Specialist MPhil degrees gain traction among senior executives

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JEREMY MAGGS: Business leaders today are navigating an era of constant disruption, geopolitical shocks, technological change and economic uncertainty. All of this is forcing executives to make, I think, complex decisions with long-term consequences.

Increasingly, many are turning to specialist postgraduate study to deepen their strategic judgement beyond the traditional MBA [Master of Business Administration].

Now, the Gordon Institute of Business Science [Gibs] has developed a portfolio of research-led MPhil [Master of Philosophy] programmes aimed specifically at experienced executives who need deeper analytical capability and strategic foresight.

Joining me now is Dr Jill Bogie, who’s the director of sustainability initiatives for Africa at Gibs and lead faculty for the MPhil in Corporate Strategy. Jill, a very warm welcome to you.

This is so interesting. So many executives already hold MBAs. I’m interested to know why there is suddenly a push towards specialist master’s degrees like the MPhil. Is there a gap they are filling that traditional business education up until now has not been doing?

JILL BOGIE: Thank you very much, Jeremy, for that introduction. That question is really something that we established after we launched these programmes. The first programme launched in 2018, the MPhil in International Business, and the MPhil in Corporate Strategy followed in 2019.

From the get-go, the MPhil Corporate strategy had a registration of 65 to 70 students, which has now increased to 90 students.

From actual experience, we have found that it was definitely needed. In hindsight, it’s easy to describe what that is because many students actually reflect back and tell us what it has achieved for them.

But the MPhils are very different from the MBA. The MBA is for middle managers and younger managers who aspire to broaden their careers. Many of them are engineers.

Well, there are many engineers in South Africa, even on our MPhil programmes – people with a speciality, a professional speciality – who want to become senior managers, who want to become executives and need to broaden their skills.

The MPhil is very different. It’s a deep dive. It’s a choice – do you want to build your credentials, deepen your knowledge and understanding of operating in the world of multinationals and international trade?

Well then, the MPhil in International Business is a strategy programme for that kind of person.

 The MPhil is a deep dive into corporate strategy. It’s also a strategy programme, not a leadership programme.

We attract very senior executives, some of whom are in the strategy department. They are advisors at the group or divisional level to the board, and they want more experience, more structure, and alternative ways of looking at the world and understanding, as you say, in this very complex world.

JEREMY MAGGS: Jill, we’ll get into the components in a moment, but I want to pick you up on that phrase, deep dive. As I understand it, these programmes are research-led. In practical terms, then, how does research training make a senior executive a better decision maker inside his or her organisation?

JILL BOGIE: Well, that’s a really good question because I experienced that myself, because I am an executive with 40 years’ experience and decided to embark on a master’s degree in my 50s.

I was astounded at how much I learned and it’s one of the reasons that I actually teach research methodology, because I believe that it provides, in this complex world, skills that you perhaps don’t realise that you need.

We live in a very binary world. What’s right, what’s wrong? Whose side are you on? Is this right or wrong? Is this the best route?

We really need to understand multiple perspectives, multiple ways of understanding the world and to understand the world in depth, but to do so in a structured way.

I find that the research process – for me as an executive, and for my colleagues who are students at Gibs; we share the passion for business – is that you need to understand multiple perspectives.

And the research allows you to look at the world and on a topic that you choose to do a deep dive [on] and realise that either by using a survey method or by using an exploratory method, which often is using interviews in a very structured way, there’s many other perspectives on a particular issue, and it broadens the understanding as well.

Then you can go deep because you have to go beyond your binary thinking or your professional thinking or your current thinking and ask: how do other people understand the world?

And then listen to what they have to say by applying a research method.

I prefer in my research not to make only academic [points], but to show our students how do you build on your existing, very capable business skills?

How do you extend those skills using what you know, how does academic research take that further in a way that’s going to be useful and answer or address or respond to questions that you as a senior executive are really passionate about or are really your imperatives, and therefore to make it worthwhile.

JEREMY MAGGS: I’m glad you used the word useful, because some critics might say, against the backdrop of the corporate world moving very quickly, that often academic research is either too slow or too theoretical to keep up. [It is] critical, of course, that you ensure your programmes remain relevant to real business challenges, and I’m glad you used the word useful there.

JILL BOGIE: You’re quite right. As a business person, and even now, having morphed into an academic, I think that the traditional academic publication process is very, very long, and for me, very frustrating.

I’ve published my top article, learnt that it took five years, and it’s why I choose to do work with students in a different way.

The research component of our MPhil programmes is essentially a nine-month project. The key here is to make it useful for business.

As a business school, it’s not difficult to make sure that the topics that the students are covering are practical.

I tell all my students ‘Your job here is to demonstrate that you can use this structured approach to address the questions you have’.

Because as a business person, I know that you could stand on your head and talk to me for an hour about the importance of your topic to business, but we want to move you into a place where you do this in a structured manner so that you learn something new, you learn more in depth, you learn different and multiple perspectives.

So we’re not in the publication game, which is the frustrating part of academic work.

JEREMY MAGGS: Jill, let’s get back to components of what you’re offering. As I understand it, the programmes cover corporate strategy, international business, change leadership, and leading in new economies. All vital.

Tell me why these four areas were chosen, and maybe link that to the leadership gap you’re trying to address.

JILL BOGIE: They’ve developed over time. I’ve mentioned international business, and I’ve mentioned corporate strategy – and change leadership came quite a few years later. I think it’s only been running for three, maybe four years, and leading in new economies is very recent.

Many of them, though, because the academic process takes such a long time to get registered through the Department of Higher Education, were pretty much all initiated or conceived back in 2018.

But they are very complementary, and they work as a suite. Two of them are strategy, international business and corporate strategy, and two of them are leadership.

International business and corporate strategy focus on the organisational level, the organisational decision-making, the firm and its strategy, and the firm and how it develops its markets internationally.

Change leadership is not just any form of change. It focuses on people.

I think that whether you’re in academia or business, the typical thing is, oh, change doesn’t work or it’s very expensive.

I am not an academic expert in leadership, but I am an executive who is involved in many change programmes, and the issue that is lacking there is understanding people.

That’s what my colleague, Dr Dots Ndletyana, works on, is the people aspect of change, because it’s about leadership.

Leading in new economies, I have been involved in that, and that’s actually at the higher level. How does an organisation or an individual have agency? Sorry, that’s a little bit of an academic word. But agency, how do they take action at a higher level within their market, within their region, towards an issue that is important in Africa or globally?

JEREMY MAGGS: That is so important given this era of geopolitical fragmentation and trade tensions. Unless an executive is getting to grips with that and has the deep expertise in international business, it’s going to become more difficult to operate in the complexity of an emerging market economy like South Africa’s, for instance.

JILL BOGIE: You’re quite right. But one of the most fascinating things about the corporate strategy and international business programme is, and one of the benefits of it, which is a side benefit not from the direct curriculum, is that there are other executives in the class.

So that’s something that all my students actually reflect back on and say ‘I learnt so much from my colleagues in class’ – and [they] use that network and have developed it because we learn from each other.

That is an important aspect, but they also come to class with very strong expectations and a desire to gain understanding and develop their existing knowledge of doing business in Africa and globally.

We’re starting off with a group of people who are already very experienced executives who know that they want to learn more about how to navigate the complexity, and I use the word complexity because I actually teach systems thinking and complexity and the principles, they’re derived from the science, but how do they apply within a business context and help us understand different ways of applying principles, which the world doesn’t use commonly, and that all plays into their desire to understand more about business in a much broader context.

You can’t avoid it nowadays, nor can you avoid the multiple perspectives. You look at the news every single day, and you see how binary it is: is this right or is this wrong? It just doesn’t help. Whether you’re a business person or just anybody going about your normal day.

But for business executives, it’s a very stimulating environment. The corporate strategy programme starts with one of our most amazing faculty members, who is still teaching, and that’s our founder, Professor Nick Binedell, who teaches geopolitics.

Every year the programme is different, with a similar structure, because he engages the students in the current context of geopolitics.

JEREMY MAGGS: Let me finish with this, and against the backdrop, I guess, of what Nick is teaching, have you applied your mind to the type of new leadership that is required in societies, again, such as South Africa, that are facing challenges of structural change, economic transition and all overshadowed by constant inequality?

JILL BOGIE: Very much so. At Gibs, we talk about being a school that’s close to business. Our clients in the academic programmes are primarily from the corporate business of South Africa.

The three pillars of the Gibs strategy are climate leadership, which includes environmental issues, social issues, and many other aspects of sustainability, and also includes digital leadership and includes humane leadership.

So working with those and within our context, the way that Gibs was founded, it was 25 years old last year, it was founded in the year 2000, the same year as the United Nations Global Compact. I think that’s a very interesting parallel.

Our social and societal role is embedded in the DNA of Gibs. It is what Nick Binedell stands for, and it remains his work.

It was continued by Nicola Kleyn, who continues to teach as a professor at Gibs, as the lead faculty member for leading new economies, and by Dean Morris Mthombeni, who is taking us internationally to a much larger audience.

So many of my colleagues internationally – I work a lot internationally with the United Nations Principles Responsible Management Education initiative – are so fascinated by how businesses and business schools operate in South Africa, to really integrate our societal and social responsibilities alongside environmental and climate, as well as still creating leaders and teaching new generations of leaders about performance and what business performance means in today’s world.

JEREMY MAGGS: That [ends our] conversation about the Gordon Institute of Business Science that has developed a portfolio of research-led MPhil programmes aimed specifically at experienced executives who need deeper analytical capability and strategic foresight.

My thanks to Dr Jill Bogie, director of sustainability initiatives for Africa at Gibs, lead faculty for the MPhil in Corporate Strategy. Jill, thank you very much indeed.

JILL BOGIE: Thank you very much, Jeremy.

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