Not long ago, Tony, Director of Shanghai University MBA Center, accepted interview from Cheng Hao Lee, MBA Home Live. In this interview, Tony shared history, mission and development of Shanghai University MBA. We share this show with you in Message From Senior.
Cheng Hao Lee: Shanghai University MBA project has developed quite rapidly in these years, and won attention form all walks of life. What is this project? Can you describe it for us?
Full Attention from Leaders and Managers
Tony: Well. I experienced original stage of Shanghai University MBA project. At that time, leaders of our university kept an eye on this MBA project. Professor Zhiming Ye, Vice-President of Shanghai University, responsible for Director of Graduate School and professor Xian Chen, former Executive Dean of The College of International Business and Management of Shanghai University went to Beijing to meet National MBA Education Committee, in order to create an excellent MBA project. I always heard that VP Ye had read all documents of National MBA Education Committee and entered all lectures. We can see that our leaders had strong determinations in MBA project. Owing to that, we were offered a great platform to create MBA project. Involvement by managers was an important factor for MBA project. I share with you all one point that whatever you want does, especially MBA; you can do well with the support of your leaders and stakeholders. Under this prerequisite, you need find person who will consider this job as his life. Constant reflection and creation is another condition of rapidly changing MBA market.
Clear Project Mission
Another condition is whether this project has a clear mission. According to mission, you should know recruit what kind of students, market positioning and students’ career. Maybe they don’t have relevant ability when they enroll, but you will lead them to the direction via your curriculum and tools. I believe that there is no way for a MBA project to help every student achieve his goal, but it can lead him a direction or change his attitude and outlook on life. So MBA education is like human education to large extent, or profession education, restructuring thinking education. In the past five years, we had support from leaders. We adopted others’ advice. We continued to innovate and improve. We then determined to insist on our mission and feature. This insist suffered from a lot of challenges, finally it was accepted by more and more people. Our staffs are impressed by this mission, and President Chien Weichang’s carefulness on education, science and all-round development. All in all, the development of MBA Center is related to the development of University and our team’s carefulness, what’ more, students, teachers and stakeholders’ involvements are quite essential.
Trustworthy Persons — Create Sustainable and Harmonious Development
We summed up four points for the development of Shanghai University. From 2004 to 2006, we called it “3M”, first M is Mission, means mission of project. From the beginning, we need Global Local talents people can trust and work with. Trustworthy is that we can trust his professionalism and sincerity. “Work with” is a working ability. This ability is more than a business skill, it’s about how to tackle with interpersonal relations and have things done. The ability involves growing-up, learning and working, which is all-round education. Apart from trustable and work with, we also have Global Local. If a person is only trustworthy, he just works in local, which is far from enough in globalization. We will give him an invisible global visa that he can use English and Chinese, do what he want does. Some people have been in the West for a long time, they know much about the west, but they know nothing about China, which will also generate culture shock. Now we are seeking sustainable and harmonious development which is not only in China, but also in the whole world. This harmony will lead us to get a win-win situation. Global Local means that we need know the west; in addition, we also should connect the west with China to gain a Global Local situation, which includes his quality, languages and understanding on the west and the east. The above thing is a mission or a goal, I don’t believe that who can achieve it after completing GLMBA, but it can give you a development platform and direction.
Community-Campus — Corporate Close Integration
Our market positioning is to cultivate a kind of leaders and managers who can help the western corporate enter into China, also help Chinese corporate enter into the world. Even more, we hope to cultivate Global Local, who can coordinate the enterprises’ stepping into and out. Our mission is relied on our project’s goal and feature. Our goal includes all-round development, global language (English teaching), responsibility for society, professionalism, good EQ and personal soft skills. The above is the development of GLMBA from 2004 to 2006. In 2006, based on “3M”, we put forward “3C”, which is community-campus-corporate close integration. They are like music, songs and singers. Professional managers want to know invitations with forefront knowledge and innovation, while teachers have plenty of corporate resources. We hope that corporate will cooperate with universities, which will promote the development. I once entered meeting of India. MBA of India has Zero Day Recruitment, which means that their graduates can find job quickly after graduation. This is the successful combination of corporate and universities. We can learn from that. Close integration of community, campus and corporate is what we called “3C”.
Campus Wide
From 2006 to 2007, we had a “C”, that was Campus Wide, which meant inter-disciplinary. Shanghai University is a key university of “211” project, also a comprehensive university. A quarter of our GLMBA teachers are from School of Management, a quarter from School of Economics, a quarter from the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and a quarter are entrepreneurs. This is a great model for cross-institutes and interdisciplinary. After financial tsunami, whether corporate or government need a comprehensive knowledge. If one person can grasp cross-cutting knowledge besides his major, he may be suitable for a manager. This is just like what President Chein said, “break the Wall between Teaching and Learning” and “break the wall Campus and Community” of “Removal of Four-Pile Walls”.
From 2007 to 2008, we added “3P” based on “3M” and “3C”. That means we not only help students seek corporate profit, but also help them concentrate on people’s development. Recently, I watched a special show from Hong Kong. The content was that many enterprises reduced staff when financial tsunami happened, then they employed new staff in higher costs, while under the same situation, a tourism company didn’t reduce one staff, but encouraged them. Finally, this company developed quite well. So when a corporate seeks profit, it should also care about your people, and seek those who can trust you. The third “P” is Plant. We hope our students could protect our plant. Our corporate cannot produce a product which will be harmful to our Plant. When all over the world are concerned about environmental protection, this enterprise will be criticized. The toxic milk powder will give us many reflections.
From 2008 to 2009, we added “4H”, which meant four harmonies- Harmony of Employee and Corporations, Harmony of Corporations and Corporations, Harmony of Corporations and Society, Harmony of Individual and Nature. Our university always meet with other MBA institutions of the east and the north etc. we share with each other about advantages, experiences and resources. We hope we can promote the development of Chinese MBA education and get a win-win situation. This is the development of Shanghai University in recent years.
Cheng Hao Lee: Thank you very much for your description about the development. We know that GLMBA is quite special in all MBA projects. Can you say something about this?
Tony: GLMBA is our MBA Center key project. It’s our only project in first years. And the mission of project is related to mission of center. Now we want to find more market positioning to serve more industries.
Cheng Hao Lee: Can you give us some cases about features and innovation of GLMBA?
Tony: For the features of GLMBA are "3M" "3C" "3P" "4H". For the operation of project, I would like to share a few points. The first point is the recruitment, we will give students an introduction about project before re-testing, so that they can clearly know the features of the project and what we haven’t done, what’s more is where we want to practice. We can let the candidates know whether they are in the same way with us. Recently, a lot of alumni will come back, they give us the feeling that they are our family; we do not need many words, and have a tacit understanding. When they entered our center, we would be concerned about who will be selected to teach them. Our teachers, from their background and teaching experience, meet the satisfaction of the students. Such as our financial management teacher, PHD from Wharton, former Head of Finance Department of Tsinghua University in Taiwan, Lang's brother, he has a wealth of teaching experience of EMBA students. Teacher of law course is honorary Master of Cambridge University, PHD Law from Peking University, served as legal adviser to the Government of Singapore, also has his own law firm. Teacher of accounting course is from Shanghai University, PHD in Accounting from Xiamen University, with rich experience in enterprises. Many students in GLMBA quite like him. Teacher of organizational behavior is PHD from Stanford University, once was the Dean of one of the best MBA Center in Thailand, now is Chair Professor, in Leadership and Change, Hong Kong Institute of Education, his organizational behavior teaching research is well-known in the world, he always interact with his students, win the students’ love. Teachers of Humanities course is the Executive Associate Dean of Liberal Arts College, Shanghai University, PHD of Chinese University of Hong Kong, he also has a lot of studies on religion. Another teacher is director of the Graduate School, he always teaches our students to put themselves in lower position, and then will have more room to develop. We have lots of entrepreneurs, providing students with real business projects, leading the students to do together. Students may be required to experience the real business environment, and organize and coordinate their own team to do a project. That’s our teaching power.
