Global MBA Perspectives Becoming Key for an Emerging Generation

But is the international atmosphere at business school really matched by large companies around the world once MBA graduates are ready to assume places of leadership in the global workforce?

In many cases, it seems the answer is no. For example, this recent article for BusinessBecause analyses why company diversity initiatives have often failed over the last 30 years, pointing to an overreliance on the appointment of a ‘diversity officer’ when fostering a climate within a company in which all levels (from the top down) are committed to the cause is the only way for it to truly succeed.

Pablo Esteves, an IE alumnus, describes how schools in Europe known for their diversity allow you to meet, work and become friends with people from anywhere in the world.

“Then let’s say you go back to McKinsey and you’ll be in your local office with, most likely, people of your same nationality because that’s how McKinsey operates”, Esteves says. Despite this, he sees a great deal of promise in the future to come. “What we want is for people to go back to these companies and in five years they will be the ones making decisions. That’s when all the things they were exposed to and learnt about will matter”, he says.

Esteves is one of four partners – all IE alumni – at Emzingo, a company running personal development programs designed not only to bestow participants with a global awareness but also to impress upon them the merits of socially responsible leadership.

Emzingo does this by running a fellowship scheme over the course of 6-8 weeks that revolves around a hands-on consulting project for a partner organization (all nonprofits or social enterprises). To date, 120 students have participated in the NexGen Fellowship, including Esteves himself who successfully applied while studying.

 “Going to South Africa to do a consulting project sounded very appealing”, Esteves says. He was so swayed by his fellowship experience that he joined the company after graduation. “I loved South Africa, I loved working for non-profits and the social sector and I really liked the whole diversity aspect and bridging the knowledge gap between NGOs and business. That was a big turning point in my career”, he adds.

Now a partner at Emzingo, he appreciates IE’s contribution even more. “I think they [IE] are crazy enough to try new things and push the limits a little bit, whereas other schools might be more wary. They trusted what we were doing”, Esteves says.

Emzingo and its co-founder, Ramon Marmolejos, recently presented at the 2013 Net Impact Conference on the subject of social innovation and entrepreneurship. There, they were able to discuss its new shorter programs, available to future global workforce leaders during student breaks. Impact Learning Treks were devised to increase Emzingo’s reach and take place over one-two weeks and focus on cultural immersion and exposure to social enterprises in Brazil, South Africa and Peru.

There have been accusations in some quarters of the worst examples of business school trips abroad amounting to ‘MBA tourism’ (the theme of a recent Financial Times feature.) Indeed, Emzingo wanted to ensure that launching a shorter program wouldn’t mean compromising on its effectiveness.

“That’s one of things we’re being very careful about. The long program is very robust, it allows you to do these consulting projects for an NGO and clearly the Impact Learning Trek is just a third of the time. So, what we’re doing is we’re including more workshops around responsible leadership and cultural awareness as in-country sessions. So, we might go to Ayacucho in Peru for a whole day of interacting with the community to learn about market-based solutions for the bottom of the pyramid”, Esteves explains, adding that while the client is a clear priority for the fellowship program, the treks have more flexibility for activity-based learning despite their relative brevity.

For Esteves, having an awareness of today’s global challenges – such as water scarcity, food shortages and energy concerns – is essential.  He cites the lack of international service programs at Fortune 500 companies by way of evidence. “Only 26 are concerned that their employees should be prepared with programs that offer them the opportunity to see what’s happening in other places in the world”, he says before adding; “the bottom-line is that companies and big corporations will need new business models to approach these problems.”

It’s a view shared by Francisco Jaime Quesado, general manager of Portuguese public agency, the Innovation and Knowledge Society. “The act of global participation in such a demanding society is an exercise of commitment between the individual creativity and the collective cooperation. The global MBA is the right answer to times of crises where ideas and solutions are the key for the future”, Quesado wrote in New Europe, emphasizing in particular that, “the global MBA challenge is the challenge of Europe” because of the opportunity it can provide for Europe to reinvent itself post-Eurozone crisis.

The need for a perspective provided by an international MBA program as well as the looming inevitability that a changing of the guard could already be under way is neatly summed up Esteves. He argues that a lack of trust between CEOs and consumers as well as people’s diminishing faith in politicians have led to a desire and belief among the younger generation that they can improve things, once given the opportunity to lead the global workforce.

He says, “You see these old-school CEOs saying we don’t have the talent, we can’t find prepared leaders. Then you have all these young people from another generation saying we want to do things differently and we want to change things. So, for us, that’s a clear sign that there’s a real need for social leadership.”