Be cautious about rankings
The European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) is the largest international network in the field of management development. It covers over 500 institutional members and reaches over 12,000 management development professionals from academia, business, public service and consultancy in 65 countries world-wide. Its members include, from academia, John Hopkins University, the Kellogg School of Management, Columbia Business School, Tanaka Business School, Cranfield School of Management, the London Business School, and INSEAD, and from the corporate world, such blue-chip companies as BT Group plc (UK), Deutsche Bank, L’Oréal, and Renault.
I talked to Eric Cornuel, their Director General, about EFMD’s work in networking and in providing accreditation for a range of players in business education, and about his vision of a cluster system of properly funded business schools and of management based on values of corporate social responsibility and on forgiveness.
Background
1.1. How would you describe EFMD’s mission?
There are three different elements to our mission. The first is to be a networking organization, providing events and opportunities for people involved in management to interact with one another on different themes, and also to enable bridge-building between business schools and corporations.
The second is to be concerned with quality ? we try to help our members improve what they are doing. To do this, we’ve established EQUIS, our certification of e-learning (CEL), CLIP (Corporate Learning Improvement Process), as an accreditation service to help corporate universities and LINK (Learning, Innovation, Network, Knowledge), our managers’ network.
The third is to be an ambassador for the European tradition of management. I see this as distinct from the classic North American model. In Europe, we see management as being about people and having an essentially social element. We do this by being involved with various projects. Here are some examples: we have a 50% stake in CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) in Shanghai; we attend and support the Global Forum on Management Education, which is a big event which takes place every four years (next year it will take place in Chile [see http://www.globalforum2005.org/]); we work closely in Central Asia with CAMAN (Central Asian Foundation for Management Development); and finally we have helped management schools on the Indian subcontinent set up their own accreditation system, through the Asia Link, a programme of the European Commission, which tries to contribute to quality and excellence in management education in the region.
2. Management education and research
2.1. A recent survey (The Leadership Challenge[1]) showed that many large companies are doing their own management training rather than sending people off to do MBAs, while another survey[2] indicated that MBA salaries had risen by 9% to $82,000; there is also a commonly held belief in management circles that the MBA has become devalued as more and more schools offer it, and MBA applications are falling. What are the key trends that you perceive in the popularity or otherwise of the MBA degree with students and employers?
There are many ‘fly by night’ institutions who are offering MBAs, yet on the whole it remains an excellent qualification. A full-time MBA taken as a general (business) diploma after an average of five years of professional work is bound to bring value. The main problem of the full-time MBA is its duration ? two years is too long given the current pace of life, it’s difficult now for people to take two years out. So I think that we’ll see the reduction in duration of the full-time MBA and the growth in distance and executive MBAs. [The latter] are much more adapted to current trends and some of the most successful MBA programs are executive MBAs.
2.2. Many business schools are finding that the old-fashioned ways of grouping knowledge according to disciplines doesn’t really meet the needs of the contemporary business environment, from either a teaching or research point of view. For example, Wharton Business School recently redesigned its curriculum to be more interdisciplinary, and Bath’s School of Management organizes itself around interdisciplinary themes. Do you see this as a major challenge in business education and how is it being overcome, particularly with respect to the MBA curriculum, but also more generally in relation to research?
This is a very important issue. One of the dilemmas of management education is the functional trappings of disciplines. In a more mechanical world, it would be possible to work within the framework of disciplines, but now there are so many different elements interacting with one another that it’s no longer possible. It’s important to have transversal vision ? people need to have a broader view. Take corporate social responsibility for example. At EFMD we are working with the UN Global Compact to address “how do we best develop a new generation of business leaders who can successfully deal with global challenges” ? the Global Responsibility Initiative. In management education terms, it is important to study corporate social responsibility but without creating a new functional area ‘The Ethics of Corporate Responsibility’; it’s something that comes into so many areas, accounting, human resources, strategy. So it’s important to take an integrative approach. This approach should not be instrumental, with people being forced to include it in their discipline area whether or not they like it. Rather, you need to start at the level of doctoral studies. The doctoral student should not be bound within a particular discipline, but must be able to integrate different areas. It calls for a change of mindset ? we must be able to create and deliver integrative knowledge.
3. Accreditation
3.1. You put a lot of weight on accreditation ? of university education, of corporate universities, of e-learning ? how much weight does EFMD accreditation have? Will it become as important as the business school rankings? How does it rate compared with accreditation from AASCB?
We need to be very cautious about the rankings: the methodology behind them is not sound. They mix potatoes with carrots with sprouts. For example, how can you compare IMD with ESADE (Barcelona), schools of very different sizes? Also, the evaluation is done by people from outside the profession, which is very dangerous. And they convey a very limited part of the complexity of the organizations ? for example, they don’t look at creativity or originality, yet these are responsible for a lot of progress.
The EFMD accreditation process is very lengthy, rigorous, and well organized. It looks at all dimensions of an institution, not only at all programs from first degree to PhD, but also at all the institution’s activities including research, e-learning, executive education, community outreach, international focus, development of entrepreneurial and leadership skills, and innovation in all aspects including learning design and pedagogy. It initially involves a self-assessment report, followed by peer review from a team that may comprise Deans and representatives of the corporate sector. Assessment is carried out by peer reviewers comprising Deans of reputable academic institutions, HR and Managing Directors of major corporations, heads of national professional associations, consultants and assessment experts.
EQUIS is also dynamic ? we refine it year on year as we are in a constantly changing environment. The think-tank behind EQUIS is EQUAL, an international association of quality assessment and accreditation agencies, as well as other relevant organizations, in the field of European management development. EQUAL also has an international board on which sit representatives of AACSB, Canadian Federation of Business School Deans (CFBSD) and Asian deans, and produce documents such as for example guidelines on offshore programs and on distance education.
3.2. You have just set up CLIP (Corporate Learning Improvement Process), as an accreditation service to help corporate universities. How will this process work?
CLIP takes EQUIS as a basis for its quality assessment methodology, and is an accreditation tool for corporate universities. It involves guided self assessment against a set of rigorous criteria, followed by peer review from Chief Learning Officers and other members of the corporate university community. It follows the EQUIS model of looking at the whole institution (recognizing also that corporate universities are not the core business of corporations and the guided self assessment process should involve not just the person in charge of the corporate university but all those concerned with the company’s executive learning provision, in particular concerned how training interacts with strategy.
One major trend is the links being forged between these corporate universities and business schools, and that’s going to be happening a lot in the future.
4. European higher education
4.1. In Lisbon in March 2000 the EC announced its target of turning the EU into ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’. In a recent article on your website, State of European Higher Education, you discuss the role played in this by the universities, pointing to the lack of European spending on research and HE, and the shortfall (2500) of management lecturers. Can you talk about your proposed solution ? academic clusters similar to the US’s National Science Foundation?
This is something very close to my heart. We are threatened with a shortage of faculty which will be catastrophic. We are seeing a brain drain to the US, which is creating a vacuum of professors and a shortage of people in management education which will be a global problem and just as we export our professors to the US, so we import the best talent from developing countries.
This shortage will have some benefits ? the ‘fly by night’ organizations will disappear, and good institutions will have to merge. But the downside is the lack of good people.
What can be done? Professors should have better remuneration and better social status. A Professor now has the same status as a middle manager, and you can’t expect someone to go down the PhD route if they end up with a lower salary and lower social status than if they had not taken that route. Then there are a number of other creative ideas ? tax breaks and incentives, such as having academics on boards of directors (it’s good for governance anyway to have outsiders on boards).
And there’s also the idea of having academic clusters. These must be funded. At the present, many institutions are too small, they need to be bigger to afford decent research collaboration, distance learning etc. Size creates economies of scale. These mergers can take place across borders ? it’s sometimes easier to do this than to merge with a neighbour. This would create the economies of scale necessary to fund the things that universities need to do, and to bring about an attitude of transversality. At the moment, people are educated at high school to be citizens of say the United Kingdom or the French Republic ? in their own national structures in other words. So the opportunity to create European citizens occurs at HE level, to give people the opportunity to study in a number of countries, not just their country of origin. At the moment, opportunities do exist for this sort of thing, such as Erasmus, but they are limited because of the lack of merging of curricula. If you had truly integrated organizations, you could have HE programs which involve spending three successive years in three different countries. It’s a question of creating a sort of academic Airbus ? it’s already happening with organizations such as Mannheim and Essec who are joining forces to create a joint business school. It won’t happen with organizations like the Sorbonne and Cambridge, which are such big brands anyway ? although if other organizations do merge, they may well face competition!
5. Emerging trends
5.1. What are the main research themes emerging in management development?
We have spoken about many of these ? the lack of a critical mass of management educators, the need to rethink the profession of lecturer who is doing a more complex job than 20 years ago, and the need to take a more transversal view of management.
5.2. A recent survey[3] suggests that many companies are focusing their executive development activities on leadership development. Would you say that this was a general trend?
The reason why there is a need to focus on leadership is because too often we see a type of management style which is unforgiving, fighting people rather than supporting them, punishing them for making mistakes, and focusing only on shareholder value. At a result, people are stressed and ill at ease. So, when you hear about leadership training it’s really about a style of management which has different values, which is concerned about health at work and forgiveness. These values are really important if you want to retain people.
Fundamentally I believe that we must encourage more human values in management: especially forgiveness. If you don’t forgive people for making mistakes, their confidence can easily be destroyed. If you forgive them, you give them a chance to learn, and you earn legitimacy.
