Angel Cabrera

New blogging adventure

With renewed energy I've decided to embark in a new blogging adventure... a discussion on global leadership and how global leaders can be made. 

Check it out at http://newsandopinions.thunderbird.edu/leaders/

Part of Thunderbird's new Knowledge Network.

The world is not as flat as it seems

If there is a phrase that sums up this year's meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, it would certainly be "the world is flat".  There seemed to be no way around it.  Every single session or debate had to begin with a reference to Thomas Friedman's bestseller.  And inevitably, every single time I saw myself growing increasingly skeptical about the whole notion.  I can see how a visit to Bangalore and Shanghai can make one think that barriers are falling down and that the global competitive field is leveling off.  And yet, whether that was Friedman's intention or not, I keep hearing his quote as a resurrection of discussions in the 80s about the emergence of a global market where consumer preferences, brands and cultural habits would appear to be converging into one uniform and harmonious global village/market.

Nothing further from the truth. Inter-connectivity has led to increased mutual awareness.  And mutual awareness has amplified, not reduced, differences.  At a time where a clumsy cartoon in Denmark can jump start a political earthquake four thousand miles away, I find it hard to buy the whole flattening idea.  The world is not flat.  But rather rugged, uneven, filled with natural and man-made barriers, mountains, rivers, valleys, walls, borders.  I can't see a most certain recipe for failure in the global market place than subscribing the flatness view of the world.  On the contrary, successful business leaders need to be able to understand differences, to navigate uneven playing fields, to leverage diversity.

Think the world is flat?  Be ready for a stumble!

(Download el_mundo_no_es_tan_plano_como_parece.pdf , an op-ed piece in Spanish on this subject).

Football and the flattening of the world

Back in Davos, having the most unlikely conversations with the most unlikely people.  This morning, a panel of soccer executives, social entrepreneurs and the inevitable Pele, are addressing the role this universal sport plays in our complex world.  Soccer is far from perfect... doping, violence and corruption cast a shadow over the sport... yet, it is hard to think of any other activity that so clearly brings people together... a universal sport, a universal following, a universal method to channel rivalry and competitiveness.  The story of the Homless Woldcup, established by Mel Young to bring hope to homeless and hopeless individuals from around the world shows it all. Quite surprising that it took so long for the world of soccer to join the world debates in Davos. 

My article with David Bowen about the need to treat global management as a true profession was finally printed by the Journal of Management Development (vol. 24, no. 9, 2005, 791-806) and can be accessed on line following this link.  The article appears as part of a special issue on the state and future of business education, edited by EFMD's general manager Eric Cornuel, with very interesting articles among others by my colleagues and friends Gabriel Hawawini (INSEAD) and Peter Lorrange (IMD). 
 

Nanotechnology

My friends at the Bankinter Foundation have been kind enough to invite me again to the Future Trends Forum, this time focused on the emerging and amazing field of nanotechnology. Under the crisp and chilling sky of Madrid, we're having the privilege to learn about the "world of the tiny" from some of the world's scientific leaders.  For starters, scientists don't seem to agree as to whether this whole nano-frenzy is indeed a new scientific discipline, or just another sexy label for the same old thing physicists and chemists have been doing for years.  Leaving their turfs aside, it appears to me that we're venturing into an amazing world of possibilities... the applications that are being envisioned in material science, electronics, energy or health care are just mind-boggling!  Prof. Feynman saw it all coming back in '59 when he predicted "there's plenty of room at the bottom"... I wonder if he even imagined what was about to come.

The Dalai Lama and individual responsibility

What a treat it was to have the Dalai Lama visit us at Thunderbird.   His views on the interconnectedness of the world, as well as the power of kindness and compassion left its mark with the whole Thunderbird community.  I have never met anyone that conveys so much positive energy around him as the Dalai Lama.  Some skeptics wondered what a "Buddhist Monk" (as he describes himself) could possibly teach to business students.  I think no one asked that question after the presentation was over.  The Dalai Lama delivered one of the most powerful and relevant lectures that many of us have ever received.  Check out a summary and complete video of the conference at the Thunderbird website.

Global Businesses Need Global Causes

Corporate social responsibility, citizenship and philanthropy can make perfect business sense.  They can help build a more competitive environment as well as strengthen the reputation of the organization and its brands.  But global companies trying to build global brands need to do more than just engaging in good social causes.  They need to engage in the worthiest global causes.  By doing so, not only they will be contributing to a more competitive global playing field, they will also strengthen their reputations as committed global citizens.  Here are some thoughts on how companies can help achieve the Millenium Development Goals and benefit from it!  Download global_companies_need_global_causes.pdf

Geneva, London, Madrid and no votes

I arrived to Europe last week.  A board meeting and alumni meeting in Geneva (boy do these T-Birds know how to have a good time!!!!), a few meetings in London and then to Madrid, to the Future Trends Forum organized by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation.  Within two weeks, voters in France and the Netherlands slapped their political leaders in the face with a loud "No" to the so-called new European Constitution (actually a treaty).  I'm still struggling to interpret what's happening around Europe... but a significant number of citizens seem to think that their leaders have grown out of sync with them.  Interestingly, some still insist that the "no" votes were misinformed, or that they were misguided by narrow national politics as opposed to the more "enlightened" and future oriented issues our fearless leaders care about.  Like my friend Jose Maria de Areilza recently wrote in EL PAIS, to some arrogant political figures, the referenda were more an intelligence test with only one possible (and correct!) answer than a true and open polling of people's opinions.  I hope they know get the point.

Meanwhile, Switzerland voted yes to the Schengen agreement, which will abolish some of the remaining border checks in the heart of Western Europe.  A message that, while we continue to define where Europe is heading, Europeans are by no means reverting to an isolationist past.

MBA Bashing, the latest management fad

Following the steps of Pfeffer, Mintzberg and others, Profs. Bennis and O'Toole just joined the ranks of insider critics bashing the management education establishment (see their piece "How business schools lost their way" at HBR, May 2005).  Management education may not be perfect, but the fatal flaws attributed by these authors may not only be unfair, they may provide support to current trends that threat to weaken what I consider one of the most important professional disciplines of our times.  Here's a summary of some counterarguments by my colleague Prof. David Bowen and myself in an upcoming article discussing the professionalization of management education.Download jmecabrera_bowen.pdf

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Bennis and O’Toole are right to advocate stronger ties between management education and practice. But they make an unfair assessment of the achievements of business education and research in the last decades. Even worse, if left unchecked, their recommendations may contribute to a “de-professionalization” of management, quite the contrary to what they claim to pursue.

Bennis and O’Toole erroneously circumscribe the scientific method to what they call basic “academic disciplines” and exclude it from “professional disciplines” like medicine, law or management. Yet, medical practice draws not just from scientific advances in the basic disciplines, but from research in the very practice of the medical profession. This is not very different from what management scholars do when they test the effectiveness of a management practice across firms in a given industry.

Professional practice is not incompatible with the scientific method. Good science helps us build and adjust a powerful toolset to the service of the practicing professional. To reduce management to a question of personal judgment not susceptible of scientific inquiry does not only ignore the accumulation of relevant and informative research that is available to date, it is also a disservice to the future quality of management as a profession. Bennis and O’Toole do make the disclaimer that not all science is to be ruled out, but their straw man analysis of current management research risks being utilized to justify and legitimize vocational versions of management education that will not contribute to improving the service of business to society. Management research is relatively new and immature compared with medical research. But this means that we need more and better research, not less.

The world’s leading accrediting body, AACSB now grants schools significant flexibility to interpret research standards and instructor qualifications. EFMD, its European counterpart, has long recognized alternative ways to interpret “research”, perhaps to accommodate the relatively low research productivity of the average European school rather than to defend a still unclear alternative model of knowledge creation and validation. Both these moves may be weakening management as a profession, rather than strengthening it.

Management educators will surely benefit by engaging with professional managers. At Thunderbird (as in many other leading business schools around the world) faculty members are encouraged (and rewarded) to engage with corporations through executive education, advising and case writing, in addition to their own academic (and unashamedly scientific) research. The more connected instructors are with real practice, the more relevant and useful their instruction will be. But just like there is absolutely no systemic incompatibility between rigor and relevance in management research, there is no incompatibility either between solid research and engagement in management practice.  We need more of both, not one at the expense of the other.

For management to grow as a true profession it needs, first of all, a solid knowledge base that is both scientifically sound and instrumental for practice, and this can and should be done through a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods, multidisciplinary frameworks, grounded theory, case research, validity generalization studies, etc.. Second, the management industry needs to protect some minimum requirements for those interested in practicing it, by among other things strengthening instruction and instructor accreditation standards for business schools. And finally, the management community (schools, accrediting bodies, scientific communities and professional associations) needs to explicitly accept its overarching social purpose and articulate a set of core values and principles. Management more than ever needs to build and adopt its own “Hippocratic Oath” that will set its moral foundations of a true professional discipline.

Townhall meeting in Davos

One of the most inteteresting novelties this year at Davos was a townhall meeting that tried to capture the collective concerns of participants.  What are the big issues  that affect the world?  What are the priorities?  What are the challenges?  After half a day of work, I was relieved to see how Davos participants (a sample of the richest and most powerful individuals in the world) to a great extent share the priorities set by the UN as the most important issues.  Check out the outcomes of the townhall meeting on pdf, or some brief thoughts about them in an article of mine in Das Tor, the newspaper of the students of Thunderbird.