SCHOOL STRATEGY
the PBS dean senses that there is an opportunity to revisit strategies of internationalisation that might have led to schools becoming preoccupied with looking outwards and beyond their immediate environments. “When we talk about the community, it’s not necessarily about how we change the world. Sometimes it’s better if you can change the local community,” explains Esteves. “Of course, business schools are global, but there’s also value in the ‘glocal’ perspective of thinking globally and acting locally. You don’t have to send your students somewhere far, far away because they are needed in your local communities as well. Business schools, because of this international perspective, often miss that point.” Preparing students to cope with the evolving world of work is another challenge identified by Esteves and, naturally, the impact of technology looms large here. However, for the PBS dean, this is as much as about imparting students with soft skills as any need to develop their technical abilities: “The biggest revolution that comes with artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t the tools, it’s what I call the paradigm shift.” Esteves goes on to outline his current work on how the growing trend towards combining humans and the power of generative AI in the workplace might change the way schools teach leadership and the dynamics of team building. The topic of cybersecurity raises a particular concern with Esteves: “At business school, you always talk about critical success factors and so on, whereas the cybersecurity world always talks about weakness because a hacker will never attack what a team is good at. But boards of directors don’t want to talk about their weaknesses; it’s not part of the agenda. I think we need to prepare students to have a greater awareness of weakness from the risk management perspective. It’s not about saying ‘I’m going to fail because I have a weakness’, it’s saying ‘I have that weakness, so I’m going to prepare a plan to mitigate it’.” To help its students adapt to emerging disruptions and realities, the business school is able to draw on the expertise and research centres of the wider University of Porto, bringing faculty in to show tomorrow’s business leaders what lies in store for them in the future. As Esteves encapsulates: “We try and make sure that our focus isn’t limited to what students need to know in the present; we call it ‘learning beyond now’.”
problems if they don’t have experts in that area. So, I think BGA could provide more support in the conceptual approach of the different dimensions involved,” he continues, referring to the areas under which BGA’s CIM asks institutions to provide evidence of measurable change. “It would be good if you can advise or coach those who need it on the topics or put people in touch with someone who can give an overview.” Such concepts are, of course, very difficult to pin down to simple and singular definitions and different cultural contexts and perspectives around the world will always yield their own interpretations. Yet it is essential to break down concepts as they relate to your environment if you expect to measure yourself against them. “I did that with my team,” Esteves divulges. “For BGA, we spent one hour on each dimension explaining from a conceptual and sometimes theoretical perspective what it means for us.” Business education’s changing times BGA’s CIM aims to help guide institutions through the changes demanded by continuing disruption in the business world and, by extension, the global market for management education. “Business schools are rethinking their model and their mission,” surmises Esteves. “I don’t think it’s enough to talk about educating business leaders. That’s too ambiguous; we have to look at how we are educating people to make a difference and consider our institutions’ impact in the community.” Here,
José Esteves i s the dean of Porto Business School, University of Porto in Portugal. Previously, he spent more than 18 years at IE Business School in Madrid, holding a number of roles, including professor of information systems, associate dean for MBA and tech and analytics programmes, as well as head of its information systems department. Esteves holds a PhD in information systems and a DBA, as well as MSc and engineering degrees in information systems with a specialisation in artificial intelligence
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Business Impact • ISSUE 3 • 2024
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