The forces shaping business education have changed dramatically and these tectonic movements are also redefining the profile for deans, say executive search experts Ben Kring and Stuart Kaplan from executive search firm KornFerry. Think of some of the questions the leaders of business schools have to ponder: Do we build a campus in Beijing or in Delhi? How do we cater to our clients in terms of executive education? How do we persuade our staff to consider innovations in the curriculum?
The head hunters say: “The business school deans who will thrive in the coming years will have a different leadership profile from their predecessors, one that emphasizes strategic skills, enterprise management, innovation, and people and relationship effectiveness”. Their conclusion: the schools need a new type of dean, “one that emphasizes CEO-style breadth and organizational expertise over more narrow academic mastery”.
And indeed, many business schools have seen movement in the deans’ office lately. The old guard bows out to do more research or to start their own business. The new guard often also has experience in other fields than business education, such as working as CEOs, HR or management consultants or professors for engineering. “I sometimes think of the university as a multi-divisional enterprise,” notes Alison Davis-Blake for example, who took over the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in July last year. “Deans are divisional managers who run a business that had better make a profit to generate the investment capital we need. We have multiple lines of business – tuition and non-degree lines of business—that need to be managed as a portfolio.”
France has seen quite a few deans stepping down in the last months. Thierry Grange decided to leave the dean’s office at Grenoble Ecole de Management - a school he helped to found in 1984 and as whose dean he has served since 2002 – to become the president of the strategic board of the school. Grange will be replaced by Loïck Roche, who has been teaching at the school since 1995. A graduate of Essec business school Roche has worked as an HR consultant as well as a management professor.
EM Lyon also got a new dean this month. Philippe Courtier replaced Patrick Molle, who step down after 16 years to become an entrepreneur. Previously to this move Courtier led the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC), an engineering school in Paris.
In the UK, Stephen Perkins, has been appointed the new dean of London Metropolitan Business School (LMBS). Perkins comes from the University of Bedfordshire, where he was Associate Dean for Research and Quality. Before, he was a member of the Electricity Privatisation Team that oversaw the privatisation of the UK energy industry in the 1990s. He also served as HR Director at National Power before setting up an entrepreneurial enterprise backed by 30 Blue Chip companies. Perkins also can price himself of a solid academic background with a DPhil in Management from the University of Oxford, where he taught at University College.
In the U.S. there are also a lot of changes going on. Robert Widing, currently dean of the Macquarie School in Sydney, Australia is going home. Widing grew up in Pennsylvania and graduated from Ohio State University – now he has been appointed to lead the Western University’s School The Weatherhead in Cleveland, Ohio. Marketing professor Widing will succeed Mohan Reddy, who has held this position since 2006. Widing has been dean at Macquarie since 2010 and previously taught in Thunderbird in the US and the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Johns Hopkins University’s Carey School in Baltimore has appointed McKinsey consultant and former surgeon Bernard Ferrari as dean. He will succeed Yash Gupta, who stepped down in June 2011, less than a year after the launch of the school’s full-time MBA programme. Ferrari began his career as a surgeon but spent many years as chief operating officer and assistant medical director of the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans before joining at McKinsey. In 2008, after retiring there, he founded the Ferrari Consultancy. Ferrari already serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Rochester, where he has been overseeing the Simon Graduate School of Business.
Villanova University in Pennsylvania named the former entrepreneur Patrick G. Maggitti as new dean for its Villanova School of Business. Prior to academia, Maggitti spent nearly 15 years in the steel and mining industries, where he held a variety of roles, including chief executive officer, director of national sales and board member. He founded two successful companies and has also consulted with a variety of international organizations on numerous facets of strategy and entrepreneurial thinking.
Sources:
Korn/Ferry
Grenoble EM
EMLyon
MGSM
Carey Business School
Villanova
Financial Times
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