Dean blazes trail for Chinese MBA programs
Zhao Chunjun, a professor and doctoral superviser, is former dean of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University. He is currently a member of the school’s advisory committee. Zhao’s main research interests include systems engineering and management education. He has hosted and participated in many major research projects, including the EU project “Multimedia Technology for Natural Resource Management and Environmental Education,” Fulbright project “Research on American Management Education,” and China’s National Natural Science Fund project “Research on Chinese Management Education.”
The 2019 Fudan Lifetime Achievement Award for Management Science went to Zhao Chunjun, who is considered the “dean of the deans of management schools in Chinese universities” for his pioneering contributions to MBA education.
Hardworking efforts
In 1986, Zhao Chunjun returned to his alma mater, Tsinghua University, after studying at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) as a visiting scholar for two years. He received a new mission working for the School of Economics and Management. Zhao’s bond with management education came suddenly, after he had been teaching in the Department of Automation for nearly two decades.
At that time, the school had been established for two years, and Zhao was also new to this field. After visiting the MIT Sloan School of Management and other places, he confirmed what a world-class economic management school should look like. The School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, however, enrolled only 30 undergraduates each year and the number of the school’s students was less than 200. They were in the offices borrowed from other departments and the faculty members varied widely in terms of backgrounds and capabilities.
After the reform and opening up, Chinese universities began to construct management education programs. Of them, Tsinghua University had a tradition of being strong in engineering disciplines. To build the School of Economics and Management (SEM), the university’s other schools and departments dispatched teachers who were interested in the cause. The new faculty also included newly hired teachers and senior scholars who had received overseas academic training in economics and management.
When these teachers gathered, it was inevitable that they were divided as to teaching content and methods. With the students’ feedback lying on his table, Zhao was forced to address concerns that could arise at any moment, like a gatekeeper preparing to catch a penalty kick. How to develop a program in such difficult conditions? After days and nights of thinking, Zhao and his colleagues proposed four guidelines still applicable today: improve the faculty quality, adjust the disciplinary structure, expand the enrollment scale and seek necessary aid.
“We should do everything possible to improve the quality of our teachers and strive to increase the proportion of the students to 10% of the total number of students at the university. Also, more mainstream courses should be added to the curriculum that used to emphasize operational research and management science, serving the need of the market economy with Chinese characteristics. In addition, we should pursue more funding and educational resources,” Zhao said.
The notions behind his words gave rise to the historic and leap-forward development of Tsinghua SEM. In 1986, Zhao was the executive vice president, and served the president from 2001 to 2005. During the two decades, he witnessed the scale of students exceed 4,000 and the hiring of a faculty of which a majority held a doctorate and many had overseas education backgrounds.
This underrated corner of the Tsinghua campus started to emit an ever-brightening light. Zhao spent a year in the 1990s as a Fulbright scholar, researching management education in American management schools such as Wharton and Sloan. He gained a deep understanding of the world-class management schools’ educational concepts and experience. Later, based on what he learned from the visit, Zhao broke routine and established an international advisory committee at the world’s highest level. The SEM was recognized by the AACSB and EQUIS, the world’s top two accreditations for management education. It started a wide range of substantial cooperation in the early years, with top business schools such as Sloan and Harvard Business School.
“To realize rapid development, we must learn from others and meet the high world standards,” Zhao said. He has been promoting China’s management education by integrating internationalization and localization since the beginning of his career, from SEM’s “special-term professor” project to the development of its MBA education.
Decades of endeavors
In 1991, when most people had no idea what an MBA was, Tsinghua SEM began to enroll MBA students among the first nine universities approved by the Ministry of Education for MBA education. Different from today’s booming situation, only 15 students came for an MBA degree.
As early as the winter of 1988 at Tsinghua University, Zhao held a two-day seminar with experts and scholars from five other universities. The seminar focused on whether China needed to found MBA programs. “The needs of objective reality were there,” Zhao said.
When Zhao looked back retrospectively, he said that the establishment of MBA education in China, apart from necessity and feasibility, was a response to the circumstances. First, the graduate class for cadres was a model for training cadres in China, and it was worth improving on after drawing from Western experience. Secondly, the establishment of a graduate degree system in 1980 provided a basis for the development of professional degrees. Third, the 14th National Congress of the CPC in 1992 called for building a socialist market economy, requiring the country to cultivate economic management talent at a great scale.
These efforts were a boost for the prosperity of China’s MBA education. “On many occasions, people have said that China’s MBA education is an exotic product. I don’t like to hear this,” said Zhao Chunjun. In his view, the genes of China’s MBA education were passed down from the cadre graduate class in the early 1980s; later it adopted from North American countries’ experience with talent training models. China’s establishment of MBA programs has followed the principles proposed by Yuan Baohua, the then director of the State Economic Commission and director of the National Directory Committee of MBA Education. Yuan said that China should focus on its circumstances while integrating with other country’s experience so that the cause can develop with its own characteristics. Zhao said that China’s MBA education has never simply copied that of the United States.
This is exemplified by the design, implementation, improvement and innovation of the MBA entrance examination system. In the mid-1990s, the number of domestic MBA admissions colleges had increased to more than 20, and the number of students had reached 1,000. However, the enrollment standards of each school were inconsistent, and there were no standardized references, such as the GMAT score. Society cast growing doubts over the quality of MBA students, making the National Directory Committee of MBA Education determined to set up a unified threshold.
Then deputy director of the committee, Zhao participated in the preparation and planning of the MBA unified exam that was launched in 1997. This type of examination, different from identifying graduates devoted to academic studies, targeted MBA students due to its emphasis on practical experience. It was a localized attempt to select graduates who wanted to pursue professional degrees.
Enduring passion
“The Chinese economy is developing rapidly, and so are Chinese enterprises. Isn’t there any management experience that we can draw upon from their remarkable achievements?” Zhao thought. He realized that it was the historical mission of Chinese management academia and business circles to summarize the management experience of outstanding Chinese enterprises. It is necessary to identify patterns and develop theories from them, thus forming a disciplinary and theoretical system concerning enterprise management with Chinese characteristics.
Zhao and some other people advised and made such a project possible. In the project, the Development Research Center of the State Council, the China Enterprise Federation and Tsinghua University collaborated on the foundational research of Chinese-style enterprise management science. This continued for nearly three years, during which time the team members investigated over 60 excellent Chinese enterprises, such as Baogang Steel and Lenovo, producing several corporate case studies and fourteen themed studies.
In the project report, Zhao and his team proposed their understanding of the Chinese way of company management in nine aspects, including rational thinking, adaptive strategy, heroic leadership, family-like organization, inclusive culture, harmonious environment, integrated innovation, bold marketing and keen marketing.
Despite multiple concerns, Zhao has stayed positive as the development trend of the Chinese economy has demanded an ever-vaster number of management professionals. He hopes his predecessors can take over the tasks whose results may not show in the short term. It is his wish that renowned schools can lend support to their counterparts so that the overall quality of management education will improve. “In the end the results will be reflected in the future development paths of the students,” Zhao said.
This article was translated from Guangming Daily.
edited by MA YUHONG