It should be international

Editor's note: MBA and EMBA programs have diversified in China, but the pressure on them to adapt to the Chinese business environment is still intensifying. Should management education be international or local? How can we make MBA not only adapt to international competition, but also solve the problems of Chinese enterprises?

The deans of Peking University Guanghua, Fudan University School of Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University Antai School of Management and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business gave their answers respectively. They expounded their thinking on the internationalization and localization of management education, as well as the leading practices of the business schools they lead.

On the other hand, HR managers and business school students also expressed their experiences and opinions from the user's point of view.

This is a meaningful interpretation of management education, both for managers and for companies hiring MBAs.

"Last year's Spring Festival Gala EMBA students exclaimed together: Long live Jiaotong University, it's worth the money. I asked them if the 258,000 tuition was worth it? They said that the investment had already been recovered. ." Wang Fanghua recalled the scene at that time and seemed very relieved. The Antai School of Management of Shanghai Jiaotong University started to offer EMBA program in 2002, which belongs to the earliest group in China. In recent years, as the dean of Antai, Wang Fanghua visited more than 30 business schools with the best EMBA education in the United States, Europe and Asia, hoping to absorb the experience of successful international school running into Antai. The unanimous affirmation of Antai by the students is exactly what Wang Fanghua and his professors have been working towards.

Compared with the EMBA, the MBA of Antai Jiaotong University has a longer development. It has been 13 years since its establishment in 1993, and it has developed from a comprehensive MBA with only one part-time system at the beginning to a total of more than a dozen educational models such as full-time, international classes, and various professional MBAs. Wang Fanghua and Antai have made many pioneering achievements in the development of MBA education in China. For example, Wang Fanghua was the first to propose the establishment of a professional MBA program; the first to propose that the business school should be managed in the way of running a business, and the dean should be a professional educator; Antai was also the first business school to hold MBA forums on campus regularly. .

And now, when Wang Fanghua was asked about the characteristics of Aetna's management education, he first mentioned "internationalization". In his view, in the context of "internationalization of the Chinese market and Chineseization of the international market", the "internationalization" of business schools is no longer a question of "whether to do it", but a question of "how to do it".

Internationalization is the essence of management education

Now is the time for the spring admissions of EMBA of Antai School of Management of Jiaotong University. I noticed that your admissions brochure states that the first feature of Antai EMBA program is Globalization. It means that Antai attaches great importance to the internationalization of EMBA education?

Of course, we attach great importance to EMBA, including the internationalization of MBA education. First of all, let me say that internationalization is a common problem faced by all Chinese business schools. Because China's economy is internationalizing and companies are internationalizing, the talents we cultivate must also be internationalized accordingly and have a global vision. Another important reason is that management education is derived from the modern market economy in the West, and the framework of this theoretical system is basically international. If you blindly emphasize Chinese originality, you obviously haven't really grasped its essence. Internationalization should be the essential feature of this discipline.

At Aetna, internationalization can be reflected in some external data. For example, among our MBA and EMBA students, there are foreign students from 6 different countries; we have dozens of foreign teachers; we have introduced a large number of original textbooks in foreign languages and so on. However, from an internal point of view, the internationalization of school-running ideas and concepts, teaching methods and means is what we really strive to achieve in management education.

How do you understand the internationalization of school-running ideas and concepts?

Antai has established a concept of "students are both products and users" in recent years. Satisfying users, this school-running idea is a manifestation of internationalization: a student is a user, and he entrusts his time, money and hope to Antai, and we must make him feel value for money. In the past, Chinese universities often only regarded students as products. Each course was equivalent to a process. The production process was strictly controlled to ensure the high quality of students. Now, we also attach great importance to the satisfaction level of students, and use this indicator to assess teachers and adjust courses. What is satisfaction? Students will be satisfied if they can apply the knowledge and methods they have learned to their work and have a positive impact after graduation. The concept of "students are users" must be established by an international business school.

Comparatively speaking, I think China Europe International Business School has done a good job in international education. It does not rely on the traditional university system, but is done with a brand-new system, which can improve the satisfaction of student users.

The curriculum system increases the connotation of localization

You mentioned just now that teaching methods and means should be internationalized. We know that case teaching and interactive teaching are widely used in Western MBA and EMBA education, which is incompatible with traditional Chinese teaching methods. very different. What is Antai doing now?

We have fully implemented case teaching in terms of teaching methods, but localize cases as much as possible, and localize the way of interaction as much as possible. After all, most of the students trained by Antai work in China, and the management problems that occur in China are to be solved. Therefore, the problem of localization cannot be avoided. The methods and means of internationalization should be changed according to the characteristics of Chinese students.

For example, Western students can easily enter a state of interaction and are willing to express their opinions. But Chinese students can't do that any time soon. Therefore, in the course setting, it is not possible to let him interact at the beginning like in the West; instead, he starts talking about systematic knowledge and masters the basic skills, and then enters the interaction. This is the change of localization. In the design of the curriculum system, combined with the characteristics of internationalization, increase the connotation of localization.

In terms of the combination of internationalization and localization, what is unique about Antai's curriculum design compared with other domestic business schools?

I would like to talk about Aetna's EMBA in particular. We were one of the first schools in China to offer an EMBA program in 2002. In recent years, it has developed rapidly, and the curriculum design is different from other schools, hoping to help students improve their core competitiveness in an international environment.

There are three distinctive modules in the EMBA course: First, the profit module design, students think about how companies can survive in the fierce market competition and how to make more profits. They also have to conduct simulation competitions with each other to get exercise in adapting to the market environment, grasping market opportunities, building resource balance, and finding profit points. The second module is performance improvement, which is an assignment that must be completed after the completion of 12 professional courses, thinking about how a good company can continuously improve its performance after making profits. The third module, Strategic Design, is completed before graduation. The positioning of EMBA is to cultivate strategic talents. They must be able to point out the direction for the development of the enterprise from a higher perspective and lead the enterprise from one success to the next.

These three modules are what distinguish us from other schools. In the evaluation process, the deans of many world-class business schools such as Wharton, MIT's Sloan School of Business, and Columbia Business School are highly rated. They believe that these three modules are very practical, and are very effective carriers for solving the practical problems of local enterprises with international methods and theories.

I found that Aetna has some professional MBA programs, such as Finance MBA, Media MBA and so on. This practice has been criticized in the West, because they believe that management does not differ from industry to industry. How do you think about this issue?

It is true that some established business schools in the West are not in favor of specialized MBA education. For example, Harvard says that it always trains business leaders and never specialises. But in fact, some emerging business schools, such as Maryland, Stanford, and Wharton in the United States have begun to pay attention to this issue.

I was the first in China to propose the establishment of a specialized MBA, and Antai was the first to do so. After more than ten years of MBA training, we should all see that China's MBAs are not like the first few years, they are senior managers of enterprises, but they are getting younger and younger. Therefore, our positioning of MBAs is placed in middle-level and grass-roots management. Those who are around 30 years old. According to the characteristics of these students, we have designed a series of specialized MBAs such as Finance MBA, High-tech MBA, and Media Management MBA. This is to change the education model according to the characteristics of the local market. We have also made some attempts, such as combining the training of financial MBA and financial analyst (CFA), when students complete the MBA program, they will also obtain a CFA qualification certificate, which is more competitive.

There is also a lot of debate in China. Gradually, schools such as Fudan, CEIBS, and Tsinghua University that used to think that MBA should be a general-purpose school are now running some specialized MBA programs. Many people criticize China's MBA classmates for being superior and inferior, which actually has something to do with educational thinking. We train in the direction of general managers and presidents, but after graduation, students are more likely to become professional managers in all walks of life, so it is necessary to introduce specialized education. Antai's high-tech MBA has been held for five years, and finance MBA has also been held for four years, which are very popular among students and enterprises. But in general, the comprehensive MBA faces a larger market, which can adapt to different industries, different enterprise systems, and different management models. Therefore, the current comprehensive MBA is still the mainstream of Aetna, accounting for about two-thirds of the total.

Connect with international standards

In addition to specialized MBA programs, Antai also has many international MBA programs and cooperates with some foreign universities. What are the beneficial effects of this on Aetna?

In recent years, we have successively launched MBA programs with the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the University of Southern California (USC). Starting this year, it will also cooperate with the MIT Sloan School of Management to combine the master of engineering and the training of manufacturing leaders. It is an interdisciplinary cooperation between the School of Engineering and the School of Business.

In the early days of international cooperation, UBC had a great influence on us. Although UBC is not the strongest business school in the world, it has a very rigorous style and diverse teaching methods, giving our teachers a very fresh feeling. After 2003, it should be said that USC has the greatest influence on us. It is a private school, which is very flexible and has a good combination of teaching and scientific research, so it has a strong ability to adapt to the market's curriculum innovation. For example, it will bring together teachers from four or five courses to work on a topic together, which is a problem-solving-oriented curriculum. Starting this year, the new reference system for our international cooperation is MIT Sloan School of Management. This is a school that specializes in technology, which is very similar to Jiaotong University, and it is also a very innovative school. In the process of cooperating with these foreign universities, Jiaotong University itself is growing and becoming more and more international.

How does Antai achieve the goal of internationalization through cooperation with these schools?

Partnerships are constantly changing. The first is the introduction type. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the cooperation with UBC was a comprehensive introduction. All 23 courses were taught by Canadian teachers. Our teachers can teach on the same stage and learn from them; the second is the fill-in type, such as Cooperating with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for high-tech MBA, we are relatively weak in technical management, so two-thirds of the courses are taught by ourselves, and one-third of the courses are taught by them; the third is the exchange type, Antai goes to Nanyang Technological University in Singapore To carry out our MBA program and give our degrees, two-thirds of the courses I take, one-third he takes. In turn, Nanyang Technological University came to Jiaotong University to carry out their projects, exchanged brands, exchanged teaching, exchanged teachers and students. This is probably the only MBA program in China that offers degrees overseas. It shows that our internationalization is not only about importing and absorbing, but also going out.

In addition, there is also a strategic cooperation, such as with USC in the United States, we start with EMBA, and extend its teaching methods and concepts to other doctoral, master, and undergraduate education, step by step. In the process of internationalization, we are constantly looking for models that are more suitable for reference, improve the level of our teachers, and be in line with international standards.

Can it be understood in this way that it is a very important goal of Antai's internationalization to make the teaching staff reach the international level?

Yes, in order to cultivate talents with an international vision, teachers must first have this vision and have a deep understanding of management theory. Through the cooperation with foreign institutions in the past few years and the connection with the international level, Professor Antai's ability and vision have been improved rapidly. Just like domestic car factories, after international cooperation, they can develop rapidly.

Take the EMBA program as an example, it was just started in 2002, and overseas teachers account for two-thirds. Now, after three or four years, we have achieved: one-third of overseas professors, one-third of professors from other first-class universities in China, and one-third of our own professors. In the future, on the basis of maintaining a certain number of international teachers, our teachers will undertake more and more courses. The same is true of trends in international MBA programs.

Cooperation with foreign universities also includes that Antai sends professors to the local area every year to work with their best professors, bringing back the essence of Western management teaching. In the next five years, we will send no less than 30 professors to the United States. Comparing with the international teaching level, Antai's professors are under pressure, but more of a driving force.

How to combine "the essence of western management education" with the practical management problems of Chinese enterprises?

We do a lot of work on local case writing. First, establish case bases in some enterprises. The so-called case base is not a one-time compilation of cases, but a dynamic compilation of cases as the enterprise changes and grows. In addition, every year, we will find some typical cases in China's major economic events and influential economic figures; we will also pay attention to those companies that have fallen from the peak to the bottom in a few years, and so on. At present, there are more than 1,000 local cases in Antai's case library, and 200 to 300 are added every year.

China's new economic trends and the growth process of Chinese companies will be reflected in the cases we have compiled. But the cases of multinational companies, such as how multinational companies achieve talent localization in China, and the successful experience of marketing localization are also widely used in teaching.

What criteria does Antai use to select teachers?

Whether the professors are from international or domestic, they must first have theoretical attainments. For example, there are internationally renowned management experts like Schultz, the founder of integrated marketing, among our teachers. Teachers also need some practical experience, and we also have some professors with entrepreneurial backgrounds. But we don't stress this one-sidedly. In fact, the teacher's practice, no matter how rich it is, can't surpass the students, because the students themselves come from the enterprises. However, the perspective and depth of the teacher's view of the problem are different. What students value more is the ability of teachers to use advanced theories and methods to gain insight into the inner laws of things, so I often say that teachers should be able to "turn a stone into gold".

Antai's students include all kinds of people from multinational enterprises, private enterprises, and state-owned enterprises. Will the source of students affect the degree of combination of internationalization and localization in curriculum design?

The main difference in course design is brought about by the difference in perspective, and has little to do with the company in which the students come from. For example, the marketing management I teach requires both MBA and EMBA, but the teaching methods and emphasis are different. For EMBA students, I focus on strategic marketing, and for MBA I focus on integrated marketing. But the combination of internationalization theory system and localization case content is the same.

The current situation of Antai Shengyuan is: one-third of international enterprises, one-third of state-owned enterprises, and one-third of private enterprises, which is in line with the current state of competition in China. I often encourage students that private enterprises should learn from state-owned enterprises, their norms and rigor; state-owned enterprises should learn from multinational companies, learning their grand and strategic vision; multinational companies should learn from private enterprises, learning their flexibility and flexibility. Such an environment is very beneficial for students to share the combination of internationalization and localization in their interactions. Now, about 14.5% of Antai's students choose to start their own business after graduation, which is also in line with the idea of MBA education internationally.

I also want to emphasize that Antai, as a local business school, still hopes to train more managers for local companies. If everyone trains students for multinational companies and trains competitors for local companies, won't Chinese companies become weaker and weaker?

Do you think it is safe to say that Antai's students are talents with both an international perspective and a localized practice?

This is our goal and the standard by which we are assessed, but it will take more time to fully reach this point. Because first of all, the ability of teachers cannot meet the highest requirements, and there is still some gap with the world's most advanced level. In addition, the impetuous mentality prevailing in the society has a bad influence on the students' learning motivation, and some self-esteem emotions are also affecting the teaching effect. But I can say that Aetna is getting closer to that goal. I also often get feedback from students. From entering the school to graduation, whether it is the development of international vision and the improvement of their ability to solve practical problems, they all feel that they have gained a lot.

It should be international

Free Alerts on newly added products!