London Business School’s Organizational Audit
Welcome to this week’s edition of Trivia Tuesday! Today, we’re crossing the pond and opening up the Clear Admit Guide to London Business School to learn about the school’s distinctive Organisational Audit, a mandatory experiential element of the core curriculum.
“As a part of the core course Managing Organisational Behaviour, teams of students engage with partner firms to audit key aspects of each company’s operations. This Organisational Audit, a focus of the first year at London, provides a window into the inner workings of large corporations and gives students a chance to apply the business analysis skills they have learned in the classroom.
“The primary focus of the Organisational Audit is to serve the partner company by providing insight into a managerial problem impacting its organizational performance and issuing clear recommendations for improvement. Teams work closely with their partner companies to plan the topic and scale of the audit. In recent years, students have investigated areas such as decision-making procedures, cultural integration following a merger, lateral communication issues and incentive structures at both Fortune 500 and niche organizations, including Disney UK, GlaxoSmithKline, the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation and Morgan Stanley.
“The entire process takes place across approximately six months. Teams make initial contact with companies in November and December and work with their contacts to settle the nature and scope of the project by February. In March and April, students enter the workplace to observe, interview staff and conduct surveys. Finally, in May, each team submits a lengthy brief to the company and to LBS professors.”
For more information on the London Business School curriculum and the many experiential opportunities the school provides, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to LBS. All Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.
You could win a Clear Admit Guide! Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.
More women on company boards
Women across the western world have achieved a revolutionary success in the last 40 years. According to a recent article from the Financial Times the proportion of women with paid jobs across the western world has risen from 48 per cent to 64 per cent since 1970. This has given a massive boost to the economy and changed women’s lifestyle and thinking. However, there are still income gaps and the boards of big companies are widely deserted from female executives. A lot could be gained from achieving these last steps of equality. It is time to call for action – something that some of Europe’s leading business schools have done now. Amongst them is the University of St. Gallen. MBA Channel has spoken to Prof. Dr. Simon Evenett, the Academic Director of the St Gallen MBA programme, about the ideas behind the initiative.
So you don’t think that women lead differently in managerial positions?
I believe that there are unique combinations of characteristics in exceptional leaders and certain sets of skills but they are not related to gender or race or sexual orientation in my opinion.
Brigitte Boone, Bridget Cosgrave, Hélène Deslauriers, Lady Barbara Judge, Lori Gonnu, Candace Johnson, Lesley Stephenson who are also alumnae and/or board members of Harvard Business School, London Business School, Wharton, Insead, and SOAS.
Professional Organisations:
European Professional Women's Network, Financial Times Non-Executive Director's Club, GTWN - Global Telecom Women's Network, GUBERNA - Belgian Governance and Board Members Association, IFA - Institut Français des Administrateurs, WOB - Women on Board, TIAW - The International Alliance for Women.
Harvard Business School Win Top European Case Study Awards
Three groups of professors from INSEAD and Harvard Business School (HBS) took top prizes at an annual European case study awards ceremony last week for cases involving black toilet paper, soap and breakfast cereal, the Financial Times reports. The FT report described the ECCH (formerly the European Case Clearing House) as the “Oscars” of the business world.
Researchers from INSEAD won the overall prize at the awards ceremony for a case study of privately-held Portuguese paper-products company Renova, which set itself apart from international competitors through development of “Renova Black,” the world’s first black toilet paper. “Renova’s success in bringing innovation and creativity to a commoditized category can serve as inspiration for all managers battling difficult conditions and a reason to remain optimistic about the future of southern European businesses, ” Pierre Chandon, an INSEAD marketing professor and one of the authors of the case, told the FT.
HBS professors top took honors in two categories – economics and politics and marketing. The economics and politics award went to a case study of United Cereal; the marketing award to a study for Dove soap. HBS professors also won the “hot topic” award for a case examining online gaming of Lord of the Rings.
Meanwhile, professors from the Ivey School at the University of Western Ontario claimed the “lifetime achievement” award for outstanding contribution to the case method. Top business schools that won in other categories included Cambridge University’s Judge Business School (for IT), Stanford Graduate School of Business (for operations management), MIT Sloan School of Management and London Business School.
Systems Analyst and Developer 
Today’s GMAT tip comes to us from Veritas Prep. In today’s blog post, they explain the importance of thinking critically while taking the GMAT. Read on to see what they have to say!
To break through the average-difficulty GMAT problems and succeed on those upper-level separate-the-700s-from-the-Sixers items, you need to accept that the harder problems offer a unique challenge. They are not typically concerned with more obscure information in the way that Jeopardy-style trivia questions get harder the more obscure the information is. Instead, they challenge you to think more critically about the same fundamental skills that you have mastered in the middle-range problems to even get to that top-shelf point.
The key to success on hard GMAT problems is to accept this quirky challenge — think differently and critically.
Consider an example:
If triangle ABC is isosceles, what is the length of side BC?
1) The length of side AB is 4
2) The length of side AC is 4(sqrt2)
If you are thinking about content, you’re likely to first recognize that neither statement alone is sufficient (you would need to know the lengths of at least two sides to make this determination). Secondly, you are likely to think about a particular isosceles triangle property: In an isosceles right triangle, the ratio of the sides is x : x : x(sqrt 2). And here you seem to have two of those sides – AB is 4, AC is the longer side, and so BC should also be 4. Right?
Not right – unless we know that the angle A is right! This triangle could also have sides of 4, 4sqrt2, and 4sqrt 2, and have all acute angles. The trap here is that the GMAT knows that you are studying particular triangle rules: 30-60-90s, 45-45-90s, 3-4-5s, 5-12-13s, etc. The authors of these questions want to tempt you, using the fact that you want to showcase the special rules that you know and prove to business schools that you’ve studied hard and have the capacity to accumulate knowledge.
But that’s not the whole game – knowledge is just one part of the GMAT, which also) tests critical thinking skills, efficient processing of information, and other higher-order thought processes. So in order to succeed on harder questions, you have to embrace and accept that challenge — you have to think critically not just about “what do I know” but also “what DON’T know.”
The GMAT is designed to stretch your mind and determine how critically you think. As you study, do not get frustrated by these mistakes, but instead accept the challenge to change the way you think to approach this test. Do so and you dramatically increase your chances of posting a high score and attending your desired program!
Welcome to this week’s edition of Trivia Tuesday! Today, we’re crossing the pond and opening up the Clear Admit Guide to London Business School to learn about the school’s distinctive Organisational Audit, a mandatory experiential element of the core curriculum.
“As a part of the core course Managing Organisational Behaviour, teams of students engage with partner firms to audit key aspects of each company’s operations. This Organisational Audit, a focus of the first year at London, provides a window into the inner workings of large corporations and gives students a chance to apply the business analysis skills they have learned in the classroom.
“The primary focus of the Organisational Audit is to serve the partner company by providing insight into a managerial problem impacting its organizational performance and issuing clear recommendations for improvement. Teams work closely with their partner companies to plan the topic and scale of the audit. In recent years, students have investigated areas such as decision-making procedures, cultural integration following a merger, lateral communication issues and incentive structures at both Fortune 500 and niche organizations, including Disney UK, GlaxoSmithKline, the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation and Morgan Stanley.
“The entire process takes place across approximately six months. Teams make initial contact with companies in November and December and work with their contacts to settle the nature and scope of the project by February. In March and April, students enter the workplace to observe, interview staff and conduct surveys. Finally, in May, each team submits a lengthy brief to the company and to LBS professors.”
For more information on the London Business School curriculum and the many experiential opportunities the school provides, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to LBS. All Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.
You could win a Clear Admit Guide! Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.
More women on company boards
So you don’t think that women lead differently in managerial positions?
I believe that there are unique combinations of characteristics in exceptional leaders and certain sets of skills but they are not related to gender or race or sexual orientation in my opinion.
Facts and Figures The St. Gallen MBA, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
Students: 25 % female, 75 % male students
International students: 25 %
Length of programme: 12 months
Cost MBA programme: CHF 63,000 (full time MBA programme)
Accreditation: Equis, AACSBA short biography
Prof. Dr. Simon Evenett
Prof. Dr. Simon Evenett is the Academic Director of the St. Gallen MBA programme. Originally from the UK, Prof. Evenett moved to Switzerland in 2005. He teaches International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen and his research focuses on the factors determining the intensity of competition in emerging markets, on the effects of competition, law and policy on firms’ behaviour, and on the analysis of existing and proposed agreements at the World Trade Organization.
Women corporate directors: Prof. Dr. Simon Evenett
Prof. Dr. Simon Evenett is the Academic Director of the St. Gallen MBA programme. Originally from the UK, Prof. Evenett moved to Switzerland in 2005. He teaches International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen and his research focuses on the factors determining the intensity of competition in emerging markets, on the effects of competition, law and policy on firms’ behaviour, and on the analysis of existing and proposed agreements at the World Trade Organization.
Brigitte Boone, Bridget Cosgrave, Hélène Deslauriers, Lady Barbara Judge, Lori Gonnu, Candace Johnson, Lesley Stephenson who are also alumnae and/or board members of Harvard Business School, London Business School, Wharton, Insead, and SOAS.
Professional Organisations:
European Professional Women's Network, Financial Times Non-Executive Director's Club, GTWN - Global Telecom Women's Network, GUBERNA - Belgian Governance and Board Members Association, IFA - Institut Français des Administrateurs, WOB - Women on Board, TIAW - The International Alliance for Women.
Harvard Business School Win Top European Case Study Awards
Researchers from INSEAD won the overall prize at the awards ceremony for a case study of privately-held Portuguese paper-products company Renova, which set itself apart from international competitors through development of “Renova Black,” the world’s first black toilet paper. “Renova’s success in bringing innovation and creativity to a commoditized category can serve as inspiration for all managers battling difficult conditions and a reason to remain optimistic about the future of southern European businesses, ” Pierre Chandon, an INSEAD marketing professor and one of the authors of the case, told the FT.
HBS professors top took honors in two categories – economics and politics and marketing. The economics and politics award went to a case study of United Cereal; the marketing award to a study for Dove soap. HBS professors also won the “hot topic” award for a case examining online gaming of Lord of the Rings.
Meanwhile, professors from the Ivey School at the University of Western Ontario claimed the “lifetime achievement” award for outstanding contribution to the case method. Top business schools that won in other categories included Cambridge University’s Judge Business School (for IT), Stanford Graduate School of Business (for operations management), MIT Sloan School of Management and London Business School.
Systems Analyst and Developer
About ecch
ecch is an independent, non-profit, membership based organisation dedicated to promoting the case method of learning. The ecch collection of management case studies, articles and book
chapters is the largest in the world. ecch has 22 employees and is located at Cranfield University.
pension scheme, 4+ weeks annual holiday and excellent working conditions.
comprehensive CV and current salary details, and addressed to:
Antoinette Mills, Media and Systems Development Manager, e a.mills@ecch.com
chapters is the largest in the world. ecch has 22 employees and is located at Cranfield University.
Job description
We are seeking a Systems Analyst and Developer to join a small team responsible for our bespoke integrated web-based system. Salary range £27k– £36k plus medical insurance, contributorypension scheme, 4+ weeks annual holiday and excellent working conditions.
Key aspects of the role
- programming using relevant software
- assisting with maintenance and support
- recommending developments in partnership with other members of the team
- assisting with the implementation and thorough testing of all new system developments
- undertaking associated general tasks as requested.
Key skills and qualifications
Essential- at least 3 years working knowledge of ColdFusion (to version 8)
- experience of SQL, JavaScript and HTML
- a Computer Science degree, or equivalent
- general IT troubleshooting skills
- the ability to demonstrate thoroughness, accuracy and attention to detail
- good team working and communication skills
- a willingness to take on a challenge
- the ability to multitask and work to deadlines.
- working knowledge of MVC methodology/architecture, JQuery, Java, CSS and Eclipse
- experience of working with PDFs, DRM solutions and Content Management Systems.
Applications
Closing date for applications 2 March 2012. Applications should be in writing, enclosing acomprehensive CV and current salary details, and addressed to:
Antoinette Mills, Media and Systems Development Manager, e a.mills@ecch.com
Admissions tips:Thinking about financing
Though many business school applicants know exactly what they want to do – and how much they hope to make – after they graduate from an MBA program, a surprising number apply to school without thinking about how they’ll pay for this expensive degree. While some students do foot the entire bill themselves or receive scholarship support from the school or an outside institution, the vast majority of MBA students borrow funds to cover their tuition and living expenses. With this in mind, we wanted to cover some very basic information on loans for the benefit of both recent admits entering school this fall and early birds just beginning to think about their applications for Fall ’12.
The primary source of funding for U.S.-based applicants will be federal loans or alternative education loans. The main federal loans, available to U.S. citizens or permanent residents, are the Federal Stafford Loan (subsidized or unsubsidized), the Federal Perkins Loan and the GradPLUS Loan. Full-time students, usually those enrolled in two or more courses per semester, can borrow as much as $20,500/year through the Federal Stafford loan program. Perkins Loans are low-interest (a rate of 5 percent) loans with a maximum annual loan amount of $8,000/year for graduate students. The Grad PLUS Loan can be used to pay for the total cost of education less aid you’ve already been awarded. Those interested in applying for federal student aid should check out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). When federal loans are not enough, private loans can help bridge the gap in education costs. Students might contact their local bank or look into lender programs, such as SallieMae or Access Group, for details on borrowing eligibility.
International students are not eligible for federal loans but may consider private loans as a financing option. The International Student Loan Program (ISLP), for instance, offers a credit-based loan to international students who are looking to finance their education in the U.S. However, as with most private loans, this loan requires a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to co-sign. International students can also visit International Education Financial Aid (IEFA) to search for funds (as can U.S. citizens planning on studying overseas). Finally, most of the leading MBA programs offer private loans to their students in partnership with a particular financial institution – some of which do not require a co-signer – so this might become an option after one is admitted.
Many need-based loans are classified as subsidized, meaning that interest does not accrue while the borrower is enrolled in a degree program (whereas interest begins to accrue immediately on unsubsidized loans). Typical timelines of loan repayment can extend from 5 to 30 years, depending on the lender’s conditions of deferral and the amount of funds borrowed. After graduation, students usually have a six-month grace period before monthly repayment begins. While schools’ admittance packages usually include detailed information about financing the MBA, incoming students and applicants should not hesitate contact the school’s financial aid office for further information on available need- or credit-based loans.
GMAT Tips: Thinking Seriously
The primary source of funding for U.S.-based applicants will be federal loans or alternative education loans. The main federal loans, available to U.S. citizens or permanent residents, are the Federal Stafford Loan (subsidized or unsubsidized), the Federal Perkins Loan and the GradPLUS Loan. Full-time students, usually those enrolled in two or more courses per semester, can borrow as much as $20,500/year through the Federal Stafford loan program. Perkins Loans are low-interest (a rate of 5 percent) loans with a maximum annual loan amount of $8,000/year for graduate students. The Grad PLUS Loan can be used to pay for the total cost of education less aid you’ve already been awarded. Those interested in applying for federal student aid should check out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). When federal loans are not enough, private loans can help bridge the gap in education costs. Students might contact their local bank or look into lender programs, such as SallieMae or Access Group, for details on borrowing eligibility.
International students are not eligible for federal loans but may consider private loans as a financing option. The International Student Loan Program (ISLP), for instance, offers a credit-based loan to international students who are looking to finance their education in the U.S. However, as with most private loans, this loan requires a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to co-sign. International students can also visit International Education Financial Aid (IEFA) to search for funds (as can U.S. citizens planning on studying overseas). Finally, most of the leading MBA programs offer private loans to their students in partnership with a particular financial institution – some of which do not require a co-signer – so this might become an option after one is admitted.
Many need-based loans are classified as subsidized, meaning that interest does not accrue while the borrower is enrolled in a degree program (whereas interest begins to accrue immediately on unsubsidized loans). Typical timelines of loan repayment can extend from 5 to 30 years, depending on the lender’s conditions of deferral and the amount of funds borrowed. After graduation, students usually have a six-month grace period before monthly repayment begins. While schools’ admittance packages usually include detailed information about financing the MBA, incoming students and applicants should not hesitate contact the school’s financial aid office for further information on available need- or credit-based loans.
GMAT Tips: Thinking Seriously
Today’s GMAT tip comes to us from Veritas Prep. In today’s blog post, they explain the importance of thinking critically while taking the GMAT. Read on to see what they have to say!
To break through the average-difficulty GMAT problems and succeed on those upper-level separate-the-700s-from-the-Sixers items, you need to accept that the harder problems offer a unique challenge. They are not typically concerned with more obscure information in the way that Jeopardy-style trivia questions get harder the more obscure the information is. Instead, they challenge you to think more critically about the same fundamental skills that you have mastered in the middle-range problems to even get to that top-shelf point.
The key to success on hard GMAT problems is to accept this quirky challenge — think differently and critically.
Consider an example:
If triangle ABC is isosceles, what is the length of side BC?
1) The length of side AB is 4
2) The length of side AC is 4(sqrt2)
If you are thinking about content, you’re likely to first recognize that neither statement alone is sufficient (you would need to know the lengths of at least two sides to make this determination). Secondly, you are likely to think about a particular isosceles triangle property: In an isosceles right triangle, the ratio of the sides is x : x : x(sqrt 2). And here you seem to have two of those sides – AB is 4, AC is the longer side, and so BC should also be 4. Right?
Not right – unless we know that the angle A is right! This triangle could also have sides of 4, 4sqrt2, and 4sqrt 2, and have all acute angles. The trap here is that the GMAT knows that you are studying particular triangle rules: 30-60-90s, 45-45-90s, 3-4-5s, 5-12-13s, etc. The authors of these questions want to tempt you, using the fact that you want to showcase the special rules that you know and prove to business schools that you’ve studied hard and have the capacity to accumulate knowledge.
But that’s not the whole game – knowledge is just one part of the GMAT, which also) tests critical thinking skills, efficient processing of information, and other higher-order thought processes. So in order to succeed on harder questions, you have to embrace and accept that challenge — you have to think critically not just about “what do I know” but also “what DON’T know.”
The GMAT is designed to stretch your mind and determine how critically you think. As you study, do not get frustrated by these mistakes, but instead accept the challenge to change the way you think to approach this test. Do so and you dramatically increase your chances of posting a high score and attending your desired program!
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