An emerging market player in international business education: The case of Wits Business School

Abstract

Economic transition and transformation have been important features of emerging markets over the past decade. In some instances, such as in Central Europe and China, the transition has been from centrally-planned economies to market-based ones, and the key challenges have been to develop managerial skills in market-based economies and post-privatization contexts (see, for example, Spillan and Ziemnowicz, 2001). In others, such as in South America and South Africa, the transition has been more from self-sufficiency and autarky to global integration (see, for example, Klein, 1998). While the different transitions present different, although somewhat overlapping, challenges for management education in affected countries, more attention has been paid to the former type of transition than to the latter. This paper is an attempt to change the balance and put the spotlight on a generally neglected region of the world. South Africa represents an example of a country that went through a rapid transition from self-sufficiency to globalization. What makes this situation particularly interesting is that economic liberalization was accompanied by political liberalization and pressures to transform the economic and institutional base of the country to make it more demographically representative. It is in this context that the role of a South African business school is analyzed below. We begin with a brief perspective on the nature of South Africa's transition and identify the management development challenges that arose. We then examine the case of South Africa's leading business school and consider how it responded to these challenges. While the business school has achieved success on many of its objectives, the transition process entails a number of obstacles, both internal and external, that make adaptive change difficult. © 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.