Deans and directors of the best business-schools of 39 world countries have got together in Almaty
CEEMAN – International Association for Management Development in Dynamic Societies, which brings together 220 members from 52 countries, for the first time in its history conducting its own annual conference in Kazakhstan. The 23rd CEEMAN conference, which Almaty Management University (former IAB) is honored to conduct, started from the meeting of deans and directors of the best business-schools of Europe, Asia, America. The aim of the meeting was to exchange ideas, information and the best practices in the world business-education.
During the conference opening, Danica Purg, President of CEEMAN, noticed: “Despite of the globalization, management schools play important role in solving local problems, actually, they are the engines of local changes”.
Irina Sennikova, Vice-president of CEEMAN, Rector of Riga International School of Economics and Business Administration (RISEBA), Latvia, explained how she understands the term “dynamic societies”: “These are the countries and societies where political, economic and social changes appear in a fast way”.
Assylbek Kozhakhmetov, President of Almaty Management University – organizer of the conference: “Devaluation comes and goes. The country stays. It is important to take into consideration managers’ way of thinking, way of managing the economy, it is important to understand which ideas country stand for, how it is managed and moved. There is an expression – helicopter view. Exactly from the helicopter you will be able to see such a picture: the road separates a little glade – from the one side you can see actively growing wheat, from the other side potholes. Even if the rain watered both of them similarly, the soil is the same, but the hosts are different. We will take a look from our own helicopter and find out the way of their thinking and ours. The values they stand for and ours. We will see, what common do we have, and what is the difference and how big it is, so we will be able to apply it.
Helmut Schutte, Vice-president and dean of Chinese-European International Business School, China (CEIBS) highlighted, that the globalization is already not a new theme for all of us: “Business-school – independently of their global and local character should be unique. From this point of view, Japanese business-schools have found their own “cherry” – bringing their management process to the top. The uniqueness of business-schools is always local feature, even in the case of world business-schools”, - considers Schutte. In Central-Asian region, also speaker noted, that the difficulties are that business-schools do academic teaching, do a little research, and almost don’t use the elements of analytical approach.
“There is a tendency of transformation business-schools in entrepreneurial universities, for the most business-schools it is a new activity. It is not been studied yet, so there are no single rules and strategies in this case. This kind of universities have to be first – just go and implement”, noticed H. Schutte, talking about new trends in the sphere of business-education.
Xiaobo Wu, Dean of the School of Management, Zhejiang University, China: “PRC – is the fast-growing country, and there is question standing in front of China business-schools: how to satisfy needs of business. In order to answer this, they define for themselves: who they teach and for what? There are some answers on this question: first – to help local small and middle companies to become bigger, to transform from local to global. Business-schools help to implement innovations in business, teach how to satisfy clients’ needs. Students have obligatory 4 months internships in Chinese companies and plus 4 months in the USA. This is how the education in PRC gets globalized.
Jose Luis Abreu, President and Rector of Spent University, Mexico: Business-schools must have in their strategies the questions connected with social behavior. Social responsibility, sustainability now are getting more important, because the poverty in the world is growing dramatically. Managers of corporations have to implement social values, social behavior, social responsibility in their companies. Corporate social responsibility must be implemented by business in business-schools.
The first day of the conference has finished. Tomorrow participants will face sharp discussions and interesting themes on panel sessions. The topic of education management will be looked through in terms of matching the challenges of society, business, and market.
