The SKEMA Global Executive MBA interweaves the essential strands of today’s and tomorrow’s imperatives, creating a holistic and inclusive approach that aligns organisations with societal and environmental needs on a global scale.
The fundamental business pillars for tomorrow
Sustainability
Companies and organisations are increasingly called upon to become responsible actors in enhancing societies’ well-being and ensuring the environment’s ability to survive and thrive. The need to design viable futures must underpin all business considerations—such as rising social inequalities, loss of biodiversity, scarcity of natural resources, or climate change, to name but a few. It requires integrating ethical and sustainable long-term solutions at all levels of organisations’ strategies—to accelerate transition toward more circular and inclusive economies.
Artificial Intelligence
While the exponential growth of AI constitutes significant scientific and technological progress—and with it, considerable business benefits—Big Data also carries with it the potential to skew information and, therefore, business decisions. It is vital for leaders to develop a critical understanding of all facets of AI and its applications so as to apply the application of data sciences responsibly to effect changes to the benefit of all stakeholders.
Leadership
As a turbulent world fundamentally changes our known parameters, so, too, leadership approaches require a paradigm shift. Our interconnected world requires a move away from individual performance and success—towards collaboration, inclusiveness and empowerment, as well as the essential skills to consider the increasingly urgent issues of diversity and inclusion, culture and ethics. Effective leaders are those whose profound understanding of themselves, their environments and their teams enable them to effect confident, well-considered and impactful decisions.
Supply Chain
Still emergent 20 years ago, supply chain management today has developed into a global and increasingly strategic business function, resulting in a range of opportunities, challenges and complexities— such as global vs local outsourcing considerations, environmental considerations, dealing with economic and financial downturns and turbulence, changing geopolitical shifts and cyberattacks, to name but a few. The speed of change and global turbulences require companies to build innovative and dynamic capabilities to secure operations and develop supply chains that are simultaneously sustainable and strategically competitive.
Transformation
Against the backdrop of the newly emerging business, geopolitical, societal and environmental realities, 21st-century transformation requires a fundamental cognitive shift—similar to Charles Darwin’s principle that “it is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change”. In today’s and tomorrow’s business contexts, change must result in creating long-term desirable futures, through a combination of anticipation, proactive strategic management and the ability to engineer and implement complex changes.
Finance
The unprecedented flow of simultaneous macro-level considerations—domestic and global economics, political uncertainty, inflation and Covid-related supply chain disruptions, energy insecurity and sustainable transformation—profoundly impact firms’ financial considerations. Against the backdrop of inflation and interest rate volatility across the globe, abrupt shifts in market shares and turbulent financial markets, leaders must develop financial resilience and consider long-term viability in short-term contexts to secure post-pandemic growth, reinforce compliance and risk management, and embrace technology and automation.
Four main chapters, each dedicated to learning a value creation process
Each chapter is broken down into lessons designed to encourage the development of systematic thinking to better understand and learn to manage complexity.
Through the different residential weeks, the Global Executive MBA programme offers the possibility of experiences within the ecosystems of the school's different international campuses, in the USA, China, Brazil and France.
Chapter 1: Understanding the wider environment
This first module is aimed at understanding the environment in the broad sense. More precisely, programme participants learn to recognise weak signals, to navigate interlinked megatrends, and to develop a cross-disciplinary approach to understand the world from a perspective beyond that of traditional management.
Residential week in Paris, France
Chapter 2: Strategising for and in a changing world
In the second module, EMBA participants learn to elaborate strategies for and in a changing world. The lessons enable them to understand the potential of technologies, sustainability and other major drivers of business growth and transformation. With this understanding, they can gain expertise to devise and implement strategies that widen the possibilities.
Residential week in Raleigh, USA
Chapter 3: Shaping Organizations & Operations
The second-last module of the EMBA is aimed at developing value-added skills that improve companies' operational efficiency. This means learning to identify the challenges facing the supply chain as a result of the growing pressure of international competition, client and customer expectations, regulatory requirements, and environment protection.
The students commit to safeguarding the planet and to protecting personal data and its ethical use. They learn to think like the school's avant-garde, to act like impactful players, and to contribute as a global institution.
Residential week in Suzhou, China
Chapter- 4: The Transformation Imperative
To round off the programme, the fourth module of the EMBA is all about implementing transformation. The students become capable of improving and using their leadership to devise a complex transformation and transcend normative approaches. They learn to take into account crucial questions concerning rights, ethics and governance in their decision making.
Residential week in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Courses
Business functions (disciplinary) courses
Objective: Develop a 360-degree view of a company and expertise in business functions.
- Understand the underlying ultimate principles and practices of different business functions, the context of business operations and detect 'weak signals'' that may potentially morph into disruptive factors.
- Acquire appropriate methodologies & develop a mindset that will enhance the participants’ personal ability to successfully manage transformation and shape the future.
- Apply data technologies to create new capabilities to foster value creation in different industries.
- Be ready for the future: today’s theories are tomorrow’s practices.
Courses: Finance; Data science for leaders; Controlling & performance management; Global management & talent development; Strategy & digital marketing; Entrepreneurship & innovation
Value creation processes (interdisplinary) courses
Objectives:
- Create value in times of disruption by adjusting strategies and business models.
- Understand how organisations develop business strategies, what makes them successful, and why and when they need to undergo change.
- Understand the impact of transformation not only on how organisations (re)structure themselves, but also on the dynamics between people in organisations.
- Learn to develop more sustainable perspectives on value creation to address the world’s urgent social and environmental challenges.
- Transform ideas into new value (the entrepreneurship process) and formulate new frameworks and alternative forms of sustainable value creation for all stakeholders, e.g.. social entrepreneurship, making the most of abandoned resources, etc.
Courses: Setting the scene: business in the 21st century; Economy analysis for Leaders; The art of strategic renewal; Sustainability, technology & society; Advanced organisational design; Operations & supply chain in a VUCA world; Toward organizations for sustainable societies: regulatory, normative & governance frameworks, actors & dynamics; The Transformation imperative
Leadership development
Objectives:
Throughout the programme, participants develop a powerful combination of soft skills and a mindset for new leadership thought and action. As transformational leaders they will be:
- Holistic strategists - able to lead change and to put in place the right capabilities, and equipped with the appropriate mindset to successfully effect change
- Agile – through adaptability and anticipation, to enable the simultaneous management of complexity and uncertainty with alignment of strategies and business contexts
- Digital leaders - to anticipate how increased digitalisation changes the way we communicate, interact and work in team
- Creative chameleons - versatile, able to lead in context and make the most out of diversity dedicated – as ‘sense-makers’, able to effect complete alignment between their mindset, the company and the environment.
Courses:
- Stage 1: Developing a transformation mindset & skills; Understanding the self, enhanced emotional Intelligence
- Stage 2: Leading (in) a crisis and in turbulent times; Communicating, motivating, inspiring teams and corporate ecosystem
- Stage 3: Leading with agility; Collaborative team management
- Stage 4: Cultural & diversity management; Intra/ entrepreneurship mindset
