BREAKOUT SESSIONS
Creating change for good On the morning of the conference’s third day, AMBA & BGA chair Wendy Loretto presided over a panel session on how business education can foster positive change in the world. Egade Business School dean Horacio Arredondo began by outlining how schools can help students use the knowledge they acquire about sustainability to spark change in their communities. “When you talk about sustainability in Latin America, you’re talking about what we need to do to improve our society. For us, it’s not just about educating our students but also having an impact on a country with 150 million people.” Advocating for change at Doshisha Business School entails bringing out students’ sustainability mindset, explained vice-dean Mari Iizuka. By taking an approach that gets learners to internalise sustainability issues, “the student can really feel what it means for them”, she explained. Iizuka also spoke of the need to imbue people with the confidence to effect change. “Among the faculty and students, we need the strength to say what we believe is important.” Shifting the focus to widening access to education and dismantling inequality, Hassan Abu Bakar, dean at Universiti Utara Malaysia’s Othman Yeop Abdullah Graduate School of Business, spoke of its “huge task of bringing the Ministry of Education’s distance education initiative forwards”. The initiative has a focus on upskilling and enabling educators to integrate technology into learning ecosystems so that they can better prepare an entire generation for the digital era. For QUT Graduate School of Business head Sarah Kelly, the priority is to build trust as “a key connector in our communities”. The school, Kelly elaborated, seeks to leverage its ability to broker discussions between “business, nonprofits, students, faculty and alumni on all the complex issues that leaders and communities must deal with in this crazy world.” Understanding what management students want Gmac’s Nalisha Patel, regional director for Europe and colleague Sara Strafino, director of market development for the same region, looked at what’s new and trending within the management education sector. They kicked off by sharing statistics from the company’s latest survey that show Gen Z now make up 50 per cent of total prospective students. The study, which involved more than 4,100 respondents across 132 countries, revealed that
The Silk Road network In a break-out session led by AMBA & BGA’s Zhongming Wang, panellists explored capacity-building in sustainable entrepreneurship and leadership development. FIA Business School dean Mauricio Jucá de Queiroz pressed home the topic’s importance by citing recent flooding in Brazil as “an urgent call for us to implement sustainable entrepreneurship in our schools.” The Technical University of Munich’s Hana Milanov then outlined how the school is taking an interdisciplinary approach to inject sustainability into its entrepreneurship education. Peking University HSBC Business School’s Young Joon Park and Polimi Graduate School of Management’s Andrea Sianesi, meanwhile, focused on
mindset on ways of doing business. “Our approach is to teach students to form a whole new business paradigm.” Meanwhile, in a showcasing session on distinctiveness and differentiation among Chinese business schools, a total of 40 schools presented a single feature of their institution that helps differentiate their offerings in an increasingly competitive market. Themes covered ranged widely, from those that speak to an individual’s business school experience to ways in which schools seek to project their expertise onto wider business and society. For example, Wuhan University of Technology put forward the aspirational maxim of “dream factory” while Yunnan University of Finance and Economics in Kunming emphasised its representation of ethnic minorities and ties with Southeast Asia. Elsewhere, Hohai University Business School in Nanjing, home to one of the world’s largest inland ports, underlined its strength in water management and related aspects of sustainability.
how their institutions are supporting sustainability-led start-ups through incubators and pitch competitions.
Tihamér Margitay, dean at Eötvös Loránd University’s Faculty of Economics, discussed how schools must address the prevailing
Zhongming Wang and Hana Milanov at the Silk Road network session
Wendy Loretto (right) chaired a panel on business as a force for good
24 | Ambition | JULY/AUGUST 2024
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online