Responsible business education, MBA destinations, top reads

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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Special Report: Responsible Business Education
Business schools are being urged to integrate ESG topics in core courses, as well as foster diversity among their faculty and students. Are they succeeding? The FT’s special report into Responsible Business Education is a multi-part series.

FT business books: April edition
From resetting ideas around how we work to productive disagreement — here are this month’s top titles.

Andrew Hill’s management challenge

“Connectionist” pioneers of artificial intelligence suggest computers will develop to be able to learn human behaviour. This is the future imagined by Kazuo Ishiguro in his new novel Klara and the Sun: automation has already displaced many high-level professionals: some have grudgingly accepted the inevitable; others are clinging on to their careers as the robots advance.

As I write in this week’s column, managing this transition successfully will require precautions, policies, preparation — and a sense of perspective. For my management challenge, try your hand at some science fiction. Imagine a utopian workplace of the future in which workers and machines live happily ever after. No novels, please — at most the outline of a story — sent to [email protected].

In further reading, to celebrate the launch of this year’s FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award — and its sister Bracken Bower Prize, which provides a platform for young business writers — we have published a list of post-pandemic titles recommended by business authors. They range from the forthcoming Doom, by Niall Ferguson, to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Cheer up: it may never happen.

Jonathan Moules’ business school news

Diversity is an ongoing challenge for all sorts of workplaces, which makes it of relevance for business schools. Are the educators succeeding in practising what they teach? Find out by reading the FT’s responsible business education report.

Green policies are another global challenge engaging business school faculty. Research by Willy Legrand, a professor of hospitality management at IUBH business school, reported in the FT, found that only one of the nine largest international hotel chains have adopted measures in line with the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance to meet the Paris intergovernmental climate agreement.

In other business education news, the University of Michigan Ross School of Business is looking for a new dean after Scott DeRue announced in an email to alumni, staff and students that he will be leaving on May 23. DeRue, who is coming to the end of a five-year term, said he will take up a senior executive position in the private sector, but gave no other details about the role.

My recommended reading this week comes back to the issue of diversity. It is an interview with Bukola Adisa, founder of Career Masterclass, a business that advises companies on how they can better include black, Asian and minority ethnic women and why doing so makes good business sense.

Data line

About half of alumni from the top 14 business schools in the FT’s Global MBA 2021 ranking work in finance/banking, consultancy and IT, three years after graduation, says Sam Stephens. Generally, these are the three most popular career sectors for MBA graduates.

Ranked business schools were divided into four tiers, with the top 14 schools in the first group. Schools in tiers one and two have an average score higher than those in groups three and four.

Schools that did not make the top 100 table had the lowest percentage of alumni going into one of the top three sectors. Further analysis relating to the FT’s Global MBA 2021 ranking can be found here.

Top business school reads

Credit Suisse Group AG Add to myFT Credit Suisse removes senior executives after $4.7bn Archegos losses Investment bank and risk chiefs set to depart as lender slashes dividend after Greensill fallout

US offers new plan in global corporate tax talks Exclusive: Biden proposal calls for big multinationals to pay national levies based on local sales

UK advises under-30s to take offer of alternative to AstraZeneca vaccine European regulator also establishes link between jabs and rare blood clots

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