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Korean business students who graduated June 28 in Glendale, Ariz., received a world-class MBA from a degree program all their own.
Thunderbird School of Global Management developed the custom program exclusively for LG Electronics in Seoul, South Korea. About 150 of LG’s top managers and engineers will participate in the multiyear, multimillion-dollar program, which produced its first graduating class in June 2006.
The most recent 26 graduates represent the program’s third cohort.
“The program has been a great success due to the quality of candidates, faculty and administration at both LG Electronics and Thunderbird, as well as the commitment and shared vision of the two organizations,” Thunderbird Provost Robert Widing told the graduates during commencement exercises at Renaissance Glendale Hotel & Spa near the Arizona campus.
Widing, who presided over the ceremony, said Thunderbird serves two main constituencies: individuals and corporations. He said the custom MBA program created for LG serves both of these constituencies.
Thunderbird and only a handful of other business schools are carving out this custom MBA niche by designing degree programs for specific corporations with their unique objectives, strategies and outcomes in mind.
Innovative solution
Some business schools have shied away from the trend, claiming it smacks of selling out to the highest bidders. But Thunderbird and schools such as the University of Indianapolis, University of Maryland and Arizona State University that offer similar programs for large corporate clients view the move as cutting-edge in an era of rapid globalization.
“Thunderbird sees this as an innovative solution, not only for its corporate clients, but within its own strategic vision to diversify its programs and revenue streams, as well as solidify its brand as the world leader in global management education,” said Beth Stoops, Thunderbird’s senior vice president of Corporate Learning. “Being able to design a program using a company’s real-world strategies and objectives is truly innovative.”
Critics of custom MBA programs fear a watering down of the traditional MBA, but Stoops said this is not the case. She said Thunderbird’s customized program is rigorous and holds up to all accreditation standards.
Young-Kee Kim, executive vice president and chief human resource officer of the LG Learning Center, agreed with this assessment during his commencement speech. He said LG already has benefited from its investment in talent development, and graduates of the custom MBA program are helping the company progress toward its goal of becoming one of the world’s three largest electronics companies by 2010.
“LG expects great things from you,” he told the graduates.
The program, which was designed and is taught by Thunderbird’s full-time faculty, includes Thunderbird’s standard course content in cross-cultural communication, global political economy, regional business environment and innovation and entrepreneurship. The program also includes the basic business fundamentals that are part of every MBA program.
In addition, the program includes customized content built around LG’s global strategy and vision, their products, industry and competitors.
A degree in the making
Graeme Rankine, Thunderbird’s academic director of the LG program, explains how this was done.
He said Thunderbird began by gathering information about LG – its vision, strategy, markets and product portfolio – to understand where LG was headed, what challenges the company might face and what skills its leaders would need to meet these challenges.
Then several faculty members from different areas of expertise joined the design team, which developed objectives for the program and then designed specific sequenced modules.
“This was a unique process because the curriculum design was not driven by Thunderbird’s central administration but rather directly by faculty,” Rankine said.
About 20 Thunderbird faculty members teach in the program, and Rankine acknowledges this puts a strain on the school’s resources. “It requires a lot of faculty time, something that is scarce at Thunderbird with faculty already teaching courses in the full-time and distance learning programs, as well as open enrollment and other custom nondegree programs that are run for corporations around the world,” he said. “It’s a fair amount of work, but the faculty learns a great deal that can be used in other programs. It’s interesting for us to get this close and in-depth with a real global company dealing with real global challenges and to see how our ideas, skills, and knowledge are relevant to solving that companies challenges.”
In general, he said the LG curriculum focuses more heavily on marketing and less on accounting and finance than traditional MBA programs. The program also includes a major project addressing LG strategic and operational issues, as well as several integrative business simulations throughout the program.
“We don’t see much of this kind of activity in the full-time MBA, but we should,” Rankine said.
Running the program
Each cohort includes about 30 students who take the customized courses at the LG Learning Center in Korea in 10 five-day modules that occur every four weeks. Thunderbird faculty and program managers travel to Korea to deliver the courses and execute the program. Four weeks before graduation, students travel to Thunderbird’s Arizona campus, where they complete the last four modules of the program and then graduate.
The most recent cohort arrived May 29 in Arizona.
During the program, LG executives continue their daily activities in the company and are able to apply what they are learning in class to their specific goals and objectives in their executive roles throughout the company.
Kim said the company is investing long-term in the customized programs to groom its next generation of top managers. The company has more than 72,000 employees working in 77 subsidiaries and marketing units around the world.
“Today LG is truly a global company with 80 percent of its revenue generated outside Korea,” Kim said. “Therefore, we need to raise next-generation leaders to manage our enterprises all around the world.”
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