'A crisis forces you to reflect on what you are doing,' said Gay Haskins, dean of executive education at Oxford University's Said Business School, which runs a senior executive programme in corporate leadership together with HKU Business School. 'The present situation has made us stand back and ask, 'have we been educating leaders you can be proud of, or educating people who have contributed to the crisis?' It has forced us to think again about the purpose of business, its short-term and long-term effects, and to [re-examine] the notion of why we have to teach certain things.'

Ms Haskins said the need to develop ideas of leadership that were linked to concepts of global responsibility was clear. The current turmoil had illustrated the interdependence of various trading blocs as well as the connections between economic and societal issues.

In what was now a global village, business schools therefore had changing responsibilities. They had to focus more on bringing people from around the world together, promoting understanding between public and private sectors, and giving students true breadth of vision.

'It is not the purpose of executive education to teach 'the answer', but to stimulate people to think and, as a result of that, to lead in a better way,' Ms Haskins said. 'It is the whole thing of engaging with the future rather than being focused on the present, and thinking about issues like shifting demographics, competing ideologies, new technologies and the environment.'

She said a first step towards these goals was to ensure that the classroom was much more international in its use of examples and case studies. For perhaps too long, business school curriculums have been over-dependent on American business cases, and that had to be reviewed. There was still a lot to learn from, say, Coca-Cola, but companies such as Infosys in India, or Singapore Airlines, Haier or a date farm in Abu Dhabi could teach just as much.

'There is not a best way of doing business; there are a number of ways,' Ms Haskins said.

'Practices are always grounded in the culture of particular countries, so the emphasis does shift. People are now not just looking at America as the dominant model of best practice, and I think that is very important.'

She added that, particularly for senior executives, the aim of any programme had to be to give 'wisdom' and develop foresight. Too many graduate business courses still relied on strong finance departments but, at the end of the day, successful management was about leading people well. That took a broad intellectual perspective, the ability to devise new solutions, and the confidence to act as a power behind the throne.

Loizos Heracleous, associate fellow at the Said Business School and one of the professors teaching the five-day joint programme with HKU, said: 'We don't lecture at this level, we interact and pose challenges in a way that is useful to the participants.'

He said the course was 'more big picture, and less functional', with a strong Asian element based on the growth of the Chinese economy and the challenges that businesses in the region would face. To give topicality and a global dimension, it also drew on the resources of other university departments for expertise in areas such as social entrepreneurship and the politics of the Middle East.

'I find that senior-level executives around the world can face remarkably similar challenges,' Professor Heracleous said. 'They need to be aware of the strategic risks to build more resilient organisations and withstand the shocks. But it is also important for business schools to help them develop the notion of socially responsible leadership.'

He said while general applications showed a marked upturn in the number of individuals signing on for advanced business qualifications, there were also signs of employers cutting back on training budgets and course subsidies.

Ms Haskins cautioned that this was a short-sighted approach.

'Companies planning for robust long-term development know that they shouldn't see this as an expense to cut,' she said. 'The higher a manager gets, the higher the level of competencies needed, and getting a qualification in an economic downturn gives you a bit more time to reflect.'