Ángel Cabrera, Ph.D., president of Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz.
Other contributors:
-- Greg Unruh, Ph.D., Thunderbird professor and director of the school's Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management.
Andeisha Farid, a graduate of the 10,000 Women program in Afghanistan (a partnership between Goldman Sachs – Thunderbird – American University in Afghanistan) just received Vital Voices’ Entrepreneurial Achievement Award for her work building the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization, which runs 10 orphanages in Afghanistan and Pakistan with over 450 children of diverse ethnicities.
I completed last week a round of workshops with faculty and senior administration where we discussed the outcomes of the “Vision 2020 Brainstorm Tour” and tried to lay out the main themes for Thunderbird’s new vision.
One interesting question that was brought up was whether we may be going too far in trying to incorporate values into the curriculum or whether, on the contrary, we may not have gone far enough. According to one view, our responsibility would be limited to teaching the best tools available and letting students draw their own conclusions in terms of how to apply them. Yet, the reality is that one cannot possibly separate values from tools because tools are embedded with values. As some of the participants pointed out, as educators we have done a good job at teaching tools, but we are yet to figure out an effective way to convey a sense of professional ethics and social responsibility in the application of those tools.
Another question that was brought up is whether we should choose between being a “development school” or a “business school.” As several of my colleagues argued, one cannot possibly separate business and development on a global stage. Business cannot flourish in the absence of basic infrastructure and human development. Conversely, economic development cannot take place in the absence of a vibrant business community. Any attempt to help leading companies and business leaders succeed in the developing world (which happens to hold the greatest growth opportunities over the next decade) must necessarily integrate business and development disciplines into the curriculum (which has been a signature of Thunderbird for decades).
I picked up today a few thought-provoking and timely quotes at the Corporate Citizenship Conference (The Economist, NY) where I’m speaking tomorrow about Thunderbird’s collaboration with Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women initiative:
“For our business to be sustainable, the communities where we do business have to be sustainable,” Alex Cummings, The Coca Cola Company.
“We serve 4 billion people, which is almost 60% of the world population. To delight the other 2 billion potential customers currently undeserved we have no choice but to grow sustainably and responsibly,” Melanie Healy, Procter & Gamble.
“Companies cannot do everything but they must do something. Concentrate on the areas where you can have the greatest impact given your capabilities,” President Bill Clinton.
By Shinu Thomas, MBA Candidate
I am a second tri traditional MBA, and I was lucky enough to attend the CSR/Clean Tech trek a few weeks ago. I just wanted to bring it to your attention that it was probably the single best learning experience I’ve had since arriving at Thunderbird and I’m really grateful that we have opportunities like that at Thunderbird. There’s the classroom education, and then there’s the Thunderbird experience that differentiates our students from typical MBA grads, and the treks are no small part of that. The CMC [Career Management Center] works very hard to help put these together and it’s well worth it. I was on the planning committee so I saw first hand how much work Mike Low puts into it, plus Kip Harrel facilitated some of the key visits, so I think they deserve some recognition and the school certainly deserves credit for serving its students. I hope we continue to grow with these valuable “out-of-classroom” experiences, because it really makes a difference in the education one receives here.
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” – Henry Ford
Interesting report on distance business education by The Economist, which, I’m happy to report, recognizes Thunderbird’s GMBA as one of the best of its kind in the world (full report available here).
DISTANCE-learning business education is a resounding success story. [...] If, perhaps, the very top tier of universities are yet to offer distance programmes, still some very notable ones do: Carnegie Mellon or Thunderbird in America, Warwick or Instituto de Empresa in Europe, for example.
Yet students who take their MBAs at a distance can find themselves railing against some intense snobbery. Full-time counterparts often decry that the only way to take the degree is to immerse oneself in the experience—to take time out from one’s career to contemplate.
Perhaps, in an ideal world.
The Open University Business School dean James Fleck likes to question the term “distance education”. The relationship between a student on the last row of a 350 student amphitheater and her professor is more accurately described as “distance” than the very intimate relationship that technology can afford between learners and instructors and among learners themselves. We definitely need a new language to describe what these programs do.
Thunderbird MBA student Ben Balden ‘10 reports from Vietnam where he’s engaged in a TEM-Lab engagement advising a local consultancy. The Thunderbird Emerging Markets Lab combines an on-campus Organizational Consulting Practicum prerequisite course with a team-based international consulting assignment. It was launched last year with the hope that it would provide a transformational learning experience to the students as well as a valuable service to an organization doing business in an emerging market.
A quote from Ben’s posting:
Hoping to learn about Vietnam and the people, I have learned about myself. This is, I suppose, one of the benefits of cultural exchange. I love this kind of learning. The ability to apply the knowledge I have picked up at Thunderbird and before Thunderbird in a real setting has been wonderfully practical. The ability to do so at an international destination has been inspirational. For me, this experience has been a cultural learning experience both of the culture of Vietnam and my own individual culture. In the brief short time I have been here I have reassessed my individual responsibility toward those around me, my affinity to an assortment of foods, my low appetite for risks on the road, and the importance of family in celebrations. Seeing life lived in a different way has presented me with a new vantage point to view the way I live my life. Learning about the local culture has not only taught me who the Vietnamese are, but also who I am. This is what makes this experience so rewarding.
Telefónica’s corporate magazine Pulso published this week a collection of essays on innovation and technology by a number of political, business and academic leaders, which includes a piece I wrote about the low-carbon economy (in Spanish), where I argue that combating climate change will offer the greatest business opportunities of this century.
So far the public debate has been either wasting time in a state of denial of the evidence (”it snows ergo there is no global warming”), ridiculing the global governance process as displayed in Copenhagen (”why should we pick up the tab if others aren’t doing their share”), or focusing on the costs of dealing with the potential catastrophic phenomenon (”why should we care about a long-term phenomenon when we have a 10% unemployment” or “reducing carbon emissions will end our economic dominance”).
It is time we begin to spend some air time and bandwidth discussing also the tremendous opportunities that lie within the low-carbon economy. Economists predict that containing carbon emissions can entail anywhere between a cost of 5% of world GDP (the equivalent of the economy of France) to a gain of 2% (the equivalent of India), with some consensus around a cost of 1%.
Avoiding a potential global disaster will test our capacity to innovate, to come up with new technologies for producing and consuming energy, new low-carbon cities and lifestyles, new business models that do not rely in the combustion of cheap fossil fuels. Business that ignore this, may become economic fossils themselves. Those that understand it may find the greatest business opportunities of the modern era.
Thunderbird alumni just created a website where all graduates are invited to endorse the Thunderbird Professional Oath of Honor.
The Thunderbird Oath is the first of its kind in the world. It was the result of a student led initiative in 2004-05, which was later endorsed by the School’s faculty and board of trustees. Students began a voluntary campaign to sign the oath at every graduation ceremony since 2005. The oath was incorporated into the admissions process in 2006, and since 2008, it has been a formal element of the commencement exercises. The new website will now allow the 35,000+ alumni from around the world to join the movement.
In 2009 a group of MBA students from Harvard Business School launched a similar initiative (MBA Oath) that ended up capturing the support of over half of their graduating class and spreading to other schools around the world. In 2009, a group of Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum also committed to a professional oath, which is open for public support at globalbusinessoath.org. In 2010 a new foundation was created to support and coordinate these multiple initiatives (which are still using different texts).
It’s official, The Oath Project website is out. A couple of months ago, a foundation was created to try to bring together a web of until now loosely coordinated initiatives, which include the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders Global Business Oath, the student-led initiative MBA Oath, and the Thunderbird Oath of Honor.
The Oath Project foundation starts up its activities with a small board (Profs. Rakesh Khurana, Nitin Nohria, and Robert Kaplan of Harvard and yours truly) and an international council of CEOs and thought leaders (still under construction). The foundation is being managed by the Aspen Institute (Business and Society Program). The first objective is to try to harmonize the text of the oath and to produce a version that all groups can feel comfortable with. Second we want to support any group that wishes to join the movement and adopt the oath. Third, we will try to share ideas as to how to bring the oath to live.
Last week in Davos I had the pleasure of moderating a session titled “Rethinking Business Ethics” which included, in addition to a few but mighty YGLs from South Africa, the UK, Israel, and the US, UN Global Compact Executive Director Georg Kell, Transparency International Chair Huguette Labelle, Monterrey Inst. of Technology President Rafael Rangel and Ecolab CEO Doug Baker. During the session Georg Kell announced the support of the UNGC to the initiative. The week before, the steering committee of the Principles of Responsible Management Education agreed in NY to also lend its support to the Oath Project.
In sum, the stars are beginning to align beautifully. With the backing of the WEF Young Global Leaders, the UN Global Compact, the Aspen Institute, PRME, and the MBA Oath, the experiences of a few business schools, and the backing of thought leaders of the caliber of Khurana, Nohria, Kaplan, Matthew Bishop and WEF founder Prof. Klaus Schwab, we are on our way to transforming management into a true profession. Join the movement!!
Matthew Bishop, NY editor of The Economist, conducts a powerful autopsy of the global financial crisis in his latest book (The Road from Ruin) and surveys the road out of the mess and towards a safer capitalism.
Bishop and Green argue that the efficient market hypothesis has been taken dangerously far and that we need a new form of capitalism grounded on a more sophisticated understanding of human behavior, an argument that seems to be gaining support (see my review of Justin Fox’ The Myth of the Rational Market).
Bishop and Green dedicate a chapter to the idea of a Hippocratic Oath for business managers (with a direct reference to the Thunderbird experience) which they believe can contribute to the necessary professionalization of management and its commitment to the public interest.
In the presentation of the book in Davos last week (see inserted picture) Matthew Bishop recognized he had been initially skeptical about the power of an oath to change behavior, but that the current course of events make him believe that a change in values by those in charge of large corporations and financial institutions is long due, and that a professional code of conduct embedded in business schools and perhaps eventually in professional associations, could contribute to such change.
This morning it was the Board of Trustee’s turn to brainstorm on the future of the School for the decade to come.
I asked our trustees to dig deep into our mission, “to educate global leaders who create sustainable prosperity worldwide“, and to imagine how Thunderbird could evolve throughout the next decade, leaving aside (in fact questioning) the constraints of the traditional academic model. What if we looked ourselves not as just a graduate school of management worried for its competitive position, but as a community of scholars, students and practitioners focused on creating sustainable prosperity worldwide.
I provided the following “incendiary” statements, not as expressions of what we are or must be, but as what-ifs to make us think differently about ourselves… What if:
Here are some of the highlights of our subsequent discussions:
Ranked #1 in the World