Promoting management in Malta

Professor Stephen Watson is principal of Henley Management College. He graduated in mathematics from Cambridge University, where he later obtained a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics and stayed on to conduct post-doctoral work in Operations Research.

His career as a Professor of Management began in Cambridge. He introduced Management Studies as a new discipline in this ancient university. Before becoming principal of Henley Management College in March 2001, he was Dean of the Management School at Lancaster University. Earlier on, he was the founding director of the Judge Institute of Management at Cambridge from 1990 to 1994.

During Professor Watson's recent visit to Malta, I welcomed the opportunity to interview him, together with Professor Reno Sammut at the Malta Chamber of Commerce in Valletta.

Courses leading to an Executive Certificate in Management, Diploma in Management and Master's in Business Administration (MBA) are organised by the Henley Management College Malta Associate in collaboration with the Malta Chamber of Commerce.

Professor Watson, I wish to begin this interview with a couple of general questions, before I come to specifics and Malta's situation in particular. In your view, is a manager born, or is he made through training and education?

Managers can be made. Management education is however comparatively new. The first business school was opened in 1870 in Philadelphia, USA. The Harvard Business School was founded in 1907.

Before that time, management simply happened as a result of life experience. Great achievements, like the building of the Pyramids, were accomplished without our modern management methods.

So we have to ask why we need to learn how to manage now. It is clear that a great deal of learning about management is done now.

Management education has in fact become big business in its own right, with an annual turnover of more than $200 billion! The results are most impressive. The reasons for development in management education lie in the complexity of modern organisations.

In the 19th century business management was much more simple and straightforward. Now it is extremely complex. The Americans realised the complexity of their iron and steel industries as well as their railways.

One couldn't understand them without studying the way they operated and the environment in which they took place. It was for this reason that the Americans started business education at the end of the 19th century.

My strong belief is that everybody can improve the different abilities to manage that they are born with and which they acquire in their general education. Management education over and above the general education we receive is necessary to develop our knowledge and skills.

Of course, there are different personality types due to early nurture as well as genetic inheritance. But whatever collection of skills and knowledge somebody has, he or she can profit immensely by specific study in how to conduct management.

What qualities, innate or acquired, should an efficient manager have?

There are a number of skills one should cultivate. A good manager should be a good listener, must be able to explain a point of view clearly, have the courage to do what may seem dangerous if this needs to be done, and to understand what makes people tick and motivates them, so that one can adapt one's style to suit the people one is dealing with.

Then, secondly, you need to study how a company works, and the environment in which it operates. Consider, for example, operations management.

To start with, you have to think about suppliers of the materials you are concerned with. Do they have a monopoly on a particular material so that they can practically dictate the price you have to pay in order to obtain it, or do they have competitors so that you are in a position to bargain?

Then there comes logistics, ensuring everything is in the right place at the right time. Computers are indispensable to achieve logistical efficiency.

To give one example, let us take the airlines that are successful in spite of the setbacks that have occurred in the last months due to the international situation. They manage to sell practically all the seats on their flights.

Why? Because they have adopted 'dynamic seat pricing'. With the help of information they get about customer demand, they are able to maximise revenues. They can figure out almost exactly who wants to buy and at what price. They plan their selling accordingly.

They conduct detailed studies about why people buy what is offered. Once you have engaged in market research, you are in a position to go ahead and create your market. To sell successfully you must first find out what people need or want. It is knowledge of this kind that helps the modern manager to manage well.

Managers in Malta

When did the connection between Malta and Henley begin, how and by whom?

We have Professor Reno Sammut with us. I'm sure he can answer this question better than I can, so I refer you to him.

Professor Sammut: Well, the Henley Management College Malta Associate has been providing the courses of Henley Management College since the early 1990s.

By the end of June it is expected that over 150 Maltese managers would have completed the Henley MBA. This is equivalent to one in every 1,000 fully occupied persons in Malta.

There are also four managers who have obtained the Henley/Brunel doctorate, and another 20 managers who have the Henley Diploma in Management.

Henley Management College Malta Associate-Management Development Services Co Ltd, in collaboration with the Malta University Services Ltd and the Malta Chamber of Commerce, is proud of its contribution to Malta's economy and to the development of Maltese managers to be better equipped to meet the competitive challenge.

Henley is recognised as a world leader in management, with accreditation by the Association of MBAs (AMBA). The college is recognised as a quality provider to open MBA programmes. International recognition comes through the achievement of EQUIS accreditation, the quality assurance standard of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD).

Earlier last year, Henley was recognised and accredited by the AACSB, the International Association for Management Education in the USA. The AACSB accreditation confirms Henley's commitment to leading edge quality business and management education and development. Henley Management College is one of only five schools in the UK to have been awarded AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA endorsement.

In the latest edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit publication, Which MBA, considered to be the 'bible' of international MBA programmes, Henley's MBA was ranked as the number one in the UK, the number two in Europe, and number eleven in the world.

Thanks a lot, Professor Sammut. Professor Watson, I come back to you. Would it be correct to describe the Henley methodology as a mixture of distance learning, tutorials and lectures?

Yes, indeed. It is blended learning, combining time-honoured methods with the most modern technology. It is very important for people to meet and get to know one another so that they can study and work together.

You are familiar, I'm sure, with Cardinal John Henry Newman's book, The Idea of a University (1852). I share his views completely about what makes for good education. Our methodology is perfectly in keeping with his approach.

We want our students to mix with one another as much as possible and so be able to exchange views with one another. When they can do this face to face, so much the better.

However, our students are scattered all over the world. This is where the latest information technologies come in very handy. We want to avail ourselves to the full of the possibilities they offer to bring people together and use different kinds of learning tools.

We have very good contacts with IBM Europe. We have over 700 IBM employees in MBA programmes alone. After face-to-face meetings, our students can follow what each one is doing on their own through the Internet. All details of their work are put on Internet Web pages and students have access to this everywhere in the world.

Their computers keep them in touch with other databases as well. They can get hold of original papers just as they are worked out and put in print on pdf files. It is almost like being together in a class-room.

Are good managers essentially people who copy what others are doing successfully or people who think creatively for themselves and come up with original ideas of their own?

Managers should be able to think for themselves. It is only they who must ultimately determine their course of action in the particular circumstances that arise. On the other hand, we can all learn a lot from one another.

Take the instance I mentioned of how the airlines are managing to make profits in the difficult modern circumstances since the September 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York. It was British Airways that first started the detailed marketing research and extensive flexibility in pricing that enables them to sell most of their seats in almost all their flights.

The other airlines quickly followed suit. So British Airways' creativity was copied by others. So to answer your question: of course, the good manager copies others' ideas as well as creating his own. But his or her real skill is in using these ideas, wherever they come from, in making his own organisation work well.

Globalisation and EU

Does globalisation require that business management be different now from what it was only some years ago before 'the global village' became an established fact?

Definitely. Economics are driven by international forces. The world has now become much more interconnected. Indian software, for instance, is now being sold the world over!

The English language is helping the Indians sell their wares everywhere. Incidentally, English is establishing itself not just as the principal business language, but almost as the only global business language.

We and you have a great advantage here. This is one of the reasons why Henley Management College decided to establish itself so firmly in Malta. We have different branches scatted all over the globe and everywhere English is the language we teach in, even if it is not locally the first language.

Last month, Malta signed the Accession Treaty to join the European Union. Britain joined the Common Market some years ago. How does this affect business management in our countries?

Management is greatly affected by this. It is actually all part of the globalisation process which you brought up in your previous question. It is my hope that ultimately these trends will lead to a sort of world government.

Much more is at stake than business management. World peace depends on it in the last resort. The more firmly peace is established, the greater is all round prosperity.

It is my profound wish that Malta will profit as much from joining the EU as Britain has from joining the Common Market, as the EU then was at the time we joined.