The Routledge Companion to International Management Education

Denise Tsang, Hamid H. Kazeroony, Guy Ellis, Denise Tsang, Hamid H. Kazeroony, Guy Ellis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415783149
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134112494
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Business General

Crises and scandals in the world of international management have brought a new spotlight onto how the subject is taught, studied and understood. There has been a plethora of literature on international management, but a lack of focus on how international management education (IME) can be shaped to respond to existing and future global business challenges.

The Routledge Companion to International Management Education gathers together contributors from academia, industry and university administration involved in IME, to: introduce the domain of IME; describe the emerging state in new geographical areas; discuss the major issues and debates revolving around IME; explore the linkage of technology and international management, and shed light on the future of IME. The diverse background of the contributors provides a global perspective that challenges the dominant Anglo-American view, with up-to-date specific insights originating from their indigenous view points, which has often been neglected and inadequately covered. The volume answers important questions, such as:

• Do we need a vision in IME?
• What is the current state of IME?
• How has IME grown in emerging market segments?
• What roles does technology play in its recent development?

The volume provides thought-provoking reading for educators, administrators, policy makers, human resources professionals and researchers. It will also give future international management students a glimpse of IME from a global inside-out perspective.

PART I
Fundamentals of international management education

1
REFLECTIVE LEADERSHIP

A vision for international management education

Dieter Euler and Mònica Feixas

Framing the problem

The development of the economic and financial crisis has caused management education at business schools to come to the attention of critics. In a trenchant and pointed manner, the question is being asked how the education of the next generation of leaders contributes to the publicly and broadly criticized misconduct of international managers. As one consequence, these discussions have prompted considerable soul searching at business schools. “Many now recognize the need to re-examine the role and purpose of business and have students wrestle with complex questions of companies' responsibilities to stakeholders, such as customers, employees, and society at large, in addition to shareholders” (Datar, Garvin and Cullen, 2010: 100). The discussion has led to a number of demands and proposals. These are partially aimed at modifying contents; for example, new case studies are being developed (e.g., about Bear Stearns and the subprime collapse), which are intended to be used to understand and discuss current developments. Further proposals target the normative foundations of management education and aim to achieve more fundamental changes. At the same time, several repeating demands and criticism can be heard:

• More emphasis on the ethical dimension of business, occasionally associated with the establishment or expansion of business ethics at the respective schools. These initiatives are based on the assumption that within the scope of management education too much emphasis has been placed on the “profit first” doctrine, while ethical standards and moral development processes have been underemphasized (cf. Ghoshal, 2005; Mitroff, 2004).

• Greater emphasis on the sustainability of business, i.e., relativization of a short-term view of economic success (“shareholder value”) in the interest of other value references (“public value,” “stakeholder value,”“corporate social responsibility”). In this context there is also an expansion of the view of business to systemic, particularly social, contexts. One occurrence of this development is the alternative MBA ranking published by the Aspen Institute since 1998, in which the integration of ethical, social, and environmental aspects is taken into special consideration in the programs offered by business schools.The often cited article by Khurana (2009) also points in this direction, according to which managers—like physicians— should take a type of Hippocratic oath whereby they undertake to serve society and to manage their companies in a profitable, social, and environmentally sustainable manner. In the meantime, students in the 2009 MBA class at a number of top-ranked programs have initiated such an oath including a commitment to integrity, ethics, and social responsibility (Wayne, 2009).

• Along these lines, many bodies propose standards and principles for business ethics or social responsibility. One concrete example is the UN Global Forum creating six principles for “responsible management education” which are supported by major professional institutions and more than 300 business schools worldwide (see www.unprme.org). The first two principles indicate the thrust of the initiative: (1) “We will develop the capabilities of students to be future generators of sustainable value for business and society at large and to work for an inclusive and sustainable global economy.” (2) “We will incorporate into our academic activities and curricula the values of global social responsibility as portrayed in international initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact.”

Closely related to this approach but more detailed is the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI) aiming at a management education that is “relevant and applied, holistic and integrative, responsible and sustainable, inter-disciplinary and multi-level, and … learning-oriented” (as opposed to teacher-centric).

Also along these lines are various initiatives on the part of international accreditation agencies in the field of management education (EFMD, AACSB, AMBA) to incorporate these ideas into their normative framework. For example, a working-group at EFMD is considering replacing the EFMD—EQUIS standards and criteria on “contribution to the community” with “responsibility and sustainability” or “responsible management.”

• Another criticism that has been continuously raised for several years regarding the practice of management education, which in the analytical part proclaims the inadequacy of objectives and pedagogies and, in the design part, proposes new guiding principles and corresponding methods. In sum, it is argued that business schools are increasingly self-centered, isolated from business and society and thus limited in their relevance and impact on business practice. Business education is supposed to lack an integrated management perspective, to neglect social and personal skills as well as critical thinking and deep reflection on issues reaching beyond functional tasks, and to represent a missing or distorted focus on values or ethics. Correspondingly business schools are supposed to attract those people whose main ambition is to utilize management education as their “golden passport” to a well-paid career path emphasizing earning rather than learning.

• This critical view gained momentum shortly after the global economic crisis but was already expressed long before. A prominent representative is Henry Mintzberg (2004), who—among other things—supports the thesis that management education must move from imparting small-scale specialist knowledge to the understanding of systemic correlations and the ability to reflect in open problematic situations. He criticizes the teachings at business schools as being too analytical and individualistic:“they graduate individual specialists, not collaborative managers” (Mintzberg and Gosling, 2002: 64).The case studies lead students to believe that they could assess complex situations within a very short period of time and make far-reaching decisions.“No one can create a leader in a classroom” (Mintzberg, 2004: 3).

• Finally, it is criticized that research at business schools has gone in the wrong direction. While sharpening their academic profiles, business schools increasingly decoupled themselves from management practice.To put it into the extreme: Research in business schools tends to refer to publications in reviewed, discipline-based academic journals. They rarely address problems which go beyond disciplinary boundaries and due to the methodological mainstream do not contribute to any challenges in designing the future. They strive for scientific rigor and neglect practical relevance and thus lose their legitimacy in management practice. So it is hardly surprising that the publications rarely reach management practice, because practitioners do not read academic journals or do not find them useful.

In this context Ghoshal (2005: 82) noted that business schools have lost a taste of scholarship pluralism, as described by Boyer (1990) as four different kinds of scholarship: discovery (research), integration (synthesis), practice (application), and teaching (pedagogy). Instead, the emphasis in applying the “discovery” concept to the study of business has ended up in eliminating all other forms of scholarship from the world of business schools. As a consequence, the academic table is now reserved only for scientists and institutional structures within and around business schools that are rigidly built around a dominant model based on the sanctity of the academic freedom of business school academics (ibid.: 87–88).

Many of the proposals address major aspects, but also leave a great deal open for discussion. The current situation can be seen as an opportunity for business schools to reassert themselves in normative terms and renew themselves with regard to their pedagogical approach.Within the scope of international management education the selection of relevant contents and/or problems is certainly significant, but the level of aspiration at which the contents are cognitively processed and the values and attitudes to which they are tied seem equally important.

The various lines of argument can be boiled down to key questions such as: What are the capabilities that graduates should acquire? Does this require new contents and knowledge (e.g., on ethics), or do the needs focus on different types of capabilities? What kinds of pedagogies are effective to foster such capabilities?

This chapter is going to argue for aligning international management education towards a vision of an ideal graduate called a “reflective leader.” Reflective leadership links three major components, namely knowledge, skills, and attitudes in dealing with factual, social, and personal challenges in a reflective way. Of course, today reflection is not missing altogether from management education and management practice. Nevertheless, following the lines of criticism outlined above, reflection is currently often practiced too narrowly: primarily directed to egocentric interest rather than social responsibility; to short-term profit rather than sustainable economic, ecologic, and social development; within the limits of functional and disciplinary boundaries rather than directed to an integrative view on the company embedded in social and cultural systems; related to task fulfillment rather than value-based innovations. “Reflective leadership” in this sense provides an umbrella term for a new type of graduate and a corresponding vision of international management education.

First of all, the considerations outlined so far will be elaborated and further substantiated by taking a deeper look at the discussion currently taking place at the Harvard Business School (HBS) as one of the flagships of international management education in the USA. From there, the chapter explores the areas in which implementation of “reflective leadership” could take place. This will be done by outlining the main pedagogical issues to be tackled and sketching innovations in progress at business schools in the following section. To conclude, the core statements will be summarized.

Rethinking international management education at the Harvard Business School

Without any doubt, the HBS has been one of the most successful and influential business schools for many years. This may be proved by various indicators. The case method, introduced at the HBS in 1920 and continuously elaborated since then, not only hallmarks the HBS curriculum but is a major component of management education all over the world. At the HBS, the case method impacts the building of classrooms, faculty development, research profile, and the overall philosophy of teaching and learning. Some 80 percent of the world's total case output in management education is generated by HBS faculty; in 2007, nearly 8 million HBS case studies were sold worldwide and contributed to a considerable revenue (Datar, Garvin and Cullen, 2010: 239). In 2009, more than 7,000 applications for some 900 MBA places indicated the attractiveness of studying at the HBS.

The self-concept presented in the mission-statement of the HBS reflects these figures: “We educate leaders to make a difference in the world.” However, the striking image has been challenged and the reputation is tarnished by criticisms following the economic crisis. For some critics, this crisis and the need to reform management education in schools such as the HBS have become two sides of the same coin. Criticism is put forward in different ways. Some arguments are voiced with a tongue-in-cheek, calling MBA graduates “Masters of Business Apocalypse” and asserting that management education is creating technocrats instead of responsible and reflective leaders. Drew Faust, President of Harvard University, ironically suggested slightly changing the mission-statement from “… make difference in the world” to “… make a difference for the world.” More substantially, many of the points highlighted earlier are elaborated: international management education in its current state is perceived to be too mechanistic in its organization and too analytical in its purpose. It does not address complex leadership challenges in an interdisciplinary and international way; issues of responsible, value-based action balancing different stakeholder views are marginalized. Specifically regarding the HBS, it is argued that other business schools ha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Part I Fundamentals of international management education
• Part II What is international management education?
• Part III International management education and its evolving context
• Part IV Technology and international management education
• Part V Rethinking international management education
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Index