BizEd

JulAug2015

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36 BizEd JULY | AUGUST 2015 BY KENDALL ROTH  ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY CAMPBELL Students at the University of South Carolina learn how formal and informal institutions shape societies and how to translate business models from one country to another. Commerce Today's business students must learn to operate within every single country in the world, from developed nations to emerging economies. In fact, as emerging nations receive more foreign direct investment and increase their ability to compete on the international level, they are becoming increasingly important global players. Yet the institutions that we take for granted in other countries often do not exist within the governments, cultures, and business environments of emerging nations. Students must learn to be as comfortable in these settings as they are in the developed world. To prepare students to work in these vastly di•erent environments, business schools must design curricula that do more than focus on the skills and per- spectives of a Western neoliberal socio- economic model. They must go beyond presenting global cases in the classroom, o•ering short-term trips to other coun- tries, or placing their students in virtual teams with international participants. They must create future managers who can deeply appreciate other cultures and who know how to transfer a product, service, practice, or business model to a significantly di•erent institutional and socioeconomic setting. To achieve these goals at the Darla Moore School of Business at the Uni- versity of South Carolina in Columbia, we recently made major revisions to our international MBA. For instance, in the past our program had an optional language training component, deliv- ered through a three-month in-country immersion followed by a three- or four- month international internship. Now, language training is a requirement for all students; if they are bilingual when they enter the program, they will learn a third language. Our goal is for them to reach advanced intermediate levels of fluency, which will allow them to engage in business in this second or third language. But we recognize that, even if stu- dents understand another language and even if they spend a great deal of time in another country, they might learn very little about its business and culture. Indeed, they might find that their pre- conceived stereotypes are reinforced. Thus, we revamped our curriculum in other ways designed to help students understand how cultures evolve, what institutions support these cultures, and how they vary across the world. To do this, we added more flexibility in & Culture

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