The last decades have seen a significant development of management education and research around the world. In that sense, the business of business schools, as some call it, is flourishing.
Yet, business schools are facing several challenges that are structuring the arena for the years to come (Dameron and Durand 2017). First, there is an increasing role played by external third parties in evaluation (accreditation , rankings ), pushing for some form of strategic convergence among business schools (Dameron and Manceau 2011); second, business schools are under severe financial stress as their business models are built around a permanent search for funding to grow their reputation in a context of salary inflation for faculty (Durand and Dameron 2008; Menger et al. 2015); third, there is the emergence of a line of divide among faculty with the ongoing recruitment of non-tenure track faculty to limit costs and the corollary risk of separating knowledge dissemination from knowledge production—a combination that stands at the very heart of academia (Dameron and Durand 2011); fourth, as some national markets in management education have matured while others have just begun to grow, business schools are pushed to look at internationalizing as a way to balance and secure their development (Dameron and Durand 2013; Ramanantsoa and Delpech 2016); fifth, distance learning opens up competition among business schools on a global basis while requiring significant investments; sixth, the entry of private operators into the sector may intensify competition between management education organizations, if not change the rules of the game (Durand and Dameron 2005).
We have analyzed these trends and challenges in the first chapter of the first volume of this book.
Based on the deep knowledge brought into the two volumes by the 55 contributors on 23 different national management education systems, this chapter discusses how business schools may face these challenges depending—or not—on the context of their specific national systems of higher education in management. More specifically, our findings depart from the view of a general strategic convergence by which business schools would seem to all be running for some sort of “global excellence”, supposedly measured by rankings , as if local and national embeddedness to serve business communities in their territorial and institutional setting was no longer enough of an ambition (Durand and Dameron 2011). In fact, we find that only a handful of business schools may be seen as global. Hence, the conventional view of a worldwide strategic convergence in the business schools’ arena is only a very small part of the story.
Based on our closer look at the dynamics of the “industry”, as reported in the 23 country-specific chapters of the two volumes of this book, the picture that we see coming out is more contrasted and complex. There may be indeed a strong push towards internationalization and even globalization , but most business schools worldwide are in fact strongly embedded in their national or even local institutional contexts. Many are torn apart between the aspiration for globalization and the reality of their constituencies’ needs. A few B-schools indeed try hard to stand as global—non-embedded in institutional settings. However, the vast majority of business schools do focus on their local/regional business communities. Some others try to combine serving the needs of their specific home base with the aim to be internationally visible and influential. All in all, we suggest that there are ways to escape the strategic convergence. This is what this chapter discusses.
As the introductory chapter of the first volume aimed at proposing a reflexive stance in analyzing the way the world arena of business schools evolves, our purpose here is to show how contextual forces are at work that may help business schools escape from strategic convergence and the attached lock-in, thus giving room for differentiation among business schools in a multipolar world.
Traits That Make Business Schools Different
What is it that makes a business school different? The 23 country-specific chapters helped us identify an array of characteristics that may contribute to shaping a different kind of strategic positioning for a business school with specific learning atmosphere, audience, set of external linkages and market targets.
- The location where the school is geographically situated: the country; whether the campus is situated in the countryside or in the middle of a vibrant city; the surrounding continent from which students and managers may be attracted; a region with headquarters of large multinational corporations, with entrepreneurial activities, with manufacturing plants, or with essentially SMEs, and so on
- The countries of origin of the students/managers attending the Executive education programs
- The countries of origin of the faculty: primarily nationals, heavily international, mostly nationals plus some neighboring countries, and so on
- The cultural context: deeply embedded locally or highly transnational, or drawing from specific regional cultures (oriental philosophy, Western analytically based efficiency, etc.)
- The political spheres in which the business schools operate, being influenced by this setting and trying to influence it in return: the local institutional and political constituencies and the connected business community; the regional or national arena and close connections to the leading national companies; the multinationals locally or nationally headquartered but operating worldwide and thus connected to a diversity of governments around the planet, and to some international organizations as well
- The organizational context of the B-school: part of a larger public or private university, with some autonomy or not, with part of the financial resources captured by the mother; independent, self-regulated body; part of a larger non-academic institution such as a chamber of commerce or religious orders; created and backed by, if not a subsidiary of, a large corporation; a private entity part of a group that owns private universities
- The role, importance and footprint of the alumni : this signals the scope of the influence of the B-school and who influences the B-school in return
- The board of the school: where the board members are from; in which circles they operate; the extent to which they come from public institutions, from small businesses, from large companies, from professional associations or Unions, from NGOs and the society at large; which nationalities and to what extent are they alumni from the school
- The profiles of Deans and assistant Deans : whether they are local, alumni from the school; international high flyers brought in by the board
- The language used: the language in the classroom, on the campus or in the faculty meetings; in the publications ; on the website; the languages heard at the cafeteria
- The portfolio of programs offered (BA, MSc in management, MBA , DBA , PhD , Executive Education ) and the balance in strategic priorities between (1) education, (2) research and (3) linking to business and society
- The sources of funding deriving from both the portfolio of activities and the institutional setting
- The attention paid to innovation in education and research , including distance and blended learning
There may be additional characteristics that contribute to make a business school specific.
Yet, more than adding items to the above list, we believe that it may be important to consider the strategic intent beyond the present state. Deciding to go for a policy of reaching out for international faculty is an intent that says something important about a strategy, especially if the current faculty is primarily or almost exclusively made up of nationals. Similarly, planning to adopt English as the teaching language is a strategic intent that may be far-reaching if the vast majority of current students are non-native English speakers ill-prepared to interact in English both within the classroom and in work groups. “Intended traits” may be more important than “as is” traits.
In this sense, each of the items in the list above may be assessed in the current situation, that is, as it stands today, while it may be as important to identify the strategic intent regarding the item and the consistency of that intent with both the overall profile of the B-school today and its overall intended trajectory into the future.
Given the context of the challenges and trends discussed in Chap. 1 of Volume 1, we looked here to extract key dimensions from the array of business school traits listed above, keeping in mind the mirror image set of “intended” ...