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It all began when the world’s first business school, the European School of Commerce Paris (ESCP), was established in 1819. Criticism notwithstanding, business schools have since continued their path in higher education without facing existential metamorphoses. Covid-19, however, has accelerated business schools’ digital transformation, calling into question the concept of business school itself. Business schools are in a new competitive landscape and profound structural changes seem inevitable. This concise text offers insights into how business schools should rethink their approach to management education, differentiate themselves from new players in the higher education market, and find innovative ways of doing things. The book is a survival toolkit for leadership teams across the world. It examines the rationale of business school and how it has evolved. The purpose of research is explained, and the teaching of management is explored. Kaplan analyzes the current business model in the digital environment. He looks at the business of accreditations and rankings and branding and community-building as strategies to address competition. The book concludes by looking at change leadership at business schools. It will interest both leaders of established academic institutions and alternative educational providers from edtech and big tech planning to enter the management education market.
"Artificial intelligence is shaking up economies around the world as well as society at large and is predicted to be either the best or worst thing to happen to humanity. This book looks at what exactly artificial intelligence is, how it can be classified, how it differentiates from other concepts such as machine learning, big data, blockchain, or the Internet-of-Things, and how it has evolved and might evolve over time. Providing a clear and unbiased picture of artificial intelligence, the book provides critical analyses of the advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and threats of AI progress for business and civilization. Solutions and possible directions of how humanity might deal with rapid development and evolutions will be given and discussed, and consider regulation, employment, ethics, education and international cooperation. Unlike existing literature, this book provides a comprehensive overview of AI based on detailed analysis and insight. Finally, several real-life examples from various sectors and industries, including for profit organizations, higher education, and government, will substantiate and illustrate the presented concepts, classifications, and discussions. This book is of interest to researchers, educators, students, and practitioners alike who desire to understand AI in its broad lines and discover the latest research and studies within the field"
This book analyses higher education's digital transformation and potential disruption from a holistic point of view, providing a balanced and critical account from a variety of interdisciplinary viewpoints. It looks at case studies on educational and emerging technology, their impact, the potential risk of digitalization disrupting higher education, and also offers a glimpse into what the future of digitalization will likely bring. Researchers and practitioners from countries including New Zealand, Russia, Eswatini, India, and the USA, bring together their knowledge and understanding of this rapidly evolving field. The contributors analyse academia's digitalization along the broad topics of the sector's general digital (r)evolution. The book looks at changes in instructional formats from the Massive Open Online Courses to Small Private Online Courses and artificial intelligence. This work also provides analysis on how skills, competences and social networks demanded by future jobs and job markets can be further integrated into higher education.
This case tells the story of Marie-Claire, a student at ESMOD, the World’s First Fashion School (est. 1841), who is currently interning at a recently founded, Berlin-based, fast-fashion retailer, primarily operating online, with only a few brick-and-mortar stores in Germany, Austria, and Poland. During this three-month internship, her main task is to look at how artificial intelligence (AI) could be applied to fast fashion, and specifically how AI could render the industry more environmentally sustainable. One of the tasks involves formulating a benchmark and comparison of three big fast-fashion players: H&M, Shein, and Zara. Moreover, Marie-Claire will analyze how AI might change the future of fashion. She will consider the opportunities extended by AI, and reflect upon potential challenges arising from its application to overcome and watch out for. Although this case addresses the combination of high tech with fashion, more precisely, the application of artificial intelligence to the fashion industry, its key insights and takeaways, apply to a much broader spectrum of sectors and industries. On a side note, the case also illustrates the differing contexts of AI advances between China, the US, and Europe.
So as not to face potential disruption, universities will need to actively engage in the sector’s evolution as opposed to passively observing its revolution. To stay competitive, they will need to adapt pedagogy and content to ongoing changes lest they risk their irrelevance. They are advised to create occasions for relationship and community building, fostering students’ affection for and attachment to their alma mater, and to avoid the university’s being abstract in students’ minds. Instead of the current standard of one-time, early-life degrees (intermittence), lifelong learning and persistence over alumni’s entire professional careers appear to be academia’s model for the future. Universities must assure higher applicability of taught material to job requirements, as employers are increasingly launching own corporate universities offering nano- and micro-degrees. Finally, affiliation with edtech start-ups and big tech companies might be necessary to ensure the funding needed to navigate academia’s new online reality and thus bypass isolation.
This case tells the story of Guillaume, a business school student, who is currently interning at the Louvre in Paris. One of his tasks involves him formulating a benchmark and comparison of three world-famous museums regarding their applications of artificial intelligence (AI): Beijing’s Palace Museum, NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the aforementioned Louvre. Furthermore, Guillaume must analyze how AI might change the future of museums in particular and cultural enterprises in general. He will think about the opportunities with regards to AI as well as reflect upon potential challenges arising from the application of AI to overcome and watch out for. The three museums studied in this case represent China, the US, and Europe, and as such illustrate the various stages of AI use and progress in these regions of the world, with superpowers China and the US clearly in the lead, and Europe lagging behind in this technological (r)evolution. Although this case addresses the combination of high tech with cultural heritage, more precisely the use of AI in museums, its key insights and takeaways apply to a much broader spectrum of sectors and industries.
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a change in mind-sets in many university leadership teams and faculty members worldwide, previously somewhat vulnerable to the sector's digitalization. Academia proved capable of flexibility, going beyond their reputation of being change-averse, moving entire curricula online within days. Yet, to benefit from higher education's digitalization, propelled by the pandemic, future pedagogical innovation is vital so as not to make other sectors' errors of merely transferring the offline into the online world. Moreover, higher education will need to find responses to several (further) academic, budgetary, legal, and operational issues induced by the sector's digital transformation, potentially leading to its disruption. However, higher education also must evade false ideas such as believing that physical buildings will become redundant due to academia's digitalization: On the contrary, facilities will be more critical than ever.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured substantial interest from a wide array of marketing scholars in recent years. Our research contributes to this emerging domain by examining AI technologies in marketing via a global lens. Specifically, our lens focuses on three levels of analysis: country, company, and consumer. Our country-level analysis emphasizes the heterogeneity in economic inequality across countries due to the considerable economic resources necessary for AI adoption. Our company-level analysis focuses on glocalization because while the hardware that underlies these technologies may be global in nature, their application necessitates adaptation to local cultures. Our consumer-level analysis examines consumer ethics and privacy concerns, as AI technologies often collect, store and process a cornucopia of personal data across our globe. Through the prism of these three lenses, we focus on two important dimensions of AI technologies in marketing: (1) human–machine interaction and (2) automated analysis of text, audio, images, and video. We then explore the interaction between these two key dimensions of AI across our three-part global lens to develop a set of research questions for future marketing scholarship in this increasingly important domain.
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate how the COVID-19 health crisis could help business schools move towards more responsible management education (RME). Business schools have been extensively blamed in previous crises for not educating their students in a responsible way. The COVID-19 pandemic could be the pivotal opportunity for business schools to regain legitimacy and a wake-up call to accelerate their journey towards RME. The authors aim to outline an illustration of the transition to a hybrid teaching model and how such educational reconfiguration might lead to more sustainable and RME, also beyond COVID-19.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach is proposed to analyse and decrypt the challenges and opportunities of a hybrid approach, its implications for the transformation of business schools and RME. This study also includes a state-of-the-art literature review, a specific investigation of the case of ESCP, the European cross-border multi-campus business school, and in-depth interviews with stakeholders impacted by the crisis.
Findings
The health crisis demonstrated the unprecedented capability of higher education to embrace rapid and profound change. Furthermore, the pandemic served as a wake-up call in that it may even have caused the progress of business schools, previously somewhat reluctant, towards more socially responsible and sustainable thinking. Thus, the schools have used the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to regain legitimacy and be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
Practical implications
The paper pulls together a multitude of suggestions for higher education in general and business schools in particular.
Originality/value
Combining two of higher education’s main challenges, namely, digitalisation and sustainability and applying the principles for responsible management education framework to map and analyse the pandemic’s implications, this paper provides a new, compelling and inspiring resource for business schools on their path to a more responsible management approach and education.
Service transformation calls for a revolutionary strategic mindset within service firms. Service firms aspire to achieve a distinctive vision through service transformation, often engaging technology and digitalization as critical partners in creating long-term firm success in the market by nurturing enhanced customer and stakeholder benefits. Therefore, it is imperative for us to examine, understand, and seek ways in which transformation can be utilized effectively by service firms. A new conceptualization is proposed that highlights how service transformation can follow many strategic paths, ranging from a relatively minor linear evolutionary reformation of service offerings to a cyclical and ongoing complete creative destruction and reincarnation of the firm. This manuscript first proposes an organizing framework to understand the internal and external factors that have the potential to render service transformation achievable, as well as the range of internal and external outcomes that can result from successful transformation. We then draw upon theories of evolution to delineate the process of transformation over time in service contexts, resulting in a conceptual model of service transformation that articulates three viable pathways to service transformation, which we call the “3Rs of Service Transformation” – reformation, renovation, and reincarnation. We define and provide examples of these three paths of service transformation and identify situations and contexts in which each approach may be most appropriate for certain firms. We conclude with a discussion of future research directions.
This chapter looks at artificial intelligence, its history, and its evolutionary stages. Furthermore, what challenges might arise in the future when humans will have to learn to live among machines and robots are discussed. This will be undertaken by analyzing challenges concerning algorithms and organisations, challenges with respect to (un)employment, and looking at democracy and freedom potentially jeopardised due to the progress of AI.
Artificial intelligence has been part of the world of marketing for some time now. This chapter will look at how artificial intelligence is defined and classified, illustrating its potential for the marketing domain with a variety of examples from various industries and sectors. Ethical concerns arising from the application of AI marketing will be discussed in the second part of this chapter. Before concluding, three brief case studies will give further insights, looking in detail at the AI activities of Airbnb, NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Artificial Intelligence, and retail giant Walmart.
The digital transformation of higher education has the same reputation as the higher education sector itself: rigid and reluctant to change. Covid-19 has radically changed this rigidity, with thousands of Universities compelled to go 100 percent online in just a few days. Threatened by edtech start-ups, big tech corporations increasingly interested in academia, as well as venture capitalists attracted by the sector's high profit margins, Universities need to change their way of doing business to stay in business. Higher Education at the Crossroads of Disruption: The University of the 21st Century looks at the various areas of higher education that will likely undergo radical changes. Learning and teaching approaches will increasingly move into the digital sphere; advances in artificial intelligence as well as (big) data availability, will change the way academia works. This books examines how teaching formats will vary, and how curricula and course content will evolve. Higher education will most likely focus on skills development, with a stronger emphasis on inter- and multidisciplinary study content, and a steady turn toward society's well-being and sustainability. This is essential reading for those holding a leadership position in higher education, researchers with a focus on higher education, and to anyone interested in the evolution and future of higher education.
