One of the foremost challenges facing Malta’s growing financial services industry is ensuring there is adequate depth in the local talent pool to service each of the flourishing sectors.
Running a business is not a mechanical activity
Henley Business School, which has offered its MBA programme in Malta for 20 years through local associates, last week widened its offering to professionals by launching the programmes of its ICMA Centre. It is the latest addition to a growing range of options available in Malta for senior professionals.
Described as the product of the first active collaboration between the securities industry and a university finance department – Henley Business School is part of the University of Reading – the ICMA Centre offers undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education, besides professional and policy development research and consultancy. Disciplines range from capital markets, regulation and compliance to investment banking and Islamic finance.
Henley Business School’s dean, Prof. John Board, who was in Malta last week to introduce the ICMA Centre’s portfolio, told The Sunday Times the development was a natural progression for the school. Henley was keen to make its various components accessible to Maltese professionals and the ICMA Centre was just the first. Established in 1946, triple-accredited Henley Business School has traditionally targeted senior managers.
Prof. Board, who was previously head of the ICMA Centre, said Malta’s financial system was becoming increasingly sophisticated and the risks and processes pertinent to other financial centres were relevant to the island. Henley had other plans for Malta in the medium-term, including establishing a presence of some of its other activities, and, as North Africa stabilises, using the island as a base for exploring other possibilities in the region.
“The ICMA Centre’s programmes are aimed at two groups,” Prof. Board explained. “They are suitable for senior professionals who are looking to reinforce their expertise, networking, and having discussions about topical issues, and for the significant number of people who will be required to service the industry. Bringing Master’s degrees in risk management is beneficial, for instance.”
Prof. Board said the crisis which erupted in 2008 reinforced the notion that running a business is not a mechanical activity – businesses are social organisms. Henley’s own philosophy has always been slightly more conservative – the school’s management teaching has not been greatly altered, but it recognised, however, that students could not be taught risk management without an understanding of the environment in which that risk was managed.
Henley’s MBA will increasingly be an improved blend of management and professional expertise in recognition of the two interacting more than ever before, he said.
With senior managers expected to retire much later than they used to, business schools, including Henley, are identifying appropriate ways to demonstrate their use to them. Concepts like ‘top-up’ MBAs have emerged, with professional doctorates sitting at the top of the scale.
However, Prof. Board believes that business schools’ role for older senior managers is more a case of supporting their visions rather than preaching how they should manage their business better.
MBAs were originally conceived more than 40 years ago and have evolved to a ubiquity in the professional world, leading some quarters to question their usefulness. What is the real value of an MBA?
“The old idea that you are a good manager because you have an MBA was always crazy. It was never true,” Prof. Board replied.
“Is an MBA obsolete? No. It is a demonstration that you have studied an amount of material relevant to running a business.
“Will there be an MBA is 10 years’ time? Of course there will. In the same way as there will be a BSc or A Levels. The syllabus and the content will be slightly different.
“An MBA is, by definition, a broad programme. That need for senior management expertise and breadth is not going to go away.”
A sound MBA, Prof. Board added, should endow students with an ability to recognise warning signs. Traditional – and good – management skills mattered most in today’s business environment: the courage to turn projects down because they did not feel right, the confidence to say ‘no’ outright.
There were various skills that students could not be taught, Prof. Board conceded. One was the ability to be entrepreneurial. Business schools taught entrepreneurship, management, and the examination of ideas rather than where a good idea originated.
“A part of good business is luck,” Prof. Board offered. “If you have the right idea, it has got to be at the right time. Maybe good business is about managing luck. One of the things a business school cannot teach is where luck comes from.
“Good managers are lucky and they are able to look after good fortune when it comes. That skill is what a business school can teach.”