Interview with Dean Houmin Yan (26th March 2013)

Professor Houmin Yan was appointed Dean of the College of Business in January 2013. With professional background in the United States – he was a tenured Associate Professor at the School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas – and extensive leadership experience in Hong Kong, he is set to lead CB in the next stage of its growth.

In this wide ranging interview Professor Yan shares for the first time his ideas on strategic development, projecting CB’s profile on the worldwide stage, linking up with Columbia Business School, new models for executive education, the role of business schools in the post-crash world, building alumni links, and the possibility of developing a signature College of Business building – amongst other things…

Professor Yan, you've been in the job for just a few months. How does it feel to be Dean of CB?

Well, in a word it has been busy! As a departmental head and professor I have been used to travelling, but since assuming the deanship I have been more based in Hong Kong. So what I mean to say is that although I already know the College a little bit, there are many things I have had to get up to speed on. So I hope that after this initial period, things may settle down and I might be able to catch up on my own research a little bit. But definitely the Deanship, the College is my first priority.

You take over the Deanship at a time when the College is successful on a number of fronts, for example our UTD ranking is up to #63. What strategic developments do you see for the college in the next 3 to 5 years?

I deeply appreciate the work of my former Dean, Professor KK Wei, and his many initiatives, particularly the way that he put the research agenda forward explicitly to all the departments. So we have encouraged high level publications, and over the past few years you see the result. And we are very happy with this new ranking of #63. We see this consistent moving up in the rankings, and we want to continue this success with the UTD “A” Journals rankings. Gradually our colleagues have gained experience in what it takes to get published in these journals. So setting up objectives is very important, and this has been communicated well within the College. By the way, this phenomenon – success in publishing in “A” journals – we see throughout the Territory. For example colleagues at another local university tell me that not only newcomers, but senior colleagues previously not publishing at this level have managed to adapt to the new goal. We want to continue this emphasis on research and we will see how to further improve at our May retreat.

Teaching-wise we are placing high priority on developing our MBA. So we have already run a workshop to learn how other universities in the Territory are running their MBA programmes. Secondly in our new home in Academic 3 we are going to have a series of state-of-the-art lecture theatres that can host our MBA programmes. Thirdly we have done a little bit of restructuring in the MBA programme and we have a new Director Kevin Chiang, who is most dedicated to the programme, and a new curriculum with a first year of general studies followed by four new ‘concentrations’ in accountancy, financing, marketing and supply chain management.

We are also entering a challenging new period with the BBA, which will be more demand-orientated, where the students themselves will be choosing their Majors, albeit within a quota system.

What are the defining characteristics of CB that set it apart from other Business Schools?

If you look at CB’s vision statement you see we are a business school “in China for the World”. We help mainland China to meet the world, by delivering executive education programmes which bring western management philosophy to China. This traditional role of Hong Kong as a place where the west meets the east, and vice versa is set to continue. But gradually, as China has grown to be the second largest economy worldwide, I see new dimensions emerging. Based on conversations with business leaders and government officials in China we see an emerging market for bringing Chinese business models to the world. For example Lenovo’s purchase of IBM, or Huawei working with African and Asian countries to build up distribution channels, etc. So how can we bring the mainland to the world? How can we best bring China thinking to the world? Here there is further opportunity for executive education.

CB recently won a 5-year accreditation from EQUIS. How significant is that?

I think it is very significant in that it demonstrates our status worldwide. We are very proud to have achieved this 5-year accreditation. The EQUIS report helps us to set up our strategic agenda and the EQUIS feedback has been very helpful to us. For example they have constantly stressed the importance of building our profile, and the crucial role that a signature College of Business building would play in raising status, not only on the campus, but worldwide.

The College is nearing the end of the first year of the 4-year BBA. Is a revamp due for our postgraduate programmes?

First of all with the BBA we haven’t reached the end of this programme. Six or seven months down the road students are going to choose their major for the first time (after three semesters). This is a new market-led situation, and it is going to be a challenge to us too, because students are going to have the opportunity to pick their major. Even though we have placed quotas, I believe it is going to give us lots of signals as to how to revamp the BBA programme. There are lots of challenges here. We already see some examples In Hong Kong. Chinese University started with a unified programme some 18 years ago, and UST six or seven years ago. So we will be collecting data on the whole process, doing analysis, and by learning from our colleagues in other institutions we’ll see how we can best present our programme to our students.

As for postgraduate programmes, yes they are also on the agenda. I’ve already mentioned the MBA programme. As far as the research degree programmes are concerned, we have been working on this. Firstly we would like to get more resources, that is student quota, from the university if we can. And secondly we can improve the student quality.

Postgraduate programmes are by their nature somewhat specialized. Are there ways in which we could further differentiate our undergraduate programmes from those of our immediate competitors?

CityU differentiates itself as a “professional school” and the College of Business is definitely one of those professional areas. On the one hand we want to give our students a rigorous education, and on the other we want to help them develop their career. Accountancy has already given us a lead here. We work with various outside organizations and companies, and see how we can place our students in top accounting firms. We study the characteristics of these leading accountancy firms, what kind of students they like to have, and meanwhile we invite our alumni back to talk to us, and give tips on how best our students can be prepared to find jobs in those firms. And there has been some good news! Currently close to 50% of our accountancy students are hired by the “Big 4” accountancy firms. So this close working relationship is a kind of model for how our students can successfully enter the job market.

The College strap line is “A Key Educational Hub - in China for the World”. We have been traditionally strong in our mainland collaborations. Do you see potential for more emphasis on “the world”?

Yes, this is already happening. In terms of undergraduate programmes we very much push internationalisation of BBA, and we currently have contact with over 180 universities worldwide, and over 50% of our students have “one semester” experience overseas. Reciprocally, every semester we have 200-plus international students joining us. We already have many European and Asian partners. And we have some North American partners, but comparatively speaking this is the area where we can place more effort. Another dimension – can we add something to the one semester exchange experience such as further internships to existing programmes?

Secondly we want to develop deeper collaborations. We already have the two-year dual degree programme with the National Taiwan University. Now we are developing a dual degree programme with Columbia University. This will enable students to spend two years at CityU, and two years at Columbia University possibly from next year. And the programme will offer specializations in the areas of economics, economics with operational research, economics with statistics and IT.

Something like 50% of our graduate students are from mainland China. Are there limits to how far we can develop the China market?

At this point in time because of the growth of the mainland economy – and the fact that mainland students can afford our tuition fees - we are very happy to see this many students coming. For some of our programmes we have 1500 students applying, so the matriculation rate is lower than some world leading institutions. But we understand that the situation may change in the future for various reasons. Firstly mainland universities are improving as fast as their economy. Secondly North American and European universities are also trying to expand their China market. So with this competition in mind we want to improve our programme quality, and also provide a better service, for example with our new facilities in Academic Building 3. We would like to maintain our momentum. So we are not looking to expand the quantity – we want to improve the quality.

Profile is so important these days. Do you intend to bring new dimensions to our branding, marketing and PR?

Yes, branding is essential to business schools, and we are fully aware of this. We have a raft of initiatives: a redesigned website, more advertising around town. Probably very quickly you’ll see something in Central, and you might see some advertising panels in the airport. We are trying to get exposure through different avenues such as TV media for soft sell of the College of Business. We also have approval to hire a Business Manager responsible for branding, and a second Business Manager for alumni, job placement and communication.

Many of our immediate competitors have dedicated business school buildings. How important is a physical presence – a separate and identifiable building – on campus?

This has been under discussion for a number of years at CB, and I know our limitations, but my view is that this is very important, not only in providing quality of education and research, it is also symbolic to the competition locally. We do need a business school building where students, faculty and alumni have a sense of belonging. Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (LAU) gives us a breathing space, with the 4 floors there. But eventually, if we want to be a first class business school, we need our own building. It has been discussed at university senior management level and I very much appreciate their consideration – including the 4 floors that have already been given in LAU. However within the College we haven’t talked about this extensively and we wish to bring it into the strategic planning in the meeting in May.

Since 2008 there have been a series of economic crises around the world. Does the role of Business Schools have to change in order to provide a new kind of leadership in this unsettled era?

At the beginning of the year I attended a forum at Peking University Guanghua School of Management, and the topic was just this: what is the role of business schools nowadays? I think there is no question that we should teach business ethics and sustainability in all our programmes. On the other hand, that type of education, business ethics, should probably also be part of the core curriculum at high school. Definitely we will also teach in the BBA. Postgraduate might be too late! It needs to be part of education earlier on, when people are building up their mind set and perspectives.

So business schools definitely have a role to play. We need to strengthen our education in areas like risk management. We need to look into both the upside and the downside. How do we analyse potential risk? Take the milk powder business in China. If all the business executives had known the cause of that kind of disaster, from a business management perspective, they might have had second thoughts. Also in terms of the theoretical modelling, I believe that kind of education is lacking. So sure we should strengthen our ethics and sustainability education in the business schools, and we should also strengthen our executives’ ability to do the analysis when they face that kind of situation. They must understand the consequences before making a potentially wrong move.

As a College we are no longer quite in our youth – perhaps entering “early middle age!” Globally, mature institutions have had great success in leveraging their alumni networks. Do you see potential for development here?

Our alumni are our asset. I receive many emails and sometimes have communication with our alumni. In my first month I met with our EMBA alumni, and in the second month with the DBA. This month I’ll be meeting with our MBA alumni. So, I do very much value their support. They are to a certain extent our agent to help us with brand building, to help us find good students, to give us their observations to improve our curriculums and programme design, so this is definitely a very important area. This is an area where we are going to put in a lot of effort to communicate with alumni.

Given ubiquitous digital access in Hong Kong and the developed world, do you see a more prominent role for teaching in an online or blended mode?

Actually just yesterday I was talking on this matter with our IS department, and we see a trend where education is probably going to be delivered using different media. If you look at the last 30 years one of the major power forces for society has been the computer and networking technology. This has been the driving force. If we don’t look into new technologies, they will come to us anyway. We are very much aware of these developments, and we are looking at the way that we can incorporate the Discovery Enriched Curriculum (DEC) with this new technology, so that the students can research concepts on the internet by themselves. So how can we incorporate the new technology and bundle it with the DEC? Already there is lots of material available online and our students are looking at various sources- for example from MIT. Even though our students are a different demographic, and we wouldn’t use this sort of video material in our curriculum for the time being, I am sure that our students are looking at such online material and getting something out of it. We want to leverage the new technology as much as possible, so besides lectures we motivate students to discover things.

The College (and our parent institution) have been strikingly successful in ascending world rankings. Is there a danger that our mission might be compromised by placing such consistent effort in this direction?

I guess university or college-wise the objective is to provide an excellent learning and research environment, and ranking is not our objective. However, we all recognise the importance of the ranking in terms of branding, how we can attract better students, how we can attract potential donors, because this is a number that communicates in an easily understandable way how good the school is. Our ranking is, then, the natural result of our excellent learning and research activities.

The College is very strong in research. Generally speaking, do you feel that we leverage this tremendous strength sufficiently in our teaching practice?

I think in terms of research and teaching, we are working at various levels. For example in DBA and EMBA programmes we are teaching current business leaders and they provide us with valuable feedback – the sorts of things that are on executives’ minds nowadays. Secondly we see that DBA theses address economics problems, anticipating management problems which may be five or six years down the road, and showcase state-of –the-art independent China thinking. So those research elements do feedback to us and we can see how we can improve our other programmes.

More generally, teaching a course is not only based on textbooks, as our present practice indicates. For example, if someone is doing research in an area, and is bringing up new examples, the research and teaching activities are complimentary. If you work with DBA students you know what the important problems and challenges are. DBA theses can be published, then they can become white papers as a sort of output of our think tanks, and thirdly that material can become casebook materials. So these examples feed into our programme portfolio at other levels.

In your time as Dean, have there been any surprises so far?

So far I haven’t seen too many surprises – probably surprises are on their way!

And finally if there is one thing you would like to be remembered for as Dean of CB, what would that be?

I know this is a kind of legacy issue. If as Dean I can achieve a boosting of the research and teaching programmes, a better quality of student recruited, I would be happy.

 

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