CHARTING A NEW COURSE
OVER DECADES THE MBA HAS MIRRORED THE EVOLUTION OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, KEEPING IN STEP WITH NEW THINKING AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES. ABOVE ALL, IT HAS TRANSFORMED MANAGERS INTO TRUE LEADERS; CHANGING LIVES FOREVER. NZBUSINESS REVIEWS NEW ZEALAND’S DYNAMIC MB
Nzbusiness reviews New Zealand’s dynamic MBA marketplace.
Today’s [business] managers will be expected to lead exponential change in an age in which ‘Big Data’, robotics, artificial intelligence, autonomous cars and food produced in petri dishes will change almost every aspect of work and life.” Dr Colleen Rigby, director of MBA at the Waikato Management School, University of Waikato is summing up the macro trends she sees impacting MBA programmes going forward.
“The impact of technology will affect not only manufacturing, but service, retail and the professions – such as law and health.”
Rigby can see an increasing move to blended learning as students become time poor – allowing them to have the flexibility to study part-time while in busy management positions. Building the leadership skills for managing change will be significant, she believes.
Rigby’s team also recognises the need for MBA students to be connected to the needs of the community. “We like to think of our MBA as having social heart, both in the way it is delivered and in students’ interaction with the business community.”
So how is the University of Waikato’s MBA programme responding to these macro trends?
Students will be exploring a real market opportunity in India (“the new China”) when they visit there in October. They’ll be taken to leading Silicon Valley type companies to expose students to the latest technological advances.
Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Zoom, are increasingly being used to link students online, and flipped classrooms have become more common, where students view lectures before class and class time is for discussion and experiential learning.
A high performing teams’ project engages students with a social enterprise project. Some students publish their research in applied journals, says Rigby, which managers can access online.
“We also recognise that knowledge in a vacuum is not helpful, so we use a number of opportunities to enable students to integrate what they’ve learned – through integrated case studies, simulations, research projects and the overseas study tour.”