Book Review: Business Exposed

During my MBA, students were forever keen to sign up for finance MBA electives believing these would make them stronger managers. However, the older, more experienced executive MBAs would instead sign up for the organizational behaviour classes. Being not too keen on finance myself, I joined them.

They had realized something that the younger MBA students hadn’t yet figured out; that business is not just about numbers, it is ultimately about people and the more you understand how to motivate and manage people, the better.

Freek Vermeulen’s book explores just that. An associate professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School, Vermeulen points out at the beginning of the book, “This isn’t a business book…it is a book about business.”

Rather than being a how-to book, setting out what to do if you want to make it big in business, Business Exposed takes the reader on a whirlwind tour, exposing the surprising and sometimes appalling realities of how business decisions are actually made.

“Because the world of business isn’t always what it pretends to be, things aren’t as rational, well-organized and well-oiled as we’re told they are.”

Vermeulen explores this and many other topics relating to business, questioning popular management decisions from adopting management tools that claim to increase efficiency, to downsizing as a way of saving money. Each story is short, easy to follow, with strong messages that are backed up with research and insights developed through his experiences.

Much of what he brings out in these stories is about how managers and CEOs make decisions on a day to day basis that often have nothing to do with facts or proven methods, such as the tools learnt in finance class. Rather, successful managers and CEOs make these decisions based on gut feeling, fear of being excluded and other very human traits. The result, according to Vermeulen, is that a lot of businesses simply imitate each other and don’t question the status quo for fear of taking risks.

Monkey management 

To illustrate his point, Vermeulen starts his book off with a story about monkeys. Five monkeys are placed in a locked cage with a banana hanging from the ceiling and a ladder placed right underneath it.

Understandably, one monkey runs straight for the ladder and is, along with the other four monkeys in the cage, instantly sprayed with ice cold water. This happens every time a monkey tries to climb the ladder so they stop trying.

Slowly over time, one by one the monkeys are replaced with new monkeys. Each time a new monkey enters the cage they go straight to the ladder. However before they can get to the ladder they are prevented by the other monkeys who know that they will be sprayed with ice-cold water. Soon none of the original monkeys are left in the cage, but still none of them will touch the ladder. None of them know why, or even try anymore.

This behaviour is not reserved just to monkeys in a cage.

In 1712, British newspapers came to be taxed on the number of pages published. To save money, editors decided to make the large pages that we find in broadsheet newspapers today (and which can be very tricky to read, especially in tight spots like trains or buses).

This tax was eliminated in 1855, but despite being considerably more expensive to print the large pages, the format persisted. Why? No one else changed for fear that that wasn’t what the customer wanted, until a few years ago when the free newspaper entered the industry using a smaller page format. Following this the other London newspapers soon followed, seeing sales figures surge.

 21st century management

With the use of case studies, the author tells us how whenever given the chance to quiz executives about their management practices and why they chose to pursue them, the answer was often along the lines of “everybody in our business does it this way, and everybody has always been doing it like this; if this wasn’t the best way to do things, I am sure it would have disappeared by now.”

Although sometimes a little US-centric, the book contains a wealth of short, easy to read stories such as these. Presented in a light-hearted way, it succeeds in bringing up some really important flaws in the way business works. The book is packed with interesting information and shows that a lot of what we assume to be fact in business is actually myth, and a lot of myth is actually fact.

For that reason it is an interesting read for business school students or anyone interested in going into business. It does something that perhaps business education in schools doesn’t do enough of; encourage future managers to question age old methods that are no longer significant to the 21st century.

-          Giselle Weybrecht, author of The Sustainable MBA

Higher education in Africa is internationalising - slowly

Higher education in Africa has been internationalising, driven by student mobility, the growth of English and an array of initiatives including the creation of regional bodies and networks and improved internet connectivity. But outside of South Africa, lack of strategies and the many challenges facing higher education are hampering its growth.

This is according to James Otieno Jowi, Executive Director of the African Network for Internationalisation of Education, based at Moi University in Kenya. He was speaking at the 1st QS-MAPLE conference held in Dubai from 1-2 May.

With the role of universities in sustainable development widely acknowledged, and in the context of globalisation, internationalisation has gained a central position in higher education with varying implications and consequences for different regions and institutions, Jowi said.

Initiatives to promote internationalisation in Africa have been increasing, with the key actors including government departments and agencies, regional organisations, NGOs and "regional university associations and research networks which continue to flourish across the continent more than ever before".

Jowi said internationalisation was also being driven by new developments in the higher education landscape in Africa. These include:

* Rapid expansion of higher education, especially in numbers of students, institutions and their types, actors and the diversity of academic programmes.
* Increasing mobility of students across national boundaries, making African students among the most mobile in the world.
* The growing role of the English language in academic engagements, especially in countries that have been using other languages for scholarship.
* Improved information and communication technologies, especially internet connectivity, which has changed how universities, students and staff participate in internationalisation.
* Growth of regional networks and programmes has played a "crucial" role in supporting internationalisation.
* Greater interest in and support of African higher education by international partners.
* Increasing intra-Africa initiatives including centres of excellence, quality assurance frameworks, enhanced collaborations between universities, and attempts to harmonise academic programmes.

However, Jowi told University World News, universities in most African countries have dealt with internationalisation in an "ad hoc, non-coordinated and non-coherent way. This makes the objectives and outcomes unclear." There has also been lack of dialogue about the realities and consequences of internationalisation.

This is a void that Jowi's African Network for Internationalisation of Education has been trying to fill. ANIE's main role is to enhance understanding, advocacy and development of the international dimension of higher education on the continent by expanding knowledge and building and sustaining a cohort of competent professionals in this field.

Aside from a messy approach to internationalisation in most Sub-Saharan African countries, Jowi said, progress has also been impeded by problems faced by higher education.

"As such, there are numerous and multifaceted concerns, challenges and risks associated with the process of internationalisation," he said, which have raised questions over its potential on the continent.

"Africa encounters internationalisation engulfed in weaknesses that emanate from the confluence of historical, economic, educational, financial and paradigmatic contexts," Jowi explained, including serious institutional drawbacks such as weak structures and capacities, poor planning and inadequate financial support for internationalisation.

"Quality and weak regulatory frameworks is another challenge and is at the epicenter of internationalisation. Africa's research capacity is also quite marginal, standing at a meager 1% of the world's total. African higher education has continued to depend heavily on external resources in both funding and academic discourse."

"Africa's higher education remains at the margins of international higher education systems with neither a meaningful identity nor influence. As intra-Africa internationalisation initiatives begin to take root, supportive policy frameworks to facilitate student mobility and credit transfers are still problematic.

"And even though there are some improvements, ICT infrastructure and utilisation is still rather low," he continued.

Further, internationalisation came with attendant risks for Africa including the brain drain, commodification and commercialisation of higher education, unfair collaborations dominated by Western hegemony and lack of reciprocity, and negative influences on curriculum and academic quality especially through 'bogus' foreign providers.

Still, internationalisation offered opportunities for African higher education that could be used to mitigate some of the challenges and risks.

While the goals for internationalisation varied among regions, countries and institutions, African universities saw significant academic advantages including opportunities for funding, partnerships and new intra-Africa initiatives and developments in higher education.

"They would like to enhance their research capacity, improve quality and have innovations in curriculum that would contribute to better learning outcomes," Jowi told University World News. "They also see internationalisation as important in enabling them to develop their physical infrastructures and human resource capacity, and to forge strategic allowances.

"Internationalisation is also crucial in preparing globally competent graduates and enhances the visibility and international standing of institutions, especially in this era of rankings. In the long run, it will enable institutions to be more competitive and able to better respond to challenges in their contexts."

-          Karen MacGregor