ACADEMIA FACING THE OPEN WATER

Thinking with you about current academic insights

There is persistent dissatisfaction with so-called insular outcomes of education at
many business schools. According to scholarly articles, recruiters, managers,
public authorities, and, indeed, the business school community, schools
experience challenges in the delivery of competencies for management and
leadership practice. In addition, some B-schools pay little attention to the
development of mindsets that encourage adapting to the future and surviving
competitive forces. Kimberly and Bouchikhi (2016) recently published a sober
article that articulated these claims and provided scenarios about the effects of
the disruptive challenges that B-schools face.
These scenarios go beyond fixes to teaching methodologies. The scenarios
describe fundamental changes to the B-school industry in its current form, and the
expected demise of many schools.
Open Water is a trusted strategic partner to many organizations who addressed
disruptions successfully over the past 25 years. Many of these organizations
continue to work with Open Water to proactively adapt to strategic, cultural, and
other challenges. Overwhelming evidence from these projects showed that
leadership mindset makes the key difference to effectively identifying and
responding to challenges. Open Water worked with B-school student groups as
well; evidence gathered from alumni showed that attitude and behaviour
changes enabled during the MBA programme developed into lasting personal
and organisational leadership competencies.
We agree with Kimberly and Bouchikhi, as well as the academic literature about
the management of change: solutions to disruptive challenges will not be found
in traditional approaches. We would recommend that the disruptions in
academia require robust mindset changes to enable schools to yield visible
leadership from business school educated managers across industries. This is a
very exciting prospect that will make a few B-schools stand out in the competitive
landscape. Therefore, we are welcoming the growing collaboration to share our
expertise with the B-school sector to help overcome disruptive challenges.
Kimberly, J.R. & Bouchikhi, H. (2016). Disruption on steroids: Sea change in the
worlds of higher education in general and business education in particular.
Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 23(1), 5-12. doi: 10.1177/154805
1815606434
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Dr Francois Bester for Open Water Academia

WWW.OPEN-WATER.COM