Innovation in Business Education in Emerging Markets

Ilan Alon, Victoria Jones, J. McIntyre

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349451029, 9781137292957
• eBook ISBN: 9781137292964
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Emerging market economies account for eighty percent of the world's population and some 75% of its trade growth in the foreseeable future, following US Department of Commerce data.This volumeprovides insights for success in rapidly growing education markets that can be used by educators, administrators, policy makers and planners.

Part I
Regional Trajectories

1

Management Education in Africa: Prospects and Challenges

John Kuada

Introduction

An increasing number of Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries have achieved significant economic results in recent years partly due to positive changes in their political climate combined with increasing foreign direct investments and growing African entrepreneurship (Roxburgh et al., 2010; Gatune and Najam, 2011; Spring and Rolfe, 2011). The immediate future appears very bright for some of them. These changes undergird Nwankwo’s (2012) observation that Africa is now standing at the threshold of an exciting growth era.

But these positive trends tend to conceal a wide diversity of experiences at the country level. As a whole, Sub-Sahara Africa remains home to a very large number of poor people. Limited human capital development, in general, and weak management capabilities, in particular, have been suggested as some of the main contributing factors to the sluggish economic development on the sub-continent. The general view among African management scholars is that until African countries have taken bold steps to develop the capacities of their managers (both within the public and private sectors) progress on the continent as a whole will remain slow (Kamoche, 1997; Edoho, 2001). In the same vein, scholars such as Nwankwo and Richards (2001) argue that the problems of civil wars, corruption and poor governance, as well as weak economic and institutional performance, are due mainly to ineffective management. These observations suggest that management education must be accorded serious attention in the economic development initiatives of SSA countries in the coming years.

Management capacity development rests primarily on the human capital base of a society. Ineffective management of political, economic and social institutions in Africa can, therefore, be traced to weaknesses in the educational systems of the various African countries. According to Appleton and Teal (1998) the cumulative progress made by SSA nations in human capital development in the middle of the 1990s was insufficient to reach the levels already attained by the rest of the developing world in 1960.

These observations have motivated the contents of this chapter. It seeks to make three main contributions to contemporary knowledge on management education. First, it provides an overview of the characteristics of management education in SSA countries and draws attention to some major gaps in our understanding of the link between management education and economic development in Africa. Second, it discusses the theoretical rationale underlying the dominant management education models that are practiced in SSA countries. Third, it outlines some emerging challenges and discusses some of the policy and strategy implications they present. In sum, the chapter intends to extend the current understanding of management education in Sub-Sahara Africa.

The chapter is structured as follows. The next section provides an overview of theoretical arguments linking human capital development and economic growth and discusses some of the challenges facing human capital development in SSA countries. This is followed by a discussion of trends in management education in SSA countries as well as the theoretical arguments underlying the dominant management education models found on the sub-continent. Finally, it offers some suggestions for addressing some of the challenges that the management education sector faces in SSA countries.

An overview of human capital development in Africa

The economic development literature provides both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to explain the contributions that human capital development (and, by extension, management education) makes to vibrant private sector development and overall economic growth of countries (Tallman and Wang, 1992; Banik and Bhaumik, 2006; Bloom, Canning and Chan, 2006). Human capital is often described as the sum of the knowledge, skills, competence and other attributes embodied in individuals in a given society and usually accumulated through formal and informal education (OECD, 1998). It is generally argued that the quality of a society’s labor force is an indicator of the level of its human capital development. But more than that, human capital development also enhances a society’s capacity to absorb new knowledge and challenge existing ways of doing things.

Although the theoretical arguments linking human capital development and economic growth are strong, it has been difficult for researchers to establish any conclusive empirical connection between what students learn in school (or how long they remain in their classrooms) and what subsequently happens in a nation’s economy (Romer, 1990; Nelson and Phelps, 1966; Psacharopoulos, 1994). The reason is partly that factors other than “school attainment” contribute to an individual’s preparedness for the job market and his or her overall productivity at work. Furthermore, the extant literature on human capital is still unsettled on the issue of whether the level of education in a given country is a cause or consequence of economic growth. The emerging view is that both are true and that nations must make substantial investments in education in order to sustain their economic growth. It is in this regard that educational development policies, programs and actions in SSA countries can be viewed as enablers or constraints to economic development on the sub-continent.

The available knowledge suggests that the level of human capacity development in SSA countries as a whole is relatively low compared to the rest of the world. One study showed that the tertiary gross enrollment ratio for Sub-Sahara Africa in 2000 was only about 5.6% of the population, compared to 26% for East Asia and the Pacific and 71% for North America and Western Europe (Barasa, 2011). There are, however, wide variations across the sub-continent. While some countries have achieved almost universal primary education, the literacy levels in others are astonishingly low. For example, the literacy rates in Niger and Burkina Faso are less than 20%, while they are over 80% in Mauritius, the Seychelles, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

The variations may partly reflect levels of poverty in the different SSA regions, as the poor may not be able to spare their children from household chores and/or may not have the economic resources to pay for their education (Appleton and Teal, 1998). There is also a distinct gender bias in education. In the 1980s, gross primary school enrollments in SSA countries were around 85% for boys but only 73% for girls (Appleton and Balihuta, 1996). As a result, only 43% of African women are literate compared to 64% of African men (Appleton and Teal, 1998). The gender gaps have narrowed during the past decade. According to a recent EFA (Education for All) report, the gender parity index for primary level education has increased to 0.91 in 2008 (Education for All, 2011).

Recent trends in management education in Sub-Sahara Africa

The existing literature suggests a strong link between management education and economic growth (Bloom et al., 2007). The general understanding is that management and leadership skills are economic enablers, in the sense that they encourage greater employee engagement and skill development, resulting in an improvement in the overall quality of a country’s labor force (Hanushek and Wossmann, 2007). Weak management capacity, that is, the ability to manage the existing labor force, has also been cited as one of the causes of the apparent reluctance of foreign investors to invest in some countries in spite of the higher marginal return to capital that investors may expect (Lucas, 1988; Stiglitz, 1988). But while good management is a prerequisite for effective development of human capital and economic growth, management capacity development, in turn, depends on the human capital base of a society. That is, the higher the level of general education in a country the better the quality of its management cadres (Odden and Kelly, 2008). As Bloom et al. (2007) argue, management is something you have to learn rather than ‘pick up’ on your way up the managerial ladder.

However, the importance of management to overall economic development has not stimulated extensive empirical research into management education in SSA countries. The available information on the subject is, therefore, of a general nature and comes mainly from the World Bank and the United Nations’ sponsored publications on human capital development.

The indications are that the management education sector has progressively evolved from a state in which it has been of peripheral concern to policymakers, education providers and employers to the center stage of the strategy and policy agenda (Materu, 2007; Rayment and Smith, 2010). No authorized directory of tertiary institutions is available for SSA countries. But there has been a significant increase in the number of universities during the past two decades. Following Materu (2007) there were about 200 public universities in SSA countries in 2005 and the number of private higher education institutions has also been increasing quite rapidly. For example, over a period of 15 years (1994–2009), the number of university-level institutions in Ghana increased from 15 to 57, of which 49 were privately owned (Anyan, 2010). The same trend has been noted in most of the high-growth SSA countries.

The rapid growth in the higher education sector in SSA has been driven by factors such as changing demographics, that is, an increasing number of young people demanding higher education (Friga, Bettis and Sullivan, 2003); the entry of foreign investors into the educational market (Engwall, 2007); emergence of better technologies that improve the cost effectiveness of online education services (Dykman and Davis, 2008); and the general economic growth that is increasing the demand for higher educated persons for supervisory and managerial positions in some African countries (Rayment and Smith, 2010). These factors have fueled changes in programs, syllabi and pedagogy in response to the changing needs of different groups of learners, top executives, board members and administrators.

The entry of foreign private investors as new players on the SSA management education program has provided impetus and innovation within the sector. The Association of Business Executives (ABE) is an example of external management educational service providers on the sub-continent. ABE works with over 500 accredited colleges in 70 countries worldwide to deliver Certificate, Diploma and Advanced Diploma level qualifications in business management, business information systems, financial management, human resources management, marketing and tourism as well as hospitality management.

Apart from the state and privately owned institutions, some of the new entrants are being sponsored by multilateral development organizations as part of overall human capital development initiatives on the sub-continent. An example of this category of management education providers is the African Training and Management Services (ATMS), established by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as the executing agency and the African Development Bank (AfDB) as the regional coordinating agency. It is, thus far, one of Sub-Sahara Africa’s biggest human capital development initiatives in the private sector.

The relatively rapid growth of the sector and the increase in the number of schools, teachers and students has jointly produced a set of challenges. One of these challenges relates to governance and quality control within the sector, that is, ensuring good-quality teaching. National institutions are needed to provide oversight and governance of the new educational institutions and products. The main challenges to quality assurance systems in Africa are cost and human capacity requirements. According to Materu (2007), operating a national quality assurance agency typically entails an annual budget of at least US$450,000 and requires appropriately trained and experienced staff. In addition, the direct cost of accreditation averages an estimated US$5200 per institution and US$3700 per program. The costs of full-scale quality assurance systems are therefore unaffordable for most Sub-Sahara African countries.

Another distinctive weakness of management education in SSA countries is that it is generally slanted in favor of the children of the relatively richer segments of the population, mainly because university education has become the prerogative of children from this social group. For example, a World Bank estimate shows that all university expenditure in Tanzania at the beginning of the 1990s accrued to the richest 20% of the population (World Bank, 1993). Since managers and administrators are mostly drawn from university graduates, the social divide in education tends to put African managers out of touch with the rest of their societies.

Theoretical rationale for management education in Africa

The theoretical foundation of the existing management education programs in SSA countries has received some academic attention during the last three decades. Some recent contributors to the discourse include Jackson (2004), Ochola (2007), Bolden and Kirk (2009) and Kuada (2010).

Two streams of research have hitherto provided theoretical arguments for the dominant models in practice. One is predicated on the assumption that Western management thought, tools and practices can be effectively transferred and applied in the African context and African management education and training systems must speed up the transfer process. This approach is labeled the “catching-up” perspective (Kuada, 2006). The other is the claim that African culture breeds unique management practices that are distinctly different from those in the West. Following this latter perspective, the adoption of Western management by African organizations would inevitably entail compromising African cultural values and rules of accepted behavior. This approach is referred to as the “cultural uniqueness” perspective.

Catching-up perspective

The...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword by Charles Wankel
• Introduction
• Part I Regional Trajectories
• Part II Content Adaptations
• Part III New Directions
• Index