Why an international MBA is respected

Author	Valérie Gauthier, Ph.D.
Organistation	Associate Dean of the HEC MBA Program

An international MBA will continue to gain the respect of the business community so long as its value proposition of training leaders remains one of its key centerpieces. An international MBA will continue to be respected if its faculty, its student body, and its academic curriculum all come together in a multicultural environment that meets the demands of today’s global marketplace. An international MBA will be respected if its commitment to character building resonates throughout the entire program.

 

The first proof of the HEC MBA commitment to achieving respect is the excellence of our faculty. Numbering more than 100 full-time professors, they are recognized as experts and practitioners in areas such as Finance, Strategy, Statistics, Marketing, Management, and Economics. HEC also welcomes 96 affiliate professors and visiting professors from the most prestigious universities around the world. In addition, HEC takes advantage of a wide talent pool, including 700 lecturers and part-time teachers, many of whom are senior executives and consultants. Because of the quality of our faculty, we can offer our students a generalist approach to management education, with the practical knowledge to train leaders.

 

In addition to our faculty, we have an excellent body of students who are carefully selected to join our program, and who command the respect of their peers. Our admissions staff, with the help of alumni and faculty interviewers, places a strong emphasis on leadership potential when making their final decision. Once the participants arrive on campus, we immediately start encouraging them to take initiatives. It is necessary at this point to step back and explain briefly how our program is expressly designed for leadership training.

 

To bring out their leadership potential, we divide the program participants into workgroups, which are designed to favor maximum diversity in country of origin, educational background, professional experience, and age. The contribution of each individual to the workgroup is critical to the academic success of the entire team. Moreover, participants are rotated into three different workgroups during their coursework.

 

Our academic curriculum is designed to garner the global respect it deserves in the management education community. A 16-month general management program, the HEC MBA enables participants to acquire core business techniques, while allowing them to fulfill their leadership potential. The program is divided into two eight-month periods, the Core Phase and the Personalized Phase. During the Core Phase, participants cover the core business subjects such as Finance, Strategy, Statistics, Marketing, Management, and Economics. This phase is very demanding academically because, without a solid foundation in management techniques, it is impossible to take our students to the next level.

 

During the second eight months, the Personalized Phase, participants choose a specialized track in Finance, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, or Strategies for Growth, and a professional track or international exchange. Professional track options include the Creative Academic Project, the Company Consulting Project, the Individual Professional Project, and the Mission and Action Project. Interspersed throughout the Personalized Phase is supplemental coursework from among 80 electives, including courses in advanced management and managerial competencies.

 

Throughout the 16 months, participants are required to take part in the Visions of Leadership initiative, which represents a key component of our program. Visions of Leadership takes a leader-based approach, bring high-profile speakers from the business, government, and sports communities to the HEC campus to share their experiences with participants. The whole seminar-based course brings about vision by addressing the following three aspects of leadership:

 

• Critical Aspects of Being a Leader: By sharing their professional and personal experiences, the invited leaders enable students to gain a broader scope and better understanding of the complexity of strategic decision making. Students sharpen their questioning skills, develop critical thinking, and build self-awareness. Speakers address successes as well as failures, while taking stock of the key lessons learned.

 

• Analytical Aspects of Being a Leader: In questioning these leaders, students learn to recognize their own leadership potential and that of others. By analyzing and resolving complex, uncertain situations where there is no single "black and white" solution, students are driven to understand real-life obstacles, such as linguistic differences, as they work out different approaches to problems.

 

• Experiential Aspects of Being a Leader: To put leadership training into practice, we create the conditions for students to obtain hands-on corporate experience. Although this is primarily done through projects undertaken in the Personalized Phase, the Visions of Leadership initiative takes two steps to bring their seminar experience into focus.

 

• Leadership Essays: At the conclusion of the speaking engagements, each participant is required to write an essay that challenges the existing approaches to a real-life business problem that one of the business leaders discussed. Their essays are carefully reviewed by the relevant speaker and by the faculty supervisor who directs the Visions of Leadership initiative.

 

• Leadership Awards: A Leadership Conference is held near the end of the 16-month program, to which is invited one of the top academics on the subject. In addition, Leadership Awards are conferred on the top three students according to four criteria: the quality of their essay, the number of votes they obtain from their classmates, their academic profile, and their involvement in student-based leadership training initiatives. In determining the three Leadership Awards, we place a great deal of emphasis on the fourth criterion, which forces us to go back to our original starting point of whether we concretely provide a fertile environment for this endeavor. To make it work, we must have student-run projects that are strong enough to both attract the attention of participants and encourage them to take on leadership roles in the projects.

 

By building leadership skills, an international MBA fulfills an important obligation to its stakeholders, including faculty members, participants, and prospective employers. The international MBA will be respected for the value proposition that the business community expects from its graduates. But there is more to the respect equation: the international MBA must have an underlying foundation based on experiential learning. To this end, the international MBA must enable participants to put theory into practice. The following track options are available to our participants during the Personalized Phase of the program:

 

• Creative Academic Project: These self-driven projects provide MBAs with the opportunity to develop the skills and experience necessary to successfully pursue their professional goals. Such projects may include developing or advancing a business concept, or writing a business case study in collaboration with an HEC professor.

 

• Individual Professional Projects: As an example of a program initiative that requires leadership in action, we have developed the Individual Professional Project (IPP) option. The IPP track provides students with hands-on corporate experience in France or elsewhere in Europe. Lasting four to six months, the IPP is an integrated field experience that underlines our commitment to those students who want to build their leadership skills while transforming their careers. To enroll in the IPP track, students must first find an appropriate host company that is willing to let them pursue the proposed project at one of their facilities. At the same time, host companies must allow students to attend four MBA executive seminars on the HEC campus.

 

• Company Consulting Projects: In addition to the IPP option, we continue to encourage students to get hands-on experience in a track option called Company Consulting Projects. This track presents an opportunity for students to work as consultants on projects with defined strategic and operational objectives. Working in teams, all participants are supervised by a faculty member and an in-company mentor. Over the past few years, many companies have worked closely with HEC MBA participants on field audits and research projects.

 

• Mission and Action Project: This project offers the alternative to work in the field toward a humanitarian or economic development goal. Participants are given the chance to affect real social change through fieldwork where the stakes are high and the rewards are even greater. This offer is geared towards participants who want to test their entrepreneurship abilities while implementing a personal project and studying the relationship between Europe and another area of specific interest.

 

• Exchanges: The International Exchange option, because it is highly competitive, motivates our participants to work hard during the Core Phase. HEC rightfully claims to have been at the forefront of management education: founded in 1881, it is one of the world’s first business schools. The MBA program, which was started in 1969, benefits from the HEC heritage immensely, particularly with respect to our exchange network. Our students are well aware of this and compete fiercely to go on an exchange at some of the top business schools in the world. This international exposure also positions our students as our leading ambassadors, responsible for maintaining respect for the HEC tradition.

 

In conclusion, an international MBA commands the respect of others because it testifies to a set of unique leadership attributes. It creates value in a global marketplace where multinational companies must be able to implement their strategy on time and within budget. An international MBA does this because the quality of management education demands it.

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