Back to School - Third Part
AN SOE FOCUS
One of the government’s most recent moves to address the need for executive education was the establishment in 2006 of the first foreign-degree program offered in China without a local academic partner, which is operated by HEC (ranked the top business school in Europe by the Financial Times last year.) Offered under the auspices of the training center of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), which guides the reform and restructuring of China’s SOEs, the HEC program is unique in that it focuses on executives from SOEs. It even offers a scholarship for participants from companies under SASAC supervision.
SASAC sought out a foreign business school to administer this program as part of an active mission to turn China’s SOEs into true contenders in the world arena, says Joshua Kobb, director of international development and strategic partnerships for executive education at HEC. “It was very clear in the beginning, when we started our discussion with SASAC, that they have plans for reforming SOEs; they want their SOEs to be truly international and global players, and they recognize that to do so they need to have trained executives, trained leaders in their organizations to drive that internationalization,” he says. “Which is why they called on an international school and not a Chinese school to deliver the program.”
GLOBALIZATION SCHOOL
HEC sees this coming globalization as a key part of its mission. As if to embody this, director of the World Trade Organization and HEC alumni Pascal Lamy was sponsor of their inaugural class in Beijing. “In the past, MNCs (multinational corporations) were very interested in getting into the Chinese market, ” explains Kobb. “But the next step is that Chinese organizations are going to be leaving China to become global competitors. We see it. It’s starting. And it’s going to continue and it’s going to be not only the big names
