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Why students should be given more control of Business School rankings

Illustration of people measuring the performance of work with bar and pie charts and a line graph.

With growing demands for lifelong learning and greater diversity in the way people study, Business School rankings will have to adapt to match the changing landscape, says CarringtonCrisp’s Andrew Crisp

Pick your ranking, any ranking you like – there’s one to suit everyone. At least that’s how it feels at times. There are rankings for universities and Business Schools, rankings by region or country, rankings by subject, rankings by research performance, rankings by sustainability, even rankings by car parking space on campus (allegedly). However, it feels that many of these rankings are missing their fundamental purpose, which is providing useful information to prospective students.

Ask students what they want from a ranking, as the latest version of the CarringtonCrisp study The Business of Branding did, and on first view there are few surprises. Most important is the percentage of students employed within six months of graduation, followed by salary increase of graduates within a few years of graduation and percentage of students having an internship of more than one month during their degree. Slightly further back are employer ratings of the School and the number of high-quality research papers published by School faculty.

Measuring employment is not easy

All of these seem sensible measures, and these do often feature in many existing rankings. However, think for a moment about that first option, the percentage of students employed within six months of graduation. The result relies on data from graduates being reported on time to their university. It takes no account of the economic conditions in a country where a university is based and different graduation times around the world could mean some data is six months older than other data when it is published.

And then how do you define ‘employed’? More and more graduates may be working for themselves in some part of the ‘gig’ economy, some will have set up their own business and many will have gone on to further study for a particular career such as law, medicine or teaching. Measuring employment is not easy.

However, assuming that a reasonable set of definitions can be agreed on and there is acceptance that the data being collected from different institutions is comparable, then a ranking might be possible. There is no doubt that creating a ranking is a difficult task if it is to be widely accepted as valid and valuable.

Little consensus on what matters most

There may however be another problem, one that few rankings seem to be accounting for.  Although the percentage of students employed within six months of graduation was the top choice of students in The Business of Branding study, it was only chosen by 21% of respondents. Indeed, the top five different options chosen by respondents in the study were all selected by between 16% and 21% suggesting that there is little agreement even among those that rankings are aimed at.

When thinking about how your Business School is ranked by external organisations, please indicate what you think should be the most important information?

Percentage of students employed within six months of graduation 21%
Percentage of students having an internship/placement of more than one month during their degree 19%
Salary increase of graduates within a few years of graduation 19%
Employers ratings of the School 18%
Number of high-quality research papers published by School faculty 16%
Impact of the School in its local community 15%
Number and value of scholarships provided to students from underprivileged backgrounds 15%
Percentage of students having an international study experience during their degree 14%
Percentage of women studying on business degrees 13%
Percentage of female faculty teaching on business degrees 12%
Incorporation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals into the curriculum and the operation of the School 12%
Percentage of international students 12%

Source: The Business of Branding

Personalisation would give students more control

Rankings are undoubtedly going to be part of the higher education landscape for the foreseeable future, but a better experience for prospective students is surely possible.  Technology offers the opportunity to personalise the rankings experience and give more control to the key audiences they are aimed at.

No doubt rankings organisations and the institutions and individuals that provide that data will want to keep some of it confidential. However, it should be possible to make rankings more interactive so that prospective students can decide for themselves what is important and adjust weightings given to certain pieces of data.

A rankings organisation may have a sense of what they think is important and publish accordingly, but if an individual can go online and then create their own ranking from the same data, you increase the value of the information for the target audience. U-Multirank has attempted such a solution, but there are limited data points, some data is absent, not all universities take part, and not all data points are those that seem important to students.

With growing demands for lifelong learning, greater diversity in the way people study and a wider range of qualifications delivered in higher education, rankings will have to adapt to match the changing landscape, both in terms of providers and learners.

Individual personalisation of rankings would mean Business Schools and universities were better able to pursue their own mission rather than the same narrow group of rankings indicators decided by publishers. It would be the important end users of rankings – prospective students, with their diverse, imaginative and creative perspectives – that shaped the priorities for higher education.

Andrew Crisp is the Co-Founder of CarringtonCrisp, known for its work with Business Schools and universities around the world. Prior to setting up CarringtonCrisp, Andrew led the agency team that carried out a London Business School rebrand. He also worked as the Employment Correspondent for The European newspaper.

Delve further into the topic of rankings on Business Impact: read an article on how rankings can effect positive change in the industry by University of Bath School of Management Professor, Andrew Crane; and access AMBA & BGA’s own research into MBA rankings.

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Can AI drones yield cleaner agricultural production and more ethical practices?

A tractor watering crops with a sprinkler system on a sunny day.

How the use of pesticides exacerbates other barriers to cleaner agricultural production and why data-collecting AI drones offer a potential solution. Research from the UK’s University of Bradford School of Management

A changing agricultural business environment and the need to improve agricultural value chains, together with calls for more resource-efficient practices and sustainable approaches has meant that business and management research is just as vital for the agricultural sector as agronomic and other agricultural science-based research. 

The pressing need to boost agricultural productivity

There is a pressing need for food producers, technologists, academics, and policymakers to identify innovative, effective, and sustainable approaches to boost agricultural productivity for the immediate future, for a sustainable food supply chain. With the global population expected to grow to 9.7 billion by 2050, pressure on food systems – and particularly on the agriculture sector – is increasing daily. Only a 70% increase in food production would be enough to feed this global population sufficiently. The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. A labour shortage caused by health concerns and lockdown measures, including the closure of international borders, has caused inevitable disruptions to both the production and movement of agriculture and food produce globally.

These conditions have led to inflation and this has made nutritious food, or even food itself, unaffordable to some people, causing hunger to more than 130 million people across the globe. This makes goal number two of the UN SDGs – to end hunger – all the more difficult to attain.

In some parts of the world, Covid-19 has also led to an increase of unethical agricultural practices, such as the overuse of chemicals in farming and suppression of labour, to meet growing demand in difficult times. Addressing this requires a detailed understanding of how innovative solutions can be incorporated into the agricultural supply chains, particularly within production, to achieve ethical, sustainable and socially viable food production.

Despite a host of state-of-the-art developments in agriculture, such as automation and smart farming, many challenges in the agricultural supply chain remain and there is still a lack of practical solutions.

Barriers to cleaner agricultural production

Our research explored key agricultural challenges and how industry 4.0 technologies, such as AI drones, may be the solution to these challenges.

What are the barriers that impact cleaner agricultural production? We identified a host of agricultural challenges which play a role in diminishing and disrupting agricultural yields. These include the following:

  • Illegal deforestation
  • Lack of efficient practices
  • Lack of accurate predictions for seasonal output
  • Theft and sabotage
  • Inaccurate seeding methods
  • Unproductive workers
  • Pesticides application and hazards
  • Workers health and safety risks
  • Movement of produce within supply chain
  • Pollution
  • Poor soil conditions
  • Plant disease

Existing research in this field has highlighted the intertwined nature of these challenges, so a fundamental element of our research was to see whether the identified challenges were interrelated. This revealed that ‘unproductive workers’ and ‘pesticides application and hazards’ contribute towards at least 10 further challenges in the context of Cleaner Agricultural Production (CAP), including the above-listed challenges of ‘pollution’, ‘lack of accurate predictions for seasonal output’, and ‘plant disease’ (i.e. spread of) as well as workers’ health and safety, a factor that subsequently affects the movement of agricultural produce in the food supply chain.

In other words, we found that in order to overcome challenges impeding the sustainability of food supply chain, while managing worker productivity, food producers and farmers must minimise the hazards resulting through pesticide application and exposure.

Unravelling agricultural challenges

For insights into how Industry 4.0 technologies can support clean and ethical agricultural production, we applied the the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s ReSOLVE framework and its six actions of Regenerate, Share, Optimise, Loop, Virtualise and Exchange.

Based on this framework, our research suggests that AI drones may offer a number of opportunities to unravel agricultural challenges, provide sustainable solutions and promote ethically conscious agricultural practices by addressing the ‘farm structure’, ‘food security’ and ‘environmental impact’ concerns, as depicted in the figure below:

Source: Drones ReSOLVE framework application from a 2021 paper in the ‘Journal of Cleaner Production’, co-authored by this article’s authors.

AI drones in agriculture

Prior studies have highlighted how industry 4.0 technologies, such as AI drones, can help minimise plant disease rates, using drone sensors that enable early detection.

Drone sensors can also help optimise the use of pesticides, for their ability to apply a precise amount of the required pesticide to specifically selected plants. By providing real data which can inform any decision to apply pesticides to a targeted crop, the drone is not just useful for the reduction of waste and pollution and the optimisation of economies of scales with regards to pesticide use and application, but also for facilitating the production of a healthier food produce – which is, of course, a more ethical practice befitting the health and safety framework.

Furthermore, AI drones are able to capture valuable data, such as temperature, moistness of soil leaf, level of precipitation and wind speed – data which is essential in keeping track of plant health and giving an indication of the amount of marketable produce.

The possibilities presented by AI-driven drones in capturing vast quantities of field data, in detecting diseases and in monitoring crops simply cannot be ignored, especially given the role of pesticide application in other barriers to the movement of cleaner agricultural production within the supply chain.

Because excessive pesticide hazards have an adverse impact on cleaner agricultural production, as well as on the movement of goods within the supply chain, it is vital for both agricultural producers and policymakers to explore ways to minimise their use and exposure. Equally, it is imperative that farmers and operational agricultural workers are aware of the underlying and interrelated role of excessive pesticide hazards in barriers afflicting the agricultural supply chain.

 

 

Dr Kamran Mahroof (left) is an Assistant Professor in Supply Chain Analytics and Programme Leader for the MSc in Applied Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics at the School of Management, University of Bradford, UK.

Dr Amizan Omar (right) is an Associate Professor in Strategic Management at the School of Management, University of Bradford, UK.

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A brighter future: culture, diversity and inclusion

Here is a large, diverse crowd of business working professionals socially distancing standing outside dressed in smart attire.

The opportunity to bring greater diversity and inclusion to Business Schools and, by extension, the business world, in a post-Covid-19 landscape

As the world looks to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, a ‘crisis environment’ in which creative ideas and innovations have flourished also presents Business School leaders with an opportunity to direct their organisations to make seismic changes in diversity and inclusion (D&I). Through direct action and a ripple effect, they can improve the economic opportunities for underrepresented segments of society.  

As such, a session at the AMBA & BGA Festival of Excellence explored options for enhancing and developing diversity strategies in business education, drawing on insight from experts in the field and those who have developed D&I initiatives in international corporate organisations – with inspiring results.

Peter MacDonald, panel chair and Director of Business School Services at Advent Group, explained that there has been a large body of research showing that people want to feel that they are a ‘part of something’, citing demonstrable business benefits in terms of performance in relation to this. 

With that in mind, how can organisations today fast-track moves towards a more inclusive and diverse culture? What more could and should Business Schools be doing in terms of curriculum development around these points? 

Defining inclusive leadership 

Sheree Atcheson, Board Member at Women Who Code, explained: ‘Business Schools can define what inclusive leadership looks like before people go out into different businesses or start their own businesses. I think this opportunity should not be wasted. [Business Schools] have an opportunity to embed inclusive principles and leadership techniques, so we aren’t continually having the same problems in trying to retrospectively train leaders on what it means to run an organisation inclusively, what it means to measure inclusion as well as diversity, and so on. 

‘The purpose of measurement is you can check if initiatives are working for you and going in the right direction, or if they are not. The key part of this for Business Schools is the role modelling of this behaviour.’ 

Taking the conversation further, Paul Sesay, CEO and Founder of Inclusive Companies, added: ‘A lot of organisations go wrong because they think that one shoe fits all. D&I is unique to an individual organisation – you can’t cut and paste initiatives. From an inclusion perspective, you have to look at the HR processes that are unique to your leadership culture before you can really move forward with inclusion. It has to come from the very top as well, from the CEO downwards to the operational staff. 

‘You’ve got to look at the culture within the organisation in order to make change and you’ve got to have difficult conversations to know what needs to be done. You may think that your culture is a certain way but when you dig into the lived experiences of individuals at work, it’s often completely different.’

Embedding learning about difference into core curricula 

Looking more specifically at the topic of diversity within Business Schools, Stephen Frost, CEO and Founder of Frost Included, explained: ‘It is a core part of leadership that we learn about difference, and that we learn about how to manage difference and how to learn from difference in order to empathise. That isn’t just a soft skill, it’s critically important for customer service, marketing, negotiation, and strategy. So, it’s about embedding this, not as a separate module, but as a core part of curriculum design. 

‘This also forms part of the values that are upheld by the School itself. On the one hand, there are some obvious things, like supporting D&I and dealing with psychological safety. But it’s also about making sure that it’s clear to everyone that it’s OK to have the debate. Sometimes we have to create safe spaces where people can fail, where they can use the wrong language and where they can ask questions – where they are educated and not simply belittled.’

Closing a lively debate, Juan Pablo Otero, CSR expert and D&I activist, proffered that D&I is not just about presence, but also representation: ‘Sometimes, we think that if we have someone with disabilities in our organisation we are OK, or if we have someone from another race or country then we are okay, but at the end only 5% of the organisation is part of a minority,’ he said. ‘We need to set goals and measure what we are in the beginning and where we want to get to. In that way, we will see our little steps.

‘We all expect big changes. What we have been living through in the last year, has shown us that we are all vulnerable. When we go back to the office, we won’t be the same as we were last year. We are going to be more sensible. This pandemic has shown us that we are so different, but we are living through the same experience across the world. This period has shown us that the only way we can solve problems is by working together. One of the advantages of the situation we are living through is that it has revealed a lot about inclusion because we have been involved in teamwork and working with all people.’ 

Chair: Peter MacDonald, Director of Business School Services, Advent Group

Panellists: Sheree Atcheson, Board Member, Women Who Code; Stephen Frost, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Frost Included; Juan Pablo Otero, CSR and sustainability expert, and D&I activist; Paul Sesay, CEO and Founder, Inclusive Companies

This article was originally published in Ambition (the magazine of BGA’s sister organisation, AMBA).

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Understanding the media industry’s brave new worlds

A dark Sci-fi landscape of mountains on an unknown world with two moons on a night horizon symbolises brave new worlds.

‘Like one of the outer moons of our solar system; exotic, constantly evolving, febrile, white hot, relentlessly volcanic…’ The National Film and Television School’s Alex Connock outlines the importance of understanding today’s media landscape and developing confidence in all of its commercial forms

Question: What do Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Fortnite and Netflix all have in common? Answer: none of them even existed in the year 2000. 

Go back a couple more years and you can add Amazon (founded in 1994, at the very start of the internet) and Google (1998) to that list. What this means is that many of the companies that determine the rhythm and the content of our daily lives are extraordinarily new. That’s indicative of a media landscape, a content footprint across all our lives, that has been in a state of constant agitation. In fact, the media business is like one of the outer moons of our solar system; exotic, constantly evolving, febrile, white hot, relentlessly volcanic… and a place you definitely want to go.

‘No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world,’ said comedian, Robin Williams, which is why media is the industry of which everyone knows the products (shows and songs) and everyone has an opinion. That makes it a joy to be in. Content spending in 2020 (a Covid year, by the way) was $149 billion USD in the US, growing at a staggering 16% year on year. Meanwhile, in Asia it was growing even faster in the same year, at 19%, and in Africa, at 46%. This means that, over time, the content creation industry is getting bigger, less west-centric, and more imaginatively global. 

From screen and audio to social media: how media has changed

Segment the media business down into its constituent categories – and you can see how radical the changes have been, and how challenging it is to fully own the space. 

Screen has seen the invention of streaming platforms to supplant the pre-eminence of the broadcast powerhouses like CBS or ITV which had defined the latter part of the 20th century, and radically upend their business models. Now, AI (specifically, machine learning) layered onto home screen platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon or Disney +, provide personalisation to user tastes at a globalised, but individual, level. The shows you are served, and the order in which you are served them, is completely unique. YouTubehas come out of nowhere to become the principle media channel for many young peoples’ lives. Meanwhile, the production technologies of video games, like Fortnite, are lending the ability to create whole new worlds in virtual studios to shows like The Mandalorian. Finally, the cinema itself has been in decline in the west (although not in China).

Audio has changed just as much. Chris Martin from Coldplay said: ‘No one really knows where songs come from’, but those involved in making them do need to know where the money comes from. Artists used to make their money from record and CD sales. Then came downloads, illegal at first, which decimated record company incomes and put the whole business model of music in jeopardy. Streamers, specifically Spotify, provided a new hope of firm revenues, but artists and record companies remain locked in alternative interpretations of who is due what.  Meanwhile, radio has been edged out by the breakthrough model of podcasting. 

In the 20th century, humanity made it to the moon – but it didn’t invent social media.  That took until the early 21st century, but now (in the west, that is) Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms are the pre-eminent media businesses in every respect except that they don’t consider themselves media businesses, because they don’t want to accept editorial responsibility for the content that is uploaded. Their production model is radically new in that it is outsourced to users. Their revenue model is driven by the personalisation and AI algorithms that make digital marketing the most powerful business tool of the era. And this is only the beginning of an era in which computer vision (another form of AI) will radically shift how we choose and interface with our entertainment.

Then there are video games – arguably the biggest and fastest-growing media sector on earth right now. One company, Riot Games, which makes League of Legends, has more than 400 job vacancies at the time of writing, such is the speed of its growth and demand for talent. There are e-sports teams and leagues too, each hungry for skilled workers. There are also business tools, like Substack, driving monetisation into blogging, hitherto a business for the penniless. And then there are traditional segments like book publishing (a sector whose demise was called way too early and which is now showing strong growth) theatre, events, festivals, music touring (Ed Sheeran, earned $700m USD on his last tour) commercials, documentaries… Oh, and sports. The soccer (football) teams, Barcelona and Manchester United, are media businesses, and best understood as such. 

Specialist skills required to thrive

Put simply, the media is of a greater breadth and scale than at any time in history.  This creative sector requires specialist skills and knowledge that can help you thrive in the industries within. As it’s primarily a gig economy with short-term, contract-driven employment, even cellists and dancers need to know enough about business to thrive. Meanwhile, those who want to design or run businesses, from animation to gaming, need to understand the multiple, complex models which drive them. Many of the text books that would tell you how to do that are so far out of date they still talk about TV advertising oligopolies and CDs. A better perspective would be that of writer, Charlie Fink, on the coming impact of augmented reality: ‘The world is about to be painted with data’.

The skills you need now, in the 2020s, are quite precise. You need to understand digital marketing – because that’s what drives sales from Broadway producers to an organic Instagrammer. You need to understand the drivers of idea creation, and how to copyright and sell those ideas – whether they are TV formats like the smash-hit US show Survivor (now in its 21st year) or the Korean megahit The Masked Singer. You need to understand accounting and finance, from the cash flow behind a streaming hit, like Chernobyl or Money Heist, to the monetisation technologies that will work in metaverse gaming concepts. You need to know how to deal with an agent, how to present a business plan, how to organise production of merchandising around your children’s animation, or how to sell advertising for a podcast. These days, even restaurants are media businesses: they make shows for Netflix and Apple TV.

Everyone in the media needs to know their worth and make sure they get paid.  ‘Chaplin’s no negotiator,’ said studio boss Sam Goldwyn of the notoriously business like silent movie star. ‘He just knows he can’t take anything less.’

There is an opportunity in business education to make sure graduates go out into the market knowing not to take anything less. Our specialist MA in Creative Business at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) maps the landscape by introducing students to a range and depth of media guests that would be impossible for a generalist education. It allows aspirant businesspeople to work with animators on product development, to deep-dive into a media sector – from the contemporary horror films of Jordan Peele and specialist Instagram commercials production for e-commerce to developing a business plan and pitching it to venture capitalists specialised in the industry. 

At the end of that, graduates emerge with an understanding of the media and a confidence in all of its commercial forms, such that they can specialise in one field, but have an informed perspective on all the others. Screenwriter, William Goldman famously wrote: ‘In Hollywood, no one knows anything.’ Only someone with proper inside knowledge could say something that smart.

Alex Connock is Head of Department of the Creative Business MA at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, UK.

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Why Business Schools need to be more than just digital

A person standing in a red curved abstract architectural space, 3D rendering

Many traditional universities have been playing catchup, trying to ensure students get their money’s worth via Zoom. But being digitally adept is not all that is needed, says Dilshad Sheikh, Dean of the Faculty of Business at Arden University

The past 18 months have taught the business world a lot. Companies need to be receptive and responsive to the trends and demands of consumers, to the point where they need to keep one eye on the present and the other on the future in order to survive. This means management students –  the business leaders of tomorrow – need to be taught how best to survive in a volatile market, alongside the current advances in technology being implemented on a commercial and corporate scale.

Home to innovation, universities have traditionally witnessed avid researchers turning outlandish hypotheses into standout ideas, while simultaneously being renowned for their slowness at adopting innovative tech themselves for their students’ benefit. The past year has forced longstanding universities that pride themselves on their history and red bricks to embrace tech, and now many, if not most, higher education institutions offer online learning. But are they truly doing enough? In short, the answer is ‘not really, no’.

Here’s how Business Schools should be changing to address the needs and demands of the business leaders of the future.

How tech will change how we learn

There’s no such thing as a traditional student anymore. It is more common for a student, especially now that more people are studying from home, to balance work, family and school on a day-to-day basis, instead of being on campus full time with a sole focus on going to lectures. Many businesses have found their employees enjoy the flexibility that comes with remote working. Universities ought to respond to that.

Students value a personalised and collaborative relationship with their university that gives them confidence that their educational interests are taken into account, according to a 2017 report from Universities UK. So, just as flexible working is becoming more and more popular, flexible learning that is tailored for each undergraduate’s needs and wants should be an option too.

Students at Arden University, for example, can pause their studies if they have other priorities – such as a busy quarter at work – and resume when their diaries free up again. This level of flexibility that tech brings to the table allows students to fit their degrees around their personal responsibilities outside of studying.

Digital learning will need even more transformation

When stuck in the four walls of their home, these technological advancements can place a student in situations they would not normally get the chance to be in until after they have graduated. A 2019 study has shown that even though students feel they learned more through traditional lectures, they learn more when taking part in so-called ‘active-learning strategies’ that are designed to get students to participate in the learning process. It produces better educational outcomes at virtually all levels.

We are experiencing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the distinctions between technologies, physical, digital and biological spheres are getting blurrier by the day. Many students have digital skills, even if they are as basic as opening a Word document. As a result, more and more students expect their university to also widely adopt new digital technologies like virtual and augmented reality, AI, or the Internet of Things (IoT).

Digital simulations, for example, that allow students to be the owner of a company for a day, will not only give students confidence in the real world, but will also equip them with the knowledge to solve the problems they may face. They are free to make mistakes in the simulation, that will bear no detrimental impact, but the experience will teach them valuable lessons.

The market wants Business Schools to move beyond simple degrees that often focus more on theory than practice as their primary product. More agile, lower-priced, digital credentialed ‘packages of learning’ are valued by employers — an essential cog in the constantly spinning digital economy. ‘Upskilling’ is not a business buzzword, it is vital to keep pace with technological advances and introducing assessments that mirror this demand is essential.

Business Schools need to look beyond essays and exams. Assessing students on their digital capability, getting them to kickstart their own social media campaign or asking them to find novel solutions for a present-day business problem will push students much more than a 10,000-word dissertation.

Jobs of the future should define courses

The World Economic Forum estimated that by 2022, the core skills required to perform most roles will, on average, change by 42%.

‘Increasingly, a career for life is an artefact of the past, and this traditional mindset of ‘learn, do, retire’ can no longer provide a future-proof approach. As automation and work converge, skills gaps are set to change at a faster pace and at a greater volume – leading to both talent shortages and job redundancies,’ states the report.  

To remain relevant and employable, workers are faced with the need to re-evaluate and update their skillsets and educators face pressure to update the focus of their courses and offerings. Consequently, there is a pressing need for courses to relay the skills that individuals often acquire throughout their life and educators need to start looking towards the future and work backwards.

The importance of being relevant and responsive to both the present and the future is a demand that education institutions must meet. As many as 85% of students think universities should be able to make changes to a course while students are learning. In fact, many employers have previously grown tired of waiting for universities to catch up. Microsoft, Linux and other employers have already teamed up with online education platforms to provide education that is not only much easier than brick-and-mortar programmes, but also more up to date and easier to distribute to vast numbers of students simultaneously.

Business leaders have expressed doubts about students acquiring the skills they look for in employees before, adding to the importance of courses that not only engage students and connect them to the real world, but that are also relevant to today’s business realities.

Universities should provide learners with the skills and knowledge they need for a very different future, as one recent study has shown. Having modules focussing on the impact of Covid-19 in the business sphere is much more useful to a student’s potential employer than them memorising the theoretical practices of responsible business, for example. 

Industry experts of today need to teach the experts of tomorrow

Another tradition that needs refining to match current demand is how academics often teach lectures. These PhD professionals will have the answers to many questions as they have dedicated their career to the industry, but what they often lack is real-life experience.

Industry professionals, however, tend to have more comprehensive knowledge of the inner workings of the professional world, including the markets, systems and processes, which will be invaluable for students.

Bringing unique value to the classroom, industry professionals provide fresh insights – something which can be difficult to come across anywhere else. It will give opportunities to connect students to the outside world, allowing them to network and grow professional relationships before they have even graduated.

Without face-to-face workshops and in-person interactions, some students have been short-changed into paying a lot of money to view a simple PowerPoint slide that may precede a Zoom lecture struggling to captivate its audience thanks to weak wifi connection. Business Schools need to do better to ensure that the leaders of tomorrow can do more than just connect and listen blindly to a disengaging Zoom call. Graduates need to be well equipped for life outside graduation and it will take more than just digital learning to achieve this.

Dilshad Sheikh is Dean of the Faculty of Business at Arden University, a UK-based provider of flexible, online and blended learning.
Dilshad’s recent research interests have focused on diversity in leadership and management in higher education. She is also a mentor for various initiatives and engages with audiences across sectors to encourage more females, especially those from minority ethnic backgrounds, to attain senior leadership roles.

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Making an impact: corporate social responsibility

A close-up photograph of a single water droplet about to hit a pool of water; pool of water is causing a circular ripple motion. Water, in this case, signifies sustainability.

How impact and CSR feed into the sustainability debate, and what Business Schools could and should be doing to exert a greater influence on business and society

A new way to do business with social impact is emerging – purposeful, ethical and sustainable. This approach, with a focus on business as a ‘force for good’, disrupts established thinking around traditional profit-based models, but is this model viable?

With the most forward-thinking organisations actively putting people, the environment, and positive impact first to achieve a fairer society and a more sustainable economy, there is evidence that pursuing a ‘force for good’ business model can be more successful than a profit-driven approach. 

There is also a growing consensus that business leaders have a responsibility not only to shareholders, but also to wider society – customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and the environment.

What does this mean for business education? A session of the AMBA & BGA Festival of Excellence gathered CSR experts for a debate on the subject of positive impact, innovation, sustainability, and responsible management. 

Topics under discussion included: the challenges surrounding the role of Business Schools; how sustainability and social impact could and should be integrated into every MBA programme; how MBA students can learn the key skills required to become forward-thinking leaders; and how the sector can challenge the business models that have resulted in the unintended consequences of today. The following paragraphs are just a selection of highlights from this panel debate.  

Measurable impact

Pavlina Proteou, Founder and CEO of BeyondCSR, started the conversation: ‘The challenge, in part, is that lots of corporations still view sustainability as a PR activity, rather than a core activity. It should be CEO level; it should be the umbrella strategy – the only strategy, actually,’ she said, before adding: ‘When you have CSR and you have that budget, you can use it to come out with a positive measurable impact, because impact has to be measured; it’s not just adopting initiatives and corporate philanthropies. CSR is there to progress and accelerate sustainability strategies, but it has to be part of the core business development, not a marketing division. 

‘This is how you make impact, and social impact is part of sustainability. We talk about sustainable development and social impact as if they are two different things but it’s one thing. If you have concrete sustainable strategies, then you can make measurable social impact and environmental impact. 

‘One of the problems is that corporations feel it’s like ticking a box. There are game-changing companies, but if the approach is only ticking a box, you’ll never have the desired outcome.’ 

Echoing calls for a reset

James Gomme, a Director at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, added: ‘In the long term, businesses will only be successful if they are operating sustainably. All governments are moving in that direction and societal expectations are moving very strongly in that direction as well. 

‘There were calls at the World Economic Forum for a complete reset of our capitalist model, of the way financial markets work and the way financial markets value sustainable business behaviour. 

‘I would encourage Business Schools to start to echo that and to incorporate sustainability-related topics into the class on financial accounting, the class on strategy, the class on HR-related discussions, and so on. 

‘It is a topic that touches everything you do as a business. Purpose should be something that runs through all of these different functions and those functions should be in support of that purpose.’

Being held to account

Celia Ouellette, Founder and CEO of the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice, noted that there is a clear link between diversity, CSR and social justice, against a backdrop defined by unrest. 

‘Diversity should be the bedrock of good teams,’ she asserted, before pointing to her experience of leading and running a non-profit organisation: ‘The strength of our team lies in the diversity of experience, culture, ethnicity of our organisation, as well as the diversity of its agenda. You need to continually look at each aspect of an MBA programme through these lenses. It will create more sustainable businesses in the long run. 

‘You can create businesses that are less risky and more future-proof. I think that “cancel culture” is just one symptom of what will come when businesses don’t align their purpose and values with the people that they are employing, or that they are selling to. 

‘One of the things that businesses will really need to face is how they’re being held to account, particularly post-Covid-19.’  

Chair: Andrew Main Wilson, CEO, AMBA & BGA

Panellists: James Gomme, Director, World Business Council for Sustainable Development; Celia Ouellette, Founder and CEO, Responsible Business Initiative for Justice; Pavlina Proteou, Founder and CEO, BeyondCSR

This article was originally published in Ambition (the magazine of BGA’s sister organisation, AMBA).

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Impacting the community through student projects

Here are two working professionals in a joyful conversation sitting at a table in an office space environment. The table has an open laptop, notepad, books and a turquoise coloured potted plant of grass.

Amizan Omar details the Bradford Business Challenge projects undertaken by final-year undergraduate students as part of the University of Bradford School of Management’s commitment to serve and make an impact on the largest meaning of ‘community’

Harnessing diversity and inclusivity, and putting ethics, sustainability and responsible management at the heart of its actions, the University of Bradford School of Management is committed to making an impact on and serving the largest meaning of ‘community’ – i.e., the diverse range of people everywhere in the world.

Community engagement

This commitment is so important to the School because 85% of its students come from the most socio-economically diverse areas by postcode, around 70% are from BME backgrounds, and because of the wider University of Bradford’s commitment to social mobility. As such, the School engages actively with communities, non-traditional students, and small-scale regional enterprises. This is manifest in the School’s mission and vision statements, which are then articulated in its broader set of actions, particularly through the academic offerings.

The University of Bradford School of Management is the first in England to receive joint accreditation from AMBA & BGA and, in the spirit of the BGA Charter, the School has a string focus on bringing business and students together in learning and teaching activities inside and outside the classroom.  

The School runs various initiatives, including its Career Booster programme – a series of seminars and workshops offered two weeks each academic year to equip students with out-of-classroom transferable skills and commercial awareness. Other initiatives include its Knowledge Transfer Networks – a series of monthly lectures showcasing the experience and expertise of particular business owners to other businesses, as well as students, staff and alumni, and which is followed by an opportunity for all attendees to network.

The Bradford Business Challenge

Another initiative is the increasingly prevalent Bradford Business Challenge theme for business and management undergraduates’ final-year project, where students work with business to solve a real business challenge that has been identified.

The final-year project module for these students requires a 7,500 words dissertation, which can be based on one of four themes Each of the themes – National Industrial Challenge; Global Challenge; Entrepreneurship and Innovation Challenge; and Bradford Business Challenge – involves engaging with a challenge in the real business world. However, the Bradford Business Challenge is alone in being an applied research project that requires students to work on a project sponsored by a business or organisation.

Students opting for this theme partner with the sponsor to find a solution to a specific business problem with guidance from an academic. Sponsors are usually businesses as well as public and third sector organisations from the Yorkshire region, England. Most of the projects are sourced from the University of Bradford School of Management’s longstanding Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) which consists of around 3,000 businesses in Bradford and Yorkshire region.

The Bradford Business Challenge is one way in which the School supports its the KTN members, on top of its Community Career Booster Programme (which offers probono training on specific skills, such as SAGE 50) and business advice. The idea is to promote seamless knowledge transfer between the School and businesses and thus, enable meaningful impact in the community.

Since its launch in the 2018/19 academic year, the Bradford Business Challenge has delivered a degree of impact to more than 30 sponsors and has helped participating students to develop a range of transferrable skills and improve their employability. An internal study shows that more than 50% of these students have successfully secured graduate-level jobs within six months of the study completion, and a further 30% said that the research skills acquired have supported them in their postgraduate study.

Community impact examples

Project sponsors also acknowledge that the solutions provided by students have significantly benefited them. A local marketing and advertising company that sponsored a project in the 2018/19 academic year, for example, reported an improvement in its profitability. Its project focused on investigating marketing challenges faced by the Financial Advisory Service and led to the development of a marketing strategy for financial advisers to market their services. This strategy is now used by the marketing company to gain more clients in the financial industry. Another case was a project with a luxury slow-fashion startup that is today an award-winning SME on market research, and this has contributed to the launch of its products.

Company sponsors span various organisation types and sizes, including public and third sector organisations. Working with the local council, one final-year project student has worked on concept proofing for ‘Citizen Coin Bradford’ – an initiative designed to encourage volunteering in community projects and support for local retailers. Volunteers to the scheme are rewarded with ‘digital coins’ for which they are entitled to discounts from local retailers.

In another recent example, a student worked with an established charity in the City of Bradford to overcome a long-existing HR management issue in the organisation. This has significantly contributed to the sustainability of the organisation, which provides a range of free therapeutic counselling services to vulnerable young people, families, individuals, and couples living in the Bradford region.

Widening reach and winning recognition

The online platform brought in by the School amid lockdown measures and travel restrictions has proven to be a silver lining for fostering broader engagement with the international business community. Through a network of the School’s MBA alumni, the School secured a project sponsored by a Dubai-based food truck and modular/mobile unit manufacturing company. The success of this project – carried out by a student with support from an academic who is a marketing expert – has led to the School opening up the Bradford Business Challenge to international sponsors. A further cross-borders initiative aimed at generating a greater impact in the community at large is now also underway to enhance the value delivered to students and the stakeholders.

In February 2021, the School was granted Small Business Charter status. The award recognises the School’s enduring commitment to working with businesses and entrepreneurs in the city, region and more widely, and its support for them through various initiatives, including the Bradford Business Challenge. Two months following this, the School was awarded ‘Business School of the Year 2020’ by the Educate North Awards – an awards event that celebrates, recognises and shares best practice and excellence in the education sector in the North of the UK.  

Moving forward, the School has identified several key objectives for the future. They include an urgent need for Bradford to move away from low-skills and low-economic positions towards raising academic aspirations and achievements in the local area. There is also a need to tackle the demographic decline in the number of 18-year-olds nationally and addressing the changing needs of employers who are expecting flexibility, resilience, commercial nous, and enhanced skills in relation to the digitisation of work, big data and AI.

Dr Amizan Omar is the Director of Accreditations for the Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences, University of Bradford, UK. She is also an Associate Professor at the School of Management, where she leads the undergraduate final-year project module. Omar is a sustainability advocator and the Faculty Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Champion.

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Leading change and inspiring lifelong learning

A student is looking into the bright blue sunny sky with a backpack on his shoulders, holding a mobile in one hand and resting the other on a bike. The student is in the city with high glassed buildings.

Changing landscapes necessitate changing approaches to alumni relations and lifelong learning. Experts from a variety of industries offer their perspectives

In a volatile world, even MBAs are challenged to keep abreast of trends and issues constantly – and 34% of graduates were found to have accessed lifelong learning from their Business School, post-MBA, in a recent AMBA & BGA survey. Growing interest and demand for continued learning presents Business Schools with a golden opportunity to retain close links with their alumni. As such, a session of the AMBA & BGA Festival of Excellence explored strategies and opportunities for Business Schools to reinvent teaching and learning among students, graduates, alumni networks, and in their custom and executive education offerings. 

Chairing the panel was Ivan Mitchell, CEO of Studious Digital Education, who kickstarted the conversation by saying: ‘I’m sure lifelong learning is on the agenda throughout organisations across the world. I want to start thinking about what the future holds for this space of lifelong learning – what are we optimistic about and what do we think is going to happen?’

Bodo Schlegelmilch, Chair of AMBA & BGA, and Professor of Marketing at WU Vienna, proceeded to present a challenge for Business Schools: ‘Business Schools have to become more flexible in two ways. They have to give a lot of delivery options, in terms of the content they are producing, but also in terms of the focus of their content. 

‘A lot of Business Schools have thought in the past that graduation is it, the students are no longer our customers. This meant that alumni relations were more of an afterthought – it was maybe about getting money, or getting someone in to give a talk. That is very wrong, because we need to look at education from the cradle to the grave, so we have to address these kinds of customers in a very different way. I think that for Business Schools, that is the biggest challenge at the moment.’ 

More active roles

Offering a corporate and employment perspective, Ehab Abdel Hafez, Head of Talent Acquisition for Africa, the Middle East and Turkey at Johnson & Johnson, responded: ‘Business Schools should be making sure that corporates are playing a more active role in developing curricula,’ he said, adding that there is ‘a lot of appetite within organisations’ for this form of collaboration. 

Offering the perspective of an MBA and DBA graduate, marketing practitioner and author, Geraint Evans, said: ‘What we must do, in terms of supporting lifelong learning, is challenge the academics, educators and the people who run Business Schools. We have to act now and focus on the fundamentals as we understand them.’

Panellists were in agreement that Business Schools have an opportunity to offer more diverse and innovative forms of lifelong learning. However, Schelegelmilch pointed out that other providers exist in the market and threaten the success of this proposed strategy: ‘There’s a whole range of institutions that offer various degrees and various types of courses,’ he said. ‘In this context, you have to be careful not to just equate lifelong learning with another degree. I think another degree is always nice, but lifelong learning can be as short as a five-minute podcast you listen to every lunchtime. The interesting question here is how institutions can manage and provide lifelong learning opportunities. And how do corporations entice their employees to participate regularly in lifelong learning? I think that is a key issue.’

Keeping up with changes to technology and aspirations 

So, how is the corporate world reacting to this change in the need for learning and development, and how can Business Schools remain in the mix? Elisaveta Nojkovska, Industry Executive for Central and Eastern Europe, Higher Education at Microsoft, offered some advice: ‘Education cannot stop with university or with the MBA. The technology is changing, the environment is changing, tools are changing – so keeping up with trends is something that needs to be a norm and needs to be flexible. Being adjustable to the current situation is something that will help everyone be upskilled.’

Gaya Gamhewage, Head of Learning and Capacity Building, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO) picked up on the current pace and depth of change, before saying: ‘What change requires is for us not to educate or train, but to learn because the purpose of learning is application in real life. Our roles are changing so, even if you’re academically qualified, you will need constant learning and the systems to support that. I think our aspirations also change. Our understanding of equity and human rights has changed our aspirations, and this requires learning not just in our domains but in a complex system. That requires all of the 21st-century skills of communication, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking. 

‘All this necessitates constant learning, not just formally in universities but also through informal learning, so we may go to a course or learn from a webinar but there’s also what we learn every day, informally. How are we learning from our experiences, codifying this learning and sharing it with others? It’s this whole complex system that makes lifelong learning.’

Chair: Ivan Mitchell,CEO, Studious Digital Education

Panellists: Ehab Abdel Hafez, Head of Talent Acquisition (Africa, Middle East and Turkey) Johnson & Johnson; Geraint Evans, marketing practitioner, academic and writer; Gaya Gamhewage, Head of Learning and Capacity Building, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization; Elisaveta Nojkovska, Industry Executive for Central and Eastern Europe, Higher Education, Microsoft; Bodo Schlegelmilch, Chair, AMBA & BGA; Professor of Marketing, WU Vienna

This article was originally published in Ambition (the magazine of BGA’s sister organisation, AMBA).

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Innovation for success in business education

Here is a lightbulb glowing white with cartoon facial features and a metallic arm pointing upright; this is symbolic of innovation and ideas.

Leaders from Rolls-Royce, PwC and the European Space Agency on how innovation will impact the business world, and what this means for business education. Highlights from a session at the AMBA & BGA Festival of Excellence

What challenges and opportunities await Business Schools in the ‘new normal’ of business? How will Business Schools create the leaders who can not only survive, but also thrive, in uncertain business conditions? And how are boundaries being pushed in terms of creativity in theory and practice at Business Schools? 

A panel of leaders working at the forefront of global innovation shared their take on these challenges and offered solutions as part of the AMBA & BGA Festival of Excellence. 

Chairing the panel was Simone Hammer, Global Marketing Director for Learning and Training Solutions at Belgian tech company, Barco. She introduced the conversation by explaining: ‘We can see as a solution provider that there has been very quick adoption [of new technology] that we didn’t think was possible. So very often in the education sector, faculty or teachers were thought to be technology adverse but the pandemic has meant that they have had to think of a different solution. That’s what we call digital enablement and now we are looking into digital transformation.’ 

Bodo Schlegelmilch, Chair of AMBA & BGA and Professor of Marketing at WU Vienna, agreed. ‘The Covid crisis has been a very big accelerator. We had a number of tendencies which were already visible – for example, more online teaching,’ he said, before adding that the pandemic had brought about, ‘a sudden huge field experiment, into which everybody had to be dragged. We went through stages. The first stage was panic: “How do we cope and how we can we do this?”. The second stage was: “This has worked quite well, so let’s experiment a little bit and make it better.” Now what we’re observing is that [Schools] are starting to become much more familiar with technology and are willing to try things out. This is an attitudinal change where they say: “Zoom is fine but what can we do in addition? Can we use virtual reality or AI in order to tailor the programme for the specific needs of students when they come in?” There’s much more willingness to explore what is possible and this attitudinal change has been very important.’

The coming stratification 

Innovations and disruption in the wider business arena have been widespread and this has also impacted on business education. The thoughts of PwC’s Director of Artificial Intelligence, Rob McCargow, chimed with those of Schlegelmilch. ‘We’ve all been dragged into this massive field experiment and everyone had to pivot to remote working within 24 hours,’ said McCargow. ‘At PwC, we had to move our 300,000 people to a remote setting immediately and this has accelerated many of the digital transformation programmes we were building. In some cases, things that had been on the roadmap for four years [from now] have been dragged to immediate action, which has been really quite exciting. 

‘This has been radical innovation by necessity – not by aspiration – and that’s been an exciting place to be. I keep hearing the phrase, “when we get back to normal,” but if we’re being candid, there is no getting back to normal now and we will see a stratification of companies that have a different mindset about the return to normal, post-Covid-19. There will be some laggards who will be desperately trying to get back to a semblance of normality and wishing to adopt the same format as before the pandemic, but at the other extreme, we will see companies entirely reinventing their business model. We’ve already seen companies disinvest from their real estate portfolio entirely and work to a fully virtual setting. The reality [for most], though, will be somewhere in the middle. PwC is going to be radically different, but we still need to have some face-to-face contact. 

‘My biggest concern is the more junior staff coming into the workplace for the first time. We have to cater for them properly and enable the ability to build social cohesion and social capital. We can’t go too far down a digital track immediately and forget about that essence of humanity.’ 

Finding the right balance

On this point, Manisha Mistry, Head of Digital Culture at Rolls-Royce, explained that more innovative approaches to business education will produce more innovative graduates, and that both Schools and employers will need to adapt quickly to make the most of a creative, tech-savvy stream of talent. 

‘There’s a real balance now that I think organisations, in my experience, are working out how they can allow these [tech-savvy] people to come into a world that we’ve cultivated over years of experience and built to a point where we’re safe in the sense of where we’re operating. We know we need to shift but [these people] are used to volatility; they’re used to changing direction instantly without worrying about all the predicating processes, models or practices around them. They have to do that with us – not to us – and these are the kinds of new areas of focus I think we’re going to need to start seeing coming through Business Schools.’

Frank Salzgeber, Head of Innovation and Ventures, ESA Space Solutions, European Space Agency, summed up the session by voicing his support for the notion of ‘social capital’ to enable innovation: ‘Everybody has a kind of social bank account. When you become older, your career is fuller, and you can really use these connections. If you’re younger, you have to fill up [the account] somehow. While they will also have to do this face to face, we have to see how we teach students that they can do this online. The challenge is to adapt our soft skills to make them work in a digital format.’

Chair: Simone Hammer, Global Marketing Director, Learning and Training Solutions, Barco

Panellists: Rob McCargow, Director of Artificial Intelligence, PwC; Manisha Mistry, Head of Digital Culture, Rolls-Royce; Frank Salzgeber, Head of Innovation and Ventures, ESA Space Solutions, European Space Agency; Bodo Schlegelmilch, Chair, AMBA & BGA; Professor of Marketing, WU Vienna

This article was originally published in Ambition (the magazine of BGA’s sister organisation, AMBA).

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The place of culture in offering holistic experiences

Here are multiple falling books in a closed pale green room.

UPF Barcelona School of Management’s Dean, Oriol Amat, and its Director of International Relations and Accreditations, Jordi Rey, discuss the importance the School places in culture and the humanities

Since the School was founded in 1993, UPF-BSM has worked to build international partnerships and networks – but equally, it has focused on building social responsibility and culture, notably by encouraging its students to study classical literature as part of their MBA studies. 

This interview with Oriol Amat, Dean of UPF-BSM and its Director of International Relations and Accreditations, Jordi Rey, seeks to find out how the School nurtures an appreciation of the humanities and how this can widen the perspectives of tomorrow’s business leaders.  

What do you think differentiates UPF Barcelona School of Management?

Oriol Amat (OA): Our School is focused on ‘management’, rather than just ‘business’. This means that apart from typical business programmes, our portfolio includes programmes and research related to public management, health management and cultural organisations, among other subject areas. 

The School also has a strong commitment to culture and the humanities – all students and programmes have some activities and courses related to culture and the humanities as well as to social responsibility and ethics. Finally, in alignment with the wider Pompeu Fabra University’s objective of generating and transmitting new knowledge about the concept of ‘planetary wellbeing’, UPF-BSM thinks that leaders must be prepared with a global vision and social commitment in a public-private setting. These competencies will be necessary to cope with the challenges that we are going to face in the coming years to improve people, organisations, countries, and the planet. 

Accreditation plays a crucial role in ensuring the implementation of our value proposition and having our organisational management systems ready to overcome any unexpected challenges. AMBA, for example, will help us to have our EMBA and MSc in management programmes more prepared for the current global challenges, and those which are yet to come. 

UPF-BSM is renowned for having a strong focus on humanities and culture. How would you define ‘culture’ and how does the School cultivate this? 

OA: ‘Culture’ is a way of life – it encompasses knowledge, arts, laws, beliefs, capabilities, and the customs of a society. As French author, André Maurois, said: ‘Culture is what remains after having forgotten what was learned.’ 

The humanities and culture are present in all of the School’s activities that take place during an academic year: programmes, research, publications, and events. To give an example of the cultural dimension’s importance at UPF-BSM, each year we give a classic piece of literature as a Christmas present to all students, faculty and staff – The Tempest by William Shakespeare this year, The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli last year, Candide by Voltaire two years ago. UPF-BSM also has a blog, ‘Micromégas’, that is named after the Voltaire novella and which is devoted to culture.

You’re keen for students to understand and appreciate classic literature – why is this important in aspiring business leader?

OA: Good leaders read a lot, and we feel that there is a lot to learn in classic literature. Reading the classics provides a lot of perspectives that allow a person to better understand other people (co-workers, managers, customers, suppliers, bankers, trade unions, and so on) and to gain a broader outlook, empathy and assertiveness. Another outcome of reading is that leaders improve their communication skills.

What are the biggest challenges facing international Business Schools?

Jordi Rey (JR): I foresee two types of challenges for Business Schools. The first type is about facing what we already know. The second type is about being prepared for what it is to come, but that is as yet unknown. The first type requires evolving our organisations and becoming ready to take advantage of the opportunities brought by global challenges, like the pandemic. 

For Business Schools, not travelling that much and the remote working, or remote learning, is breaking some physical barriers and helping us to become more global and more digital than ever before. We need to take advantage of distance learning, e-commerce, digital transformation, health management or supply chain management – all these areas where Schools have new opportunities. 

This requires agility – something that is also related to the second type of challenge. If you do not know what is coming next but are prepared to respond quickly to new challenges, you will keep a competitive advantage, whatever your industry. 

To overcome these two types of challenges, it’s important to have an external view of what your Business School does. External evaluations help institutions to benchmark internationally with best practices. They also strengthen the School leadership, foster a global mindset and define better processes [that can result in] having a faster decision-making organisation. 

Finally, it is important that Schools act as role models and inspire companies for a continuous transformation context where change management seems to be the new normal. 

The business education arena – like the business world – is being disrupted as never before by globalisation and rapid technological change. What innovations are being developed at your School to future-proof its postgraduate business programmes? 

OA: We are developing a more flexible educational model where students will be able to learn strategic and operational competencies with some special components, like culture or humanities.

Our portfolio is being simplified to have fewer programmes but more tracks, this ensures that the education is more adapted to the profile and needs of every student. 

Our programmes are considering new modalities where face-to-face, online or hybrid forms are becoming more integrated, with new methodologies like flipped learning being introduced. Some innovations are also being developed to teach and assess soft skills in a distance setting. 

Our learning experience is becoming more global with a more flexible approach: study trips, mobility abroad, visiting professors, COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) initiatives or double degrees are options to provide this additional global perspective of management. 

Social commitment, ethics, culture, and innovation are components that are being increasingly embedded in our programmes to prepare future leaders who will overcome the global challenges that the planet is facing. All the transformations in our portfolio are necessary to be more sensitive to planetary wellbeing. 

Do you think the business education sector, as a whole, is responding quickly enough to this disruption?

JR: The business education sector is responding fast, but transformation process outcomes depend on the starting point of each institution. 

Unfortunately, not all Schools are prepared for a distance learning setting, for example. At the same time, not all regions in the world have the best facilities to provide a high quality of distance teaching. 

However, Schools that have similar facilities are competing in a global context where the quality of the learning experience can be the same no matter where you are delivering the content from. 

The higher education sector as a whole is becoming more and more competitive. In addition, new content providers are now playing a role. The options are becoming more open and if you want to keep your competitive advantage, it is also important to provide additional added value through high-quality professional career services, student tutoring, networking, and alumni services. Because of this, Business Schools need to go beyond the traditional lecture and offer a more holistic experience in the new digital student journey. 

How is technology continuing to impact on the Business School environment? How important is it that Business Schools are ahead of the curve here and what more could, and should, they be doing?

JR: Business Schools play a leading role in our society where public and private initiatives might want to meet and develop innovations in a controlled setting. Business leaders are being prepared in our Business Schools, which means that if we want to infuse technological innovations in organisational management systems, School operations should also be digital and ahead of the curve. We need to walk the talk. 

We can also offer room for new tech-based startup platforms in our institutions where people can find the right talent and resources to develop these types of innovative solutions. In addition, Business Schools have the opportunity to open the spectrum and work with institutions from other disciplines – for example, those in engineering or the humanities – to prepare more holistic and digital leaders. 

Do you think there is a reluctance on the part of Business Schools to introduce too much change into their programmes? 

JR: All Business Schools want to keep their identity and, at the same time, a good position in the higher education industry. The need for change depends on the position of a School’s brand and how the School is perceived in international markets. 

Change is good but radical change for [the sake of] change might not make sense if there is no need to. On average, the perception is that incremental change is more welcome than radical change. Change in this sense may centre on the continuous improvement of what is already working and on implementing focused disruption in relation to specific programmes that need to be revamped. 

Nevertheless, the highest-ranking universities and Business Schools are invited to create trends and introduce innovations in their programmes to keep their leading position. If they do not, a School’s value proposition can become out of date in the long run. 

Students care about sustainability and climate change. How important do you think sustainability is, and in what ways has your Business School adapted this into its programmes? 

OA: Sustainability and climate change are directly related to planetary wellbeing, to which UPF-BSM is fully committed. This is a commitment to improving the quality of life for people, organisations, countries, and the planet itself. 

Our programmes also include ethics as a transversal and core component. It means that every student is equipped with a sensitivity to help the planet become more sustainable in the long run. 

What do you think ‘sustainable leadership’ looks like?

OA: In 1970, Milton Friedman (winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976) said the unique social responsibility of a company was generating economic wealth for its shareholders. Today, this is not acceptable, and companies must generate value in three dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Today’s leaders must care not only about its shareholders, but also all other stakeholders, the public and the planet.

What are the next steps for yourselves as Business School leaders?

JR: Our next steps are to keep working with our colleagues to create added value for the AMBA network through our contributions and help our students to become better people and better professionals. 

OA: The School is proud to be part of the AMBA & BGA family and we expect to help our institution to become a world-class School of Management, in line with the reputation of Pompeu Fabra University. The final outcome in this is to generate scientific and social impact in our society, in order to generate more wellbeing. 

Do you feel optimistic about the future of business, Business Schools, and the economy?

OA: We are still suffering from the Covid-19 crisis, but because of the effectiveness of the vaccines, it is now possible to see the end of this crisis. I think that by the end of this year, there will be a great economic recovery at the global level. In the case of Europe, a full recovery will be a reality in some countries, especially in central and northern Europe. In the case of southern Europe, it is possible that the recovery will arrive a bit later, in 2022 or 2023. This will have consequences for Business Schools. 

I have seen the evolution of Business Schools in the past decades and the sector has grown both in years of economic expansion and in years of recession. During recessions, companies reduce the budget for education, but individuals invest more in their education as a strategy to face the crisis. All things considered, I feel very optimistic about the future. 

JR: The future is unknown, but it is also a place to be created. Right now, business, Business Schools and the economy are going through another wave of transformation like the industrial revolution. At that time, artisans had to reinvent themselves and now we are also facing a moment of overall change. It is about adaptability and capacity for change. It is all about evolution.

Oriol Amat is Dean of UPF Barcelona School of Management, Pompeu Fabra University (UPF-BSM) and Full Professor of Financial Economics and Accounting at Pompeu Fabra University.

Jordi Rey is Director of International Relations and Accreditations at UPF Barcelona School of Management, Pompeu Fabra University (UPF-BSM), where his role focuses on the School’s accreditation and internationalisation strategy.

This article was originally published in Ambition (the magazine of BGA’s sister organisation, AMBA).