We’ve become accustomed to business schools talking about globalisation. From São Paulo to St Petersburg, Los Angeles to Lagos – partnerships and programs cross oceans and span continents. Yet the benefits that schools bring locally are too often forgotten.
Indeed Business schools should be just as proud of their impact closer to home. After all, a business school isn’t just providing knowledge. It’s a community that provides jobs, purchases goods and services, and pays salaries that are often redistributed locally. And they attract students from outside the region who spend on board, lodging and more.
With this in mind, the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), a business school accreditation body, has launched a tool for business schools around the world to help measure and maximise their impact on the local environment.
“I visit many schools per year and always see first-hand some of the amazing things that are happening," says Eric Cornuel, the CEO of EFMD. "Engaged students and faculty, close links with industry, new ideas and innovation, developing start-ups and incubators, mixing skills and mentors, fostering a sense of entrepreneurship, helping local communities and widening access to underprivileged students to name but a few.”
To help identify the tangible and intangible benefits that a business school brings to its local environment, the EFMD Global Network has launched the Business School Impact Survey (BSIS). It is partly a response to Cornuel’s belief that this sector has never faced such challenging times; “Business schools, universities and centers of learning are all under enormous pressure from a wide range of issues which include funding, technology, perception of value, but even more their legitimacy and impact on sustainability.”
He hopes that the BSIS will help tackle this by capturing the local value that a school brings. The information collected can be used both internally and externally, Cornuel adds, in an effort to widen the debate about the role of business schools in society. Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the reputational perception of business schools won’t be hurt by a little repair work.
Schools who adopt the BSIS work with EFMD and its partners on a three-stage process: identifying the impact the school wants to measure; putting the data collection process in place; and evaluating why impact is important.
This includes the financial aspects that can be measured, such as the amount spent on goods and services, as well as the economic and cultural contribution from a school. Faculty, for example, create new businesses through entrepreneurial projects as well as support local businesses through professional training and managerial development. Graduates also make valuable employees in the area.
The University of St Gallen in Switzerland has used the survey to consolidate and build on its local roots. For the university's President, Thomas Bieger, interviews with local stakeholders provided an independent review of all of the university’s links, which allowed new ideas for actions and strategic adjustments to emerge.
'The university is not only seen as a factor of regional benefits but as an important factor of regional life," he explains. "And every citizen at least indirectly has an access or direct contact as employer, speaker, visitor, supplier, friend or representative of the university."
In the case of St Gallen, faculty have active supervisory or management roles in more than 200 companies and foundations listed in the Swiss Commercial Register, and approximately 40% of these are located within the region.
EFMD insists that the Business School Impact Survey is not an accreditation system, so schools can’t fail it, and won't be compared to one another. The final report will offer recommendations for improvement in a number of areas. Schools will be advised on how to communicate more effectively, on encouraging certain activities of particular interest to the local community, and how to manage local, national and international outreach.
So rather than schools boasting of their global achievements, maybe we’ll be hearing more about the ideas they generate for regional impact, the local businesses they’ve nurtured, and the talented staff and graduates contributing to the community.
