2023: EQUAL MEETING IN PARIS AND TOUR DE TABLE

The EQUAL member associations met on November 10th, 2023, to discuss the future direction of the EQUAL network. Eleven members gathered to focus mainly on sustainability’s importance in management education. Hosted by CDEFM (Conférence des Directeurs des Ecoles Françaises de Management) at Grenoble Ecole de Management’s new Paris campus, the meeting highlighted sustainability as a key agenda for the network’s development.

As part of the agenda, the meeting included a “Tour de Table” session, where each member shared updates and news from their respective networks.

Tour de Table – November 2023

AABS

  • Became an official member of the European Commission Directorate-General for International Partnerships Steering Committee for Youth Mobility for Africa Flagship.
  • AABS has welcomed new members from the following new countries: Mauritius, Rwanda, Austria, Canada, Portugal, Switzerland, USA, and Cameroon.
  • The 2023 AABS African Deans and Directors Forum will take place in Mauritius from 15 to 17 November 2023, hosted by CLBS.
  • The 2024 AABS Connect Conference will take place in Johannesburg from 29 to 31 May 2024, hosted by GIBS.
  • Officially, the AABS network as of October 2023 is composed of more than 80 members.
  • AABS now has five AABS Accredited schools.
  • AACSB International
  • New CEO since June: Lily Bi. Working on a new strategic plan for the organization.
  • EMEA conference in Rome later this month, Deans Conference in Barcelona in February.
  • State of Accreditation report 2023.
  • Agreements with national QA bodies in France and Korea.

ABS Finland 

  • Student admissions is once again under discussion on national level. There is a push to decrease the number of different admission tests across the whole university field across disciplines. Business schools already have a joint admissions test to BSc level, but discussions are underway, if there is more to do. At the moment 60% of students are admitted based on their matriculation exam results and the rest based on their performance in the joint exam for the field of business administration.
  • Business schools are discussing why the gender balance is skewed towards males on the BSc level (37% of new students are female on average across the schools, ranging between 27% and 44%). On MSc level it is 57% female (between 48% and 74%)
  • The government is expanding PhD education and awarding funding for 1000 new PhD students to start their work as part of faculty on fixed term contracts. 800 places go to fields that are designated as flagship fields of the Academy of Finland and 200 are freely open to universities to submit their applications.

AMBA & BGA 

CDEFM – Conférence des Directeurs des Écoles Françaises de Management

  • 11 expert committees now working within the group – each bringing together representatives of schools across the network : Rankings -Communication – Deans – Continuing education – Pedagogical innovations – Legal & compliance – Quality & accreditation – Research – Corporate relations – International relations – Ecological and social transition
  • Upcoming dates:
  • November, the CDEFM will be heard by the French National Assembly on private for-profit education
  • November: Duo Days: For the past three years, the Bureau National des Étudiants en école de Management (BNEM) has been organizing the DuoDay in Management Schools, in collaboration with La fédé 100% handinamique (la Fédé). With DuoDay, a high-school student with a disability is welcomed by a business school student for a day to discover the courses and activities offered by our schools. The aim is twofold: to introduce high-school students to the Écoles de Management and, more broadly, to higher education, and to raise students’ awareness of disability issues, particularly by combating prejudices about disability.
  • December : Participation in the National TEDS (Ecological Transition and Sustainable Development) day in Montpellier.
  • March: webinar to present the SD&RS competency framework guidance document
  • May: Colloquium on International Relations for schools
  • Other News: 
  • Creation of a student life task force: subjects covered: promotion of student commitment and access to healthcare.
  • Translation of the DDRS competency framework into English
  • Drafting of a white paper on green/student mobility
  • Study in progress on the expectations and employability of international students (https://cdefm1.sharepoint.com/:w:/s/CDEFM-CoDexRelationsInternationales/ESdqyESqb3ZMifwZju3ynzkBHVbuio088REHYYCVRXlEsQ?e=1V5TFI)
  • Drafting of a welcome guide for international students
  • Expert committee working on the jungle of labels (explain what each label stands for, to make it easier for students and their families to understand).
  • CDEFM takes part in the Ministry’s TEDS consultation workshops on faculty training
  • Lobbying on the subject of
  • apprenticeship tax collection
  • private higher education
  • competency blocks (France Compétences and MESR)

CLADEA (Latinamerica Council of Business Schools)

  • Anual 2024 Conference – Perú , Arequipa City. 16-18 October.
  • Mexico 2025 Anual Conference Octobre.
  • Deans Workshop . Rio de Janeiro – Brazil- August
  • Centre America Networking Event , Sept 2024 , 15th.
  • Spain , 14-15 Feb 2024 , Latam Europe Academic Conection. ESIC Campus , Madrid.
  • We recieved 25 new members last week in Cordoba Argentina in  our Anual Assambly meeting. Grow to 33 Countries , including India , China and Croatia as new countries. Now having 270 Institutional members in our network.
  • New President Elected , Dr Monica Lopez , from CETYS University en México ( until 2025).
  • Our Call for papers recieved + 500 to be revised. Final resulted 250 for the annual congress.
  • Looking for new alliances to reinforce LATAM members conexion to Europe , Africa and Asia.
  • Cladea Journal is managed by Emerald Publishing- “Academia – Revista Latinoamerica de Administración” ISSN 1012-8255

EDAMBA

EFMD Global 

FNEGE 

IAE France 

  •       IAE France SD-CSR repository
  • Finalization of the SD-CSR knowledge and skills framework/repository. Previously, a very important work of aggregation of all the standards relating to sustainability and environmental transitions was carried out in order to preserve what was most relevant for the IAEs. The working bases were: Jouzel-Abbadie reports (2022), ClimatSup Business (The Shift Project, 2022), the “L’Entreprise Full-RSE” study (Enterprise Institute, FNEGE and PwC France and Maghreb , 2022), the Climate Plan (MESR, 2022), the SD and CSR Master Plan (French Ministry of HER, 2023), the framework note (French Ministry of HER, 2023), the GreenComp benchmarks (European Union, 2022), INRS (2022) , CDEFM (2023) and UVED (in progress).
  • This prerequisite work allowed the working group to identify areas not present in the repositories and yet essential for management sciences. Two versions were produced, one for general public distribution, the other for internal distribution to support all IAEs in their environmental transition projects. The objective is to enable each IAE to play its essential role in shaping a better future by training a new generation of leaders and managers aware of sustainability issues and capable of making informed decisions for a more sustainable future.
  • This framework is currently in the internal validation process and must receive final validation in mid-November before full communication.
  •       IAE France Educational resource center
  • Development of an educational resource center for DDRS with the same approach. Identification of existing resources and creation of additional resources by IAE France and the Digital University dedicated to Management, AUNEGe.
  •       IAE France Annual Conference
  • Preparation of the IAE France community Confernece, organized every two years, AGORA IAE FRANCE 2024, which must focus on the impacts of IAEs for societal transitions

UNL – Universities of The Netherlands 

  • For students, a renewed grant system was reinstalled this year after a 8-year period of a loan system that did not work out properly for students. During the loan system, many students created huge debts that after their studies hampered them to  start building up their lives e.g. by limited options for getting a mortgage for buying a house. The new reintroduced grant system will give them more options.
  • Once again, political discussions are held on the intake of international students at Universities. Many parties feel that intakes are currently too high, from a finance point of view but also for practical housing reasons. Universities should have more room for controlling the numbers, but also new rules and financial incentives should prohibit further growth or even decline of international student intake. There is pressure to return to Dutch spoken programmes as a default with English spoken tracks as an option.
  • Dutch universities take a more critical stance towards global university rankings. Rankings are still viewed as important instruments to be able to determine ones place among the world’s top universities and serve as potential powerful recruitment instruments, but the current ranking methodologies are not seen anymore as doing justice to the breadth of work that universities do. As a consequence, universities will be using these rankings less frequently, and will contribute to the development of – multidimensional – alternatives.
  • The Council of dean’s economics and business (representing the 14 schools of economics and business) has published a joint impact agenda with an open access booklet in September 2023. Title: The Challenges of Transition. Economics and Business Science for Sustainable Prosperity. Fulltext is here: https://zenodo.org/records/10019977. The launch was accompanied with a “dean’s impact forum” on 22 september 2023. Link to the linkedin post by the chair Prof Peter Verhoef on the event: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peter-verhoef-96b59a3_yesterday-we-had-our-second-impact-forum-activity-7118674692781039616-g5Zr/

WEBINAR – EQUAL Meet the Expert Series

Join us for this first edition of EQUAL Meet the Expert Series!

Integrating sustainability/social responsibility into our business schools has become an imperative. Doing this spans a wide range of stakeholders and activities: students, faculty, staff, curriculum, governance, norms and regulations, impact, our broader ecosystems (alumni, corporate partners, and other stakeholders)… Many schools face challenges on how to proceed while many best practices exist to be shared. AT EQUAL Network we are convinced that this is a collective endeavor and that the more these best practices can be shared, the stronger the collective progress will be.

In this very first edition of the EQUAL Meet the Expert Series, in collaboration with EFMD Global, we invite Willem Fourie, Founder of South African SDG Hub, Associate Professor, University Pretoria, to share his views on the SDGs and their place in management education.

REGISTER NOW and be part of this important discussion.

This free webinar is open to all EQUAL members and their membership. 

COVID-19, Updates and Activities in the Network

We at EQUAL Network are aware of and closely monitoring the Coronavirus pandemic situation in Europe.

Europe & the whole globe, our countries, our university systems and networks, our institutions and ourselves are going through very unusual, challenging and difficult times.

EQUAL Network brings together associations and communities in Management Education and Research and plays the role of a central and sharing node of those networks. Would you have resources for our communities on how you are coping with this unusual situation, please do not hesitate to share. Many of us are moving from face-to-face to online teaching, from collective work to work-from-home with e-solutions, from conferences and events projects to new solutions for research production and dissemination.

We hope we all can learn from one another and share experiences.

Stay safe and take care,

Jérôme Rive, EQUAL Chair & Andrzej Popadiuk, EQUAL Vice-Chair

List updated on 20 April 2020

EFMD established a temporary space on the EFMD blog, where business schools, L&D providers, organizations or individuals can share their experience, examples of best practice or resources they’d like to circulate within the EFMD community. For activities and events, you can follow this link to see updates on all EFMD activities.  Below are a few upcoming offerings you might be interested in.

GMAC has a dedicated webpage for all updates happening in its activities.  The online interim GMAT™ exam will be launched in mid-April, for more information please refer to this webpage.

SET Project: Student Evaluations of Teaching, Measuring and Enhancing Course Quality and Teaching Quality

This research conducted by Ad Scheepers, SET Project: Student Evaluations of Teaching, Measuring and Enhancing Course Quality and Teaching Quality, shows that student evaluation should be viewed as a process, as a cycle. One of the important steps in this cycle is the interpretation of the data, and that obviously depends on the aim identified when constructing the instrument. This can go from improving the teaching, quality assurance or appraising teachers.

The literature review allowed to pull out some interesting recommendations on each of the SET process stages. Most of the previous studies do not focus on the whole SET process but are fragmented. The main concerns centred around reliability, validity, and bias.

During the field study, current practices were studied in 50 European and non-European business schools for the different SET process stages. The main conclusions on establishing a good practice are:

  • Use a multidimensional instrument for assessing teaching effectiveness and quality rather than one global measure.
  • Do not make the questionnaire too complicated and use core dimensions and a minimal number of items per dimension to guarantee reliability. This will also increase response rates.
  • Check reliability regularly and systematically. This will also counter bias.
  • Response rates are a big concern, but it does not have to be problematic. Either the sample should be sufficiently representative or SET should be made mandatory and an integral part of a course or module.
  • When SET is used for HR purposes, such as tenure and promotion, additional sources of information should be available and used.
  • The quality of SET will greatly improve if SET is seen as a process with linked, coherent stages, and when it forms a closed loop. One ‘actor’ should be appointed as accountable for the whole process.

The findings of the research as well as full project report are noted in the recent project report.

See more EQUAL supported projects here and do not hesitate to contact us regarding suggestions of important topics or questions related to quality and business education.

Project: Entrepreneurship Education in Business Schools – France

The Entrepreneurship Education in Business Schools: Best practices and recommendations project aims to address the gap between the growing number of entrepreneurship initiatives in Business Schools in Europe and the lack of guidance on how to support this type of education. In addition, it attempts to promote processes of creative research and innovation that must be the base of the future of business education. Among others, the main goal of this project is to provide guidelines for business schools on improving entrepreneurship education.

The first phase of the project, led by Chartered ABS and Asociación Española de Escuelas de Dirección de Empresa (AEEDE), covered literature review, the methodology of the research, and focused on Spain. The second phase is now presenting the research on French Business Schools, which was led by Chapitre des Écoles de Management of Cenferénce des Grandes Écoles (CGE). It looks into the practices and methods of the Entrepreneurship education in three business schools in France: South Champagne Business School (SCBS), EDC de Paris, and Toulouse Business School (TBS). The methodology is based on a qualitative approach, including secondary data collection and qualitative interviews with entrepreneurship managers from the Business Schools.

The findings of the research as well as recommendations for entrepreneurship education are noted in the recent project report.

To better understand the entrepreneurship education practices in Europe, currently, the third part of the project addressing Business Schools in Italy is ongoing under the lead of Associazione Italiana per la Formazione Manageriale (ASFOR).

See more EQUAL supported projects here and do not hesitate to contact us regarding suggestions of important topics or questions related to quality and business education.

Project: Management and Leadership Development Needs in Dynamic Societies

A recent CEEMAN-led project, Management and Leadership Development Needs in Dynamic Societies, which was supported by EQUAL, aimed to enhance the collaborative approach between education and business sector. The research focused on one of Business Schools’ stakeholders: the business sector and its needs in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The societal, political and economic changes in Central and Eastern Europe and South Africa in the past 25 years led to numerous business challenges for companies in the region. CEEMAN has recently concluded an exploratory study on the major current and future summons, which conducted by Danica Purg, Alenka Braček Lalić and Jennifer Pope. The authors address the following challenges: demographic trends and political instability, the fourth industrial revolution, changing customers’ behaviours and needs and a more competitive environment.

The study analyses the companies’ responses in order to identify the skills gap and consequently formulates recommendations on how management education can help to close that gap.

Findings of the two-year exploratory study were published by Springer in a book titled Business and Society – Making Management Education Relevant for the 21st Century.

The book also contains country chapters to dig deeper into the particular issues and needs in the participating countries. Featuring an extensive research study, it offers a unique perspective on the business challenges and developmental needs of companies in emerging and recently emerged economies, and on the missing links between those needs and management education.

The findings of the research as well as recommendations both for management education and the business sector have been published by Springer. For more information, please refer to CEEMAN.

See more EQUAL supported projects here and do not hesitate to contact us regarding suggestions of important topics or questions related to quality and business education.

Join the 2018 Management Week in Paris from 22-25 May & celebrate the 50th anniversary of FNEGE

The 4 day event organized by FNEGE in collaboration with the Scientific Management Associations, aims to bring together the entire management community and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Foundation, created in May 1968.

Academic and professional conferences and debates will be held throughout the week, as well as meetings (Pépite France, IAE France, CGE, Directors of establishment), and the FNEGE day on Thursday 24 May with a Gala Dinner and presentation of the FNEGE awards.

EQUAL celebrates its 20th anniversary!

Video-statement by Professor Eric Waarts, EQUAL vice-chair

EQUAL: Quality always wins – 20 years of Impact on Improving the Quality of Education

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