By Professor Randall Carolissen
MBA programmes need to embrace uncertainty, placing agility, creativity, digital savviness, and sustainability at its core to be responsive to the leadership paradigms of the future.
On 15 November 2022 the earth’s population would have reached 8 billion marking a drastic slowdown in growth with expected global population plateauing at about 10 million by 2050.
Much of this is attributed to less than replacement (2 per woman) global fertility rates. This aggregation, though, masks severe geographical distortions and power imbalances.
According to the United Nations, 1.5-billion people will be over the age of 65 by 2050, most of whom are residing in developed countries.
These demographic peculiarities will be manifested in exacerbation of global risks such as climate change, cybersecurity, and geopolitical conflicts.
There is an emerging consensus that all leaders must strive to increase institutional resilience to contend growing incidences of black swan events.
The 2008 financial crisis and the Covid 19 pandemic are not isolated events but the triggering of social forces unable to contend with a world that is overpopulated and severely out of sync with nature.
Much of Africa’s brain drain phenomenon is attributed to socio-economic slumps, intractable crime levels, deteriorating infrastructure and rampant corruption.
Media reports of highly skilled professionals emigrating en masse compounds this gloomy picture and adds to the despair with which Africa is often associated.
However, the brain drain discussion can also be viewed as a rebalancing of the globe’s skills shortage, which may have potential gains for developing nations.
South Africa, and much of the continent, has a population with an average age of 19 as compared with the world average of 43. It is therefore only logical that the rest of the world will look at talented African youth to fill in the skills gap and sustain social and pension fund liquidity.
This anticipated surge in youth immigration will add to the export of local expertise and may eventuate in significant repatriation of funds and economic benefit for developing nations.
The silver bullet would be to fully develop and exploit this significant endowment of the youth dividend. We will have to wait and see.
It is in this context societally focussed MBA programme engendering skills fit for future leaders remains a valuable asset for any South African looking to unlock opportunities at home and abroad.
Highly skilled workers need to be trained in a way that they will be able to manage and protect the planet.
That means the MBA programme will need to be redesigned to develop future-fit leaders with the requisite agility, analytical skills, an ability to combine creativity with design, and sufficient technological savviness to be tomorrow’s change agents.
If we are to reduce poverty and inequality and reach net-zero carbon emissions by the middle of the 21st century, future-fit leaders with empathy, understanding and an appreciation of the impact of reckless planet management are needed. They need to view humankind and the Earth as inseparable.
Redesigning the MBA to improve accessibility
Future-fit leaders can come from anywhere. The problem is that a limited number South Africans have access or can afford to enrol at business schools.
Today, many programmes still require students to physically attend class, and this means incurring the extra expenses of flights and accommodation. The pandemic accelerated the need for virtual programmes and accelerated deployment of technology to enhance delivery and pedagogy.
Thanks to quality connectivity, virtual classrooms and recorded lessons, the Online MBA collapsed time and space, reaching candidates in far off urban and rural areas. In doing so, the JBS began chipping away at the MBA’s reputation as exclusive to city-bound elites.
The JBS carousel system is a novel response allowing students to work at their own pace .
They can hop-on and hop-off when they need to, and they can register per module with flexible payment options. The innovative coaching system provides students access to experienced business people that can help them along their MBA journey. Despite this facility to drop off in between modules, our retention rate for online studies remains above 90%, well above typical online rates.
So far, it has attracted more than hundreds of students from five provinces and abroad, including Spain, Canada, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, and several other African countries.
Designing an MBA that is relevant for the future
The question of the MBA’s relevance rears repeatedly. The likes of Elon Musk further intensified this doubt by saying it did not teach people to think and that too many MBA graduates were running corporations and therefore harming the business sector.
But the argument for the MBA’s worth can be made, especially when it intends to create future-fit leaders.
In South Africa, an MBA degree still gives professionals a leg-up in the corporate arena. It can future-proof careers and personal finances within a tumultuous economy. And it can open-up prospects within South Africa and abroad.
But while these are the immediate concerns of any student, the greater question is whether the MBA can address the most urgent national and global challenges of today. These include ineffective leadership in a digital future, social and ecological sustainability, and inequality.
An effective MBA course can address these concerns. And in the South African context, it can help create a pool of initiative-takers who can reverse the current crisis of leadership. For a long time, we had to endure leaders who lack the imagination and grit to navigate an increasingly chaotic environment. Our future leaders will need to have the skills to put the house in order.
JBS equipping students with the right tools
When designing the course, the JBS team asked themselves what type of leader South Africa needs in the future. The answer was a future-fit individual who could grow with the times.
What is needed is a redesign of the MBA offering.
Just over a decade ago, MBAs were designed according to a Newtonian paradigm. Predictability, order, norms, and standards were highly valued. Today, this paradigm is outdated.
The programme must be redesigned along Einsteinian lines of thought. We have to embrace chaos, unpredictability, and complexity. Living with Covid-19 for the last two years has demonstrated this.
In keeping with the Einsteinian paradigm, The Johannesburg Business School (JBS) launched the Online MBA in 2021 that would allow any South African access to a world class programme.
Moreover, the Online MBA is an Afro-centric course that equips students with a sharp method of inquiry and gets them to understand the political and the financial systems that drive this world. It recognises that African expertise can solve real-world problems and that we are poised to rebalance the globe’s skills shortage.
The programme links students to the approximately 2,000 entrepreneurs at the University of Johannesburg’s Enterprise Development Centre. Their practical work is being used to solve the problems these businesses face. Entrepreneurs have already seen a significant difference in their turnover since collaborating with the MBA students.
The JBS is also linking MBA students to a virtual marketplace so that they can trade with each other, access funding, technology, accreditation with SABS and markets. This integrated value chain approach allows them to run a fluid enterprise, going between corporate and entrepreneur depending on the situation and further authenticated access to government procurement.
The course is the only one on the African continent with digital transformation at its core and describes the intent; technologically savvy leaders that are effective change agents. This focus on digital makes the Online MBA the go-to course for corporates, entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to equip the skills needed to thrive today and in the future.
Professor Randall Carolissen is the Dean of the Johannesburg Business School.
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