Santiago Iniguez
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Since June '05
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11 entries from November 2008
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
(3.7MB)
My interview with Expresso of Portugal, published 15 November
Click here to download the PDF file of the interview, 
(392 KB)
Click on the image to see.
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Humboldtian Faculty and Mavens - Santiago Iniguez
When I ask my colleagues about the main challenges our schools face today many point at the attraction, development and retention of good faculty as one of the most serious. Indeed, today schools compete to attract those scholars who combine the best credentials in research with solid teaching skills and who also interface with the top management of respected companies. I have sometimes refer to these well-rounded academics as “kangaroos”, as opposed to “gurus”, because the former are able to jump from research to class to consultancy in large corporations, performing excellently in the three facets. Let me now further elaborate on this multifaceted type of academics by opposing two models of faculty, which I will name “Humboldtian Faculty” and “Mavens”.
“Humboldtian Faculty” was moulded at the eponymous institution in Berlin in the early Nineteenth Century and has inspired the model of academic prevalent at all Western universities in the past two hundred years. Wilhelm Von Humboldt believed that, in order to make a significant leap in the sciences and in the humanities, the career of academics should become specialised –until then, university professors may teach different discipline- and universities should be organised in schools and departments. A number of consequences for the academic profession followed over the decades and I summarise some of these features in the chart included below.
The Humboldtian Faculty model has rendered many positive results. Knowledge has experienced an unprecedented advance across the board. At the same time, a significant number of education analysts and scholars have warned about some undesirable effects of the model such as the “silos syndrome” derived from an extreme specialisation and lack of integration of both academics, teachings and research at large.
In addition, the demands from stakeholders, the formidable impact of technologies in the learning process and the origination and distribution of knowledge are transforming the role and the ideal profile of scholars. I believe that the concept of “Maven”, widely popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “The Tipping Point”, can adequately illustrate what is expected from business schools’ professors today. Mavens are active gatherers of new trends, ideas and data and have the key skills of identifying which of them may transform the world.
Furthermore, they exercise the necessary influence to have these ideas diffused through other major opinion makers in society –whom Gladwell calls “connectors” and “vendors”. I include a number of characteristics of faculty as Mavens in the chart below. I hope this idea contributes to a constructive debate on how to better shape the academic profession and adapt it to current changes and demands. I do not believe that I am proposing a revolutionary change, but rather an evolutionary but significant adjustment of the role that faculty play in the modern learning process.
Humboldtian Faculty |
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Discussing Social Responsibility in Shanghai - Santiago Iniguez
www.SantiagoIniguez.com, Dean of IE Business School
Click here to download the Conference presentation 
(4.9 MB)
Every other year, the vibrant city of Shanghai becomes the venue of several major management education conferences arranged sequentially in one week. These conferences -organised, respectively, by Antai Business School, EFMD, AACSB and APBS - congregate a good sizeable number of scholars, business school officers and corporate managers, particularly from China and South East Asia.
This year, the Antai Conference –the first of the weekly intense networking events- focused on the social responsibility of business schools and I was invited to speak at the opening session. Normally, when I address issues related to business ethics or social responsibility I try to avoid the overselling of my school. I believe that if I would speak profusely about the different initiatives related to social responsibility at IE Business School I could be compared to those individuals who show off when practicing charitable deeds. In this respect I find pertinent the popular quote from the Gospels that says “when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do”.
Indeed, social responsibility initiatives should not be merchandised as communication or marketing tools by business school representatives. What is decisive is that those initiatives permeate the curriculum and the experience that students learn and live. Actually, students themselves should be the ones who testify if their schools and professors have influenced positively their views and lives. After all, educating is about moulding better persons, good citizens, promoting good habits and behaviour, isn´t it? If the MBA is a transformational experience, and participants learn new knowledge and acquire new skills, they should also be encouraged to improve their ethical attitudes and their business deontology. For those who may be still sceptical about the teaching and the learning of business ethics at business schools, or those who may hold the Freudian thesis that individual ethics is formed in early childhood and unchangeable afterwards, I recommend the classical and stimulating book “Can Ethics Be Taught”.
When I am asked summarily about what is the social responsibility of business schools, like I was at this Shanghai conference, I respond with a simple statement: It is nothing less than preparing leaders, managers & entrepreneurs who transform the world. Interestingly, Francis Estrada, Dean of the Asia Institute of Management in Manila, who made a very interesting presentation after mine, formulated a very similar statement.
My presentation, which you will find in the PDF attached- covered three main challenges that business schools managers have to face if they aim at achieving their social responsibility goals. First, choosing the strategic group that better suits their schools in the global context. Second, the role of business schools in the new knowledge value chain. And thirdly, the ideal profile of the faculty in order to achieve the intended results in the learning process. Many thoughts delivered at the Shanghai conference have been previously shared with the readers of this blog and I thank them for their valuable comments.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lightening of a fire”, a favourite and evocative quote from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats You may disagree with me, but I hope you will acknowledge the passion for education that I try to convey in my addresses.
(PDF 5.8 MB)
