Top Asian business schools hold Alliance symposium

Three top Asian business schools celebrated their first symposium as members of the BEST business schools alliance on Saturday at Peking University.

The BEST Business School Alliance was established last January by Hitotsubashi ICS, Guanghua School of Management of Peking University and the College of Business Administration & Graduate School of Business of Seoul National University.

At the symposium, joint research projects were launched on the economic development the three countries have experienced over the past decade.

The objective of the alliance is to facilitate fully fledged research and educational cooperation between these three prominent business schools, located in the capital cities of China, Japan, and South Korea.

The idea for this business school partnership was born at the Trilateral Cooperation Vision 2020 that was jointly created by the governments of China, Japan, and South Korea in May 2010 to explore cooperative partnerships between the three countries, which are increasingly becoming the center of the global economy.

"Asian economic development requires leadership talents of higher quantity and quality than Europe and the United States, the so-called ‘mature societies’," said Zhang Wei, professor and assistant dean of global executive education at Peking University.

Cai Hongbin, dean of Guanghua School of Management, said the West and Asia have differing leadership training systems.

The United States has a long history of the MBA, and considerable parts of its management staff are working for some time before they take part in an MBA program.

After finishing MBA studies, they return to their company, formally entering the management structure.

But Asian countries, especially Japan and South Korea, rely more on internal training and promotion. In particular, there is life-long employment in traditional Japanese enterprises.

As a result, business school or MBA education is not the same as that received at US business schools.

Deans of top business schools offered their opinions on the future of the alliance.

"As various leadership models co-exist in the world and there is not just the Western model. I think many of new models come from right here, in Asia," said Hiroshi Kanno, dean of Hitotsubashi ICS.

"Our mission as a business school in Asia is trying to find this unique model, make it public and get students ready for it."

Hyuk Choe, dean of the College of Business Administration & Graduate School of Business of Seoul, believed the three business schools can offer three platforms for a strong relationship between the countries. "They are faculty, students and cooperation. In this sense, we as business schools can be platforms to benefit each other."