Challenging existing business school paradigms

Challenging existing
business school paradigms

For a school to truly make a mark upon the broad arena of the business and management discipline, it has to maintain its relevance to the community that it is serving, cultivate the respect of not only other academics, but those in the corporate field and even your everyday Joe, as well as act as a focal point where questions pertaining to issues in business and management can be referred to in full confidence.

Hence, a business school is not merely a building where students come to study and then graduate from within a few years, but is instead a symbol of an organic ethos, a set of principles that form the backbone of both the school and its students, and permeate thinking and practices long after students have graduated and programmes have ended. In short, it shapes society at the core by nurturing future leaders through relevant curriculum as well as influencing business practices through meaningful consultancy and research work by faculties.

It is the concept of a business school that fuels Professor Arfah Salleh, dean of Universiti Putra Malaysia's Graduate School of Management, to strive for the evolution of GSM itself into an entity based on the tenets of human governance and ethical processes.

This transformation entails a holistic approach not only from the philosophical stand point but also the processes and methodology with which the school is managed, including the manner a faculty's performance is appraised, "explains Professor Arfah. "Benchmarking to the criteria of research universities may prove inappropriate since business schools do not share the same contextual teleology for existence with research universities. But many local business schools are part of the larger research universities setup and are subject to this dilemma."

Appreciating the need to provide the right signal to faculties in terms of the expectations that management has of them has made Professor Arfah resolute to resolve the matter and institutionalise it. To her, unless this impasse is addressed, GSM, like many other business schools can be trapped between aspiring to achieve prominence as a business school relevant to the community, yet having to comply with some of the requirements of research universities' criteria that are not congruent. " For instance, the focus of business schools to bridge theory and practice through having industry-experienced faculties will be difficult to materialise. While a doctorate is a beneficial tenure prerequisite for research universities, many business practitioners do not find such academic standing a must-have, "Professor Arfah points out.

"Likewise, research findings by business schools' faculties must transcend the realm of academic publications to reach the Malaysian business community too, and for that, these works must display business relevance. Evaluation criteria that give weightage to high impact journals as measured solely by academic peer references should be questioned. In addition to that, the focus of research also should be realigned to capture the needs of the country's community of business practitioners apart from advancing the theoretical aspect of the discipline."

It is with all these in mind that GSM is hopeful that a new governance structure can be set up - one that permits GSM to not only set its criteria for assessing its faculties' performance and for staff appointment but also to chart its overall direction and the manner of reaching it.

AN INDEPENDENT ENTITY
While the idea of being an independent entity within a university establishment may sound unconventional, GSM has fortunately received strong support and positive feedback from the university leadership and Senate members to move in this direction.

The vision of a business school that possesses the liberty to fully focus on providing scholars with quality education without the fumbling of impeding institutional performance indicators is what GSM is setting its sights on right now.

GSM hopes to be able to move to the next phase of governance structure in the form of a non-profit foundation governed by a board of trustees and governors," Professor Arfah elucidates on GSM's game plan. "This would allow GSM to operate as an autonomous entity in terms of direction and strategy."

Despite the intention for GSM to become an independent entity, it will still maintain its role as the sole entity for UPM to advance the business management discipline at the postgraduate level.

"We will certainly be continuing UPM's role in contributing to the country's human potential development, by nuturing human leaders to spearhead organisations from the prospective of Eastern traditions," assures Professor Arfah.

"This business school will be a realisation of the philosophies that we have been trying to push through - GSM's core of human governance and respect towards every human, no matter the position in an organisation."

LOOKING EAST
One of the misconceptions that Professor Arfah is eager to correct with the inception of GSM's new model of a business school is the low regard of eastern practices within the business field. "Currently the existing business school curriculum is drawn from a single Western-constructed worldview," maintains Professor Arfah. "Our eastern values are hardly considered in business practices, yet I believe that we should look at ourselves - our culture and our values - to rediscover the pathway to a more spiritually-based system, as opposed to the current system that ignores this in the pursuit of profit and material possessions."

Acknowledging that going against a pre-existing system is a daunting task, Professor Arfah nevertheless believes that GSM is up for the challenge with a teaching staff who is 100 per cent behind her efforts, and programmes that will introduce the new generation of students to holistic learning that includes experiential learning, human governance and a strong ethical component embedded within every subject. And in light of the never-ending list of corporate misdeeds including the more recent Olympus accounting  reporting fiasco, she has every reason to stick by her belief.

"It is important for us to maintain our relevance to the industry while slowly changing mindsets," says Professor Arfah. "We understand that change will not occur overnight." Professor Arfah knows that this change is necessary for the local business industry, and if she must forge forward as the pioneer, than it is more of a compliment rather than a burden. "We have received support from the industry players who have come to us for training programmes. It is uplifting to have the opportunity to begin spreading human governance. It is something that is exigent for our economy, and as potential students broaden their mindsets, we will stand as the business school with something fundamental to offer."

New Straits Times, | Tuesday | December 15, 2011

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The Power of Synchronicity

The Power of Synchronicity

By
Prof. Arfah Salleh
Dean, Graduate School of Management 
UPM

On June 10, 2000, the day the Millennium Bridge – a steel foot bridge for pedestrians to cross the Thames - opened, 90,000 people crossed the bridge with up to 2,000 on the bridge at any one time. To their surprise and dismay, as they crossed the bridge, these pedestrians felt a wobbly motion. After limiting access to it for a while, the authorities closed the bridge for two years to fix the wobble.

The swaying motion was diagnosed as a 'positive feedback' phenomenon, or, in engineering parlance, Synchronous Lateral Excitation. The natural swaying motion of people walking caused sideways oscillations in the bridge. When the people swayed in step in response to the wobble, they further aggravated the oscillations. And the oscillations reinforced one another to intensify their effect.

Pedestrian traffic beyond a critical mass has set off similar vibrations in other foot bridges.  The greater the number of people, the greater the intensity of the vibrations (Wikipedia on Millennium Bridge). 

The same effect that occurred at the Millenium Bridge, when a sufficient number of people walked and swayed in tandem, can also occur in the implementation of any management effort.  ‘Positive feedback’ or ‘synchronous lateral excitation’ can help understand how management principles and practices have secured wide appeal.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book “The Tipping Point” illustrates this principle of synchronicity with good effect. He argues that once an idea or sale of a product (as was the case of Hush Puppies, an example he quotes in his book) assumes a critical mass, changes can occur or spread so quickly as though it was a social epidemic. Indeed, Gladwell draws inspiration from epidemiology (the study of epidemics) to illustrate how one child who brings a virus soon infects the whole class.  Witness for example, exhorts Gladwell, how Sesame Street – the TV show for children – ‘infected’ them with the learning habit and caused a literacy epidemic among them.  Similarly, he asks why crime fell so dramatically in New York in the mid-1990s when previously the Big Apple was riddled with a high crime rate.  The answer, he concludes, is the power of synchronicity among the critical mass of people who wanted to make New York safer. 

All it takes is one, and then a few, to get the change effort in motion. In no time, the idea catches on so quickly that the change becomes pervasive in an organisation. As Margaret Mead once said, “Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 

As human beings we are so conditioned to think that change can only occur slowly albeit steadily.  However, change can, and often does happen all too fast. And little changes can trigger a chain reaction leading to a transformation.

Ideas, therefore, can be contagious. It can enthuse anyone who comes into contact with it.  

Human governance is an idea born at the Graduate School of Management. It is how we govern ourselves during decision making and arriving at judgments throughout our professional and personal lives guided from the inside out. It is about living our lives by our untainted conscience.  Human governance can infect the local business world and beyond if we – students and faculty at the Graduate School of Management and others convicted of its philosophy - live by it and spread it by word of mouth and deed. 

If we can combine our thoughts and actions around human governance what great impact we can make to our world by the synchronicity of our thoughts and actions. We can start an epidemic of our own.  We can infect the world where human governance fortifies the spiritual beliefs of individuals to make this world a better place and where businesses focus on the triple bottom-line – profit, planet and people. 

To start that epidemic, it only requires a little effort from all of us.  If we could spread the principles of human governance and the impact that human governance can make in our professional and personal lives by word of mouth, or through print, and walk the talk, we can be sure that the message of human governance will spread like wild fire. And, as the message gathers momentum, and the critical mass or the tipping point or the boiling point is reached,  human governance would touch as many as would care to reflect on its principles and consider them worthy of emulation. We would then have moved the world with just that little effort on everyone’s part. Shall we?

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