Business School Briefing: time hacks, new deans, MBA tuition costs

Welcome to Business School Briefing. We offer you insights from Andrew Hill and Jonathan Moules, and the pick of top stories being read in business schools. Edited by Wai Kwen Chan and Andrew Jack.

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Andrew Hill’s management challenge

Companies’ obsession with how to reorganise their office space for hybrid work is blinding them to the real challenge: how to reorganise workers’ limited time.

In my column this week, I look at some of the ways in which organisations could help their staff use their time more productively and more creatively. For my management challenge, I’d like to hear your “time hacks” — the ways in which you have learnt during lockdown to squeeze more useful hours into the day. Send your ideas to [email protected].

In further reading, my appetite for more stories about Kodak – a company whose fall I analysed in 2012 was piqued by Bonnie Jones’s fascinating look at the revival in celluloid film for The Believe magazine. It has plenty to say about the differences between top-down management (or direction) and more inclusive directorial styles, encouraged by the use of digital techniques. Purists may wish for a return to Kodak-made celluloid, the article points out, but “the expansion of digital has had a democratising influence not only on sets but also in the wider world by opening film to new stories, storytellers, and storytelling techniques”.

Jonathan Moules’ business school news

Oxford and Cambridge are usually in the news at this time of year for the annual rowing event down London’s River Thames, the boat race. This year, both have been involved in another contest – to find new deans for their business schools – and this month Cambridge Judge came out in front, announcing the appointment of Wharton professor Mauro Guillén as its next director.

Oxford’s Said Business School has got ahead in another regard, re-opening its campus for the MBA class, but only for the full-time MBA programme, and only in a Covid-19 secure way. The move, which comes weeks before the planned lifting of lockdown restrictions for higher education establishments in England, was in part due to lobbying from student representatives of the current MBA class.

Wondering how the world will look post-Covid is still a source of uncertainty, so for my recommended reading suggestion this week I would like to propose the following essay by London Business School professor Julian Birkinshaw, When Will Everything Get Back to Normal? Spoiler alert: It won’t.

Data line

In the FT’s Global MBA 2021 ranking, the top 14 business schools (in tier one) reported their average tuition costs were twice that of schools that were ranked in tier three, says Sam Stephens. However, alumni that studied at a school in tier one reported an average salary of $177,794, over $50,000 more than alumni that studied at a school ranked in tier three. Further analysis relating to FT’s Global MBA 2021 ranking can be found here.

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Top business school reads

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‘We are trapped’: residents hit with soaring charges at luxury London homes
FT investigation: Property developer Ballymore under fire over surging annual costs and maintenance issues

The brutal third act of Vladimir Putin
After eras of prosperity and patriotism, Russia’s president is now ramping up repression to hold on to power

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