Source: The Economist
by C.S-W.,
Dec. 21st, 2015
But does a word retain its meaning if everyone uses it? What was once distinctive becomes ordinary, and besides, argues Vincent Mangematin of the Grenoble Ecole de Management in France, being global may not necessarily be good anymore. “Everyone says they want to be a global business school,” says Mr Mangematin. “It’s highly homogenised.” The word “global” has become more meaningless the more often it is used. Even an MBA student in his first week of classes knows this case study: when a field of business schools all sound the same, and all offer similar services, the only way they can compete is on price.
There are some exceptions: first-tier institutions—the Harvards and INSEADs of this world—stand above the fray. But with thousands of business schools, a good chunk of which offer a “global” or “international” slant on their MBAs, it can be difficult to differentiate one from another. Every school offering an international or globally-focused programme hopes to train top executives at multinational firms. But, as Mr Mangematin points out, there are more MBA graduates than seats in the c-suites of the best businesses. So he has a counterintuitive suggestion: at a time when everyone is globalising, business schools should narrow their focus in order to thrive.
The professor draws a comparison with the wine industry. For a time, there was a race to produce palatable but plain wines that appealed to consumers across the globe. Brand names, rather than specific terroirs, were what shoppers based their purchases on—and price drove buying decisions. Some winemakers rebelled against a race to the bottom, focusing on what differentiated their product, rather than making it the same as what else was available. They found success as a premium product, and attracted discerning customers. Business schools should follow suit, he reasons.
Of course, there are real differences between the thousands of business schools offering students seats on MBA programmes. Though the packaging may be the same, courses’ content can change based on where business schools are located. The idea is not to go into ever-more specific niches—the “MBA in something” The Economist has previously explored—but to offer a general education with a hint of one’s surroundings. In that sense, what Mr Mangematin is suggesting is not as radical as it may seem. His idea is not that schools throw out their syllabus and start afresh, but simply that they tweak how they present their programmes to prospective students, acknowledging that schools are swayed by their surroundings. Students already choose to apply to Stanford, say, because they want to benefit from its proximity to the startup hubs in the San Francisco bay area.
Still, it will take a brave business school dean to step away from the crowd and go out on one’s own, highlighting the things that make a school unique, rather than what is reassuringly familiar. Unilateral disarmament rarely happens, and even more rarely works. “It will be scary, for sure,” says Mr Mangematin. Curiously, deglobalising glossy brochures may require a global consensus.
