[photopress:tanaka_business_school.jpg,full,alignright]The growing economic importance of China and India have focused academic minds. The Financial Times, in its MBA rankings system, allocates 20 percentage points — the same number as average salary increase — to a course’s internationalism. American business schools are starting to make foreign trips a compulsory part of an MBA.
Part-time students are also traveling. Tanaka Business School, part of Imperial College London, has introduced an annual international study tour for its Executive MBA and this year the destination is China. On-site presentations are organized daily and the idea is that students apply what they see to a series of case studies.
Mandarin Chinese is growing in popularity. More than a hundred Masters in management students at Audencia Nantes School of Management are learning Chinese this year and the executive MBA class has just spent a week in China studying and visiting firms. Like other schools, Audencia is opening an office in China.
Bernard Gracia, director of the Executive Institute for Purchasing Management, which runs an MBA in Geneva, emphasizes the importance of cultural awareness for business. ‘Purchasing orientation in China, for example, is based on a flexible short-term approach whereas America has a massive, consolidated approach with big contracts. In Europe it’s more the specific redefinition of needs.’
Source: The Independent
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