Business school

A business school is a university-level institution that confers degrees in business administration. Such a school can also be known as a business college, college of business, college of business administration, school of business, school of business administration, or, colloquially, b-school. A business school teaches topics such as accounting, administration, strategy, economics, entrepreneurship, finance, human resource management, information systems, marketing, organizational behavior, public relations, and quantitative methods.

Types

They include schools of business, business administration, and management. There are four principal forms of business schools.

    Most of the university business schools are faculties, colleges or departments within the university, and teach predominantly business courses.
    In North America (outside Quebec) a business school is often understood to be a university graduate school which offers a Master of Business Administration or equivalent degree.
    Also in North America the term "business school" can refer to a different type of institution: a two-year school that grants the Associate's degree in various business subjects. Most of these schools began as secretarial schools, then expanded into accounting or bookkeeping and similar subjects. They are typically operated as businesses, rather than as institutions of higher learning.
    In Europe and Asia, some universities teach only business.


Notable firsts

* 1819 – The world's first business school, ESCP Europe was founded in Paris, France. It is the oldest business school in the world and now has campuses in Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, and Torino.
* 1855 - The Institut Supérieur de Commerce d'Anvers (State funded) and the Institut Saint-Ignace - École Spéciale de Commerce et d'Industrie (Jesuits education) were founded in the same year in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. After almost 150 years of business education and rivalry between catholic and state education, the successors of both institutions have merged in 2003 to the University of Antwerp.
* 1857 – The Budapest Business School was founded in the Austrian Empire as the first business school in Central Europe. It is the oldest public business school in the world
* 1881 – The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is the United States' first business school and the world's first collegiate business school.
* 1889 - The Manchester School of Commerce was established in Manchester, United Kingdom. It was the first school in the United Kingdom to teach commerce and was a predecessor of the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.
* 1898 – The University of St. Gallen established the first university in Switzerland teaching business and economics.
* 1906 – The Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) was established as the first university in Poland dedicated to teaching commerce and economics.
* 1946 – The Thunderbird School of Global Management, then called the American Institute for Foreign Trade, was the first graduate management school focused exclusively on global business.
* 1949 – The University of Pretoria in South Africa founded the oldest business school in Africa and was the first university to offer an MBA outside of North America. In January 2008 the Graduate School of Management was formally replaced by the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
* 1991 – The IEDC-Bled School of Management was the first business school to offer an MBA program in Eastern Europe.
* 1994 – CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) was the first business school in China to have received funding from a foreign government, namely the European Commission.
* 2010 – Skema Business School, opting for a multi campus strategy all around the world, in Brazil, France, China, Russia, Australia, Morocco and the USA, is the first French Business School to open a campus in the United States in Raleigh, North Carolina among the Research Triangle Park.

Degrees

Common degrees are as follows.

    Associate's degree: AA, AAB, ABA, AS
    Bachelor's Degrees: BA, BS, BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration), BBus (Bachelor of Business), BCom, BSBA, BAcc, BABA, BBS, BMOS and BBusSc (Bachelor of Business Science)
    Master's Degrees: MBA, MBM, Master of Management, MAcc, MMR, MSMR, MPA, MISM, MSM, MHA, MSF, MSc, MST, MMS, EMBA and MCom. At Oxford and Cambridge business schools an MPhil, or Master of Philosophy, is awarded in place of an MA or MSc.
    Post Graduate: Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM), Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM), Post Graduate Program (PGP) in Business Management, Post Graduate Program (PGP) in Management
    Doctoral Degrees: Ph.D., DBA, DHA, DM, Doctor of Commerce (DCOM), FPM, PhD in Management or Business Doctorate (Doctor of Philosophy), Doctor of Professional Studies (DPS)

Use of case studies

Some business schools center their teaching around the use of case studies (i.e. the case method). Case studies have been used in graduate and undergraduate business education for nearly one hundred years. Business cases are historical descriptions of actual business situations. Typically, information is presented about a business firm's products, markets, competition, financial structure, sales volumes, management, employees and other factors affecting the firm's success. The length of a business case study may range from two or three pages to 30 pages, or more.

Business schools often obtain case studies published by the Harvard Business School, INSEAD, the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, the Richard Ivey School of Business at The University of Western Ontario, the Darden School at the University of Virginia, IESE, other academic institutions, or case clearing houses (such as European Case Clearing House). Harvard's most popular case studies include Lincoln Electric Co. and Google, Inc.

Students are expected to scrutinize the case study and prepare to discuss strategies and tactics that the firm should employ in the future. Three different methods have been used in business case teaching:

    Prepared case-specific questions to be answered by the student. This is used with short cases intended for undergraduate students. The underlying concept is that such students need specific guidance to be able to analyze case studies.
    Problem-solving analysis. This second method, initiated by the Harvard Business School is by far the most widely used method in MBA and executive development programs. The underlying concept is that with enough practice (hundreds of case analyses) students develop intuitive skills for analyzing and resolving complex business situations. Successful implementation of this method depends heavily on the skills of the discussion leader.
    A generally applicable strategic planning approach. This third method does not require students to analyze hundreds of cases. A strategic planning model is provided and students are instructed to apply the steps of the model to six to a dozen cases during a semester. This is sufficient to develop their ability to analyze a complex situation, generate a variety of possible strategies and to select the best ones. In effect, students learn a generally applicable approach to analyzing cases studies and real situations. This approach does not make any extraordinary demands on the artistic and dramatic talents of the teacher. Consequently most professors are capable of supervising application of this method.

History of business cases

When Harvard Business School was founded, the faculty realized that there were no textbooks suitable to a graduate program in business. Their first solution to this problem was to interview leading practitioners of business and to write detailed accounts of what these managers were doing. Of course the professors could not present these cases as practices to be emulated because there were no criteria available for determining what would succeed and what would not succeed. So the professors instructed their students to read the cases and to come to class prepared to discuss the cases and to offer recommendations for appropriate courses of action. The basic outlines of this method are still present in business school curriculum today.

Other approaches

In contrast to the case method some schools use a skills-based approach in teaching business. This approach emphasizes quantitative methods, in particular operations research, management information systems, statistics, organizational behavior, modeling and simulation, and decision science. The goal is to provide students a set of tools that will prepare them to tackle and solve problems.

Another important approach used in business school is the use of business games that are used in different disciplines such as business, economics, management, etc. Some colleges are blending many of these approaches throughout their degree programs, and even blending the method of delivery for each of these approaches. A study from by Inside Higher Ed and the Babson Survey Research Group  shows that there is still disagreement as to the effectiveness of the approaches but the reach and accessibility is proving to be more and more appealing. Liberal arts colleges in the United States like New England College, Wesleyan University, and Bryn Mawr College are now offering complete online degrees in many business curriculae despite the controversy that surrounds the learning method.

There are also several business school that still rely on the lecture method to give students a basic business education. Lectures are generally given from the professor's point of view, and rarely require interaction from the students unless notetaking is required. Lecture as a method of teaching in business schools has been criticized by experts for reducing the incentive and individualism in the learning experience.

Global Master of Business Administration ranking

Each year, well-known business publications such as Business Week, The Economist, U.S. News & World Report, Fortune, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal publish rankings of selected MBA programs that, while controversial in their methodology, nevertheless can directly influence the prestige of schools that achieve high scores. Academic research is also considered to be an important feature and popular way to gauge the prestige of business schools.