Creating a brand for business grads

SINGAPORE — As the world marketplace becomes smaller, future business leaders would need to be able to work with people of various cultural backgrounds and adapt their skills quickly across different continents in order to succeed.

And it is with this in mind that newly-appointed Nanyang Business School (NBS) Dean Ravi Kumar, 61, wants to create a brand for NBS graduates.

“Doing work well is all very good, but how do we get students to learn to communicate, work with others, be a leader and be able to drive a product across different cultures to completion? It’s very important for us to create that sort of brand for NBS,” Professor Kumar, who was appointed last month, said in a recent interview.

Sharing his vision for the school, he said students will be trained in a more holistic style, encompassing thought leadership and tapping cross-faculty modules such as psychology.

Prof Kumar stressed the importance of possessing sound understanding of business behaviour, including that of big family firms — such as Samsung or Hyundai — and consumer behaviour across Asia and other parts of the world.

Such context is key for the West to understand why “some of its theories, such as capitalism, have not worked well … in culturally different contexts”, he noted.

Prof Kumar gave two examples: The financial crisis which rocked most of the West about four to five years ago boiled down to “a question of trust in the system, which is relationship-based”. Insurance, too, has to be sold differently to consumers in the East — with the idea of protecting the family at the core — whereas in the West, people tend to buy insurance as a means to protect themselves against risks.

To generate greater understanding among students of different cultural contexts, more cross-faculty collaborations — such as with the Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) Asian Consumer Insight Institute — are on the cards to start research in the area, which might lead to new Masters and undergraduate programmes.

Students will be given real-world problems to solve in a hands-on manner during class discussions, with the school planning to invite more local and international companies to give talks where they will share their problems and solutions. Prof Kumar also plans to send more students overseas, even if it is only for short stints lasting a week, to “open the minds” of undergraduates and help them better understand nuances across cultures.

The new Dean was selected by NTU to head its business school after a two-year global search for a successor to Professor Jitendra Singh, who returned to the United States after 19 months at the helm because one of his daughters could not adapt to life here.

Prof Kumar said he relished the increasing competition from both local and foreign universities for students and faculty members.

“It keeps us on our toes to keep innovating … and it keeps us honest.” By positioning NBS as the main source of research, undergraduate and graduate programmes on “knowing how (Asia) works”, he believed that top-faculty talent will naturally follow.

Pointing out the solid foundation and good reputation that the school already has — with NBS undergraduate programmes being highly sought after among the top 15 per cent of each university cohort here — Prof Kumar has set his sights high: He wants NBS to be the business school of choice.

“We are not going to be followers, but leaders in what we do,” he said.