Shaping management education in S'pore
The future success of business school instruction here depends on how we embrace our identity and turn being Asian to our advantage.
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DURING the Asian Management Conclave (AMC) held at Singapore Management University (SMU) last month, deans of leading business schools in Asia came together to discuss the future of management education. Themed Management Education in Asia: Strategies to Leapfrog, AMC 2015 was jointly organised by SMU and management education think-tank MBAUniverse.com. It featured presentations and discussions by thought leaders and executives from 15 Asian economies, the United States and Europe. The underlying theme was that Asian business schools need to come together to share practices, create new knowledge and collaborate to have a bigger presence on the world stage.
One might observe that the mood of this meeting was to figure out strategies to beat the American and European schools at their own game. Yet much of this bravado could turn out to be verbal posturing and not much more. There are three important obstacles.
What globalisation does is that it subtly and gently discourages the localisation of education by shifting managerial and scholarly attention elsewhere. Business schools pursue a global presence, quite possibly at the cost of a local commitment. Considering these issues, perhaps the poignant and yet unspoken question is: should Asian business schools be joining this global, reputational game?
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