EDITOR'S NOTE:

EMBA education is proliferating around China, it's a huge success, but the quality of programs and graduates vary greatly. Next year EMBA education will mark the 10th anniversary of its arrival in China. Shanghai Daily opinion writer Ni Tao interviews some experts on strengths and weaknesses.



IN her finely decorated office overlooking busy Quyang Road in northern Shanghai, Zhao Lijia radiates the aura of a typical Chinese businesswoman, chic, confident, yet remarkably modest.

Modesty is the first thing you'll notice about her, and ambition is the second. Next to the office of the 40-something boss of Shanghai Mingjia Real Estate Group is a showroom with a wall dotted by honorary credentials and awards the company has received over the last two decades.

It's hard for a woman manager not to be proud of her achievements in breaking the glass ceiling. But Zhao humbly refers to them as "things of the past," and says her search for knowledge is what fires her up to strive for better results.

One of the learning experiences that she calls tremendously helpful to her career is the two-year EMBA (Executive Masters of Business Administration) program she finished in 2009 with the Shanghai National Accounting Institute (SNAI) in Qingpu District.

Its EMBA program, jointly held with Arizona State University (ASU), is ranked 20th this year by the Financial Times, up eight notches from last year.

"As a manager of a private firm, I deeply feel the EMBA training has broadened the horizon of many Chinese private businesspeople like myself," she says. Some Chinese managers are really capable, she says, but they have a common shortcoming - a severe lack of financial and accounting knowledge and a global perspective. This is especially true about managers in private enterprise, she observes.

"It was not until I took EMBA courses at SNAI that I realized my company doesn't have to stick only to doing bricks and mortar. We can also be investors in capital markets, through private equity or venture capital projects," Zhao says.

Her view is echoed by an EMBA graduate and alumni, Zhang Yunfeng, head of the Shanghai Equities Custody Register Center.

A former senior executive at Shenyin Wanguo, a leading securities broker, Zhang is experienced in finance, but he says that many EMBA candidates he came across know very little about finance.

China is in the midst of building itself into an innovative country by 2020, but that won't be possible without enough financial talents.

Many small- and medium-sized companies are quite innovative, but cannot find the investors. Why?

They don't know how to secure funding from capital markets, says Zhang. "Often Chinese view finance as a pantheon to which only a few highly qualified players can aspire. But that widely held view is downright wrong."

EMBA courses can make a difference. Though Zhang has been in finance for nearly two decades, he still enrolled in the SNAI EMBA program in 2007, for he thought "practices had to be complemented by theory."

One major reason he chose SNAI is its strength in finance and accounting. But a good grasp of finance alone won't be enough to take Chinese businesses, especially private businesses, to higher heights. More factors will have to come into play.

Though the private sector employs over 80 percent of China's work force, and boasts various hubs of freewheeling enterprises like Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province (which enjoyed a halo until its recent cash flow fiasco), it has yet to produce the management talents who can think in long-term, says Zhao, the developer.

There are many challenges in carrying out long-term corporate strategy, the most notable being staff turnover. And that's more a problem for private firms than state-owned companies, which has a good retention rate because of job security.

Zhao's company has been grappling with retention of employees for years, and at the beginning, she, like many other bosses, tried to do so by promising pay raises for leaving executives, to no avail.

Then during an EMBA class she attended at SNAI about performance assessment, she had an epiphany. The lecturer, she says, told her that for firms to have a low turnover rate, they need a package of incentives, including incentive stock options and comprehensive performance evaluation, that can encourage management to see company growth as their own mission. "I learned from the course that people's desire grows incrementally. Desire won't stop at higher salaries. This is a hugely illuminating lesson," says Zhao.

For a long time EMBA education in China has been viewed as a club of networking for senior corporate executives. Many do apply for the program for that purpose, but more are now saying they have come out of it truly enlightened, and after all, networking itself is occasionally the fountain of business enterprise.

For Zhang of the equities custody center, there is nothing wrong with hobnobbing with people of taste and social status. As the old Chinese saying goes, those who approach "red" (decent) people themselves tend to become "red." Interactions with individuals from various walks of life - government officials, businesspeople and financial wizards - have helped him shape his own decorum, style and character, says the bespectacled manager in his early 40s.

Even though it has come a long way since its inception 10 years ago, Chinese EMBA education still leaves something to be desired in one important aspect - cultivation of morality of business leaders, both Zhang and Zhao said in their interviews.

"It's not that Chinese entrepreneurs are immoral, but some are not tolerant enough of different opinions," says Zhang. He cites examples frequently seen in TV dramas. A boss who feels offended by subordinates' disagreement with his wacky ideas in corporate governance holds a grudge against them. That kind of arbitrary CEO culture will lead a company down a road to nowhere.

A good boss ought to be taught to respect and welcome difference. And that's where the current EMBA curriculum can improve, to embrace more character-building lessons apart from practical skills.

Zhao, the developer, concurs. Society's atmosphere promotes quick success, while our business leaders need to go slow, to acquire humane values. That consideration has taken her back to SNAI for a post-EMBA project, which mainly centers on ancient Chinese rituals and cultured ways and their implications for doing business.

Another area of improvement is the curriculum, which needs more domestic business case studies; now Western case studies dominate.

That is beginning to change, says Deputy President of SNAI Li Kouqing, adding that EMBA educators will have to update their curricula since the Chinese economy is growing rapidly and they need to stay in touch with the latest trends from the business community.

For example, from next year SNAI will add a new EMBA course on management of intellectual property rights (IPR), which is especially pertinent to China.

Chinese economic momentum, combined with the newfound heft of Chinese firms and the growing number of entrepreneurs, will continue to underpin the brisk growth of EMBA.

Li is optimistic that the market forces will decide which EMBA programs will get more popular, and which will be forced to improve, or be weeded out.

Lu Xiongwen, dean of the School of Management at Fudan University, observes that in their haste to provide lucrative EMBA education, many schools haven't thought hard about their purpose.

Not every locality has the resources necessary for EMBA to thrive. Many schools get permission to provide EMBA but recruit students at different places, because the local student base is not big enough. This crude monetary motivation has hurt the quality and image of EMBA, Lu is quoted as saying in July in an online chat program.

It is education's purpose to provide public goods, to transmit knowledge and nurture talent. When it fails to do so, public skepticism of the greater good education is supposed to embody will grow and create social crisis, Lu said.