Santiago Iniguez - Dean IE Business School

Diversity and Cultural Lightness in Canada

Montreal is a crucible of cultures and a showcase of diversity, a city rich in educational offerings, home of some of the best universities in North America. At the end of my  visit, on occasion of the Canadian’s business schools’ conference (CFBSD), I would like to share some impressions from my different meetings with faculty, alumni of my school and friends, but I will start with some forceful and illustrative quotes from “Towards a Canada of Light” (Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto 2006), a lucid book by Bruce W. Powe, professor of English at York University and recognised Canadian author. He explains that his book is his personal "homage to Canada, a perpetually unfinished book for a country that refuses to make sense to anyone: an evolving book (different in every appearance) to evoke the counter –country that can’t and won’t freeze into one mask" (p. 8).

The cultural frictions existing in Canada contribute, in Powe’s opinion, to generate the particular mosaic identity of the country, in a similar way as to how electricity results from the reaction between contrarian poles, to project a bearable lightness of spirit that comprises many complementary visions, as opposed to other communities where there is identity of political and cultural credos –in fact, Powe traces parallelisms mainly between Canada and the US. In Canada, he explains, "the flashpoints of friction often appear between Quebec and the rest of the country, between the old nation-state with its own borderlines and the new open state process (…) between evolutionary Canada and the revolutionary American empire. What do I mean by evolutionary? A culture and civilisation in perpetual, mostly peaceful metamorphosis" (p. 27). In fact, the cultural mosaic portrayed by Powe is a common phenomenon in Europe, and even inside some European countries. Belgium, Great Britain, Italy and Spain are just some countries where different languages and traditions –even nations, according to some- coexist in a peaceful but dialectic way, projecting an electrifying cultural radiance. The recognition of this diversity is at the basis of most European institutions and a source of both attraction and conflict, but the balance is positive.

The impact of cultural differences in management education did also arise at the meeting of Canadian deans that I just attended. However, CFBSD is one of the most cohesive association of business schools that I know. Beyond diversity, there is a common agenda and a shared spirit in most major issues. Interestingly, my impression is that there are probably more similar features between Canadian and European business schools than with US based institutions. Those similarities include aspects related to income structure, governance, faculty profile and programme portfolio, among others (incidentally, many Canadian universities have a "full-service" programme offerings, from undergraduate to executive education programmes). At the same time, Canadian business schools vary significantly among them, being mainly concentrated in three major locations: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Overall, the performance of Canadian management education centres in recent years is remarkable, given the increasing attraction of foreign students to the country and the relevant position of some of its leading schools in different international rankings.

Chapeau for the diversity and the attractiveness of Quebec’s educational offerings in management education! As Powe says in his referred book, "Quebec and Canada need each other because Quebec provides flashes of challenge, a current of passion, while Canada provides fields, a larger frame for that passion" (p.28)

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My visit to the Canadian Dean’s Conference in Montreal

I read in today’s edition of The Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading newspaper, an article by Virginia Galt on "feedforward", a concept launched by Marshall Goldsmith, a California-based executive coach, intended as an alternative practice to the classical "feedback". The philosophy of this new practice is that it is better to focus on doing things better in the future than in talking about the past. "In theory, constructive feedback is supposed to focus on the performance, not on the person. In practice, however, almost all feedback is taken personally, no matter how it is delivered. The beauty of feedforward is that it cannot be construed as criticism because it focuses on something that has not yet happened". Indeed, an interesting contribution which is actually in line what some scholars are already teaching, like Fernando Bartolome, professor of organisational behaviour at my school and previous contributor to this blog.

I am currently in Montreal, attending at HEC Montreal the autumn conference of the Canadian Federation of Business School’s Deans (CFBSD) . I have been kindly invited by Tim Daus to talk about the  Bologna Process and its potential implications in Canadian management education. Interestingly, after the first day of meetings my impression is that the main topics raised by participants at the conference are very similar to those discussed at other similar regional conventions, evidence that management education is becoming irreversibly global. Those topics include the increasing competition for market share and potential funds, the scarcity of management professors, the nature of research at b-schools and the need to reinvent our programmes in order to develop –using Dan Muzyka’s expression- "involved managers and not rock stars".

I increasingly see myself, in this type of events, encouraging my colleagues to experiment and assume risks in their activities. I believe that in an increasingly global and competitive management education industry there is a peremptory need to differentiate each school’s educational offerings, something achievable in many different ways. Globalisation is not about standardisation only: it is about amplifying the range of alternative offers too. Business schools should devote more time to "feedforward", and less to feedback and to the analysis of the past.

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B-School’s Supply Chains

In an interesting article published yesterday, November 8, in Financial Times, Dave Barnes echoes the widespread expression coined by Thomas Friedman that "the world is flat" and adds that today "nations –like companies- are becoming more specialized and assuming certain areas of expertise". The formation of distinctive competitive advantages in different countries –e.g. manufacturing in China or call centers in India-, explains Barnes, has driven companies "to outsource parts of their operations to appropriate countries. This increased collaboration –with technology as a catalyst- means that instead of companies competing against companies, by 2010 supply chains will be competing against supply chains".

Technologies have been also a key factor in the globalization of management education, and higher education more generically, along with the internationalization of most business school’s stakeholders and –allow me to use this term- the "glocalisation" of management knowledge and business needs. In fact, I was wondering if Barnes’ reasoning could be also applied, mutatis mutandis, to management education. Is our industry moving towards the creation of major supply chains that could exploit scale and compete on a global basis?

A fact supporting this hypothesis is the proliferation of multi-alliances among business schools and of partnerships with companies of related industries –such as conference brokers and consultancies, to name just two. These latter industries do also experience similar globalization forces and need to compete on a worldwide scale, something that prompts complicity and agreement quickly and easily. Indeed, it is plausible to believe that in coming years we will attend the generation of "management supply chains" that will comprise different organizations –educational and others, for and non-for profit, local and multinational, which combine their activities for the provision of a sophisticated range of services to companies and managers. Since some activities of this supply chains may have multifarious sources –for example, management knowledge can flourish beyond academia, in consultancies or publishing houses- it may make sense that the partners of one of this supply chains distribute their tasks according to their comparative capacities and cost.

A further question raised by Barnes’ article is whether some countries will become specialized in terms of specific academic areas, in a similar fashion to what happens in other industries. We already see this in the creation of recognized clusters: for example, the gravitational force of New York and London’s stock exchanges attract a big number of financial services’ companies and, in parallel, schools specialized in finance. Another example may be the concentration of a significant number of education providers in some particular segment. Some years ago, for example, Financial Times’ survey on Executive MBAs concluded that there were four clear hubs in this field on a global scale: Chicago, London, Madrid and New York, given the concentration of highly ranked schools in those cities.

Interestingly, the globalization of management education generates two concurrent and apparently opposed processes. On the one hand, it promotes the standardization of programmes, contents and business schools’ models. On the other hand, it causes the emergence of many new varieties, formats and specializations. A clear evidence of this is the language of delivery of MBA programmes: although English is increasingly the "lingua franca" of management education, prospective participants may apply to MBA programmes delivered in Welsh or Basque, a singular opportunity that did not exist years ago. Does language diversity represent a potential source of differentiation for b-schools?