For more than 15 years, Tuck has played a vital role in nurturing business schools in developing countries. Tuck helped launch the International University of Japan's Graduate School of International Management, making it the first U.S.-style business school in Japan. Together with Vietnam National University, Tuck helped launched the Hanoi School of Business—Vietnam's first market-economics business school—and provided executive education programs for more than 350 senior Vietnamese managers. Tuck's latest venture in this area is working with the International Finance Corporation's Global Business School Network (GBSN) Academic Advisory Council to strengthen the skills of managers in emerging markets. They can do this by expanding opportunities for management education and training in these countries.
The GBSN's initial focus is on Africa, where they have partnered with 10 institutions on a range of programs, including teacher training, case-study development, and entrepreneurial-management training. Last spring, Tuck held the inaugural meeting of the GBSN council, hosting deans and senior faculty from 15 business schools in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Tunisia, among others.
"Improvement in standards of living, quality of life, and growth of the economies in the developing world depends on the ability of those countries to generate and expand their own wealth-producing businesses—and to develop the entrepreneurs to start them and the managers to run them," says Joseph Massey, director of Tuck's Center for International Business, which co-sponsored the event.
Conference panelists agreed that a great need exists in Africa, where countries are growing at five percent or more per year—much faster than Western countries realize. As business schools there are launched and established, they face the challenge of building—and retaining—skilled faculty. Many of the best professors are lured from fledgling or even established business schools in developing countries by the vastly higher compensation in the businesses in their home countries or by universities in the developed world, with their greater research, teaching, and consulting opportunities.
Business schools who partner with the GBSN take on mentoring roles with emerging business schools, sharing experiences and best practices with their deans and faculties to raise the quality of business education so the schools can produce leaders who meet the needs of the developing economies. Members of the Academic Advisory Council, including Tuck and its fellow business schools in Europe and the U.S., are working together with the GBSN to provide input and feedback about its programs. Network schools include Tuck, Wharton, Harvard, Kellogg, UCLA's Anderson School of Management, HEC Paris, London Business School, INSEAD, and others.
"We're committed to working with our colleagues to promote the sharing of ideas and expertise because our programs will shape tomorrow's global leaders," says Massey. "Business education has a bright future."
