Career Supercharger

Download your MBA Guide 2016 here.

Embracing commercial opportunities on the domestic and international stage requires careful strategy, leadership and advanced business acumen – all skills learnt through an MBA. As the business world evolves, so too the MBA stays one step ahead.

It is probably very simple when you think about it. If you are a leading educational institution offering MBA courses, you’d better demonstrate dynamic leadership, disruptive techniques (“tossing out the rule book when the opportunity presents itself”), bending new technology this way and that, and pushing the global standard, full-on.

And that’s what our institutions are doing repeatedly to the satisfaction of thousands of local and foreign students, many of whom are seeing the MBA as a calling-card for a career change.

The arrival of ‘Big Data’ and all that it involves has led a number of MBA providers to add ‘researcher’ to the normal outcome of a ‘business leader and manager’ too.
Take Massey University, which “provides study flexibility to those studying with us at four regional locations”. This year it introduced an advanced masterclass course in ‘Design Thinking’ to its MBA students – a collaboration between the Massey Business School and the College of Creative Arts at the Open Lab in Wellington.

Masterclass facilitation was led by Justin Farrell, Fellowships director at the Institute of Design at Stanford University, California – aka “the d.school”, and described as: “A creative leadership accelerator for restless experts who want to transform their industries.”

Since its launch, fellows have designed systems interventions in international development, ‘food equity’, philanthropy, K12 education, disaster relief, financial services, legal technology and federal workforce collaboration. Current fellows are also working on issues in healthcare, including cancer prevention and clinical care for low-income communities.

Farrell is said to be a prolific visual storyteller, who designed the investigative series Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, and is the winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

The local subsidiary of a multinational business contributed a ‘live case-study’ for Massey’s workshop participants to engage with, analyse, and apply design thinking principles to it. The results from MBA student teams were presented to the organisation and some of the ideas are being taken further for practical limitation, according to Massey’s MBA director, associate professor David Tweed.

“Design Thinking offered us an opportunity to demonstrate the integration of theory and practice at the highest level and in a way that provided benefits both to MBA students and New Zealand business. We expect to be doing more of this in the future,” he says.

Meanwhile, AUT’s MBA papers cover three components: Knowing (facts, frameworks and theories of what we teach); Being (values, attitudes and beliefs which form managers) and Doing (skills, capabilities and techniques which lie at the heart of the practice of management).

An ‘MBA with a Creative Technologies pathway’ is one of three options for specialising, on offer with an AUT MBA. This includes: papers on transmedia, serious play, entrepreneurial strategies, transdisciplinary practice and a special topic.

They also offer a ‘Master of Creative Technologies with Business’, described as an extension of the highly successful ‘Master of Creative Technologies’ to allow papers from the MBA programme, including cross-cultural management, marketing strategy, strategic brand management and project management.
The other two options are:

• MBA with a Supply Chain Management pathway. This includes papers on operations and management, supply chain management, quality management, project management, negotiation and procurement management.
• MBA with an extended Applied Business Project. This option places a greater emphasis on the applied nature of the programme with a research methods paper and a major business project.

AUT’s MBA director Ken Lee says this meets the multiple drivers for people to take on the challenge of MBA study, including the desire to reach the highest levels of management, starting their own business, or developing their personal and managerial skills.

Lee describes AUT’s MBA programme as “rigorous and challenging with a strong bias towards practical application and personal development”.

“We focus not only on giving candidates the practical skills and techniques to be better managers and leaders, but also on their growth as an individual, helping them gain insights about themselves and turn that knowledge into action.

“Business has never been more complex or more competitive than it is right now. Whether you’re a large corporate, a sole operator or somewhere in between, your customers have a multitude of options for products and services.

“But with the challenges of a globally networked, ‘always on’ business environment come opportunities – massive markets, better economies of scale, international investors, more cost-effective delivery channels and highly accessible, two-way communication channels to reach existing and potential customers.

“To take advantage of these opportunities requires strategy, leadership skills and advanced business acumen – all skills and expertise that are developed through our MBA programme,” says Lee, pointing out AUT’s Business School holds top QS World University Rankings. Earlier this year the school was awarded five stars in Teaching and Student Quality, Internationalisation and Diversity, and Facilities.

In the QS subject rankings, AUT sits in the top 200 worldwide for Business and Management, and the top 150 for Accounting and Finance.

Local and global thinking
“While the University of Auckland MBA equips graduates to work anywhere in the world,” says professor Jayne Godfrey, director of the Graduate School of Management at the University of Auckland, “it does have a particular focus upon educating managers so they can maximise their contribution, and their business’s contribution, to the New Zealand economy.

“We aim to provide Kiwi managers with the knowledge, skills and ability to think locally and globally in order to advance the national interest.”

“A key issue facing business managers is operating in an increasingly digital world. For example, understanding how to manage IT when you are not an information technologist; managing a labour-force which is more digitally-proficient than the managers; managing in the face of increasingly rapid innovations which make current hardware and software superseded or obsolete.

“Looking further into the future, it is important for industry and business leaders to start planning for a world of increased automation and artificial intelligence which will progress from replacing routine manual labour to replacing higher order decision-making roles,” says Godfrey.

“The impact of globalisation means we need to recognise where there are language and cultural differences between the negotiating parties, and manage risks such as exchange rate risk and sovereign risk.

“Today there is a need to manage generations with different social skills, and different personal and social values, to get the best from a diverse workforce.

“There is a need for organisational resilience in the face of economic challenges created by globalisation. For example, a downturn in Asia will have a significant impact upon many New Zealand businesses.”

Security threats such as terrorism, cyber security and identity theft; and changing consumer tastes and preferences all need to be factored in, she says.

“We are at the forefront of research and teaching about how to shape markets, for example.

“Human resilience too is vital in an environment where managers and employees are increasingly stressed as they need to keep pace with increasingly rapid decision-making, partly driven by technological advances.”

The University of Auckland continues to “immerse MBA students in an international business project and travel of fshore to experience the issues of developing, negotiating and concluding contracts in an international context”.

“We are currently reviewing our MBA programme to ensure that we continue to offer a qualification that equips managers to address the challenges to business in the future,” says Godfrey. “This will ensure the programme evolves as the business environment evolves.

“We want to equip managers of SMEs and large organisations to address the challenges of the day – in an increasingly global, digitised and competitive business context.”

Anything but boring
The University of Waikato’s MBA recognises the need to focus on both management and leadership through a leadership development programme which runs alongside the MBA. This includes assessment prior to the course, class feedback, one-on-one coaching and post-course measurement.

“In addition, speakers are invited to address key topics such as big data, building a personal brand, mindfulness and topics that can affect the future of the business. We see a strong focus on flipped and blended classrooms in the future,” says Dr Colleen Rigby, MBA director, Corporate and Executive Education, Waikato Management School, University of Waikato.

“It is not enough to be a good manager to deal with the turbulence and complexity of the environment – effective and positive leadership is essential too.”

State-of-the-art technology has arrived, along with new Dean, Don Ross, bringing some additional and exciting opportunities in the technology area to the school.

“This will enable us to make a leap into the future with transformative and engaging platforms for interaction with students across the world. In addition, some of our teaching staff have utilised Facebook tests and self-marking of assignments,” says Rigby.

“Don Ross says ‘Be anything but NOT boring’, so we have a number of unique initiatives we will be pursuing in the years ahead, including an online strategy certificate.
“We are also fortunate to have an expert group of specialist lecturers who not only teach but also practice as professionals in their fields. Our participants have the opportunity to hear from people who not only know the theory, but are directly involved in the field in which they are teaching.

“To mention just two fields: in economics our Vice Chancellor, Professor Neil Quigley, is a director of the Reserve Bank and recently presented his personal views on the New Zealand economy to MBA participants.

“Other staff in this field, are associate professor Anna Strutt who has worked with the Asian Development Bank and Dr Steven Lim, who teaches in Japan and consults in Asia.

“In strategy we have Professor Dr Jens Mueller, who is the director of Pharmac; food safety reviewer for MBIE; and a temporary adviser to the World Health Organisation.
“Many of our lecturers teach internationally too, which gives them a global perspective which they can then convey to students.

“Our staff teaching on leadership such as Professor David McKie and associate professor Peter Sun have all consulted to, and run, leadership development programmes for a range of organisations in Asia Pacific, including in New Zealand.

“In addition, participants’ comment that Waikato Management School offers a personalised experience. We know our participants’ names, backgrounds and career goals and they never become a ‘number in the system’,” Rigby says.

So what further changes does she see?

“There is likely to be more ‘blended learning’, more integration of international partners in the process of learning and more student empowerment in the classroom process. Artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, 3D printing and driverless cars are just a few of the elements businesses need to incorporate into their business planning in the future.”

She is very proud of the fact that the Waikato MBA is Triple Crown accredited, which means that it fits within the top one percent of 13,670 management schools in the world. “Accreditation by AMBA, AACSB and EQUIS means that not only has the MBA been scrutinised, but so has our staff, teaching programme, facilities, globalisation and assessments,” says Rigby.

The Kiwi MBA continues to ride high in a strong field.

Kevin Kevany is an Auckland-based freelance writer. Email [email protected].