Plenary sessions and discussions as well as round-table meetings on relevant topics featuring high-profile guests have all been held within the framework of the event. The conference participants had an opportunity to have a direct dialogue with moderators and speakers representing top-management of leading business schools.
Stakeholders of business education have shared ideas and case-studies, drawing on their experience. Sergei Myasoyedov, director of Institute of Business Administration at RANEPA, Russia’s flagship business school under university, President of the Russian Association of Business Education, has said that a lack of programmes in English is a big problem. Such programmes add up to just 2-3% in the portfolio of Russian business schools. The other challenge was that the majority of teachers are either good teachers, or have a full command of the English language; rarely will one find a balance of the two. The same is applicable to Kazakh business schools, too.
S. Myasoyedov added that IAB was a truly an outstanding phenomenon of not only national but also international level: «This is a school which, like many other business schools, virtually didn’t exist 25 years ago. It has now blasted off like a rocket. A team of faculty, experts and specialists in business education have gathered together around the school. It has an excellent reputation within Kazakhstan and neighbouring countries; it receives international accreditations and global ratings. But what appeals to me the most is that IAB is a very young university. One can always see young faces among the faculty and staff. Besides that, these are trilingual young people, too. They code-switch easily from Kazakh into English and from English into Russian, and so on. This is a new generation of Kazakh intellectuals, and a brilliant generation, too. I think that these people will be able very soon to be competitive with the best faculty of Asia and Europe.”
Kamilla Sharshekeyeva, provost of International university of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan), former Kyrgyz Education Minister spoke about the development of business education in Kyrgyzstan. According to her, despite government grants public universities are not always better than the private ones. Quite often it’s the other way around, with private universities being more viable. She shared the experience of the creation of three private universities, such as American University of Central Asia, International University of Central Asia and Kyrgyz University of Management and Design.
Ramon O’Callaghan, Dean of Graduate School of Business at Nazarbayev University, President of Central Asian Foundation of Management Development (CAMAN), has pointed out that this conference combines personal experience of education institutions of various countries and regions. «It helps to strike a balance between theory and practice. On the one hand, these are conceptual models; on the other hand, case-studies and their materialization. The conference is a platform for sharing innovative ideas, knowledge and experience. I think that it will become a challenge to many of us. I’d like to call on all heads of education institutions to think over management and leadership in terms of internationalization of business education and define their own options of problem resolution”, - he said.
“ I’ve been here for a relatively short period of time, a year and a half, for me I’m sitting in some of the sessions and learning and understanding better what the trends are, it’s very useful of course and very important,” – O’Callaghan emphasized. “I think internationalization has been high on the agenda for a while in many schools, in many countries. It’s part of a general trend of globalization of business as I said in my own presentation. But you know it’s also driven by rankings, and accreditations. And again it’s normal because business is increasingly more international, so we as business schools also need to develop and help students to develop that global mindset that we’ve been talking about.”
Sergei Mordovin, chancellor of International Management Institute of Saint Petersburg (IMISP, the Russian university that is modeled after European business schools), reflected on the stance that many business schools take when they start asking entrepreneurs for sponsorship grants. “By taking money away from business we thus reduce its investment attractiveness», - S. Mordovin said. The same applies to universities’ reliance on funds from the public purse. «It doesn’t only damage the image of business schools, but also makes them dependent on cash injections and strategic unsustainability stemming from the governments’ various fluctuations of policy.
Pertaining to the conference S. Mordovin said that IAB was always very dynamic. “Like all new novices in the beginning you had tried to copy the leaders; however, for many years now you’ve been trying to create something new. There aren’t any equivalents of IAB in Kazakhstan or in the whole of the post-Soviet area”, - the guest concluded.
Perry Hobson, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Global Engagement of Taylor’s University, Malaysia, said that research had to be placed very centrally in what any university is doing. “ And when we are talking about the heart of a business school and of business education it’s about helping us to have enquiring minds and to have questions which cannot simply be answered, – Mr. Hobson says. “ Research has to be placed very centrally at what the university is doing and obviously what companies are doing. Clearly they need to know about their customers - that’s going to come from research. They need to understand the needs and demands of their staff, that’s going to come from research. So it’s being able to get our students not always to look for the answers, but they’ve also got to learn to ask the right questions, because if you’ve never asked the right question, you are never going to find the right answer.”
Rinat Shayakhmetov, adviser to Chairman of the Board of BANK RBK spoke about expectations and hopes of a certain part of business community. According to him many companies are now setting up their own corporate universities and found their own scholarships for talented people precisely because they don’t find response from education institutions, including business schools. “Business education lags behind the needs of business”, - R. Shayakhmetov says. The banker conventionally split education into 5 types, which are product-based, skills-oriented, functional/production, distance education and education that develops leadership qualities and competences. He said that the last type of education is having serious problems now and addressed stakeholders in business education to assist in growing leadership qualities among youths.
Yuri Loktionov, dean of School of Finances and Management at Kazakh-British Technical University (KBTU) shared his view on the training of technical and engineering human resources. According to him when training specialists in the petrochemistry or engineers it is necessary to also provide them with business education so that an employer could get an oil specialist or an engineer with managerial skills. A series of business schools disagreed with this, saying that only a handful out of a hundred will actually become managers; the rest will be simple workers.
Following a lunch break in the picturesque yurts the conference continued working in the section format. At the section called Competence-based models of MBA and DBA programmes actualization and realization the debate was over what these programmes should teach. Leonid Yevenko, research supervisor of the International Higher Business School at RANEPA thinks that MBA and DBA may be used to teach students a lot of skills, including English and Internet use. Sergei Mordovin didn’t agree with him at all, saying that these were basic skills that any person needs to know today. «Teaching English is not the task for business schools” – he stressed.
Gulzhanat Tayauova, director of IAB’s DBA department noted that the majority of DBA students in Kazakhstan can’t speak English and don’t have research skills, and still they are successful in business and management. These skills need to be cultivated and because most often these are older people, their education usually takes from 3 to 7 years.
Segei Kalendzhan, dean of the Higher School of Corporate Management at RANEPA shared how this problem was being tackled at his school. Apart from personal talks between potential students and the management in which the clients’ proficiency and expectations are checked, the students are also offered a series of requirements, such as, for instance, serious articles getting published in research journals. If a student cannot publish an article per year, they will leave the course themselves, the speaker said. S. Kalendzhan reminded that the school had cooperated with IAB for 10 years. «We are pioneers in the DBA programme and we have a joint MBA programme. IAB includes all kinds of education programmes and incorporates further education with basic university education. In this respect IAB is a striking example of combination of various forms of modern business education.”
A panel discussion entitled Synergy of Creative Management, Projecting to the Future was also held as part of the conference and involved advisor to Kazakh Education and Science Minister for Information and Communications Kuat Dombai, owner of a fashion house Kuralai Kuralai Nurkadilova, director and producer Arman Karabayev, editor-in-chief of magazines MINI, Otdokhni,
Liza Gulnar Tankayeva, president of the academy of creative arts and style Leila Kainazarova and HR director of KUSTO GROUP Madina Karsakbayeva.
Together the guests tried to answer the question over what creativity is and how one can teach this to Kazakhstan’s managers working in many various fields.
The conference features leading actors of Kazakh, Russian and overseas business schools, business communities, leading experts and civil servants.