BC Business
MBAs had their moment in the spotlight during the recent recession as bankers with fancy degrees were vilified in the media. Business schools around the globe turned the microscope inward, searching their souls for signs of culpability.
Here in B.C., the nine universities offering MBA degrees emerged stronger than ever, each bolstering its commitment to building a healthy business community.
UBC sent students to Kenya, where members of the class of 2010 helped villagers get small businesses up and running. At UVic, where sustainability is woven throughout the curriculum, students travelled to Brazil to help a local company bring the acai berry to international markets.
Other schools turned their focus closer to home: one Trinity Western student, for example, plans to apply his new-found management expertise to local not-for-profit social-service agencies. And business schools across the province tackled the crisis of conscience head-on, fostering classroom debates on the role of ethics in business and spurring students to put their business smarts to good use.
You’ll find the latest updates on these and other developments in B.C. MBA programs in this 2010 BCBusiness MBA guide, along with our at-a-glance summary of MBA options in B.C.
Putting the “Us” in Business
Works well with others: that’s often the strongest selling point on a resumé, since teamwork is indispensable in an office setting. Even though it’s been drilled into us since preschool, some of us still need a little work on our team skills. That’s why it’s an integral part of most MBA programs.
We hear the teamwork mantra repeated so often that it’s easy to lose sight of what it even means. At Vancouver Island University, instructor Ron Sitter begins with definitions. Traditionally, he says, it means “two or more people working together with a common goal who are mutually accountable to each other.” But he prefers another definition: “understanding that we need each other, that we can’t do it alone as well as we can do it with all of us, that none of us is as smart as all of us.”
Sitter also tells students that teamwork can be viewed as a pyramid. At the foundation are purpose, process and communication. Once those are mastered, you can proceed to the next level, which includes involvement and commitment. “If you can achieve those, at the very highest level you end up with this fuzzy thing called trust,” Sitter explains.
Understanding what it means is one thing; to put it into practice, UNBC MBA students start the program with a retreat. Han Donker, chair of UNBC’s School of Business, explains that during the first week students have to work in teams to solve cases.
At Vancouver Island University, Sitter says, the hands-on component of teamwork includes a one-day session where he spends just 40 minutes in front of the class, then “the rest of the time they’re in their little work groups, hammering out the different concepts.”
Ideally, any business can be viewed as a team working toward a common goal. So it stands to reason that the best outcome of any MBA program is graduates who work well with others.
– Bryan Arseneau
Blame it on MBAs
Many blamed the economic meltdown of 2008-09 on MBA programs that spawned a generation of greedy CEOs, but is ethics something you can teach?
Mark Wexler, professor of business ethics and management at SFU’s Segal Graduate School of Business doesn’t think so. Wexler tends to teach people in their 30s and 40s and believes their ethical standpoint is already well formed by that time. Even by the time younger students start their MBAs, they likely have already formed their own opinions and ethical footing. So while you can teach students about ethics, you can’t teach them to be ethical; that’s up to the individual. So what are schools doing to ensure that their students at least have an understanding of what it means to be ethical in the business world?
Royal Roads University was in the process of redesigning its curriculum when the financial crisis hit, and according to Steven Glover, associate professor in the faculty of management, it was a perfect time to re-evaluate the university’s stance on ethics. “One of the things we’re trying to do with the redesign is emphasize three different threads, and those are a strategic, leadership and responsibility focus. The ethical question really goes to all of those areas and is intended to be woven throughout the program and the courses,” says Glover.
Wexler offers a course bearing the title Business Ethics, and he was teaching these concepts to technology students, undergraduates and executive MBAs long before the financial crisis hit. When asked if SFU has added any ethics courses recently, Wexler responds that it has added some since he’s been there but not in response to the recent global economic recession: “When I first started teaching, there were none; now there are five or six. Every program has one, and they’re required.”
Whether ethics courses were already in place or whether the curriculum is being redesigned, the question still remains: how do you teach ethics? Both Glover and Wexler agree there are two ways ethics can be taught. One is to teach it in a dedicated course, like Wexler’s. In that instance, ethics is all the class talks about; they look at everything in the context of an ethical framework. The other option, which Royal Roads has chosen, is to try and include ethics discussions within the material in different courses. That places marketing or finance, for example, within an ethical framework.
Whether either of these approaches will ward off future Bernie Madoffs is open to debate. But even if these programs don’t instill a higher moral sense in students, at least they’ll know if they’re doing wrong.
The Do-good Generation
Not everyone entering an MBA program is lured by the promise of big bucks. Increasingly, MBA students say they want to use the power of business to make the world a better place.
At UBC the Sauder School of Business’s Social Entrepreneurship 101 (SE101) program, headed by faculty adviser Nancy Langton, aims to make a difference internationally. In 2009 students went to Nairobi, Kenya, to teach local youth entrepreneurial skills and how to build a business. Student participant Les Robertson says the hands-on instruction will outlast any handouts: “This is neither a hand-out nor simply just business management/entrepreneurship skills; this is a hand-up. These are life management skills, and this creates economic opportunity internationally.”
By sharing what they’ve learned from their MBA programs, the SE101 participants “empowered the Kenyan students with knowledge that they can use to start to build a better future,” adds Kirby Leong, a past participant and current SE101 program co-ordinator.
The University of Victoria’s MBA program also offers students the chance to apply what they’ve learned within an international setting. Mike Valente, assistant professor in business and sustainability, teaches courses on doing good within the community. One of the four strategy pillars of the UVic MBA program, he says, is sustainability, which encompasses social and ecological issues. “So the program has started to build sustainability and social responsibility into [students’] projects as part of the curriculum.” Valente involves his students in an international field trip every year, and in 2009 20 students went to Brazil to help a local company that wants to bring the acai berry to international markets, while still involving the local community in sourcing the berry. The students were there to help advise the company on how to make their business model work.
But not everyone with an MBA has an international focus. Tony Lapointe, executive director of the Mission Community Services Society in Mission, B.C., is making a difference closer to home. While Lapointe was doing community work before completing an MBA at Trinity Western University in Langley, he now has a greater understanding of the business tools that are fundamental to any business, for-profit or not. “There were things for me that were relatively new and significant, such as finance and knowing how to apply the financial tools, or how you market a not-for-profit organization,” he says.
So whether you’re travelling the world to teach disadvantaged youth entrepreneurial skills, helping a company compete globally or staying close to home and running a not-for-profit organization, there are MBA programs out there that can teach you more than how to boost the bottom line.
An MBA for Everybody