The mission of the Richard Ivey School of Business of the University of Western Ontario is to 'develop outstanding business leaders who think globally, act strategically and contribute to the societies in which they operate,' said Larry Wynant, professor of finance and associate dean for Asia and executive director of the school's Cheng Yu Tung Management Institute in Hong Kong. 'We work as facilitators in imparting an interactive and challenging learning experience for executives,' Mr Wynant said. 'It is an experience that builds on existing skills and develops new perspectives. The Ivey approach views business issues and opportunities in a strategic context, and examines their impact on the whole organisation. We aim to develop the ability to turn information into options, and options into decisions.' In September 1998, Ivey's educational programme came to Hong Kong with the opening of the Cheng Yu Tung Management Institute. It was established with the help of Ivey alumnus Henry Cheng Kar-shun, managing director of New World Development, to honour his father's commitment to education. Mr Cheng teamed up with Ivey 'to complement the existing education programmes in Hong Kong and China with an international MBA programme and a state-of-the-art facility.' The institute, which has a 15-member Asian Advisory Board, offers Executive MBA and customised programmes. Ivey is also a major case-study writer, with more than 1,800 cases in its collection. The school is the second largest case writer after the Harvard Business School, and the largest case writer in Asia, Professor Wynant said. 'We continually update our library of global cases for the benefit of senior managers, with about 150 new cases added each year.' Central to Ivey's Executive MBA programme in Hong Kong is a growing pool of Asian business case reports. A series of 18 case-books have been translated into Chinese, each containing about 20 to 30 cases covering mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Ivey also offers a variety of exchange and joint activities with universities and companies in Hong Kong, the mainland, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. The Cheng Yu Tung Management Institute's EMBA programme selects students on the basis of their work experience, rather than their past academic performance, Professor Wynant said. The EMBA course is spread over 22 months, including a residency period of a fortnight of intensive full-time classes stretching from 8 am to 11 pm. In the second year of the course, the students spend a week on campus in Canada. 'Diversity is one of the major factors in selecting students, so that people representing small and medium enterprises, as well as big companies, can study together. 'Another factor is the need to ensure that key geographic areas are represented in our classes. Representing about 11 countries, most of the students hail from Hong Kong, North America, Europe, mainland China, South America as well as the Middle East,' Professor Wynant said. 'The third factor is the need for a class to have students from diverse career backgrounds, including accountancy and finance, information technology, marketing, human resources and operations. This helps the students to understand and take on board the differences in each others' views and perceptions in approaching an issue.' The institute's Executive MBA programme 'allows you to earn one of the world's most prestigious management qualifications while continuing to work', Professor Wynant said. 'To ensure our executive programme offers equivalent learning to the traditional Ivey MBA, it has more in-class hours than other Hong Kong Executive MBA programmes.' Ivey also offers two-day and two-week executive programmes. It also offers customised executive programmes designed for students from a single company; it can typically include 30 to 40 managers from a large company who enrol for the same programme. The institute also offers consortium programmes, which include executives from six to eight non-competing companies that come together in a single student group. The institute has conducted classes like this for the Mass Transit Railway Corporation, HSBC group, Cathay Pacific Airways, the government, and the Airport Authority, among others. In November, Ivey plans to launch a series of executive seminars. These will offer an opportunity for senior executives to attend four one-day modules in information technology, marketing, human resources management and finance. Each module will expose executives to the latest management thinking and trends worldwide. IVEY17gsp