道琼斯全球资讯数据库精选

1. It’s the networking that counts Four years ago I was considering my future. I had decided, out of all the possible degrees I could pursue, that I wanted to do an MBA. In China, business negotiation is about much more than just numbers. Reading your opponents, anticipating their moves and achieving a positive result for you both takes skill and stamina. With my MBA, I have the knowledge and confidence to go into meetings and achieve the right outcomes. When deciding where to apply I put special emphasis on wanting to build connections with future Chinese business leaders and potential partners. Tsinghua has close ties with China’s business and political elite.How could I go to a US business school for two years, for example, and then, fresh off the boat, hope to enter the China market successfully? A two-year, full-time MBA would give me the time to study and learn how people in China live, eat, work, think and interact. My plan was to get my MBA in China and then work for a multinational company, eventually establishing my own business. At first, it was a strange experience studying in China without speaking Mandarin. I forced myself to take daily lessons for the first year. As time went by and I could communicate more, I started to unlock the world around me, in and out of the classroom. I cannot emphasise enough how not understanding the language will impede all you do in China. Working late into the night with classmates on cases, I was exposed to the eastern attitudes to life and work, and the differences between the west and the east became increasingly apparent. In the west we are taught that time is short and meetings must be to the point, no wine with lunch, replace business travel with video­conferencing and conversation is business-focused.In China, the prevailing approach is the opposite. Friendship is a prerequisite to business and not participating in such activities may harm one’s chances of closing a deal. A respectable golf handicap goes further than a smart tie. The lessons learnt in Tsinghua have held me in good stead in my professional life and, I believe, I have become better at doing business in established western markets because I now place more emphasis on building relationships, using the phone instead of email and the preamble chat before the business discussion. I did not want to return to the UK where I had an offer from a boutique investment bank because there was no logic in such a move. Many of my classmates felt the same and were determined to remain in China to pursue their careers. The school’s career centre was helpful but the key ingredient was the drive to find opportunities through networking. 关系是王道 4年前，我正在考虑我的未来。在研究了所有我可能攻读的学位后，我决定去读MBA。 在中国，商业谈判远远不只关乎数字。读懂对手、预测他们的行动以及为自己争取到积极结果，这些既需要技能，还需要毅力。拥有MBA学位，让我获得了参加会议并取得预期结果的知识和信心。 在决定申请哪所学校时，我特别在意与未来的中国企业领袖和潜在合作伙伴建立关系。清华与中国政商两界精英都联系紧密。假如我在一家美国商学院读两年，然后土老帽一般来到中国，怎能有望成功进入中国市场？为期两年的全日制MBA课程，让我有时间学习并了解中国人如何生活、吃饭、工作、思考和互动。我的计划是在中国取得MBA，然后为一家跨国公司工作，最后建立我自己的公司。 一开始，在不懂普通话的情况下，在中国学习是一种奇怪的体验。第一年，我强迫自己每天都上课。随着时间的流逝，当我能够与人们进行更多的交流时，我开始让自己接触周围这个世界，既包括课堂内，还包括课堂外的世界。在中国，不懂中国话会对你所做的一切都构成阻碍，这一点怎么强调都不为过。 我有时会与同学为一个案例忙碌到很晚，由此接触到了东方的生活和工作态度，东西方的差距变得日益明显。在西方，我们被教导，时间短暂，开会必须简明扼要，午餐不能喝酒，用视频会议代替出差，一切谈话都以业务为主。在中国，流行的模式却与此相反。培养友谊是经商的先决条件，不参与此类活动可能会有损于达成协议的机会。在打高尔夫时体面地让人几杆，要比打扮得西装革履还要有效。 在清华所学的课程让我的职业生涯受益匪浅，我相信，现在我能更好地在发达西方市场经商，因为，我现在更加关注于建立关系，用电话沟通，而非电子邮件，在商业谈判前会先轻松的聊聊天。 我曾接到英国一家精品投行的工作邀请，但我不想回到英国，因为这样做不合逻辑。我的很多同学与我有同感，他们决定留在中国，追求自己的事业。清华的就业中心提供了一定帮助，但关键因素是通过人际网络找到机会。 DOWJONES EDUCATION 道琼斯全球资讯数据库精选 如需更多精彩内容或订阅,请登陆:uni.xinhuaonline.com 联系方式：北京朝阳区东大桥路8号尚都国际502室（ 100020） 联系电话：010-58700900

2. Chronicle of a quiet revolution in business schools Business schools are under the microscope again, their relevance and value questioned in many quarters. The financial crisis has triggered a self-examination of their raison d’être. However, before we can decide whether and how business schools need to change, it is worth pausing to consider how and why business schools have evolved as they have. Before the 1950s, business schools were, in the words of a contemporary observer, the “slums of the educational community”. They did little of their own research, focusing mostly on identifying and transmitting best practice in management to their students. After the second world war, a diffuse group of business academics, influenced by the Rand Corporation, a think-tank, argued that the only valid knowledge was that which could be proved scientifically. A series of reports by organisations including the Ford Foundation concluded that business education had to become more academic. The poster child of this new academic movement was the path-breaking Graduate School of Industrial Administration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon). GSIA was intended to provide management education based on rigorous, multidisciplinary research. In the words of Augier and March, the reformers “proclaimed the importance of problem framing more than problem solving”. GSIA recruited some of the best minds in management science. It would go on to influence every large business school in the US and eventually the world. But there were problems with the GSIA approach that still linger. First, little more than lip service was paid to the idea of multidisciplinarity. Even at GSIA, the important subject areas were mathematics, economics and behavioural psychology. Sociology and political science were on the sidelines; other disciplines did not get a look in. In practice, as Augier and March point out, there is a conflict between academic rigour and multidisciplinarity. The need for rigour pushes people towards specialising in one discipline. As a result, business schools are made up of silos, full of people who are deep specialists in their own field but who know little about what is happening in others. The need for academic rigour has also had an impact on the kinds of knowledge that business schools produce and disseminate. As Augier and March put it, schools are almost required to talk about a balance between fundamental and practical knowledge. In fact, most schools concentrate heavily on academic theory, for reasons that have as much to do with research rankings and funding as they do with ideology. And there is also a nagging feeling that by concentrating on scientific and academic rigour, something vitally important – experiential knowledge – has been left out of management education. 商学院的意义何在？ 商学院又被拉到了显微镜底下，它们存在的意义和价值受到了许多人的质疑。本轮金融危机促使它们对自身存在的理由进行一下反省。 然而，在我们弄清商学院是否需要、以及如何改革之前，我们有必要先想一想，商学院是如何演变成如今的样子的，其中有什么缘故。 上世纪50年代以前，商学院是——用当代一位观察人士的话来说——“教育界的贫民窟”。它们几乎不自主开展什么研究，而主要着眼于寻找最佳管理实践，再传授给学生。 二战后，受智库兰德公司(Rand Corporation)的影响，众多商业学者提出，只有经得起科学证明的知识才站得住脚。包括福特基金会(FordFoundation)在内的机构发布了一系列报告，认为商业教育必须更具学术性。 卡内基理工学院(Carnegie Institute of Technology)的工业管理研究所(GSIA)是这场新学术运动中的开路先锋。卡内基理工学院即现在的卡内基梅隆大学(Carnegie-Mellon)。GSIA决定提供建立在严谨、多学科研究基础上的管理教育。用奥吉尔和马奇的话说，改革者“宣称，提出问题的重要性甚于解决问题”。 GSIA延揽了管理学领域一些最杰出的人才。它将影响美国的每一所大型商学院，最终也将影响世界各大商学院。 然而，GSIA的做法也存在一些影响至今的问题。首先，多学科的理念不过是口头说说而已。即使是在GSIA，重点学科领域也只有数学、经济学和行为心理学。社会学和政治学处于次要地位。其它学科则被彻底无视。 实际上，正如奥吉尔和马奇所说，学术严谨性和多学科研究之间存在冲突。严谨的重要性促使人们专攻一门学科。 结果，商学院分化成了一座座“孤岛”，教授们大多极为精通自身领域，而对其他领域一无所知。 对学术严谨性的需要也影响了商学院发展和传播的知识类型。正如奥吉尔和马奇所说，商学院几乎都被要求在基本知识和实用知识之间达到一种平衡。事实上，大多数学校都过分偏重理论知识，原因既与观念有关，也与研究排名和经费脱不了干系。 还有一点也令人不安：由于着重科学和学术严谨性，一些极其重要的知识——经验知识——未能进入管理教育的范畴。 DOWJONES EDUCATION 道琼斯全球资讯数据库精选 如需更多精彩内容或订阅,请登陆:uni.xinhuaonline.com 联系方式：北京朝阳区东大桥路8号尚都国际502室（ 100020） 联系电话：010-58700900