Students at international business schools see the bigger picture

George Chamberlain, sales director of Image Source, an 80-person company that produces royalty-free stock photography, is an MBA student with itchy feet. He has already studied in London, Paris, Turin, Oslo, Brussels and Rio de Janeiro. By the time he completes the ESCP Europe Business School course in May next year, he will also have studied in Madrid and Houston, Texas. Chamberlain is one of a new breed of directors who recognise that tackling global business problems requires global business knowledge.

He chose ESCP's MBA because it offered a strong European focus. "We do a lot of business in Europe—for me, that's where the future lies," he says. "Sometimes we can get very blinkered in what we do, but the MBA enables you to see the bigger picture."

Professor Davide Sola, ESCP's Italian-born UK director, says that a key strength of multi-national study is the ability to inter-act with local managers. It's an important point. More firms want to know how they can adapt global business ideas to take account of the unique features of their own local markets.

Sola maintains the best way to learn how to do this is to meet managers from many different locations. "Moving from one place to another puts somebody's brain into absorption mode," he argues. "You get to see new ideas and think about how you could make them work in your own country. Because students are exposed to many different contexts, they're able to help their firms look beyond their normal horizons when they return to their companies."

Students on ESCP's Executive MBA study on five campuses—in London, Paris, Madrid, Turin and Berlin. Explains Sola: "They also have modules—international conferences—which take them to other countries outside western Europe, Brazil and South Africa. So, in total, a student can study in seven countries."

Richard Wheatcroft, masters programme director at The Open University Business School, is another leading academic who believes that management education must be global.

"Even if a person's own business situation seems to be purely local, the world is nowadays so inter-related that there will be, almost inevitably, international aspects affecting it, and a student's MBA studies steadily increases his or her sensitivity to this—and ability to manage it effectively," he says.

Business schools that have taken the global message on board—and some including London Business School, Warwick Business School and Cranfield School of Management have been doing it for years—strive to give their programmes an international flavour. This autumn, OU Business School is recruiting the first students for an MBA in global leadership that will include residential study workshops in Kuala Lumpur, Dubai and Oslo as well as London.

Developing international business courses means making sure that it's possible to communicate in a common language. That means using universal terms rather than UK-oriented references, Wheatcroft points out. He cites the example of "mortgage banks" rather than "building societies". But there's more to it than choosing words carefully.

"Alongside the 'hygiene factor' of avoiding unhelpful language, we are always working to distinguish between the 'universal' management ideas and models inherent to a worthwhile MBA course and the 'localised' situations in which students and graduates use and apply those concepts," says Wheatcroft.

"We can aid students by using cases and examples from a wide range of countries and business cultures, and by helping each of them to see how the generic models can be interpreted and adapted for use in their own, specific situation."

Like Sola, Wheatcroft believes that taking an international approach to business learning broadens the mind. "To put it bluntly, one gets a better, more complete understanding of one's own business situation if one looks at it not only through the filter of the local culture and way of doing things, but is also seen from differing viewpoints as well.

Chamberlain is in no doubt about the value he is gaining. "The biggest benefit is you can implement what you're learning immediately," he says. "You can have a module at the weekend and put it into action on Monday. It's broadening my horizon outside the sales director role. What the company should get ultimately is a more informed and strategically focused individual."