China's M.B.A. Programs Attract the Business Elite
Liang Yingqi was frustrated.
The chairman of toothpaste producer Guangxi LMZ Ltd. saw his company's market share shrink and profit fall after Procter & Gamble Co. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. started selling some of their toothpaste products at about three yuan (36 cents) in China in 2001. After building up their presence in big Chinese cities for almost a decade, the global giants were now playing on his turf -- more price-sensitive consumers in smaller cities and the countryside, instead of the more affluent urban residents who were willing to pay seven yuan for a tube of toothpaste.
He couldn't figure out how these multinationals could compete on price while spending so much on advertising and sales. Puzzled and frustrated, he decided he needed to understand what was happening to his business. He enrolled in the executive M.B.A. program at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing in September 2002.
For each of the following 18 months, Mr. Liang would fly more than 1,900 kilometers to Beijing from southern Guangxi province to attend four days of classes. He graduated in January and wrote his thesis on competition strategies of Chinese toothpaste companies in domestic and international markets. More importantly, he learned how those multinational companies make their long-term development strategies and how to make his own. "We can't win a competition if we don't know our competitors," he says.
Attracting the Wealthy
Officially launched in China as a degree program in 2002 at 30 universities, executive M.B.A. programs are aimed at training executives who can build and manage more sophisticated companies as the country's economic power grows. Unlike programs in the West, which help midlevel managers prepare for a leap into general management, the programs in China attract some of the country's wealthiest and most influential businesspeople, who want to think big and understand the fast-changing global marketplace.
Growing up in a planned economy, few Chinese businesspeople have had formal training in managing big companies under a market economy. With China's increasing integration into the world economy, they also need to deal with challenges of globalization.
"Companies in China have come to an important point where entrepreneurs can no longer manage their companies based on their past experiences," says Wu Changqi, associate dean of Peking University's Guanghua School of Management. "Executive M.B.A. programs provide them a forum where they can learn practices of foreign and domestic companies."
Some students, like Mr. Liang of LMZ, have to compete with multinational companies in the domestic market, while others, like Liu Jun, chief operating officer of Lenovo China and an executive M.B.A. student at Tsinghua, have to learn how to grow globally.
"When you are running a business organization, you actually have very little time to think about the big picture," says John Akula , senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Business, who teaches business law at both Tsinghua's and MIT's executive M.B.A. programs. "It will benefit you if you can spend a few days to think in a broader way what you are going to do."
Mr. Akula jokes that American executives with positions like his students at Tsinghua must prefer playing golf to sitting six to seven hours a day in a classroom.
The New Reality
But his Chinese students say they have no choice. " 'Change with each passing day' used to be a mere phrase in dictionaries, but it has become a reality we have to live with," says Liu Shaoyong, chairman of China's largest carrier, China Southern Airlines. As China's gross domestic product per capita exceeds the current level of $1,000, more Chinese will be traveling by air, the pilot-turned-executive says. He believes that he needs to know more about the global air-travel market to make his 40,000-staff company more efficient and profitable.
More than 50% of the students at China's top business schools -- Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management and Shanghai-based China Europe International Business School -- are either chairmen or chief executives of companies. As a result, they are more likely to practice and test what they learn from school in their daily management. All three schools say some of their students are billionaires or top executives of the largest companies in China.
But these students' high positions and enormous personal wealth have attracted a fair amount of critical comment. The media call these programs "rich people's clubs" and play up the phenomenon of luxurious cars parked on campuses every weekend. Some question how motivated these rich and powerful people are about learning while some say that snob appeal plays a big role in these programs' popularity.
Indeed, tuitions of as much as 250,000 to 290,000 yuan, or about $30,000 to $35,000, at top schools are out of reach of ordinary people in China, where tens of millions are still living on less than $2 a day. Zhao Chunjun, dean of Tsinghua's School of Economics and Management, denies that many of his students drive luxurious cars to classes and argues that better-managed companies can contribute to China's economic growth, therefore helping narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.
The executives interviewed for this article say that attending the programs turned out to be a much bigger commitment than they expected and also a highly rewarding investment in both learning experiences and networking opportunities.
A Long Journey
Cao Kebo, president of Jiangnan MPT Co., which produces about 40% of China's automobile bumpers, had to travel two hours by car from his company's headquarters in Jiangyin city in Jiangsu province to Shanghai before flying two more hours to Beijing. He missed only one of his 18 classes and doesn't think the trips were too much trouble. "As entrepreneurs," he says, "we have to deal with troublesome issues everyday." Mr. Cao's family is among the wealthiest in China.
Mr. Cao says that what he learned from Tsinghua will have a far-reaching impact on his company's development. "I didn't go there to get a tool kit of management," he says. "I learned ideas and visions." He also values the opportunities to interact with his professors and classmates. "It is not easy to find somebody in your company who speaks the same language as you," he says.
Already, some students are sending their deputies to school, too. Mr. Liu of China Southern Airlines is talking to Tsinghua about organizing a short-term training program for all of his high- and midlevel managers. Mr. Liang of LMZ asked his chief financial officer and chief operating officer to apply for executive M.B.A. programs at Tsinghua and Peking universities, respectively. But the chief operating officer didn't pass the admission test.
Indeed, as the popularity of executive education grows, the schools are getting more selective about admissions. Tsinghua business school's application and admission ratio rose to 4 to 1 last year from 2 to 1 in 2002, while the ratio at Peking University's Guanghua school rose to 4 to 1 from 3 to 1.
Meanwhile, these high-profile students will also shape the content and style of China's executive M.B.A. programs, the schools say. They pay close attention to their students' evaluation of each course and change their curricula and course contents accordingly.
As top executives, these students are more interested in courses like strategy-making, corporate governance and leadership building but have little patience with technical aspects of accounting, says Liao Li, associate dean of Tsinghua's business school.
The programs have also shifted from teaching translated Western case studies to developing more content that is relevant to China today. Last fall, Peking University's Guanghua school withdrew a course on capital markets and added a new one on corporate governance. "The most important issue our students face is not how to invest in mutual funds," says Mr. Wu, the associate dean, "but how to deal with the opportunities and risks in state-owned enterprises' transition to shareholding companies."
中国MBA课程吸引众多国内精英
一段时间里，梁英奇颇有些灰心丧气的感觉。
作为牙膏生产企业──广西两面针股份有限公司(Guangxi LMZ Ltd.)的董事长，他眼睁睁地看著自从宝洁公司(Procter & Gamble Co., 又名:宝硷公司)和高露洁棕榄(Colgate-Palmolive Co.)于2001年开始在中国市场以人民币3元（0.36美元）左右的价格行销牙膏产品之后，自己公司的市场占有率和利润就开始不断下滑。这些全球范围的业内巨头先是用了大约10年的时间在中国的大城市站稳了脚跟，随即便开始向外围扩张，将目标由那些不太在乎花7元钱买一支牙膏富余消费者转向了那些对价格颇为敏感的中小城市和农村地区居民。
他想不通这些跨国企业在广告和销售上支出如此巨大，又如何能在价格上进行竞争。在困惑和苦闷之中，他痛感到需要了解企业出现了什么问题。于是，在2002年9月，他注册了清华大学(Tsinghua University)经济与管理学院的高级管理人员工商管理硕士(EMBA)课程。
在此后的18个月中，梁英奇每个月都要从广西飞往1,900公里外的北京，参加4天的学习。今年1月，他毕业了，完成了一篇题为《论国产品牌牙膏国内外市场的竞争战略》的论文。更重要的是，他了解了这些跨国企业如何制定其长期发展战略，同时也明白了该如何制定两面针的发展战略。他说：“如果我们不了解竞争对手，就无法在竞争中获胜。”
2002年，中国30所大学正式推出了EMBA课程，目的是要在中国经济实力不断增强的背景下，培养出能够创立和管理更为复杂的企业的高级管理人员。同西方EMBA课程主要培养准备进入综合管理岗位的中层经理不同，在中国，这一课程吸引了那些最富有、最具影响力的工商企业人士，他们希望能从大局考虑问题，并了解瞬息万变的全球市场。
在计划经济体制下成长起来的中国企业家基本没有接受过在市场经济体制下管理大公司的正式培训。随著中国日益融合到全球经济中，他们也需要应对全球化的挑战。
北京大学(Peking University)光华管理学院副院长武常岐说，中国公司已经到了一个重要的关口，企业家不能单凭过去的经验管理公司了。EMBA课程给他们提供了一个契机，使他们能够学到外国及国内公司的经验。
部分学生，比如两面针的梁英奇，要在国内市场同跨国企业进行竞争，而还有一些人，如也在清华大学学习EMBA课程的联想中国(Lenovo China)首席运营长刘军，就需要学习如何在全球实现增长。
麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)斯隆商学院高级讲师阿库拉(John Akula)说，当你管理著一家企业时，实际上很难有时间考虑大局。他在清华大学和麻省理工学院教授EMBA商法课程。他说，如果你能够花上几天从宏观角度考虑一下如何行事，你定会受益匪浅。
阿库拉戏称，同清华大学的学员职务相当的美国管理人员一定更喜欢打高尔夫，而不是一天在教室里呆上6，7个小时。
但他的中国学生说，他们别无选择。中国南方航空股份有限公司(China Southern Airlines Co. Ltd., 简称：南方航空)董事长刘绍勇说：“日新月异在词典中只是一个成语，但这却是我们不得不面对的一个现实。”他说，随著中国的人均国内生产总值(GDP)超过目前1,000美元的水平，将有更多的中国人乘坐飞机。他认为，应增加对全球航空市场的了解，提高这家有著4万名员工的航空公司的效率和利润。
在北京大学光华管理学院、清华大学经济管理学院和位于上海的中欧国际工商学院(China Europe International Business School)这三所中国顶级商学院中，一半以上的学员都是企业的董事长或首席执行长。因此，他们更愿意在日常管理中运用和实践从学校学到的知识。这三家学院都表示，部分学员是亿万富翁或中国大型企业的最高管理人员。
但这些学员所处的高位和巨大的财富使他们成为众矢之的。媒体形容这些课程是“富人俱乐部”，并指出每到周末都有许多豪华轿车停在校园。有人质疑这些有钱有势的人参加学习的动机，还有人称虚荣心是人们对这些课程趋之若鹜的重要原因之一。
的确，顶级商学院高达25万至29万元（30,000美元至35,000美元）的学费是中国的普通人所无法企及的，中国还有数千万人每日的生活费不足2美元。清华大学经济管理学院院长赵纯均否认许多学生驾驶豪华轿车来上课，他表示，管理完善的公司有助于中国的经济增长，进而能缩小贫富差距。
接受笔者采访的管理人员称，参加此课程的付出比预想的要多，在学习经验和网络机会方面也获得很高的投资回报。
江南模塑科技股份有限公司(Jiangnan MPT Co.)总经理曹克波需要驾车两小时从位于江苏江阴的总部赶到上海，然后再乘飞机两小时到达北京。模塑科技的汽车保险杠产量约占中国总产量的40%。在18次课程中，他仅缺课一次，同时认为这种旅行并不非常麻烦。他说：“作为企业家，我们每天都要同麻烦事打交道。”
曹克波说，从清华大学学到的知识将对公司的发展产生深远的影响。他说：“我到那里不是为了学习管理工具，而是思想和构想。”他还认为能有与教授和同学交流的机会非常难得。他说，在公司内部找到可以交流心得体会的人并不容易。
而且，部分学员还计划将下属也送到学校学习。南方航空的刘绍勇正在同清华大学商谈，计划组织所有中高层经理参加短期培训课程。两面针的梁英奇要求其首席财务长和首席营运长分别申请清华大学和北京大学的EMBA课程。但首席营运长没有通过入学考试。
的确，随著高级管理人员课程越来越受欢迎，学校在入学条件方面也更为严格。清华大学经济管理学院的申请与录取比例从2002年的二分之一减少到了2004年的四分之一，而北京大学光华管理学院的录取比例也从三分之一降到了四分之一。
与此同时，学校称，这些高层次的学生也将对中国EMBA课程的内容和风格产生影响。他们非常关心学生对各门课程的评价，并相应地改变课程和内容。
清华大学经济管理学院副院长廖理说，作为高层管理人员，这些学生对战略制定、公司治理和领导力塑造等课程更感兴趣，而对会计技术方面的内容缺乏耐心。
课程也在从讲授翻译的西方案例向开发更多同当前中国实际情况相结合的内容转变。去年秋季，北京大学光华管理学院取消了关于资本市场的一门课程，新增了一门关于公司治理方面的课程。光华管理学院的副院长武常岐说：“我们的学员面临的最重要的问题不是如何投资共同基金，而是解决向股份公司转变过程中的国有企业的机遇与风险的问题。”
