The Business School Broadcast – 16th February 2018

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In this week’s Business School Broadcast we discover the winners of the 2018 MBA Games, find out if playing hard to get actually increases romantic attraction and look at why the Small Business Administration’s New York office is offering a free entrepreneurial training course.

Gustaf Nordbäck appointed CEO of FT | IE Corporate Learning Alliance

Financial Times | IE Business School Corporate Learning Alliance, a leading global provider of customised corporate learning programs for large corporations, has appointed Gustaf Nordbäck as its Chief Executive Officer.

Nordbäck has a successful track record in the learning sector. He joins FT | IE Corporate Learning Alliance from DigiExam, a digital assessment platform used to create, administer and mark exams. He helped grow this business into a company serving over 2800 organisations across more than 80 countries.

Tas Viglatzis, Chairman of Corporate Learning Alliance, says: ‘Gustaf Nordbäck brings very valuable expertise and talent to our organisation at an important point, as we deliver our strategy to reinvent corporate learning over the coming years. I look forward to working closely with Gustaf to build on and enhance Corporate Learning Alliance’s successes and growth momentum.’

Schulich School of Business wins 2018 MBA Games

The Winter Olympics might currently be taking place in Pyeongchang, South Korea. But, we're more interested in the news that Schulich School of Business at York University announced that Team Schulich braved the extreme Ottawa cold, alongside rival competitors from 16 other Canadian graduate business schools, to win the 2018 MBA Games.

About 600 students from 17 universities competed in this year’s games at Telfer School of Management in Ottawa. Points were awarded across contests in three categories, including multiple case competitions, a spirit competition and several sports contests.

Teams from Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management and UBC’s Sauder School of Business placed 2nd and 3rd overall, respectively.

“This was our year to win the MBA Games,” said Catherine Sim, Team Captain, who expects to graduate with a Schulich MBA degree later this year. “It feels great to bring the Queen’s Cup back to where it belongs.”

Does ‘playing hard to get’ increase romantic attraction?

We may perhaps be a couple of days late reporting this, but is love still in the air?

One of the most elusive dating tactics since the beginning of time has to be ‘playing hard to get’. While Socrates famously advised courtesan Theodote to boost her attraction by withholding her affections until men are “hungry” with desire, ‘playing hard to get’ remains a sought-after strategy many yearn to master in a romantic relationship - as shown by the prevalence of related advice on dating columns or the internet.

However, prior researches have yielded little support for the efficacy - or inefficacy - of this belief and those who had had the chances to execute the strategy in real life might realize the so-called strategy often leads to ambivalent results.

Professor Dai Xianchi of Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School, together with PhD student Ping Dong (now Assistant Professor of Marketing at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University) and PhD student Jayson S. Jia of Stanford University (now Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Hong Kong), collaborated in a research to find out the answers.

SBA pumping up free entrepreneurial training course

The Small Business Administration’s New York office is looking for local small business owners to enroll in its Emerging Leaders entrepreneurial training course.

The free seven-month long program seeks to help small businesses expand, create jobs, and innovate. Two separate sessions are being offered, one in Yonkers, and one in Manhattan.

Eligible businesses must have an annual revenue ranging between $400,000 and $10 million, be in business for at least three years, have at least one employee aside from the business owner, and the applicant must be a key decision maker in the firm.

Ex-footballer uses MBA to help athletes' life after sport

From professional footballer to binman, Scott Ward suffered this crushing reality after he was forced to retire as a goalkeeper because of injury.

It was only on meeting his wife, Emily, and seeing how she was doing a Business Studies degree part-time while holding down a full-time job with no support that he realised education could help him transform his life.

“She was my inspiration,” says Scott. “I needed to do something, so I had a chat with my wife and I felt doing an MBA could be the answer. By then I had been able to work in sales and strategy development so I had some experience in business.

Scott put his personal experience to good use by devoting his MBA project and dissertation to researching the cultural impact of athletes’ transition out of sport.

It has led to a position at KPMG where he has designed and is now implementing a programme to give global athletes from all sports the support they need emotionally, mentally and practically to be prepared for a new life in the ‘real world’ or while they are still competing as part of a dual career.

Cass academic's research examines the 'oppressive myth' of work

The world in which we live and work is changing rapidly. We are working harder, for longer and for less money, with the ever-present fear that our jobs might be subsumed by robots in a few years.

These changing patterns of work and business and the conflicts they create are a source of fascination for Professor Peter Fleming, Professor of Business and Society at Cass Business School.

His research examines the changing relationship between business and society, with special emphasis on new patterns of conflict in the workplace, the evolution of management ideologies and the rise (and fall) of corporate social responsibility. He has also studied the causes of organisational corruption in the private and public sectors.

LBS wins major prize at World Government Summit

London Business School (LBS) has been named the winner of the Shaping Future Governments Global Universities Challenge.

The prize was presented by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, on stage at the World Government Summit Award Ceremony in Dubai on Tuesday.

This year’s topic asked students to address a hypothetical scenario set in 2031, when the UAE has positioned itself globally as No.1, and offer advice to the cabinet ministry on maintaining the nation’s prime position into 2071.

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