STRATEGY
Introduction by Bodo B Schlegelmilch, Chair of AMBA & BGA, and Alexander G Welzl, President of the China Data Analysis and Research Hub. Educating the next generation of leaders is a difficult task, and Business Schools around the world carry a substantial part of the responsibility for getting this task right. However, deciding on the right way to educate 21st-century leaders is riddled with uncertainties. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation. For Business Schools, it has opened new and exciting avenues for remote teaching, but also raised uncertainties by calling into question how we teach and what we teach. The digital transformation has also changed the competitive environment for Business Schools, as future leaders can tap into digital educational offers from suppliers around the world. For students, this means more choice; for Business Schools, it means more competition. More important than the way of delivering knowledge and skills is what we teach. Content is king, but do we know what future leaders need? What type of knowledge and skills will be critical in solving future societal and business challenges? There are new types of jobs on the horizon, but we may also need fundamental changes, affecting the responsibilities and purpose of companies in society. Climate change illustrates the need to move towards sustainable circular business models. In light of the profound transformations and grand challenges of world societies and economies – namely anthropogenic climate change, digital transformation, demographic changes, urbanisation, and resource depletion – the skills to be achieved by corporate managers are far from being focused solely on economics. This is especially true for CEOs, members of boards and middle-management in multinational firms in manufacturing, the service sector, financial industry, and many other fields of private and public enterprises. The pandemic is just a prelude, and kind of global stress test for governance systems, societal concepts, economies, and people at the dawn of the worldwide impacts of climate change in the coming decades.
Against this backdrop, mutual learning is needed. In the end, coming up with novel sustainable lifestyles, governance systems and economic performance cycles is a question of survival for the generations to come. Managerial capabilities are at the heart of this challenge. Therefore, the
question of how Business Schools address their educational responsibility in their curricula, philosophies and core values is of utmost importance. Undoubtedly a new balance between competition and
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