Fresh ideas for future MBAs

Mark Smith’s early resignation as director of Stellenbosch Business School not only disturbs the school’s equilibrium but also robs the South African business schools sector of a leading voice in its quest to be heard internationally. 

After Smith accepted the post in 2020, replacing Piet Naudé, the department of home affairs took more than a year to complete the paperwork allowing him to enter South Africa. Now he’s leaving, two years before his contract expires, because he says his wife and stepdaughter are prevented from permanently joining him. Temporary visas, which they have been offered, aren’t enough. 

Family comes first, says Smith, so he’s returning to France, whence he was hired and where his family still lives, to find other academic work, either there or in a neighbouring country. He will continue with some Stellenbosch lecturing and to supervise PhD students, but regrets having to leave South Africa. 

While the school seeks a permanent replacement, Charles Adjasi, a Ghanaian academic who has been at Stellenbosch for more than 10 years, will act in the position from November 1. He is the school’s head of research and a professor in development finance and economics. 

Some of Smith’s strategic goals, such as a reappraisal of academic programmes, are well advanced, but others are some way from completion. One he particularly regrets having to step back from is championing the international cause of the South African business schools community. 

Despite a welter of international accreditations and rankings for various schools, UK-born Smith says the local sector often underestimates the respect with which it is held in other countries. The appointment of foreign academics such as Smith and American Catherine Duggan, director of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), is an opportunity not just to bring outside thinking to South African business education but also to give it a global voice.

Smith says Morris Mthombeni, dean of the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs), has been a valuable ally in promoting local business schools’ international cause. 

A number of other business schools are undergoing, or preparing for, changes in leadership. Segran Nair, formerly head of the GSB’s MBA programme, became director of Milpark Business School midyear. The University of the Free State Business School has appointed Nicolene Barkhuizen as its director from November 1. At present she is deputy head of the University of Johannesburg’s department of industrial psychology & people management and director of the centre for work performance. 

Paul Poisat has been appointed acting director of the Nelson Mandela University Business School, which has been without a permanent leader since early last year. He is an international authority on human resources, a subject he teaches at the school. 

Kobus Jonker will return to the Western Cape at the end of the year after completing his five-year tenure as director of the Tshwane School for Business & Society. No successor has yet been officially announced. The school, formerly the Tshwane University of Technology Business School, has created an independent identity under Jonker. Though he admits it will take time for the school to increase market awareness, he is happy with what it has achieved so far. 

What is missing, Jonker admits, is financial sustainability. Executive education, for which companies and industries pay handsomely, is the financial lifeblood of most business schools. Tshwane has had some success in attracting clients, but it needs more.

One constraint has been teaching capacity, but with the appointment of new faculty, Jonker says: “We are now ready to grow.” 

North-West University Business School, based in Potchefstroom, is looking for growth in another direction. MBA director Leenta Grobler says the school may add a master’s degree in business leadership (MBL) to run alongside its MBA. 

Only two other schools offer an MBL at the moment: DaVinci Business School and Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership, which also has an MBA. 

The difference between the two degrees, as the name suggests, is that the MBL puts more emphasis on leadership. Both are governed by the same accreditation rules and carry the same academic status.

Unisa used to be exclusively MBL and academic director Peet Venter admits the jury is still out about the effect of adding an MBA. 

MBA and MBL students, combined, number about the same as those the MBL used to attract alone. The good news, says Venter, is that enrolments for the business postgraduate diploma, usually the precursor to an MBA or MBL, are up. “It’s too early to tell if the MBA and MBL qualifications are cannibalising each other, but we are working on the vision of the MBL to distinguish it from the MBA more clearly,” he says.

Elsewhere, health care-focused MBAs are taking centre stage at several business schools. Stellenbosch’s is well established. Now Wits Business School and Johannesburg Business School are among others going in the same direction.

Wits director Maurice Radebe points out that health care is only one area where the school wants to specialise. Energy is another area in which it has proven expertise. Academic director Logan Rangasamy says the health care-focused MBA — aimed at people already in the industry but lacking management expertise — will start next March, and the energy equivalent in 2025.

Johannesburg Business School is looking at a similar target market. Academic director Tankiso Moloi says: “The state of health-care management, particularly in the public sector, is not good. Even if people have an MBA, they need something that meets the particular challenges they face. There is a tendency at some public hospitals to appoint doctors to executive positions. When they move to the executive suite, they aren’t ready.” 

Dean Randall Carolissen adds: “We believe rapid improvement in health-care management can be achieved within Africa. But teaching must be correctly focused and relevant.”