ASIA’S RISING economic power is remaking the world. Chinese corporate champions like Alibaba and Baidu are challenging their Western counterparts. Are they bringing with them a specifically Asian management style? Bartleby visited two highly rated business schools in Hong Kong in an attempt to find out.
Where Mr Fong did find a difference was in the attitudes of MBA students towards leadership styles. He conducted a survey of MBA alumni and current and past students on HKU’s executive MBA course . It asked respondents about their views of behaviours that are broadly desirable , broadly undesirable , or culturally contingent .
That may reflect prevailing organisational structures in Asia, where family businesses, often led by a founding patriarch, are more common. Steven Dekrey, the associate dean of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , says that the classic case studies of large Western corporations developed by American business schools are less pertinent in the Asian context.
Of course, business schools can only teach all this to students who enroll. . That is the last big difference from the West. But Mr Dekrey sees encouraging signs for the growth of business education in Asia. Among those students who are interested in an MBA, more appear willing to choose an Asian school such as the HKUST—nicknamed the “University of Stress and Tension” but in fact a rather attractive place to study, with views of Clearwater Bay conducive to reflection and learning.
As do so many, many others
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