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Fitting into the International MBA World
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Fitting into the International MBA World
By QS Contributor
Updated July 21, 2014 Updated July 21, 2014How has the globalised world made it more important for MBA graduates to fit into the international arena effectively?
With the world becoming a more homogenized market by the day it is easy to slip into the belief that doing business across borders bears little difference to doing business in your home market. But whilst it is true that ongoing ‘globalization’ has made international markets less complex than in the past, working globally still presents its fair share of problems. With business schools at the forefront of preparing the next generation of business leaders for action, what is being done to make truly international business more attainable in the future?
Offshore campuses
One of the main trends in the business education world over the last few years has seen many schools open ‘international locations’ in order to spread their reach geographically. From a purely commercial point of view, it is obvious why schools would want to open operations in new markets. But with locations outside of home territories, schools are increasingly able to offer students ‘on the ground’ business experiences in new markets. Something many aspiring business leaders see as invaluable nowadays.
The first business school to declare itself truly international was the French institution, INSEAD. Even though they initially only had a campus at Fontainebleau, the school was always marketed as a school with a global view. However, in 2000, INSEAD decided to extend their claim further by opening a second campus in Singapore. And more have followed since.
One of the most notable entrants to the Executive MBA market over the last couple of years has been the OneMBA, a coalition of top business schools from North America, Mexico, Brazil, the Netherlands and Hong Kong. OneMBA students attend classes every four to six weeks at their ‘home’ university as well as attending four international ‘residencies’, where all other OneMBA students are present, spread over the 21-month program. Each residency lasts seven or eight days and at the end of the course you earn two MBA’s - one from your home university, plus the OneMBA issued by the five partner schools collectively.
Keith Mahoney graduated from the OneMBA Class of 2008 and says, “When I was researching which business school to apply to, my priority was to find an International Executive MBA program. I looked at some of the top schools in the New York area, and while they are strong academically, I found their internationalprograms lacking. For me, taking U.S. professors and students and offering the same courses overseas doesn’t qualify as a global curriculum. My take is that’s a field trip. I wanted to hear local professors and executives describe what it’s like to do business in Europe, Asia and Latin America. That learning is invaluable.”
HEC Paris has recently launched a new executive education location in Doha, Qatar – one of the most exciting locations in the Gulf region. Many will now be aware that Qatar will be hosting the soccer World Cup in 2022, something many would not have thought possible even a few months ago, but this is only one of many initiatives that displays the county’s enormous ambition. Education City, where HEC will be offering their EMBA and tailored executive education programmes, is part of the wider Qatar 2030 vision which has set a number of social, educational, and business targets for the country to achieve to become a leading global nation.
The EMBA program, which will be situated in Doha’s West Bay zone, has been set up with the aim of developing a strong pipeline of home-grown managerial talent with an international perspective, something that is sorely lacking in a region where many companies are family-run.
Oliver Gottschalg, a professor of Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris, says, “Qatari business is, like the rest of the Middle East, growing rapidly. Companies there are becoming more diverse and more international every year. As a result there is a real need for business leaders who understand not only the country and the region, but also the global economy and Qatar’s role in it. Our challenge is to accompany these organisations in their growth, by training local and locally-based leaders, thus contributing to the diversification of the economy and its sustainability.”
Ali Shaher, from the talent development team at the leading Qatari telecommunications company QTel, sees the school’s role as vital to the success of the 2030 vision. “HEC Paris will have professors on the ground full time who will be able to look at how business is done in Qatar and help to provide the tools for further international growth and diversification. The fact that they will be based here means they will get a much better perspective on the local business culture and what they can add to it.”
Multi-cultural classrooms
But what about schools with only one location? Most fall into this category, but many still claim an ‘international perspective’. The international diversity of the EMBA class is certainly one way schools can claim to provide this perspective. The Judge Business School, at the University of Cambridge, is a case in point. Whilst ‘only’ having a base in the UK, few can dispute the international repute that their parent university carries. But it’s the fact that in an EMBA class of 52, 24 nationalities are represented that really sets them apart. And with 40% of the students (including one with a 20 hour door to door trip from Kazakhstan) actively travelling from outside the UK once a month for classes, it is difficult to argue with the international pedigree.
Michael Salama, a VP in the tax department at the Walt Disney Company in California says that travelling to the UK to gain international exposure has worked for him. "The Cambridge EMBA really does offer a practical global perspective on business. The international make-up of the class ensures that there is something new learned from one another at every session. When I board the plane to return to Los Angeles afterwards, I am confident I've made the right choice and comforted by the fact our learning and connectivity with one another continues seamlessly through the online learning resources when we are not on campus.”
Bridging distances
Connectivity away from the campus is clearly a big issue for the EMBA and even more so for a school’s international contingent. If you want international exposure but can’t travel to a far flung campus on the other side of the globe on a regular basis, the ability to access course material to be online is a minimum requirement. But how can you interact in a meaningful way with such a disparate classroom?
Warwick Business School is a leader in the field of distance learning and were ranked by the Economist as the best distance learning EMBA in the UK, and 3rd in the world. They are one of a few schools that have built an Executive MBA program that caters to those who simply cannot travel to the campus regularly, whatever the reason. All the material can be accessed remotely and exams can even be delivered and taken anywhere in the world. The only compulsory travel commitment is that students must be on campus for the school’s 8 day seminar, held in September. The real difference though, is their new virtual classroom, wbsLive, which allows students to fully interact, not just with academics, but also with fellow students anywhere in the world.
So, whether by running campuses in a number of international locations, creating an internationally diverse classroom at your existing campus, or by harnessing technology that will allow students to interact across continents as if they were sitting side by side in a lecture room, it certainly seems that the business school world, much like the business world, is becoming a smaller place.
This article was originally published in November 2012 . It was last updated in July 2014
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