Business today is unruly, complex and unpredictable.

With instant networking across companies, industries and borders, economies are dynamically inter-connected. Across a maze of global markets, business legislation, regulation and policy are in constant flux. With the stunning growth of social media, people anywhere have the unprecedented ability to influence other people around the world. And with the rapid, unstoppable pace of technological and market innovation, competition is increasingly intense. As a result, strategies that worked in the past probably wont work in the future Crises often emerge in an instant and are usually unexpected. There are no fast and easy answers, no simple rules to guide actions, and no pat solutions to the myriad of evolving issues that face organizations on a daily basis. In this vibrant and volatile environment, the need for effective leadership has never been greater. Traditionally, most managers have focused their attention on their own company and traditionally, business education has focused on how to understand, make and execute decisions within an organization. But, in todays business environment, the value a company creates and how it succeeds depends on much more than simply ensuring all the parts within an organization work together. It depends on working effectively within the enterprise or the rich complexity of interdependencies both within the organization and between the organization, as well as the environment in which it operates. In other words, to build and sustain a high performance organization, a leader must not only point his or her people in the right direction. Rather, a leader must also have vision and the ability to connect with and continually nurture a network of relationships with other companies, organizations and people. This enables leaders to see the big picture and understand how it is evolving. They become adept at anticipating the impact of economic trends, competitive challenges and global-scale market issues. And they know how to capitalize on the synergies that result from gaining this fulsome perspective. Such leaders are cross-enterprise leaders with the competencies, character and commitment to build and sustain the profitability and growth of their firms.

Leadership in the MBA classroom

At the Richard Ivey School of Business, we strive to develop leaders who embrace the complexity of doing business today, who are decisive despite the uncertainty, and who can foster the commitment of their employees, partners and other stakeholders to the best course of action moving forward. Basically, our approach is to help prepare todays MBA student to think, act and lead in the cross-enterprise way now required for business success. The cross-enterprise approach is reflected in Iveys case study approach, where students are presented with real life challenges faced by actual companies. Like business today, these case

studies are not limited to a specific business discipline, like finance or marketing. Instead, they depict situations where analysis and decision-making involve a variety of multi-disciplinary issues at any given time. In effect, the classroom becomes a business simulator where students can test their thinking and judgment in a low-risk, supportive environment, receiving instant feedback from professors with diversity of insight and knowledge. Equally important, students gain the opportunity to hear and benefit first-hand from top executives who share their experiences and the lessons they learned during these experiences in the classroom. This hands-on approach enables students to learn the specifics of functional disciplines while also experiencing how each of these functions affects one another. This provides students with the opportunity to think holistically about the enterprise in tackling the delicate and often complicated work of a cross-enterprise leader.

Leadership initiatives
Beyond the classroom, an effective management education should also give MBA students the opportunity to act on the knowledge and capabilities they gain in the classroom. At Wharton, for example, students have the opportunity to spend several weeks of the summer in Asia, Africa or the Americas through the Wharton International Volunteer Program. Meanwhile, the Centre for International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth organizes spring break trips for Tuck students to selected host countries. At Ivey, our MBA students can learn to act in a cross-enterprise way by participating in the LEADER Project, a student-driven overseas economic development program, where MBA students teach foundational business skills to students and entrepreneurs in the newly developing economies of Eastern Europe and Russia. A second student-driven initiative is the Ivey China Teaching Project, which offers MBA students the opportunity to volunteer their time to teach a case-based course to business undergraduate students at Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade. These rich exchanges benefit both the overseas students and the volunteer instructors, who gain a better understanding of how leadership differs in other cultures while securing valuable international experience. While it remains true that companies exist primarily to create shareholder value, the best business leaders today see their companies as part of an enterprise a rich, growing and continually evolving network of mutually-beneficial relationships. They value the role that their organizations can and should play in enriching that enterprise and as a result, they consistently gain positive results for their companies. TopMBA.com releases the leadership ratings of QS' Global 200 Top Business School Report 2010 on Thursday December 9th 2010. You can find the rest of business school ratings, as voted for by MBA employers around the world, here: Global 200 Top Business School Report 2010.

Related Articles

Consultancy firms around the world increase MBA employment Leading tomorrow: Leadership on MBA programs As the pendulum swings: MBA leadership Leadership challenges facing the MBAs of today

Share with friends

Home Find MBA Programs MBA Events MBA Rankings Admissions MBA Jobs

Be Sociable with us:

Facebook Linked In Twitter

Undergraduate degrees

Postgraduate courses

MBA and EMBA programs

Global careers

Business Challenges Facing Today's MBA Grads

Sarah Clark

Graduates with business degrees are joining companies that face challenges in maintaining strong growth and a competitive edge in an increasingly dynamic business environment. What kinds of challenges can MBA graduates expect to face? New York Times reporter William J. Holstein spoke with Micheal Patsalos-Fox, chairman of the Americas division of McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm. The interview focused on new challenges CEOs of global companies face. But those challenges aren't only the concern of CEOs, they are also of interest to MBA graduates, many of whom will be involved in developing and executing strategies to keep their companies competitive and relevant in the 21st century.

Sustaining Growth
What is bothering high level managers most, however, is achieving consistent growth. PatsalosFox noted that a company with $50 billion or more in revenue would have to develop a new Fortune 200 company each year in order to meet Wall Street expectations. To say that such growth presents a lot of pressure would be a gross understatement.

Facing "Extreme" Competition

Patsalos-Fox explained to Holstein the concept of "extreme" competition, saying that it's increasingly difficult for a company to sustain a high profit margin for very long. There's just too much competition. And it's not just coming from China, but large companies in the developed world that are expanding their areas of business.

Learning to Adapt
Patsalos-Fox noted that some industries are faring better than others in the current competitive business climate. Information technology companies and biotech firms particularly are doing well, he said, because of their ability to adapt to changing circumstances. More traditional companies that aren't used to constant change are having a more difficult time, said Patsalos-Fox.

MBA Degree Programs: Preparing Future Business Leaders

If challenges such as these facing the business world appeal to you, consider getting the training required to lead the way on business management strategies. MBA degree programs offer advanced training in financial management, business strategy and entrepreneurship, as well as a variety of other areas connected to bus

The Global MBA Race: Facing Challenges Through Collaboration

James M. Danko

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Along with its vision to create uniformity in higher education, the Bologna Accord will naturally increase competition between European and American MBA programmes. The fact is, both have much to learn from each otherand their doing so effectively can improve management education and practices worldwide. The MBA world is getting smaller. The graduate business degree that started in the U.S. at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in 1900, and in Europe at INSEAD in 1957, can now be found in nearly every part of the world. Today, universities throughout the world have extended their offerings to provide an array of MBA programme types. Part-time programmes have proliferated in particular, allowing students to earn an MBA in the evenings, on weekends, or through distance learning. European MBA programmes have become an unquestionably powerful force in their own rightwith high-quality programmes at leading schools like HEC-France, IESE, IMD, INSEAD, London Business School, Queens School of Business, Rotterdam School of Management, and SDA Bocconi. European and American Programmes While many argue that U.S. business schools have always dominated the MBA market in both quality and quantity, others contend that European schools are as good at developing effective managers, particularly because of their strength in developing an international mindset and teaching students to lead
2 1

in an increasingly interconnected world . The lead that U.S. business schools gained with their nearly 60year head start in the MBA market is diminishing as European schools rise in quality and quantity. U.S. schools offer a number of advantages to prospective studentsmost notably prestige. The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) 2003 Global MBA Graduate Survey showed that prestige was ranked first by full-time MBA graduates worldwide as the most important criterion in an MBA programme, with Europeans submitting the largest percentage of responses in support of this criterion. American business schools dominate various rankings, and their focus on research helps drive prestige. In his work on MBA value versus research impact, J. Scott Armstrong points out the positive correlation between research and prestige among elite American business schools. A schools high prestige serves to benefit its students tremendously: it draws the worlds leading faculty, who bring the frontiers of business research into the classroom; it fosters high name recognition; and it makes high salaries and
4

good placements probable for its graduates.

Business LeJob

Opportunities Still a Challenge for MBAs

News Barbara Bierach - 01.28.2010 According to the Fall 2009 survey of the MBA Career Services Council the ongoing economic malaise continues to limit overall on-campus recruiting opportunities for new MBAs. However, despite decreased recruiting activity across several key sectors, the findings also show increasing MBA recruiting in other areas of the economy. These mixed results are reflected in the expectations of Career Services Directors, the majority of whom predict growth in total job opportunities in 2010. The survey findings show, at a summary level, that 79% of respondents report a decline in oncampus recruiting for full-time MBA jobs during Fall 2009. At the same time last year, this same percentage of respondents reported a decline during Fall 2008. In contrast, the findings also show that full-time MBA job postings may be rebounding; while 48% of respondents report a decline in these postings, this is an improvement from 70% of

respondents in 2008. And more encouragingly, 34% of respondents reported an increase in fulltime postings during Fall 2009. These increases in MBA recruiting activity are occurring across several sectors. Over 20% of respondents report increases in energy/petroleum, government, healthcare services, pharma/biotech, and high technology. Conversely, over 20% of respondents also report decreased recruiting activity in consulting, consumer products, commercial banking, diversified financial services, investment banking and brokerage, investment management, venture capital and private equity, manufacturing, and real estate. The changes to recruiting activity noted here are consistent with broader economic outcomes. With respect to the economy and job growth, respondents appear optimistic about a recovery, with 60% predicting an increase in overall market opportunities. Kip Harrell, President of the MBA Career Services Council and Associate Vice President of Professional Development and Career Management at Thunderbird School of Global Management, says, "All of us in the MBA Career Services offices at business schools across the world are hopeful. We know that graduate employment is a lagging economic indicator and as the economy picks up, so will MBA hiring." The survey, conducted every Fall in November and December by the MBA Career Services Council, collects data from AACSB accredited business schools across the US and Europe. The MBA Career Services Council, founded in 1994, is a global professional association for individuals in the fields of graduate management career services and MBA corporate employers. There are more than 400 members representing a diverse group of more than 160 MBA programs, advanced degree business schools and corporations located around the world.
adership