1. Our Vision
Inspired by its founding commitment, the School of Business Administration in 2019 developed a new educational vision under the era-defining motto “To build a first-class business school integrating economics, law, and management, taking a firm hold in south-central China and facing the world.” The words “taking a firm hold in south-central China” are firmly grounded in the University’s proud history and founding principles, and give powerful testimony to our aim of enhancing our educational profile and competitive strength in the region and beyond; “Facing the world” is a heightened expression of our commitment to adopting an all-embracing, go-global strategy and fostering a new generation of global citizens with an international vision; The key slogan “integrating economics, law, and management” makes manifest our educational mission, that is, to encourage cross-disciplinary teaching and research by capitalizing on our traditional strengths while learning from others, and to cultivate a learning community unfettered by disciplinary boundaries; “To build a first-class business school” captures our ambition and ultimate goal, which is to establish ourselves as a globally recognized institution and home to trail-blazing researchers, change makers, and socially responsible entrepreneurs. On the whole, this motto is a perfect embodiment of the School’s doctrine developed earlier, that is, “Building an elite university of social sciences with distinctive features”. Moreover, the motto is a timely response to the call of the nation and society after the School was officially recognized in 2017 by the Ministry of Education as a home to “first-class key disciplines”. Perhaps most importantly, it serves as an impassioned plea for delivering a global educational experience focusing on sustainability and exchange without losing sight of each other’s unique strengths.
2. Our Mission Statement
Our vision, as clearly blueprinted above, is broad and all-encompassing. In alignment with that big picture, the School hopes to call for more fine-grained development strategies and further state our mission as follows: “To Create Business Knowledge, Contribute Business Wisdom, and Cultivate Business Elites.” This mission statement indicates that the School strives for innovation and dissemination of business knowledge by exploiting two of its greatest traditional strengths and sources of inspiration—Business Management and Applied Economics, and thereby expanding the breadths and depths of the theories and practices pertinent to China’s economic development and strategic needs. The School also holds as its mission to realize a smooth integration of theory and practice, and make a valuable contribution to the larger society by sharing its expertise and playing the role of China’s top think-tank. In so doing, the School aims to succeed in cultivating top business minds with well-rounded abilities, solid academic backgrounds, a truly global vision and a keen sense of social responsibility.
3. Our Value(s)
To make the aforementioned vision a reality, and to ensure the successful implementation of the School’s strategies, the School has long championed its core beliefs that “Knowledge and Practice Bring You Truth, Honesty and Integrity Take You Far.”
“Knowledge and Practice Bring You Truth”
Confucian wisdom has it that knowledge guides social practices, and social practices in turn consolidate knowledge; only through an integration of knowledge and practice can one live a fulfilled, driven life and achieve a state of Nirvana, and this always rings true for students and teachers alike. It’s the School’s belief that this Confucian wisdom can and should be readily applied to business education.
“Honesty and Integrity Take You Far”
Mutual trust will take care of itself as long as you carry decency and honesty with you in your everyday encounters. As the old Chinese proverb has it, “A person cannot walk on firm ground without honesty, just like a bird cannot fly high without robust wings.” The School has long championed the value of honesty as the foundational stone of its long-term development. In practicing this value, the School has spared no effort in teaching equality and diversity, and making sure that members of its learning community uphold the same value in future social and business undertakings.
4. Our Strategy
The School’s development strategies between 2019 and 2024 are: Pursuing International Trends, Embracing Local Practice, Promoting School Advantages, and Delivering Responsible Management.
a) “Pursuing International Trends”: Toward the Cutting-Edge of Global Education
To achieve this very first strategic goal, the first and foremost target for the School is to build a truly international educational profile, which means that the School will adopt a go-global strategy and take as its primary aim the promotion of global educational exchange by hiring a team of guest lecturers of global renown, recruiting foreign-trained young talents, and creating an academic exchange platform for its faculty members. With regard to research, the School is currently planning on further collaborating with reputable business schools and institutions overseas on projects that will lead to publication in top journals, thereby making a valuable contribution to cutting-edge scholarship. Adopting global best practice also means that the School will take as its tasks the development of joint programs and assistance for ambitious, globally-oriented students who would benefit from the experience of studying and conducting research overseas.
Aside from building an international profile, the School has also been working assiduously to adjust to our fast-paced technology-focused world. The century we live in has witnessed waves of technological revolutions and paradigm-shifting innovations from the Internet and social media to big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence. Facing such sweeping changes, the School has been tirelessly exploring ways to connect its curricula to current technological advances, thereby helping students reflect on the possible challenges and opportunities that may present themselves in future. In that spirit, the School embarks on a reformulation of its teaching objectives every two to four years. To that end, it is reorganizing its core curricula by introducing seminars in such areas as Digital Trade, The Internet & Fundraising, Business Valuation for Internet Enterprises, and Big Data, Business Innovation and Corporate Design, among others. The School is also planning to encourage its team of lecturers to incorporate real-world business scenarios and practical experience into its teaching of and research into business consulting, in an effort to help business enterprises in China and abroad develop a keen sense of on-going technological advances and the wherewithal to succeed.
However, pursuing global best practice does not necessarily translate into conveniently skirting national and provincial economic realities and development goals. First, with the implementation of China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, numerous Chinese companies are now seeking investment opportunities abroad in an effort to bridge the divisions between domestic and global markets, thus creating “a dual-cycle system”, and reshaping their own understandings of the global economy in an ever-changing world. In response, the School aims to foster business minds with solid backgrounds in the market—provincial, global and otherwise—and the nation’s development goals. The School’s creation of a stable talent pool through international educational collaboration for the Chinese nation is overdue. Second, given that in recent years China has shifted its focus to supply-side structural reform in pursuit of quality economic growth, the School cannot and will not ask its students and faculty to stay in their cozy ivory towers. Rather, the School has made solid plans to translate its research output into projects that address the needs of the society and provincial economy by building more platforms for collaboration between schools and business enterprises, and encouraging our faculty to share its ideas among the thinking public.
b) “Embracing Local Practice”: Toward a Global Education Embedded in Local Conditions
While many would agree that the role of business education is to serve local socio-economic needs by enhancing students’ management competence, few would dare to assume such a role. While pursuing global best practice, the School is also acutely aware of the pressing need for development strategies grounded in local realities.
A project of embracing local practice means that scientific research must go hand in glove with China’s provincial realities and local characteristics. For years, the School has been promoting and funding China-oriented research projects, case studies and teaching programs, in the hope of bringing forth a new era of knowledge embedded in Chinese national experiences and realities.
A project of embracing local practice also means that the School will put the task of guiding economic transformation and upgrading at the front and center of its work. To achieve that, of foremost importance is to encourage extensive fieldwork and establish research on firm, practical grounds, before prescribing solutions to the pressing managerial problems plaguing local companies, local markets and the local economy. No less important for the School is to create a forum that enables teachers and researchers to apply their expertise to real-world issues that local communities and governments find intractable, thus creating dialogue between the School and government bodies at various levels.
Such a localization project would be incomplete without addressing the needs of the School’s alumni associations, particularly business enterprises established by its senior students. To strengthen its alumni network, the School will implement its educational strategy, one that is highly cross-disciplinary, practical and problem-oriented with the explicit aims of broadening students’ global horizons, as outlined earlier, and preparing leading young business graduates for membership of the School’s alumni associations. Furthermore, the School will be exploring new possibilities for creating dialogue between alumni associations and classrooms by inviting distinguished alumni—scholars, entrepreneurs and other luminaries—to host research seminars and career fairs.
c) “Promoting the School’s Advantages”:Toward an Cross-disciplinary Training Regime
In recent decades and in the years to come, the School has spared and will be sparing no effort in reforming its education practices as well as principles, aiming to deliver quality educational experiences to an innovative, receptive and open-minded learning community. The School has long regarded as its task the fostering of a new generation of business minds with solid backgrounds in economics, law and management by building on its traditional strengths and key advantages and developing a comprehensive training regime. Boasting a sterling reputation in economics, law and management, the School will not hesitate to take on the twin challenge of integrating all three of its core disciplines as it has always done, and adopting a four-part training model. This model comprises 1) a team committed to strengthening established disciplinary studies, 2) a cross-disciplinary course module, 3) a research platform benefiting teachers and students alike, and 4) a training center for practical work and internships. For years, the School has been working on finding new ways, such as developing a new MBA program along with a new cross-disciplinary training program targeting international trade majors, to strengthen disciplines already recognized as its traditional strengths. Moreover, the School has in previous years introduced to its undergraduate and graduate students and MBA degree seekers cross-disciplinary course modules encompassing seminars and courses such as Introduction to Law, Economic Law, Law and Economics, Law and Business Management, Intellectual Property Managerial Economics, and Economic Analysis: a Macroscopic View, among others. With that driving spirit, it should come as no surprise that the School’s long-term project of building research platforms by leveraging its two strongest “first-class” disciplines—applied economics and business management—to its advantage, while gaining inspiration from other disciplines and fellow institutions, has proved a success. Its “Wenquan Law & Economics Lecture Series”, a platform designed to cultivate a collegiate environment and cross-disciplinary dialogue has been extremely well-received. In short, the School’s training regime is informed by three keywords—innovation, application, and integration, as evidenced by its training center for practical work and internships where ideas for research projects, social surveys and internships are incubated and exchanged.
d) “Delivering Responsible Management”:Making a Fair Contribution to Education, Research and Practices Geared Toward Global Responsible Management
The School adheres firmly to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Management Education (hereafter PRME) and will strive to make a valuable contribution to a variety of education programs, research projects and social practices in support of global responsible management. The School’s strategic planning and the ways in which its strategies are put into practice all echo PRME’s six basic principles: PURPOSE, as evinced by the School’s commitment to fostering a new generation of business minds endowed with vision, cross-disciplinary awareness, and a sense of social responsibility; VALUES, which finds resonance in the School’s course modules (e.g. Business Ethics) heavily geared toward incorporating responsible management into real-world business scenarios; METHOD, as clearly evidenced by the School’s flexible, fine-grained approach to teaching and conducting research; RESEARCH, another principle that informs the School’s numerous research projects targeting poverty and environmental degradation; PARTNERSHIP, a principle pursued through the School’s relentless efforts to create solid ties among academia, business enterprises, and government agencies; and DIALOGUE, as evidenced by the many professional and academic platforms designed to foster multilateral intellectual exchange and disseminate expertise on responsible management. Overall, as an institution with an aspiration to establish itself as a world-class business school, the School will carry on promoting its core value as embedded in its founding motto “Knowledge and Practice Bring You Truth, Honesty and Integrity Take You Far” through meaningful organizational practices, and the fostering of an informed, empowered, and impassioned business community.