are political constructs, not economic or commercial constructs. This is because markets as we know them cannot operate without a set of rules that are politically determined and that chime with prevalent social mores. The fiction of the ‘free market’ must be banished from business teaching. Similarly, the fundamentals of what a business is and what business is for also need to change. The shareholder value model is past its sell-by date. The role of business is, like all other institutions, to participate in the process of creating a better society. What that looks like is politically determined. Politics, therefore, is not an optional add-on to standard business teaching much like, for some companies, going green is just a thin veneer layered onto business-as-usual. Politics needs to permeate every aspect of Business School curricula and give students a true picture of what the 21st century business environment looks like. Hint – it’s deeply political.
13 13
Joe Zammit-Lucia is the author of The New Political Capitalism (Bloomsbury, February 2022). Following an executive career in multinational business, he founded a management advisory firm with offices in Cambridge (UK), New York and Tokyo. On divestment, he co-founded the RADIX network of public policy think tanks.
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
How can Business Schools
develop leaders that embody the change needed in the business world?
14
What makes the difference between those of us that simply complain and those of us that endeavour to make things better, for people and the planet? David Lewis and Jules Goddard , co-authors of Mavericks , look at leadership characteristics and other important aspects for Business Schools to focus on
15 15 15
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
L et us start with two run; and equally no difficulty in expressing their great ideas about how it should be run. Second, when we have had the opportunity to return to these organisations a year later and ask the same question – 'what are your frustrations and thwarted ambitions?' – we are met with the same list we heard a year earlier. Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor, Jeffrey Pfeffer, refers to this as the ‘knowing-doing gap’ – most of us know that things should be and could be much better, but few of us do anything about it. The knowing-doing gap, coupled with observations. First, almost every executive and management team with which we’ve ever worked has had no difficulty in articulating numerous frustrations about how their organisation is the two observations above, provoked us to initiate a research project. Why? Because we also observed that while most of us simply moan about how bad things are, some of us actually do something about it. And the question we wanted to explore is, what differentiates those of us that recognise incompetence, inadequacy and lack of ambition, but do little about it, from those of us that dedicate
win, to the point of business as being to create ‘a better world for people and planet’. This became Rik’s life philosophy. He asked a new and different question – instead of the question being, ‘how can I win?’, Rik asked himself, ‘how can I make carpets in a sustainable way in terms of the planet, the use of resources, and the way in which we work?’. In research, published in our book, Mavericks , we interviewed more than 30 people like Rik – people from all walks of life and from across the world, to discover what it takes to persist and succeed in making the world a better place. Making better use of brains and technology There are no shortage of challenges that need our attention to make the world a better place: the World Bank has estimated that nearly half the world’s population live on less than $5.50 USD a day; 2.8 million adults die each year as a result of being overweight or obese, according to the World Health Organization; and in a period of unprecedented wealth creation, prison populations have doubled, trebled and, in some countries, quintupled. We could go on. Yet, more than at any time in our history, we have the resources, the ingenuity and the technology to enable everyone to live a fulfilling and flourishing life. The question is, where are these resources and why are they not being fully deployed for the benefit of us all? Where are our best brains? Who owns the latest technology? To what extent is our human ingenuity, creativity and innovation being used? The answer is that the best brains are your brains, the best technology resides in your organisations. The question is how we can make better use of our brains and technology to make the world a better place. This is not a question to be outsourced to a supplier, the government, or shareholders… or whoever else you want to make responsible; it is a question for you. So, what are you doing to make best use of those resources? And the question we want to explore here is how can Business Schools help people to make best use of those resources and create more worthy value? Business Schools have traditionally taken an accountancy view of what we mean by ‘value’ and ‘cost’. The problem is accountancy does not take into ‘account’ many of the costs involved in creating value – the unintended negative value created for one group in pursuit of creating value for another, referred to by economists as externalities. Externalities are unpriced effects that arise from the production and sale of goods and services. Air pollution from vehicles, aircraft
16
our lives to making positive transformational change for the betterment of others? Rik Vera is one such person. Rik started his career as a teacher, but after being made redundant because the school at which he taught was closed down, he started a career in carpet sales. In Rik's own words, he saw sales as a competition: 'How can I win against my competitors?' The classic model of
‘We have the resources, the ingenuity and the technology to enable everyone to live
a fulfilling and flourishing life’
business competition. Then he was asked to take over and run the carpet manufacturing plant. On the first day, when he walked into the factory and saw the inefficiencies, the pollution and the inhumane working conditions, Rik was shocked. As a result of being asked to run the factory – the place where the product is made – his mindset changed from seeing the point of business as to
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
and container ships, is one example. The cost of this is not paid for by either the producers or the consumers of specific products and services, but is paid for by the rest of society, in the form of ill health and treatment for example. We are all made worse off by pollution, but are not compensated by the market for this damage. This is one of the main reasons why, in democracies at least, governments intervene to attempt to rebalance using, for example, carbon offsetting programmes, regulations around the percentage of components in production that must be recyclable, and so on. But while this intervention from government is helpful, if not critical to safeguard people and planet, what if businesses and Business Schools took on more responsibility for this rebalancing? What would this mean for Business School curricula? What would it mean for the kind of leadership executive programmes should promote? Here are some thoughts that we believe could radically transform Business School curricula and create the leaders we need to create the world we all want to see and live in. What is ‘good’? A few years ago, we were struck by the absence of philosophical thinking in shaping and informing our modern-day management and organisational practice. We had this image of a two-legged stool, an unbalanced situation – something was missing. As we thought about it, we realised our organisational thinking is derived from two very impressive bodies of knowledge: economics and psychology. Economics asks the question, ‘how can we make efficient use of scarce resources?’ Psychology asks the question,
‘These are the questions that define the paradoxes and dilemmas of leadership’
17
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
we approach communication and change management?’ These are questions that should be at the centre of executive education in Business Schools – not because there is a clear formulaic answer that we can teach, but because these are the questions that define the paradoxes and dilemmas of leadership. How do you decide between options, all of which are part good and part bad, depending on the stakeholder perspective you take and how do you resolve conflicting values? The classic Business School approach is to insist on developing organisational values. And yet when you look at almost all organisations’ values, you’re struck by two things. One, they look exactly the same, and two, they seem to have been distilled into five statements, sometimes four, sometimes six. This is an impoverished view of values. There are many values that all of us hold dear, but we know that our values alone do not give us the answer, they generate the question. How do you reconcile the need for transparency with the need for confidentiality? How do you reconcile the need to be honest and the need to be sensitive? How do we square the circle? There is no prescriptive answer, there is no set of rules. It is a moral dilemma. It must be addressed in each instance in dialogue and conversation. It requires judgement and an answer to the question, ‘how do I decide between two competing goods?’ A decision you have to live with, to argue for, and to justify, in terms of your moral framework – that is a leadership decision. To make decisions and collaborate within a morally pluralistic world, to engage with others whose values may be different – not better or worse, but different. This is the job of leadership. This is where we need to place more emphasis in our Business School curricula. The mindset and skillset of purposeful leaders During our conversations with Rik Vera and others who have made a consistently positive impact on their organisation or community, what became clear was that despite their very different personalities and situations, they shared a common set of characteristics. We identified five core characteristics of these ‘Mavericks’, or individuals who persist and succeed in making positive change happen: 1. A passionate belief that things should be better. 2. Resourcefulness to connect people and ideas to create momentum towards a better outcome. 3. Preparedness to challenge the status quo and act in unorthodox and nonconformist ways to get things done. 4. The ability to learn and make progress through trial and error, and through experimentation. 5. The ability to remain undeterred in the face of ridicule, resistance and sometimes outright hostility. As part of our quantitated research, we asked a control group of executives from organisations across the world to rank themselves with respect to these five mindset/ skillset characteristics. Then we compared the results to how our Maverick leaders ranked themselves against the same five characteristics. Both the Mavericks and the control group
‘how can we get other people to do what we want them to do?’ But neither of these two great disciplines contain an ethical point of view at their heart. This is what is missing. You only have to think of some of the language used. Economics refers to people as factors of production, just like land and capital. And the human resources department? They refer to you and me as human resources. Management speak is punctuated with the words ‘buy-in’, ‘engagement’ and ‘motivation’. What does this mean? It means buying into what I think is right; it means being motivated to do what I want you to do, and it means being engaged with my agenda. Economics and psychology have worked miracles. To take just one example, 500 million people have been lifted out of poverty in 30 years in China through capitalism, or ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. We have the wonders of the internet, space travel and the robotic lawnmower. Yet in the west, in Asia and increasingly in Africa, as we become better off, we are left with the question, ‘how do we know if what we are doing is good?’ How do we know what is ethical? These are philosophical questions. Philosophy is the discipline that asks the questions, ‘what is ‘good’?’ ‘what is the right thing to do?‘ and ‘what is the right way to do it?’ Philosophy is the third leg of the two-legged stool that can balance the incredible power of economics and psychology by asking the critical question, ‘what is the ethical dimension of business?’ In our 2019 book, What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader , we use philosophical thinking to challenge standard management practice and ask, ‘what do we mean by organisational values?’ ‘what do we mean by empowerment?’ ‘what do we mean by authority?’ and ‘how do
18
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
‘A decision you have to live with, to argue for, and to justify, in terms of your moral framework – that is a leadership decision’
had strong beliefs that things should be better. This confirms our opening observation that almost everyone, Maverick and non-Maverick alike, believes that things could be better in their organisation or community. On the next characteristic, resourcefulness, a gap emerged. The Mavericks saw themselves as more resourceful, 10% more resourceful than our control group. With respect to nonconformity, an even bigger gap emerged. The Mavericks saw themselves as 20% more nonconformist. A still bigger gap emerged on the next characteristic, with Mavericks demonstrating themselves to be 25% more experimental. The biggest gap came in relation to the final characteristic of being undeterred – the Mavericks rated themselves as being 27% more undeterred than those in the control group. What differentiates the Maverick from the non-Maverick is the extent to which they are resourceful, nonconformist, experimental and undeterred. This is what makes the difference between those of us that simply complain and those of us that endeavour actively to make things better. So, what should Business Schools do to help more of their students become Maverick leaders? Our advice is that they should focus as much on the following as they do on strategy and finance. Life philosophy In our Schools, we should help executives to strengthen and articulate their life philosophy, their higher purpose of being. It was clear that each of the leaders we identified as being a Maverick had a philosophy of life that drove them, shaped their high-level goals and informed their day-to-day activity. Here are some examples: • ‘ I just want to help people feel better, and wanting people to know that they are cared for and loved… I always had a sense of fighting for the underdog and the importance of justice .’ Annmarie Lewis. • ‘ I have a real burning passion to stimulate brilliance in people, it's as simple as that .’ Akin Thomas. • ‘ Giving back to my country [Mexico] my people, and all the wonderful things that I have received. It is my responsibility, my duty, to make a positive impact .’ Oscar Corona Lopez. Diverse networks Maverick leaders do not work alone. Neither can they afford to be surrounded by people like them. Maverick leaders build open and diverse networks and engage with others with curiosity. We need to help executives develop the skills of curiosity and empathy. As one of our Mavericks, Annmarie, explained, it is about cultivating fertile ground by making connections with
different stakeholder groups, in government, in business, in academia, in communities. Annmarie is going where she can get traction, where her nonconformity and her radical perspective can be taken up, developed and pushed forward with others. Growth mindset and self-efficacy These leaders embody the growth mindset, a term introduced by US psychologist, Carol Dweck, and reject the fixed mindset. They are adaptive but never defeatist. They judge by outcomes rather than just intent. Their optimism is often irrational. What they fear is not failure but fatalism. A growth mindset is not a genetically fixed characteristic, nor is it determined one way or another by early nurture. It can be, and needs to be, developed and strengthened in all of us, at every stage of our career. A growth mindset fuels self-efficacy. Unlike self-esteem, which is a judgement of one’s own self-worth, self-efficacy is an existential commitment to one’s own capacity to build a worthwhile life. It is a promise to oneself, not an assessment of oneself. Over the course of a well-lived life, it tends to strengthen as the sense of personal accountability also strengthens. In summary, Business Schools can do so much more to develop leaders that embody the change needed in the business world by: helping leaders to understand, explain and manage paradox; develop and articulate their life philosophy; develop their curiosity and the diversity of their networks; adopt a more experimental mindset; adopt a growth mindset; and facilitate transformational conversations.
19
David Lewis (above, left) is a Guest Lecturer at London Business School and Hult International Business School. He is a global business consultant and was included in the 2019 Thinkers50 radar of top management thinkers. Jules Goddard (above, right) is a Fellow of London Business School. He has written extensively on strategy and leadership and his corporate clients include Orange, Tata, Danone, Toshiba, and Rolls-Royce. David Lewis and Jules Goddard are the co-authors of Mavericks: How Bold Leadership Changes the World (Kogan Page, 2022).
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
20
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
Undergraduate expectations are evolving under the conditions imposed by Covid-19. Business Schools should see this as an opportunity to change their offerings for the better, says Jordi Robert-Ribes, CEO at EDUopinions
21 21
BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
T he education sector has been vastly impacted by the events of the last year. Whether it’s the increased dependence on online learning or the worsening economic forecast, student and graduate life has been altered drastically by the pandemic. Inevitably, this has also triggered a shift in student concerns and priorities. As institutions adapt to a ‘new normal,’ students have had their first taste of hybrid learning, and are discovering the pitfalls and benefits of it. Additionally, students that are now graduating into a challenging jobs market are re-evaluating which skills will help them to seek employment. This shift in student perspectives is undeniably a challenge for Business Schools and their offerings at the undergraduate, or bachelor’s, level. As such, a reimagining of the traditional bachelor’s programme may be necessary to live up to new student expectations. But what will the future of bachelor’s degrees in business and management look like? To explore this, it’s necessary to examine how student demands are changing and what institutions can do to adapt to shifting priorities. The pandemic’s impact The greatest change to bachelor’s degrees over the last year is a direct result of the pandemic, and that’s the increase in online learning. The speed at which institutions were forced to transition to online learning meant that there were inevitably some teething issues in the use of technology and how students were taught. Students were quick to criticise. Pre-pandemic, it was already clear that universities were not putting education technology to use successfully. A 2019 YouGov report surveyed more than 1,000 students on the use of technology in the classroom, and only 11% of students said technology at their institutions was ‘innovative’. Though the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technology in the classroom, it’s likely that, for many universities, not much has changed in that time with regards to the complexity of technology and how it’s being used. Reviews from the EDUopinions website emphasise how students have reacted to the switch to online learning. One bachelor’s student of international business in the Netherlands, for example, explained their disappointment at the lack of contact between students and professors online. They also mentioned that the reliance on pre-recorded lectures has reduced engagement and participation in their course. Generation Z students – those currently graduating from university – are perhaps our most technologically advanced generation so far. These students want technology that is reliable and easily accessible. Universities must keep up with these demands ‘The changes in student demands represent an opportunity for Business Schools to become more accessible and make university education more egalitarian’
if they want to continue to use digital technology in the classrooms for their bachelor’s degrees.
A volatile graduate jobs market As well as adapting to online learning, undergraduate students have also had to face the prospect of a more difficult jobs market on graduation. Before the pandemic hit, only half of graduates had confidence in their ability to find a job, but this has since dropped to a third, according to a survey of those in the UK from YouGov. An annual report from the UK’s Institute of Student Employers (formerly the Association of Graduate Recruiters) also lays bare the scale of competition within the graduate jobs market. Its research shows that up to 90 candidates are now fighting for every graduate job. With so much competition for roles, it makes sense that graduates are reconsidering how to stand out from the crowd. For many, this means looking at the value of their bachelor's degree and how well it has prepared them for a volatile skills market. Students are reassessing the value of their skills as well as how they can make themselves more employable. Even if graduates do secure a job or internship, the subsequent job retention has also been down because of the pandemic. Research from graduate careers organisation, Prospects, has revealed that among final-year students who secured a job post-graduation, 29% of them have subsequently lost them. An additional 28% of students have had their graduate job deferred or rescinded and 26% have lost their internships. It begs the questions, ‘are bachelor’s degrees preparing students fully for the unpredictable world of work?’ and, ‘could universities and Business Schools be doing more to give students the skills to rebound from job losses and succeed with future job applications?’ Many Business Schools already have a careers or jobs service that students can refer to during their studies. However, in a period of sustained economic downturn, it’s no longer enough for these to be voluntary. Careers need to be an integral part of the degree. In research from the University of Greenwich Students' Union, students specifically asked for more guidance on the transition from graduation to full-time careers and requested that recruitment fairs be held throughout the year. More and more, students are looking to their degrees for not just technical skills, but job skills. Those that fail to provide this – especially during periods of jobs market volatility – will undoubtedly see trust in their institutions and bachelor’s degrees fall. Value for money Lockdowns have forced universities to close and move many classes entirely online, causing students to question their degree's value for money. Although tuition fees have largely remained the same, many are calling for a change in what they pay while students have little or no access to campus facilities like libraries, careers services and department offices. According to a 2020 survey from the Higher Education Policy Institute last year, 31% of students considered their courses poor or very poor value, up from 29% in 2019. The Office for Students – the independent regulator of higher education in England – noted in a keynote address in June 2021 that they had received more than 400 notifications from students and staff members since the outbreak of the pandemic relating to course satisfaction. Chief Executive,
22
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online