Vlerick Beijing International MBA: Ready for the Chinese experience?
In October 2008 Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School will be launching a full-time and a part-time international English-language MBA at Peking University. Following on from Russia, this initiative in China is an important new step for the School in its objective to equip young people today to be well-educated managers of the future, capable of leading global organisations.
Beijing International MBA (BiMBA) at Peking University was established in 1998 as the first joint international MBA programme in Beijing to be approved by the Chinese government. It is a joint educational venture between Peking University and its global partners, hosted by the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) at Peking University. CCER is an academic research centre that advises government and business on the potential and future development of the Chinese economy and on China as part of the global economy.
The BiMBA programme had existed for almost ten years as a joint venture between a consortium of American business schools and universities and CCER. This partnership was nearing the end of its ten-year agreement, so CCER started looking for a new partner that they felt was suitable for China emerging into the future. The increasingly successful global profile of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School led them to Belgium. After some 18 months of negotiations, Peking University felt fully convinced of Vlerick’s overall quality and invited the School to deliver a full-time and a part-time international MBA programme.
Vlerick is in charge of designing the MBA, monitoring the quality of the curriculum and ensuring marketing, faculty staff and recruitment, but will also greatly benefit from the fact that many courses will be taught by Chinese faculty members, who will, in time, be involved in teaching Vlerick programmes worldwide. In order to internationalise the programme, Vlerick has brought in three other partners, though this number may be increased at some point.
Mutual learning
The School’s internationalisation strategy has formed the basis of alliances that open up markets in both directions, for Belgian export firms to develop business in other countries and for businesses and individuals in other countries to enjoy a high-quality management education here. “Our partnership with Peking University is an extension of that strategy,” explains Dean Anders Aspling. “Today, we see a lot of Belgian companies that want to do business with China, but Chinese culture is so different that anyone needs explicit knowledge, experience and guidance. An excellent place to start is management education, either at degree level or at executive education level, through Vlerick and through our partners in China, with an introduction to business in China, to Chinese culture and - much more specifically - to strategic planning in China, marketing development, operations, supply chains, etc. On a more global basis, emerging economies like China, Russia, Brazil and India are going to be the drivers of the 21st century economy. So the obvious course of action for us is to seek alliances in those countries. Another part of our strategic plan is to go somewhere where we can contribute to the development of the region and bring learning with a global dimension back to Vlerick. Of course, these partnerships also secure a recognised position for us, both regionally and globally.”
Chinese MBA with a global dimension
Students who study in Belgium enjoy a Western European experience in a multicultural environment. “However, it’s impossible for the young people that we’re educating today to complete their career without doing business in China,” Aspling points out. In the future, we will have to take into account those emerging economies even more than we do at present. People who embark on the MBA programme in Beijing will get a much more Asian, Chinese experience, albeit in a global environment.
It’s very important to recognise the Chinese dimension in the programme. Vlerick will lead a programme based on the key competences of a Chinese MBA programme. It’s not our Vlerick MBA that we’re exporting to China. It’s designed to be an attractive high-quality Chinese MBA for a global market. This positioning is the complete opposite of what has been the predominant model in the past 15 years for other programmes. Our ambition is to learn from this experience. A growing, emerging economy offers an enormous learning resource for the rest of the world, and also for us as a business school. It would be unwise to think that we’re on top of things and should export our knowledge and our model. It’s a mutual learning experience.”
Blind spot in research
In addition to education, research is the second key element of the partnership with Peking University, with the alliance offering unique opportunities in this area. “It’s almost bizarre that for the past 20 years the Chinese economy has enjoyed compound growth rates of 9 to 10 percent, but there’s actually very little research into how the economy has expanded and how this growth has been achieved,” says Aspling. “There’s a lot of ignorance on the part of western business about where the opportunities lie and how to properly take advantage of them for mutual benefit. We want to initiate research on those topics and see case studies that reflect on Chinese business, on European business operating in China, and on Chinese business operating outside China. Apart from culture, the development of emerging economies is another key area of debate and research. At Peking University the challenges of sustainable economic growth in emerging economies are being studied and this will be a fantastic opportunity for learning, because we don’t really have this kind of research here. We study it globally, of course, but there you’re right in the middle of the development of a society and an economy, and that’s pretty unique.”
Supporting business development
Vlerick also has ambitions to work with Peking University to develop executive education programmes for Chinese and foreign businesses operating in or hoping to operate in Asia. “BiMBA and CCER has already established contact with these organisations, but concentrated to a very large extent on degree programmes,” Aspling explains. “Vlerick’s interest is in both MBA and executive education programmes. It’s a generic pattern in economically developing countries, where the first phase is always laying the foundation by means of traditional education, i.e. degree programmes. After that comes executive education. We consider management development as a tool for improving and developing business, especially when you’re entering a global competitive market. Businesses in emerging economies are becoming very much aware of this necessity.”
Corporate responsibility
The lightning speed at which the Chinese economy is progressing means that businesses and the Chinese government are also facing huge challenges in terms of the environment and social stakeholders. Aspling: “We know and we believe that business practice must be conducted in a way that is in itself sustainable for the environment and for relations with other stakeholder groups. Inevitably, that will be part of our education programme, but it’s not as though we’re going to China and planning to change all this. We acknowledge that the Chinese government and businesses have actively started taking these matters into consideration. We will learn together how we can accommodate that emerging economic power in a way that is sustainable for all of us. The issue of responsibility for these issues, however, is very much context-related. You can’t export the American way of thinking about environmental issues to China. We have to be very firm on aspects that are crucial, but we also have to be very respectful of the context in which the Chinese operate. The preaching dimension is one dimension but not the most important one. You have to approach these challenges from the perspective of the Chinese community, society and economy.”
Anders Aspling:
“BiMBA is a great opportunity for Vlerick to learn and to become stronger at three levels: the global mindset, research and knowledge development, and international recognition.”
Info
Orator magazine - December 2007