AACSB Data and Research Blog

Business School Collaborations: Who Has a Plan?

By Colin Nelson

The AACSB Globalization of Management Education Task Force states on page 211 of its recent report that "connections do not just happen; they require proactive and strategic action by schools" in order for them to get the most out of their globalization efforts. What does this mean for business schools? It means that if they want to reap the greatest benefits of their collaborations for their students, they need to have a plan.

In an effort to keep abreast of the dynamic world of business education, AACSB has developed a survey on business school collaborations to track connections among business schools around the world. AACSB asks its members to provide information about their collaborations, which the survey defines as formal, written agreement between all partners involved in the survey.

In the most recent iteration of AACSB's Collaborations Survey (2009–10), we asked our respondents to indicate whether or not their business school systematically plans its collaborative and international activities, along three dimensions. First, we ask whether or not the business school has a formal written policy on collaborations, whether foreign or domestic. Next, we ask whether or not the school has a formal policy guiding its international activities of any type. Finally, we ask if the school has an office, department, or staff position in place that oversees collaborations and/or international activities.

Out of 249 respondent schools, representing 38 countries around the world, 64.3% reported having at least one of the two types of guiding policies in place, and 61.8% reported having an office, department, or staff position in place that oversees collaborations and/or international activities, whether or not the school indicated such policies were in place.

Seemingly comfortable majorities of the schools responding to the Collaborations Survey are making an effort to create a strategy to guide their globalization efforts. However, when we cut the data by world region, more interesting findings emerge:

Figure 1. Formal Policies by Region

   

Figure 2. Administration of Collaboration Activity by Region

 
 

Only 51.8% of schools based in Northern America reported having either kind of formal policy in place to guide collaborations or international activities in general, making them less likely than any other region to have such policies. Northern America is also the only region in which a majority of respondent schools reported having no office, department, or staff position in place that oversees collaborations and/or international activities. By comparison, more than 90% of schools based in all other regions combined reported having such an administrative structure. More than 90% of schools based in all other regions combined reported having at least one of the two types of guiding policies in place.

Now, it's true that schools from Northern America make up 67.5% of all respondents to the survey, and so it may be that increased participation from other world regions on future iterations of the survey could bring greater equity to the results. Nevertheless, if having some form of guiding strategy is key to getting the most out of globalization efforts, it seems that many schools in Northern America have some catching up to do in order to be on par with the rest of the world.

Regional Universities: Models for Developing Regions

By Colin Nelson

AACSB's recently-released report on globalization speaks extensively about what it means to be a "global" institution, and covers many dimensions of cross-border education, such as institutions with international branch campuses, international joint or dual degree partnerships, articulation/twinning agreements between institutions in different nations, etc.[i]

However, there is an important dimension of cross-border education that is not covered, namely the growing number of regionally-focused, multi-locational institutions to which multiple national actors contribute. These are different from institutions with branch campuses outside their country of origin, in that no one nation hosts the "main campus," but rather all campuses act as co-equal parts of the institutional network. Such institutions are an increasingly common strategy in developing regions, where individual nations have limited resources for promoting access to higher education.

I have observed three models for such institutions. First is the model in which governments of several states collectively found and/or own a given institution, or the "public model." Examples include:

• University of the West Indies (UWI)– Established in 1948 as a College of the University of London, UWI became independent in 1962. It has three main campuses: Mona, Jamaica (which includes the Mona School of Business); Cave Hill, Barbados (which includes the Cave Hill School of Business); and St. Augustine, Trinidad (which includes the Arthur Lok Jack School of Business). UWI also has 42 university centers, known collectively as the "Open Campus," among UWI's other 14 stake-holding countries and territories:

• University of the South Pacific (USP) – Established in 1968, USP is jointly owned by the governments of 12 island countries in Oceania, each with its own campus and/or university center. The Faculty of Business and Economics is based on the main campus; Laucala, Fiji:

• Eastern and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI)– ESAMI is owned by the governments of 10 member states, who all signed its establishment charter in October 1979 and recognize its MBA programs. ESAMI headquarters is in Arusha, Tanzania, but all member states have campuses:

 

Another model is that of a private institution, founded and/or operating in multiple countries (the "private model"). This model does not preclude government cooperation, however, as such is generally needed for the institutions to operate effectively cross-nationally. Examples include:

• University of Central Asia (UCA) – An international treaty and charter establishing this secular, private university was signed in 2000 by the governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and H.H. the Aga Khan, and registered with the UN. UCA is an independent, self-governing institution with campuses of equal size and stature in each founding country:

• Arab Open University (AOU) – Though its headquarters is in Kuwait, campuses of AOU also lie in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. AOU was founded in 2002 in all nations that currently boast a campus, except Oman, whose branch opened in 2008. AOU uses the same teaching and program delivery methods as The Open University of the U.K., a partner of AOU. The Faculty of Business Studies is one of AOU's three original academic units, present at all campuses:

 

The final model blurs the line between individual institutions and consortia (the "consortium model"):

University of the Indian Ocean (UIO) – Established in 1998 under the aegis of the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC), UIO is a European Union-funded network of institutions of the five IOC member states and territories: the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion (a French territory), and Seychelles. Though it has no physical campus of its own, multi-university degree programs are offered by UIO, focused on topical subject areas such as diaspora, or vocational degrees such as an MBA, whereby all participating students from IOC member countries attain the same recognized level of education. During its three-year pilot phase, the UIO secretariat was based in Réunion, but it now rotates among member states:

As the report points out, business schools in developed nations choosing to expand their global cross-border presence tend to select locations for their facilities "because of their roles as business centers in their respective regions and for their accessibility by students and faculty traveling from other regions of the world."[ii] As a result, less developed nations are not frequently chosen as hosts. I see regionally-focused institutions like those above as an encouraging sign, not only of developing nations' recognition of the utility of capacity-building inherent in management education, but also their ingenuity in creating locally relevant responses to their needs.

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[i]AACSB International, Globalization of Management Education Task Force. (2011) Globalization of Management Education: Changing International Structures, Adaptive Strategies, and the Impact of Institutions, Emerald Group Publishing, Ltd, Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, U.K.

[ii] Ibid, p. 178.