The course has been revamped in recent years and placed on a “progressive path”, says MBA director professor Kevin Chiang. “Our slogan, ‘We are SHARP’, implies our strategic commitment,” Chiang adds. “We are committed to fostering a business education environment with world-class software, state-of-the-art hardware and well-connected alumni, in order to boost global talent recruitment and to power them to achieve a career-advancing placement.”

As befits a programme with international aspirations, CityU’s MBA has increasingly sought to bring into the classroom practical and cutting-edge knowledge tempered by a global perspective. Students have been able to benefit from a broad spectrum of experiential learning opportunities from across the world. In the UK, CityU has partnered with Imperial College London for a global brand management workshop, while in the United States, University of California Berkeley has helped offer a similar workshop focused on fostering entrepreneurship.

“These courses are all projects in which students will have to reach out and work with different organisations,” explains Chiang. “In the global brand management workshop, our MBA students have worked on projects for iconic brands including luxury carmaker Bentley, supermarket chain Tesco and Edwardian Hotels, where students developed branding strategies for the Asian market. At the same time, the entrepreneurship workshop allowed students to learn from Berkeley faculty and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley through workshops and visits to innovative companies such as Ford and Google. They put what they learn into practice by developing a comprehensive business plan, which they present to venture capitalists for genuine evaluation.”

Closer to home, students also have the chance to take part in a diagnostic residential trip in Asia, which provides the opportunity to work as part of a consulting team that helps partnering companies seeking to address business challenges. Although the course originally focused on mainland China, as inter-regional trade has expanded so have the prospective destinations for students. Recent students have carried out their work in countries as varied as South Korea, Cambodia and Malaysia.

Chiang is keen to emphasise that it is the hands-on components of CityU’s course that are so valuable. Its MBA is designed to prepare students to take on business leadership roles that span disciplines, industries and regions, providing tailor-made courses that allow students to gain first-hand experience of business and real-world challenges.

“Given the complex nature of the global business environment, and the needs of today’s businesses practices, experiential learning or ‘learning by doing’ enable students to gain practical experience they can apply in real-world situations,” says Chiang. “Importantly, no matter what career they are pursuing, experiential learning experiences can help students increase their business acumen and develop the cross-functional decision-making skills that are crucial for any profession.”

Approaching the needs of professionals from a different angle, helping workers round out their skill sets is the aim of the PolyU MBA programme.

“Many professionals in Hong Kong are trained to be specialists in their fields. At some point in their careers, these specialists will need to equip themselves with business and people skills in order to evolve into middle and senior management potentials,” says Dr Pamsy Hui, MBA programme director, faculty of business, at PolyU.

“At the same time, there are many professionals who are technically skilled with potentially great entrepreneurial ideas, but they lack the business knowledge to turn these ideas into realities. Our programme provides the general business and people management knowledge and skills that these professionals need to move forward in their careers.”

PolyU offers its MBA students a two-year course that imparts knowledge across a broad front. Students can choose from modules as varied as accounting, economics, operation management, management information systems and marketing. Using this broad-based foundation, students are then given the chance to delve deeper into areas that interest them. In their second year, students learn about ethics, responsibility and sustainability, and close their studies with a capstone subject in strategy. “In sum, this is very much a generalist programme,” declares Hui.

One advantage PolyU has over rivals is its history of close collaboration with industry. Originally established in 1937 as the Government Trade School, PolyU’s precursor was the first publicly funded, post-secondary technical institution in Hong Kong. As a result, the university has long had ties to the supply chain and transport sector, as well as the textile, accounting, hospitality and health care industries. “This history means we have been able to combine academic rigour with practical wisdom in our programme,” says Hui.

This history is clearly reflected in the student make-up. Of the 2019 class of MBA students, 32 per cent have a background in logistics and operations, and 20 per cent in accounting, finance or insurance firms.

Despite these strong roots in Hong Kong, PolyU is not ignorant of the international aspect of business in the 21st century. “Hong Kong is an international city. In an increasingly interdependent world, it is no longer enough for a leader to focus solely on the local situation,” says Hui.

To help students achieve a global outlook, PolyU offers a number of internationally-focused subjects such as global economics, international management and global sourcing and supply. For their field study course, students travel to cities around the world, learning from companies and organisations in their home context.

“Being able to navigate across cultures is what makes Hong Kong successful,” says Hui. “Knowledge about different cultures and contexts, and the skills required to negotiate across cultures and contexts are crucial to the development of a global leader. In fact, such knowledge and skills are also sources of innovation. Finally, we learn more about ourselves and our country by interacting with others and seeing and learning about other countries. An international perspective allows a richer and more meaningful contemplation of one’s life.”

Students looking for greater global perspective don’t have to look far. The Hong Kong Management Association (HKMA), a non-profit-making organisation which aims to advance management excellence in Hong Kong, has partnered with the University of South Australia (UniSA) to offer a special MBA programme with a specialisation in finance, HR management and marketing.

“The UniSA MBA is informed by industry to address real-world scenarios, delivering an education that can be applied in the workplace in real time,” says Peter Stevens, executive director, MBA and executive education at UniSA. “The programme is critical in bringing leadership skills to the fore and enhancing them. Partnering with industry and academia ensures that UniSA is not only developing the skills of today but also the leadership skills required for the future.”

The University of South Australia is one of only nine institutions in Australia, and 180 globally, to be accredited by EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System). Its MBA syllabus on the course is regularly updated to keep abreast of the latest developments in business. Leadership for growth, managing people and organisations, ethics and governance and sustainability are hot topics that UniSA has brought into its teachings.

A hugely inclusive course, UniSA’s MBA student body is made up of individuals from a broad mix of industry sectors and job functions. The one constant is the experienced nature of students, with most being veteran professionals and managers in their 30s and 40s.

“The course is for those who want to acquire the knowledge and skills to advance their career in senior management and leadership,” says Stevens. “The UniSA MBA programme has been designed to suit individual career and business needs with the choice of three specialisations in finance, HR management and marketing … It provides students with real-world insights through their world-class professors and industry experts, using intensive weekend seminars, case studies in-class and practice-based assignments.”

For those seeking a truly international MBA education there’s always the option of studying abroad. One institution with significant links to Hong Kong is the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, which has long offered scholarships to students via the Hong Kong Scholarship for Excellence Scheme and Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowships.

“Rotman is a Canadian gem,” says its dean, Tiff Macklem, who has a PhD in economics and has served as a senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada and as one of Canada’s finance deputies at the G7.

Canada is particularly welcoming to international students, says Macklem, highlighting the fact that after graduation students receive a three-year work permit. Toronto, in particular, is a diverse city where 51 per cent of the population was born outside Canada. “It shows” Macklem says, “that you can have a diverse community that is prosperous and thrives and benefits because of that diversity”.

Rotman’s success is based, in part, on its rigorous analytical programme. Educators then introduce a model-based decision-making framework that builds on the analytical foundation, which helps to serve students well across many sectors. Students tackle finance and accounting as well as HR and marketing. Digital delivery is used to help working professionals with the demands of the course, allowing them flexibility on when they watch course material and the speed.

Flexibility is a key word for Macklem and more of it has been injected into the MBA course to help keep it up to date with the needs of students.

“We’re big believers in the two-year programme for full-time students,” Macklem says. “However, we’ve been introducing more flexibility. Some of that is technology, but it’s more than that. It used to be that for our full-time MBA, the curriculum was set in the first year; the second year was all electives. We’ve mixed that up now, to allow students to get into courses they’re really interested in earlier.

“Secondly, we’ve made our internship period more flexible, too. It’s no longer just during the summer, which is for some companies the least busy time. We changed around our delivery to do that, and that’s created a lot more opportunities for students to find the internship they want.”

Rotman does more than teach the fundamentals of management thinking. Behaviour is seen as crucial, too.

“So much success in business is about working with others,” says Macklem. “Being able to motivate others, to be persuasive, to communicate, to be a leader. And that’s not something that lends itself to classroom teaching … It’s about being aware of your behaviour in meetings. How are you perceived? We all have things we do, which we might not notice but others are put off by. Understanding how other people see you is very valuable. If people see me in a certain way, is that deliberate because I want them to see me that way or is it completely unintended?

“And in a setting when we have students from many different countries, we all come from different cultures where different things are perceived differently. Understanding those differences of perception is one of the keys to being successful in business and in life.”