2014’s Best & Worst CEOs and Other MBA News Snippets

The Thunderbird MBA program looks set to be scrapped, at least for the time being, in plans drawn up as part of the final agreement formalizing Arizona State University’s (ASU) takeover of Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Thunderbird MBA Set to Close

In the terms announced by ASU on Friday (December 19), the initial offerings in Thunderbird’s new dawn will primarily be a one-year masters in global management and a two-year MA in global affairs and management. There is also set to be a new focus on executive education.  No reference is made to the Thunderbird MBA in ASU’s official statement. 

The deal will reportedly see ASU pay off debts of US$22 million while retaining much of the Thunderbird faculty. Allen Morrison, formerly of IMD, has been named as the Thunderbird’s new CEO and director:

“Thunderbird is stronger as a part of ASU, and ASU is stronger for having Thunderbird as a part of the institution,” Morrison said.

Talks over the specifics have been taking place since the summer but, with a final agreement now in place, the deal is expected to be closed by the year’s end, December 31st.

Academic strength threatened by planned cuts at Copenhagen Business School?

Concerns have been raised over potential job losses as a result of funding cuts of almost US$10 million at Copenhagen Business School (CBS).

The cuts, announced by Copenhagen Business School in November, have been attributed to changes to Denmark’s funding system for publicly-funded universities – something that has particular relevance in Scandinavia where tuition fees are closely regulated.

A trio of US professors have now written directly to Copenhagen Business School’s president, Per Holten-Andersen, in protest – according to a Financial Times report. The three professors, who are all connected with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argue that cuts in academic staff will do substantial damage to the Copenhagen Business School’s strength of integrating the humanities into business education.

As much as 10% of CBS’s academic staff could be looking at redundancy from February 2015, according to a protest petition that urges the school to reconsider how it will impose budget cuts.  

Twitter and Tesco Make Dartmouth Tuck professor’s ‘Worst CEOs of 2014’

Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, and Tesco’s Philip Clarke have the misfortune to be named among the five worst CEOs of 2014 in a list of the year’s best and worst CEOs put together by a management professor at Dartmouth Tuck.

Sydney Finkelstein, who is the director of Dartmouth Tuck’s leadership center, has been sharing his views on the CEOs he believes are making the biggest mistakes since 2010, and last year started to highlight the work of CEOs he believed had performed best.

This year’s list forms part of Finkelstein’s desire to identify and demonstrate leadership practices that work, and those that don’t. He is the author of Why Smart Executives Fail – a bestseller in the US and Japan.

“Drawing attention to prominent CEOs who have stumbled is another way to learn, for all of us, about what works and doesn’t when it comes to leadership,” Finkelstein said of his ‘Worst CEOs’ list in a press release for Dartmouth Tuck.

Worst CEOs of 2014

Best CEOs of 2014