the case study legacy of ivey’s early - oise · •some of the more popular chinese casebooks...
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The Case Study Legacy of Ivey’s Early
Linkages in China
Paul W. Beamish
Canada Research Chair in International Management
Ivey Business School
Western University
May 10, 2014
Background
• Ivey has long been active in Greater China
– Research
– Teaching
• First North American business to establish
degree program campus
• Case study writing and distribution (via Ivey
Publishing)
– Service
• Since 1984 via CIDA-sponsored “China
Project” with Tsinghua’s School of Economics
and Management2
Phase I of China Project
• 35 articles, cases, notes published
• 9 Ivey faculty visited Tsinghua to lecture
• 12 Tsinghua visiting scholars to Ivey for a
year
• 8 Tsinghua graduates of Ivey MBA program
• All visiting professors from Tsinghua
attended Case Writing Workshop
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Phase II of China Project• Additional partners
– U of Waterloo
– Dalian University of Technology
– Southeast University
• 1992 program delivered on teaching “Joint
Ventures, Technology Transfer, and
International Trade via The Case Method”
• 1992 first of 5 international business case
books published by Tsinghua University
Press
• 1993 saw publication of 6 additional case
books by our other Chinese partner schools 4
These 2 Phases Laid the Groundwork for Four
Major Case-Study Related Initiatives by Ivey in
China over the Next Two Decades
1)Ivey-Tsinghua Casebook Series (1998 – 2002)
2)Annual Case Teaching/Writing Workshops at
Tsinghua (since 1998)
3)Ivey Publishing’s Case Distribution in China
4)China Management Case-Sharing Centre
(CMCC) (since 2010)
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1) Ivey-Tsinghua Casebook Series
(35 Books Published,1998 – 2002)
• In response to the education ministry’s
decree that 25% of MBA courses be taught
using the case method, 16 MBA casebooks
for China were published in English in
1998, in collaboration with Tsinghua.
• Translations of these 16 casebooks in
expanded form were published in Chinese
in 1999. Each book involved an editor from
Ivey and an editor from Tsinghua6
• Some of the more popular Chinese casebooks
were expanded again in 2001 – 2002 into
second editions, along with the introduction
of casebooks on three new topics.
• In addition, 18 best-selling textbooks in the
west, jointly recommended by Ivey faculty
and Tsinghua faculty, were reprinted in 1998
for use in China.
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Professor Paul Beamish,
Director of the Asian
Management Institute (right)
presented the largest collection
of business casebooks
produced for China to Zhu
Rongji, Premier of the State
Council of the People's
Republic of China (left). The
former Premier, who served as
Dean of the School of
Economics and Management at
Tsinghua University, received
the casebooks during his
official visit to Toronto,
Canada in April 1999.
2) Annual Case Teaching/Writing
Workshops at Tsinghua (since 1998)
• For the past 15 years, a Hong Kong based
foundation has provided funding to allow us to
provide an annual Ivey-Tsinghua Case Teaching
and Writing Workshop. Over 1,000 Chinese
university professors have attended.
• In addition, Ivey professors continue to offer
workshops at other universities throughout
China. More than 2,000 additional Chinese
professors have attended these workshops to
date.10
3) Ivey Publishing in China
• Ivey Publishing is the world’s second
largest producer of business school teaching
cases, after Harvard. It has nearly 5,000
items in its current collection. 800 Ivey
cases or Ivey Business Journal articles are
available in simplified Chinese with 200
additional ones being translated annually.
By practice, all Ivey cases or IBJ articles
involving China are translated into
Simplified Chinese, as are all Best Sellers.11
• Ivey Publishing has over 300 cases
involving China in its current collection.
Ivey cases are used all over China. Ivey
Publishing has dozens of site licenses with
Chinese business schools.
• In June 2013, Ivey hosted a visit by deans
and case center directors from China for a 2
day workshop on how to set up and manage
a case center. There are over 50 case
centers being established at Chinese
business schools as of early 2014.
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4) China National MBA Education
Supervisory Committee (CNMESC)
and China Management Case-Sharing
Centre (CMCC) (since 2010)
• An MOU on Case Development
Collaboration was signed to foster the
development and dissemination of China-
based cases. This collaboration involves
over 200 Chinese universities and one non-
China based institution: Ivey.13
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(l to r) Shuming Zhao, Dean of School of Business, Nanjing University, Jingqin
Su, Director of China Management Case-sharing Center and Dean of School of
Management, Dalian University of Technology, Ivey Professor Paul Beamish,
and Prof. Yunhuan Tong, Secretary General of China National MBA Education
Supervisory Committee joined hands after the MOU signing ceremony during
the inaugural China Management Case-sharing Conference in Kunming.
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The 3rd CMCC International Case Forum
January 7 – 8, 2012
• The CMCC is supported by the China
National MBA Education Supervisory
Committee. CMCC operates as a non-
profit service organization with a focus on
researching, developing and sharing cases
that discuss local business challenges.
• In 2013, a delegation from the China
Academic Degrees and Graduate Education
Development Center (CDGDC), Ministry
of Education visited Ivey Publishing.
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• CDGDC had been entrusted with a new task
by the Ministry: to build a national-level
case center for professional degrees
education in China. There are now nearly
40 professional degrees in China and their
proposed case center is intended to help
ALL of them!
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Reflections
(Q1) How did universities, acting in
partnership, contribute to China’s
economic revitalization and rapid
transformation?
In the early 1980s, the state of management
education in China was very low. Our
Chinese partners played an important role in
China’s economic revitalization, because the
country supported growth in its number of
degree granting business schools. Canadian
business school linkages in China in turn 18
facilitated their role in two primary ways.
First, Chinese visiting scholars learned a great
deal during their visits. They observed first-
hand how a market economy functioned, and
how a business school functioned within such
a context. Exposure to alternative models
allowed them to think about how to bring
back to China the relevant elements.
Second, they were introduced to new, current
teaching material (both textbooks and case
studies) which they could draw from
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for their new reality.
The fact that the Ivey casebooks for the
Chinese market sold hundreds of thousands
of copies, and the fact that millions of copies
of Ivey cases have been studied in China,
suggests that this content was able to
contribute to China’s transformation.
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(Q2) How did university partnerships
foster the spawning of new ideas that
would address issues of governance,
social justice and sustainability that
had arisen in the face of rapid change?
Whether through observation as visiting
scholars, or access to more and current teaching
materials, university partnerships certainly
created knowledge transfer and the introduction
of new ideas to one’s Chinese counterparts.
Any key word search of the Ivey Publishing
website (www.iveycases.com) using
governance, justice, and sustainability (and
related terms) will return hundreds of relevant
examples. All of these cases have long been
available for use in China.
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(Q3) What organizational or
contextual features of the linkages
enabled them to be effective? What
serious challenges or hindrances arose?
A major strength of the Ivey-Tsinghua linkage
was continuity. The same key people were in
place both during and after the 10 year funding
period. This allowed personal
relationships/friendships/trust to develop, which
in turn created and environment in which
complex issues could be managed more easily.
A number on hindrances/challenges nonetheless
existed or arose. First, if Chinese faculty had
limited facility with English, they were unable to
derive as much benefit as would have been
desirable. Second, the issues around Tiananmen
Square protests of June 1989 resulted in a number
of Chinese visiting scholars in Canada not
returning to China. This slowed progress in the
linkages. Third, the CIDA contracts required a lot
of time to be spent on paperwork.
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(Q4) What lessons for current and
future collaboration between Canadian
and Chinese universities may be drawn
from past experience?
A guiding principle from the Ivey side was to
always treat our counterparts in China with
respect. There was a widespread recognition
that the state of management education was
likely to improve quickly in China and that
eventually our counterparts would have the
skills and abilities such that they would be able
to teach us as much about the practice of
management as we were teaching them.
An important lesson for future collaborations is to
retain strong institutional memory. Most players
will change over a three decade period so it is
helpful on all sides to understand the past.
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