Close to the action

Mar 22nd 2012, 15:58 by M.S. | PARIS

EVEN the most passionate champion of management education might concede that there was a time, well within living memory, when the business campuses were little more than ivory towers. MBA students were far too busy poring over case studies to worry about what was going on in the real world outside the classroom. Particularly if that classroom happened to be situated well away from hoi polloi in a leafy French forest, for example, or overlooking the Charles River in Massachusetts.

Times change and now fashion dictates that programmes should be as rigorously practical as they are they are academic. Graduates are expected to emerge from their MBAs with corporate dirt under their fingernails. So with this in mind, wouldn't it make sense for potential MBAs to select their school not just on the basis of its faculty, student body and the effectiveness of its careers department, but also on how close it is to the heart of commercial and political action?

Students at London Business School, for example, don't just learn how banks and hedge funds operate from their professors and the media. They can hear it direct from the financial services front-line troops with whom they share the coffee bars and the pubs of the City. In the same way, their peers at IE in Madrid or IESE in Barcelona can see the effects of high youth unemployment every time they leave their campuses. Prospective MBAs at SDA Bocconi in Milan, meanwhile, will learn everything they need to know about the dead hand of Italian bureaucracy as soon as they try to lease an apartment, open a bank account or apply for a driving licence.

If you are going to find out how and why things go wrong—and how to avoid repeating mistakes in future—one way is to opt for a place where they have gone spectacularly awry. As a successful lawyer, Iris Christopoulou could have had her pick of business schools across Europe or North America. Instead she opted to stay in her home country and study at the ALBA Graduate Business School in Athens. She thinks this has given her a clearer understanding of the role that business and politics plays in underperforming economies. “Our professors have a lot of insight into the reasons for the crisis and what we need to do to get out of it,” she says. “Our problem isn't just economic, it's also political. We've got too many career politicians who haven't got a clue about what's really going on. We need more leaders with entrepreneurial backgrounds. And ALBA is trying to play a part in helping to create them.”

Whether you learn more from studying in a country that gets it wrong than where they get it right is an interesting one. Those who subscribe to the latter viewpoint may prefer to head to Germany, currently one of the few successful European economies. Although the country is a relative newcomer to the MBA, schools such as Mannheim and ESMT offer the chance not just to hear from its business leaders and understand the export-driven business culture of Mittelstand firms, but also from the politicians who may make or break the euro zone. It also has the added bonus of not having to fight through picket lines and riot police to do so.

Readers' comments


Connect The Dots

Scholars see the Economic Model as critical to economic performance. I believe this overlooks more critical factors such as individual achievement, ambition and drive.
Example are the Chinese People. Chinese are a diaspora scattered over many nations in Asia. They exist in various economic systems from Capitalism in Taiwan, Communism in China, International Finance Capital in Hong Kong, Gambling, Gaming and Leisure in Macau; and Enlightened Philosopher Kingdom in Singapore. But they are all doing fabulously well!
Booming with 10% plus growth rates for the past 20 years. Communism, Capitalism, Gaming, and Philosopher King--they are ALL DOING WELL.
And the it is NOT the economic system but the people that bring the prosperity.
Another example is Historical China. The Chinese civilization is several thousand years old. And it had the world's largest economy for nearly 90% of civilization. The Communist in China have only 'been on the scene' for less than a century. The Chinese economy was dominant once, and probably will be dominant again in the near future.
The Communist are as responsible for the rise of China as they are for the daily weather in Beijing--really just bystanders who get wet. Remember for much of Communist history, 1945-1980, China was poorly lead, on the brink of starvation, shivering in unheated hovels, and worst than Africa economically. It is only in the last few decades, that the Communist have learned to "GET OUT OF THE WAY!" of the economy. Simple Laissez Faire.
It is NOT the triumph of Socialism, Communism or Other-ism. It is the triumph of the Chinese people.
Why are some nations, cultures, or populations more risk taking and others more cautious? Why are some people more entrepreneurial?
I think the best government could do is to get out of the way of the individual. It is individual entrepreneur spirit that was always present--the desire to get rich. Ambition.
And like all people, there are different levels of ambition and drive. Some nationalities may be more entrepreneurial including the Jews, Lebanese, Indians and Chinese.
They tend to start small business concerns world wide like Mom-and-Pop dry goods, 7-11 and Hole-in-the-Wall restaurants. They are poor but entrepreneurial, persistent, hard working and smart. Things that we wish we could be.
That is the basis of wealth, NOT Macro State Systems. The People, the Shopkeeper, the Micro Economics. They are far more important than your Macro Model--look at the Chinese.
Step back and gain perspective. Look at the world wide Chinese Diaspora beginning with your local Chinatowns stretching to the Asian Tigers and now finally into the China Mainland.
The Eastern Confucius Economies, Germany, The Netherlands, and Scandinavian Economies do well because of the culture and work ethic. Long term government can suppress and destruct an economy like Communist China 1946-1979, Warsaw Pact Countries from 1945-1989, or the current state of Cuba, North Korea or Libya...but government cannot grow the economy.
It is the natural talent of its citizens, the culture of risk and innovation, and the ethics of hard work that grow an economy.
Governments can get it wrong. But it is up to the people, their culture and work ethic to grow an economy.

shaun39 in reply to Denisovan

If you really want to know, take a skip across the the Belarus State Economics University.

When you come back, you'll actually notice Western institutions, habits and business practices that you weren't even cognisant of before - appreciating and understanding things on a whole new level. You'll use that understanding to decide where things need to change.

On the other hand, you'll have had to endure an entire year in Belarus... It ain't the Congo, but it's hardly an entrepot for globalisation and entrepreneurial juices.

shaun39 in reply to Connect The Dots

It was China's economic system - with bureaucracy and internal and external trade restrictions - that kept China impoverished while Japan opened to the West in the 19th century.

It was China's economic system under communism that kept China impoverished, while Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore all flourished by integrating with Japan and the west.

Even today, "entrepreneurial" China has far lower incomes, less value added per capita, far worse poverty and lower education attainment than Russia.

Economic systems matter - as does accumulated capital. And sure, culture matters too - the Japanese will forever be punished for excluding women; sub-Saharan Aids victims will suffer long for following the Catholic church's contraceptive advice; nationalist "culture" in France drives isolation and protectionism...

You are naive if you think that (competent, well defined and efficient) big government projects aren't essential to prosperous modern economies - they absolutely are, especially with regard to transport and energy infrastructure. Mom and pop stores typically have lousy productivity - they are a symptom of economic failure and tax avoidance/ non-accessibility of finance/ lack of legal institutions for allowing businesses to grow.

Overwhelmingly, living standards are all about productivity - and that is just about integrating with global markets, encouraging rapid take-up & roll-out of technologies and practices developed elsewhere (private sector, public sector and institutional), and accumulating enough capital to make the necessary investments.

Often, productivity and prosperity require that most people should specialise as workers rather than entrepreneurs - integrating well and training to perform tasks with outstanding competence. More humble than mom & pop, but that's what builds reliable cars, usable software, safe aircraft, fast & honest court systems, fantastic theatre productions, new pharmaceuticals and decent clothes.

It ain't in the genes; even the culture ain't all that relevant. Rather, we are rewarded for adopting international best practice, trading with the world and quickly implementing the best technologies and practices known to man. Culture carries and is shaped by this - but the two are not the same. In all of these areas, the US has an enormous advantage because of its massive market size and diasporas from across the world.

Connect The Dots

"it ain't in the genes; even the culture ain't all that relevant."

QUESTION: Why are the Jews so successful in their wide diaspora in all kinds of economic systems?

Eraserhead in reply to shaun39

"Even today, "entrepreneurial" China has ... lower education attainment than Russia."
- Given a Chinese city (Shanghai) leads the OECD countries on educational achievement (source - and in its coastal cities 70% of its people go to university these days - a rate far higher than the UK, and a rate higher than the 58% (source - of 16 year olds in the UK who "pass" their exams including in English and Maths.
I don't know about the other points, about GDP per capita, value added per employee, and poverty, (and lets not forget that 30-40 years ago China was one of the poorest countries on earth) but the Chinese are doing extremely well on education.


RE: Prospective MBAs at SDA Bocconi in Milan, meanwhile, will learn everything they need to know about the dead hand of Italian bureaucracy as soon as they try to lease on an apartment, open a bank account or apply for a driving licence.
To rent in Tokyo I had to obtain a written guarantee from my Japanese father-in-law (yes, really)
To open a bank account in Oxford I had to obtain a letter of recommendation from the University.
To get a driving licence in Sydney I need to stay in the country for longer than 6 months, including ANY trip outside the country.. basically I fly to NZ for the weekend and the 6-month period restart again… for ever and ever
Being Italian, Italy is not as bad as I thought and some still think it is

shaun39 in reply to Eraserhead

The PISA study in Shanghai only counted the children of official Shanghai citizens - essentially, only the middle in China's richest (mainland) city.

If the massive underclass of migrant workers (mostly attending informal schools) were counted, Shanghai's results would not be so flatering. The quality of education available to most Chinese stinks - what you get depends on what your parents can afford. A comparatively small proportion of Chinese kids attend higher education, and the quality of Chinese universities is still somewhat behind western (or Russian) standards.

Yes, China is improving with remarkable pace. But the Chinese people are only human. They aren't unusually intellegent or hardworking as per the stereotype - it is just that intellegence and bleeding hard work are conditions of sponsorship to attend western universities, so those are the people we see. On a comparison of general populations, stereotypes break down somewhat.


A bit of fluff here, isn't it?

As someone who hires lots of MBAs I can tell you that sharing coffee bars and pubs with others does not count as "dirt under the firngernails". And I question whether living in Greece will really give anyone special access to the minds of Greek policymakers.

I'd rather get more people who know well their accounting, finances and operations management. I'm getting a little tired of graduates who want to ix the world but have no idea on how to run a business.

Connect The Dots in reply to shaun39

What is the sum of improper fractions 31/8 + 47/6 = ?
The beauty of math is there is only ONE CORRECT answer in ANY LANGUAGE. Soft students do NOT want to be evaluated by a hard measure, they want partial credit, an essay type answer, be able to network and call a lifeline(call a friend for advice), be able to use an iPhone App to generate the answer, be able to game the system, and be able to BS their way through academics.
In the 60's and 70's American students were doing well on international comparison tests of Math and Science and they endorsed these results. Now American students are sinking to the bottom of the OECD. To the levels of Mexico and Turkey. And the Americans now indict the validity of the tests.
The PISA results of OECD countries in 2009 showed 5 of the top 6 results in Science were in Asia. Finland came in second.
And all top five scores in Maths were in Asia. The highest non-Asian country was Finland at sixth.
IF Shanghai is an outlier, how do you explain away the success of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, all in the top positions? These are all similar Eastern Confucian Cultures. Similar race and culture. Different from the West.
Shanghai tests, because of allegations of improprieties, were administered from the beginning by an outside Australian education firm. Imagine having the Australians administer the NYC Public School standard tests? And the test administrators arrived at a school and just tested the students who were attending. They were not Scotland Yard background investigators to see if a particular kid had a valid passport or ate breakfast that morning. They just tested the students present in a fair and rigorous way. No different than any SAT test. They are not there to give the Joe Friday third degree criminal investigations.
And let us say China's schools are cheap and lousy. They 'stink'. With no heat, no school supplies, no chalk, and held together by spit and straw. But that they are performing at a world class level and spending less than 20% of a Western education is REMARKABLE. We should learn from this system.
Or alternatively => If it isn't the system, THEN maybe it is the culture and the people who succeed whether in an unheated hovel or multi-million dollar, glass-and-steel, high school computer laboratory sponsored by Bill Gates.


I thought you meant the USA, which is the country that got it most wrong. We started the Financial crisis of 2008 for heaven's sake. Give credit where credit is due.

iThinker in reply to shaun39

The migrant workers in China aren't the same as the migrant workers from Mexico or Guatemala. As Thomas Friedman once said, "The trouble is, in China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears, in America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears". The Chinese culture highly values education. Each family only has one child and the make sure they child gets the best education and does not get involved in gangs. From the newsclips I've seen, kids in China actually respect their teachers, unlike here in the US where they talk loudly to one another in class, laugh at the teachers, throw stuff, start fights in the classrooms, have gangs running wild and getting girls pregnant. It wouldn't surprise me if these migrant workers' children actually do better than the pampered kids in Shanghai.

Archie Goodwin

>>the hoi polloi

"Hoi" already means "the", so there's no need to say it twice. It's just "hoi polloi".

--The ancient Greek grammar police

5xTNVce3wa in reply to Connect The Dots

My guess is something called networks - high sense of belonging drives resource sharing (finance) and drives business (you have recommendations ready). Jews are not the only example of it (just more apparent), in a diverse country like India you have these examples more common.

Your point on genes is not entirely incorrect though. Studies indicate Ashkenazy Jews to have significantly higher IQ level (attributed to generations of finance work they have been involved in).


Swiss Reader in reply to Connect The Dots

Connect - I agree that China is doing a great and commendable job in improving education, especially considering that the whole school system was destroyed a generation ago in the cultural revolution. I also agree that a good teacher in a lousy, stinky classroom gets better results than a demotivated moron in a multi-million facility.

I believe however that you are exaggerating the importance of maths as the one and only standard for educational attainment. Some knowledge of foreign languages can be quite useful, and maybe even more important is the faculty to make a clear and reasoned argument in one's mother tongue. Those subjects may be more difficult to test, actually requiring an "essay type answer", but should not be despised.

And here I feel is the weak point of many Asian school systems, not just in China. The emphasis on formal, "objective" tests leads to many people leaving school with top grades and perfectly familiar with calculus and higher maths, but unable to take a decision on their own initiative and give a clear and articulate reason for it.

Connect The Dots in reply to Swiss Reader

Swiss Reader-
Standardized tests can only rate certain objective skills. It fails for open response essay type answers which account for most of life. But we agree: we all need some basic competencies in Math and Logic.

But the PISA did not just evaluate Maths Skills. It also tested SCIENCE COMPETENCY and READING COMPREHENSION.

IF Western Children spent as much time reading books or doing math and science problem solving as they did playing video games, THEN they would lead the world in education accomplishment. And be the most enlightened generation that every existed. But now we have Facebook, Txt Msg and the Web which are major time sucks. And children don't read books no more.

Please see the attached Web Link Stub on my original comment.



Or go to Canada where we stayed (and stay) out of trouble.



Products and events



