Moving towards
a full-fledged business school
a full-fledged business school
Like a caterpillar preparing to emerge into the world as a radiant butterfly, Universiti Putra Malaysia’s Graduate School of Management is preparing to commence its transformation into an entity that not only propagates but also actualises human governance on the education and industry stage. The need to fulfill a niche in the world of business education has created emergent qualities within GSM under the direction of Professor Arfah Salleh, the dean. “We hope to run our business school as a not-for-proit foundation,” reveals Professor Arfah. “We intend for this foundation to have autonomy within UPM, similar to the Harvard Business School that exists within its own grounds and serves its own student community directly while still operating under the Harvard University banner.”
The idea for a business school unfettered by the direction and other strategic issues that are meant for the university as a whole, allowing it to focus primarily on its object — the provision of world quality business education steeped in ethics and spiritual principles objective is a worthy one, and one that Professsor Arfah hopes to pursue with the re-creation of GSM.
“We will still be the provider for postgraduate business education in UPM,” Professor Arfah assures. “But this transformation will allow us to do away with several restrictions that have been constraints on performance. Our directors, both university academics and industry players, have provided us with well rounded input for the creation of the ideal business school.”
Ongoing plans
“What this business school will be is an actualisation of our philosophies — the focus on human governance and treating people as human beings rather than resources,” emphasises Professor Arfah. “We are fully dedicated to giving our best to this endeavour, and we realise that charting new territories in
Malaysian business education will not be a simple task.”
As the dean, Professor Arfah has faced several challenges in implementing a holistic and ethical idea of business education. Nevertheless, she has overcome many of them, as her team is completely behind her in reaching out to students with this concept. At first, the dean says, they felt alone with their ideas. “ But eventually we earned respect and now we have supporters in companies like TNB and UEM, whilst also preparing to sign MOUs with other companies who have recognised the value of what we have to offer,” maintains Professor Arfah. Corporations have approached GSM to carry out executive development programmes and leadership training based on their principles, giving it a chance to make its presence felt in the industry. “Changing mindsets to favour human governance over corporate governance will not occur overnight,” Professor Arfah concedes. “But over the years, we hope to be able to train and educate enough managers and executives to effect a positive change. We hope the time will come when business leaders realise that with human governance, corporate governance will ensue.” The current curriculum is also being looked into, to ensure that it best serves the principles that Professor Arfah wishes to impart to postgraduate students. Even the MBA and DBA will be reviewed and streamlined for better effectiveness. What is most important for a business school, especially one that provides postgraduate education, is to remain relevant to the business community that it serves. This aspect is not about divorcing the school wholly from academia, but instead about retuning the focus of the school. Professor Arfah intends for the school to be closely linked to the industry, establishing itself as trusted and competent in providing what the corporations need. The programmes offered are to be constantly evolving with the times, and reviewed regularly for relevance.
A novel approach
“Subscribing to the principle of human governance also means that GSM needs to ensure that what is being taught in the programmes is useful to the graduates when they leave for the work place. And for that, we want corporations to tell us what they want, defne it down to the very core of what they need,” says Professor Arfah. “There would be the technical skills, which would work together with human governance — the ethics and leadership in humans. We intend to work the core human skills and the technical skills in tandem.” Core skills are what is currently known as soft skills, communication and the like, which is unusual because these skills are core to the individual human rather than as over-and above soft additions. It is these skills that are the driving force behind any business in linking the human relationships to keep the company a float and enable people to use their technical skills effectively. Qualities such as accountability, leadership, ethical principles and communication skills all form the core of a good business practitioner. These qualities are ones that Professor Arfah hopes will be integrated into students of the business school. One day, she says, they hope businesses no longer need CSR, because by then leaders would understand that it is not about taking too much and then attempting to compensate, but taking only what you need in the first place and being conscious of the need to look after the wellbeing of human throughout the business’ life-cycle rather than only after making profit.
Realising the principles of human governance
The school is not intended to be governed based solely on the criteria for achieving high rank amongst universities in terms of research output and number of publications. Rather, the wholesome aspect of the school and its dedication to its principles is expected to cultivate a reputation within the industry, where most of the students will originate from. “There will always be a place for research, because we need the findings to evolve,” Professor Arfah accurately points out. “For us, there has to be a synergy between research that is used for solving problems and the relevance that it has to the industry.” Professor Arfah is not alone in her method of thinking. Recently a couple of international academic institutions and consultants had exchanged communication with GSM discussing aspects of human governance and industrial relevance as the mainstays of a competent business school. “Right now we are imploring people in the industry, Look, we are here, and we want to be relevant,” Professor Arfah says. “It is up to them to accept our offer. If they do not open the door, then Malaysia will be as it is now, with a wall separating the academia and the corporate world. The industry calls in consultants to fix immediate problems, but what we are offering is the potential for long-term solutions through training and research capabilities. What we want in the end is for the culture of human governance to be alive in organisations.” And as manifestation of that desire, GSM has recently signed an MoU with MAICSA to reinforce their current cooperation in championing good governance practices among Malaysia’s corporate professionals. According to Professor Arfah, with human governance made the underpinning philosophy, the unique proposition of the GSM Corporate Governance MBA is that the programme helps develop a more teleological and holistic mind-set of students as future cosecs. Through this collaboration, the graduates will be automatically eligible to be admitted as Graduates MAICSA, paving the way forward for them to become Associate and Fellow members of MAICSA.
New Straits Times, | Saturday | October 15, 2011
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