Mainland MBA seeks to boost management skills in Hong Kong
For 55 years, the Hong Kong Management Association (HKMA) has been striving to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of management, both in Hong Kong and regionally.One of its main means of achieving this goal has been providing and promoting educational and training opportunities for members...
For 55 years, the Hong Kong Management Association (HKMA) has been striving to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of management, both in Hong Kong and regionally.
One of its main means of achieving this goal has been providing and promoting educational and training opportunities for members.
Amongst the range of new and world-class management programmes the HKMA has recently launched is an MBA programme delivered by the Fudan University School of Management.
“The introduction of this programme goes hand in hand with our vision and mission,” explains Glover Chan, senior manager in the HKMA marketing department. “Our vision is to be the leading professional organisation advancing management excellence in Hong Kong and the region. Our mission is to promote best practice in management, to nurture human capital through management education and training at all levels, and to provide members with a platform for the exchange of ideas, for networking and for personal development.
“We offer a broad range of training and education opportunities for executives in Hong Kong. To help achieve this, we bring in overseas university programmes such as those from the UK and from Australia, to be delivered in Hong Kong. Yet, being an international city, and being a SAR of China, Hong Kong also needs to look to the mainland, where the future potential is most abundant,” Chan adds.
The MBA programme HKMA will run in conjunction with the Fudan faculty is part-time. “Professors from Fudan will fly to Hong Kong to deliver the programme, except for a few sessions that will take place in Shanghai,” Chan explains. “These include an introduction at the start of the programme, a study tour in the middle, and the graduation at the end.”
Taught mainly in Putonghua, the MBA programme will place equal stress on both theory and practice, as well as the parallel concepts of internationalisation and localisation. In other words, it will help participants develop both an outward-looking approach towards the global economy, as well as a deep understanding of China.
The programme is structured around 14 compulsory courses. Alongside these, scores of electives, grouped into four “tracks”, are offered. The tracks are finance, marketing, e-commerce and entrepreneurship.
Together the electives cover such areas as macroeconomics, marketing, finance management, operations management, HR management, strategic management and information technology.
As well as bringing Fudan University to Hong Kong, introducing its faculty members to the city’s business environment and facilitating its teaching activities, the HKMA will, over time, help in developing case studies related to Hong Kong.
Chan says the reputation of the Fudan University School of Management, which has been running an MBA programme since 1991, sets it apart from many of its peers. “It has a strong faculty with an international outlook and, not only was it ranked the best business school in mainland China, its MBA is ranked among the top 55 in this year’s global MBA league, according to the Financial Times,” he says.
The School currently has around 5,000 MBA alumni, working not only across the mainland but around the globe, in a wide range of fields.
Chan explains that this HKMA MBA programme is suitable for executives with an equivalent bachelor’s degree recognised on the mainland, plus at least three years’ full-time work experience. “Also, they will need to understand, and be able to speak and write, Chinese,” he adds.
