E. Morin developed thinking on how important it is for the social sciences to study crises.Footnote ¹ In particular, he showed that a crisis of endogenous origin reveals the tensions and contradictions in a social system that led to the crisis occurring – that determined it from within. Also, beyond its analysis (its course, its eventual means of resolution, its consequences), studying an endogenous crisis helps better understand the social system in which it occurs.

The book in which this chapter appears aims to develop thinking on management education institutions facing the COVID-19 crisis.

The question of the relevance of this thinking arises immediately; the COVID-19 crisis is, first and foremost, a public health crisis. There is little doubt that it has had consequences on many other spheres, including that of management education. But what can we learn for this sector from a crisis imported from another sector? It seems logical to assume that management education institutions reacted to this crisis by trying to operate as closely and consistently to the way they had been accustomed to operating before the crisis period. Studying such a situation makes it possible to better understand how the management education sector reacts to a crisis of exogenous origin. But to what extent can this tell us about the dynamics of the sector in question? A review of the very notion of crisis clearly shows the potential for developing such thinking.

The COVID-19 Crisis Reveals the Social Role of Business Schools

The expressions commonly heard in everyday language at the time of a crisis such as that of COVID-19 (“return to normality,” “the new normal after the crisis,” etc.) demonstrate the extent to which the very notion of crisis is strongly linked to that of “normal” and “normality.” G. Canguilhelm approached the latter notion as consubstantial with that of abnormality, but above all, he highlighted the extent to which the normal is understood in relation to the implementation of a project

Thus, the notion of crisis describes a situation in which it seems as though one has left a situation of normality in which a project was being implemented.

The importance that one gives to the latter results in a will to return to normality (and is thus a “crisis project,” the existence of which implies a “crisis strategy” that one tries to carry out in parallel to the project that justifies an organization’s existence) and therefore to the previous situation. However, the realization of a crisis project can ultimately assert itself not as leading to the status quo ante but as revealing new possibilities to be implemented (Habermas, Reference Habermas1976). If an endogenous crisis provides information on the weaknesses of the past, the study of a crisis of exogenous origin makes it possible to analyze potentialities for the future.

These two attitudes – that of seeking a return to the previous situation and that of developing new ideas and their implementation – emerge from the examination of the strategies and actions of business schools in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. The analysis of this crisis makes it possible to appreciate the depth of the changes underway in management education and confirms Milton Friedman’s assertion that “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change” (Friedman, Reference Fox1962/2002, p. xiv).

In other words, the study of the influence of the COVID-19 crisis on management education institutions leads not only to studying the way in which these institutions are organized in order to be able to continue to develop their management education but also, beyond management education, how they were able to structure themselves so as to help solve the constitutive social crisis which is that of public health.

Studying how management education institutions have responded to the COVID-19 crisis helps to shed light on how they see their mission.

Responsiveness to the Crisis in the Management Education Sector

Although some management education institutions had begun, as early as the start of 2020, to develop their thinking on how to react to the pandemic, the consequences of this did not really erupt into the management of business schools, except for those located in the Wuhan region, until February and March. Then, in management education institutions around the world, it suddenly became a question of responding to very concrete challenges. Examination centers being closed, it was impossible to take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) in China, and it very quickly became so in Bahrain, Mongolia, Kuwait, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other places as well. It became necessary to cancel study trips and seminars in China even though “global experience,” “immersion trip,” “global consulting,” and other such programs in which social-impact projects constituted a significant feature had been rapidly increasing in the country. In a now-globalized management education market in which Chinese students represent a very large proportion of international students, we observed a drastic decrease in international applications for the following academic year.

Very quickly, too, immediate daily management problems arose as a result of the consequences of the epidemic that was taking hold across the world. Thus, institutions in Europe and Asia (quickly followed by those in certain regions of Oceania and Africa) had to face confinement as of March. At this time, when the United States was not yet intensely affected by the epidemic, the first effects of it were being felt on campuses (e.g., starting at the very end of February at Tuck School of Business, after a student came in contact with a patient during an on-campus party, Dartmouth College had to deal with the first effects of quarantine). In addition, management schools and faculties have had to tackle major reorganization and rescheduling issues.

The way in which schools reacted to the occurrence of a crisis is very revealing, both of their management style and of their position in the societies in which they operate. It is particularly remarkable that in Europe, Asia, and South America (and a little less in the USA), schools anticipated the measures taken by their regional and national political and administrative authorities. The examples are too numerous to all be cited, but we can present a few from various continents.

On March 12, a day after the outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, 16 cases of COVID-19 were reported among Mexico’s 128 million people. Although the number of cases was still very low in the country at this date, the IPADE Business School, sensitive to the global impact of the coronavirus, decided the next morning to temporarily suspend face-to-face activities in all of its national and international academic programs to protect the health and integrity of every member of its community. With the firm conviction that everyone must take part in the fight against the spread of the virus, IPADE implemented this precautionary measure even before the Mexican Ministry of Education decided to suspend all educational activities in the country (Alvarado and Romero, Reference Alvarado and Romero2020).

At the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria on March 16, all face-to-face teaching had ceased, and the bulk of employees had begun to work from home (Kleyn, Reference Kleyn2020; while the first case of coronavirus detected in South Africa dated March 5, when there were in all only 27 cases in the whole of Africa). This decision long preceded the first measures taken by the South African government.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology was an even more specific case because, as a result of the troubled situation in Hong Kong, which had led some students to move away from campus, the school had been operating with hybrid teaching since fall 2019.

Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM) decided to put an end to two essential activities – face-to-face teaching and work at school – 72 hours before the French government decided to initiate a national confinement strategy (Saviotti, Reference Saviotti2020). The reasons for this reactivity are extremely revealing of the reality of business school activities: at the end of December 2019 and in the beginning of January 2020, GEM received feedback from exchange students in Asia and on its campus in Singapore indicating the development of a difficult situation. Thanks to the quality of this dialogue that arose as a result of the internationalization of its activities, GEM had started to prepare itself to face a major crisis. In February, the school banned travel to China for its students and staff and asked all staff and students in the country to return to their home countries.

These few examples were chosen arbitrarily from dozens of similar ones. They trace how the international activities of business schools helped found their crisis management and how they are in a position to coordinate their decisions with those of national administrations. These examples are all clues to the way in which business schools now connect a regional and national dimension to an international one.

Adapting Schools’ Activity to Maintain Their Raison d’être

In general, the first responses of schools to the onset of the coronavirus crisis were situated in a reactive logic and centered around two priorities. These were, first of all, maintaining (or restoring, in the cases of institutions that had stopped teaching for a short period) their teaching activity as regularly as possible while also maintaining its quality (keeping in mind that they very quickly moved toward distance learning) and, second, recruiting students for the following academic year. (The globalization of management education had made it possible, for example, that even though in March the United States was still relatively unaffected by the coronavirus, business schools were already beginning to postpone the dates of their admissions rounds.)

The reactive attitude initially implemented by management education institutions is therefore typical of crisis logic; it involved maintaining, through a series of detailed responses to organizational needs and specific dysfunctions, operations that were as close as possible to those in effect in the “normal” situation before the crisis.

Although it was accepted that logistical and educational adjustments were necessary (caused in particular by the switch to distance education), these were not to affect the logic and the deep coherence of the system of management education. The objective of management education institutions seemed to consist of getting through the difficult moment of crisis, getting out of this abnormal situation, and returning to a normal one by perpetuating the main modes of operation and the logic of the system.

However, clues quickly appeared that made it possible to measure how difficult such an approach would be. An episode in the life of business schools that took place in March and April is a particularly revealing example of this difficulty. The high tuition fees at business schools are, particularly in the United States, a constituent element of the system. Talented candidates who have already accumulated significant savings or a high borrowing capacity as a result of their prior professional careers and the resulting social recognition are admitted to business schools following a strict selection process. There, they receive an education that subsequently enables them to accelerate their careers and increase their income (and thus to reimburse, if necessary, the very high cost of their studies). The quality and relevance of this education constitute the supreme justification for its high cost because they guarantee that the system functions properly.

It is thus very interesting that starting in the second part of March, in many business schools, including some of the most prestigious, a petition signed by a very large proportion of students (for example, 80 percent of students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business) demanded that the management of their school reimburse part of the tuition fees to students during their schooling because of the switch to distance education (Moules, J., Reference Moules2020, April 12). These petitions particularly affected American universities (e.g., the Stanford Graduate School of Business; the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Columbia Business School; the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA] Anderson School of Management; the New York University [NYU] Stern School of Business) but also schools beyond the United States, for example, in Europe (IE Business School in Spain) and in Canada (University of British Columbia [UBC] Sauder School of Business).

The signatories of the petition justified their request with two main elements: first, they presented distance education as being of inferior quality, and second, they argued that the tuition fees paid to schools cover not only the education provided but also campus life – the latter being a socialization process that includes starting a networking process for their future professional careers, both with the leaders and professionals with whom they might make contact through campus life and with the other students, who will later develop their own careers.

Switching to distance learning during an epidemic appears to be a logical and appropriate reaction; however, this change has had consequences on the operating logic of schools.

This episode has made it possible to measure the danger of a solely reactive approach that responds step by step to the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 epidemic and dispenses with a substantial reassessment of the practice and of the approach implemented. Such an approach risks losing the coherence of the functioning and activities of schools.

The pandemic presents some unique challenges to business schools because of their international character. Numerous business schools have experienced students and staff from a range of countries being forced to return to their home countries because of travel or visa restrictions (Krishnamurthy, Reference Krishnamurthy2020, p. 3). The top 20 MBA programs in the United States reported a 14 percent decline in the number of international students: compared to the fact that international students account for an average of 35 percent of students in elite programs, this indicates the magnitude of the challenge that COVID-19 poses to business schools. These students in the USA have the distinction of paying full tuition fees, which can be as high as $160,000 per year (Roth, Reference Roth2020).

In many business schools, foreign students are an important source of income because they subsidize the tuition fees of domestic students (Brammer and Clark, Reference Brammer and Clark2020, p. 453). As the number of foreign students declines, institutions may be forced to change their financial models. Moreover, institutionally, many business schools are now part of universities, whose entire business model is threatened by the pandemic.

Moreover, the mere fact that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on business has profoundly affected business schools. Entire sectors, such as aviation and tourism, have been severely affected, without any prediction of when or even if an upturn will occur. Similarly, small and medium-sized enterprises are often in a particularly unstable situation and are threatened with bankruptcy. This will have an impact on the opportunities for students after their studies and thus on the academic paths followed and the curricula. At the same time, there is a growing interest in health-care management (Krishnamurthy, Reference Krishnamurthy2020, p. 4).

These changes, as well as the labor-market volatility that graduates will face in the coming years, are expected to have an impact on enrollments. But these changes are also having an impact within schools themselves: a survey of 172 senior university executives indicates that their main short-term concerns have been identified as the mental health and well-being of students and staff, unbudgeted costs, and high dropout rates. In the long term, their main concerns are about the financial future of their institutions.

Alongside the various challenges to be overcome, it is interesting to point out that the current crisis has also created opportunities. The demand for flexibility and adaptability has led to a significant acceleration of innovation in the academic world, which may generate opportunities to reimagine the future of resilient and sustainable academic institutions. Previous research carried out before the coronavirus crisis indicates that students study slightly better online than in a traditional classroom environment, indicating the possible benefits of moving to e-learning (Krishnamurthy, Reference Krishnamurthy2020, p. 2).

In addition, teaching staff members have proven their resilience and adaptability, committing themselves to research and teaching throughout the crisis. Communication channels, as well as teaching and assessment methods, have been reimagined. A major challenge faced by business schools is continuity of teaching, mainly through a focus on the continued availability of educational opportunities for the students during disruption. Business schools strive to make arrangements to provide students with education during this period. Emphasis is placed on finding a way to maintain services during the disruption period. During this period, business schools undertake “emergency distance education,” with a focus on sustaining curriculum requirements (Hodges et al., Reference Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust and Bond2020). At the institutional level, the consolidation of technology as a central aspect of higher education offers various opportunities for collaboration and even restructuring of academic institutions. The crisis has also accelerated and intensified existing trends, providing the conditions for a natural experiment in which adaptable institutions can test innovative methods and practices. It has also opened up opportunities for new areas of research on changes in consumption, communication, and market trends, as well as on adaptive and innovative capacities in times of international crisis.

Emergent Strategy and the Need to Maintain Consistency in the Face of the Crisis

Our purpose is certainly not to argue that the community of management education institutions has contented itself with being reactive to the coronavirus crisis. Not only have strategies to respond to the effects of the crisis (see the crisis strategies mentioned previously) been implemented, but so have strategies involving fundamental changes whose relevance became apparent during the crisis.

If strategy is defined as a pattern in a stream of decisions and can be conceived as a continuum going from deliberate to emergent strategies (Mintzberg and Waters, Reference Mintzberg and Waters1985), the latter can be defined as “patterns realized despite or in the absence of intentions” (Mintzberg, Reference Mintzberg1979, p. 257).

The notion of emergent strategy reflects the way in which strategies have been developed in business schools in the face of the situation created by the coronavirus. Although the decisions taken were made in response to given challenges, it is possible to highlight a consistency between these decisions that creates a strategic pattern. The implementation of an emergent strategy requires that the actors in organizations have developed sufficient empirical knowledge and practical wisdom forged in the field to allow them to make decisions that are compatible with the needs of the context. That is, they need to have a clear understanding of what it is possible to do and the consequences of making a decision. The notion of emergent strategy does not imply that the decisions taken within this framework are secondary decisions, whereas the important decisions are only the subject of deliberate strategies. The culture; the type of staff working for business schools; the balance between administrative and academic staff; and the presence, in many cases, of very committed leadership have led to the implementation of emergent strategies that go well beyond the blow-by-blow response of reactive decisions.

The question of selection tests, which is a central issue for business schools, is an example of how elements of emergent strategy have been formed. On the one hand, this question models the type of candidates, and therefore the students, that the school receives and thus, consequently, the character of the school. Moreover, to the extent that these tests require a great deal of preparation, they create expectations commensurate with the level of “suffering” they have generated in test-takers. At the same time, experience shows that the effort that students feel they had to make to be accepted is strongly correlated with their level of identification with their schools. In addition, the GMAT and GRE score requirements contribute to determining the schools’ reputations.

Lastly, and above all, because these tests are deemed reliable, they constitute an important “safety net” for schools by guaranteeing the quality of candidates in a certain number of parameters considered fundamental. Even if the GMAT and the GRE are sometimes criticized because they produce too homogeneous a profile of students, giving them up is a difficult choice for the schools. In addition, these tests have demonstrated their undeniable quality over the years, and moreover, they have demonstrated their ability to evolve and improve with respect to all the challenges they have to face.

Additionally, most of the schools, in particular, most among the more recognized ones, had retained a GMAT or GRE requirement for candidates until extremely recently. We must therefore consider the current trend to exempt GMAT and GRE at its proper importance.

Following the June decision by the University of Virginia Darden to waive these tests, other universities made the same decision in August and September (Wisconsin School of Business, Rutgers Business School, Northeastern University Kellogg School, University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, Emory University Goizueta Business School). The consequences of these exemption decisions were not long in coming. For example, in mid-July, Darden announced an increase in MBA applications of 364 percent (Byrne, Reference Byrne2020c).

The rationale put forward for these exemptions is that during the coronavirus epidemic, it was very difficult for applicants to be able to take the GMAT and GRE tests within a reasonable timeframe. The decision was based on the observation that it was impossible to continually push back the deadline for submitting applications. At one point in the process, universities also feared that they might face a shortage of applicants (which may explain, for example, why Northwestern Kellogg, alongside granting test waivers, also decided to revisit rejected applications).

But now Pandora’s box has been opened. It is indeed difficult to think that after the eventual end of the epidemic, a return to the status quo ante in the selection process will be entirely possible. At the same time, no one can seriously imagine that this change will not have profound consequences for management education institutions. Indeed, this should upset the type of preparation done and change the level of investment in time and money in order to be a candidate. Schools will certainly not be satisfied with using the same selection process with one less evaluation parameter (the tests); they will have to completely rethink their selection process and take career profiles into account more.

Yet while some argue that this could give applicants from low-income families a greater chance of getting in (Byrne, Reference Byrne2020a), given the high cost of preparing for the GMAT and GRE tests, foregoing such a reliable and relevant tool does not appear to be an inevitable option. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the company that designs these tests, has demonstrated its capacity for innovation and to face challenges that arise. Furthermore, one also imagines that GMAC will cooperate with the schools to limit the impact of the social environment of origin on the results of candidates’ tests. And without the tests, the assessment of applications from foreign applicants would be much more difficult because it is traditionally complicated to assess career profiles from distant countries; this could lead to a change in the composition of the groups recruited, and it would become necessary to modify the pedagogy during studies. The conditions of competition have also been disrupted; can one seriously imagine, for example, that being able to apply to Kellogg without having to take the GMAT or the GRE would not have a huge influence on candidates in Chicago (and therefore force this university to change its criteria, which would likely lead to the same at other institutions)?

Finally, it is difficult to think that schools have made such fundamental choices in terms of selection by imagining that it was only a question of solving a temporary, one-off problem and not of reacting to and participating in a systemic change.

Developing Comprehensive, Integrated Approaches to the Crisis

The fact that this example of a shift in the selection process seems to be a possibly favorable development should not lead one to infer that all developments provoked by the coronavirus crisis are easy and devoid of danger. We stand in opposition to the many articles published in recent months arguing that the chief among these developments (the spread of online education, exemption from GMAT and GRE tests, the increase in the level of admissions selectivity, authorization for deferrals of beginning of studies, etc.) are only accelerations of trends that began before the COVID-19 crisis and that, being “in line with the movement of history,” they are necessarily favorable.

We would like, on the contrary, to underline the difficulties that they carry with them, which attest to the fact that even if these developments were brewing and even if it was technically possible that they could be implemented, schools were careful not to spread them rapidly. They are only potentially favorable within the framework of approaches whose coherence we will present.

To highlight the issues, we will analyze a few examples of these supposedly fashionable developments that, in reality, were marginal before the COVID-19 crisis.

Even though online MBAs had experienced some development in recent years (Warwick, IE Business School, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, University of North Carolina [UNC] Kenan-Flagler Business School, Carnegie Mellon, Durham, Northeastern, Politecnico di Milano, Bradford, etc.), the majority of schools were careful not to rush toward this option.

The COVID-19 crisis has created a need to move toward this type of education. Examining the way in which schools have reacted to this imperative shows, however, that they have tried as much as possible to maintain outdoor or indoor teaching, at least in parallel to, and as much as possible side by side with, online education. Going online, if we want to combine it with quality education, requires significant investment, a fact that favors the most affluent and recognized schools. It is interesting to note that these have opted whenever possible for hybrid MBA education options rather than ones that are entirely online.

The approach adopted by INSEAD is indicative of schools’ preferences in terms of teaching during the COVID-19 crisis. At the same time, it is particularly remarkable for its coherence and the choices it entails.

Despite a 58 percent increase in MBA applications, INSEAD decided to reduce admissions on all its campuses by 38 percent in September 2020 in order to carefully manage social distancing guidelines and to organize all its MBA courses as face-to-face offerings (INSEAD, 2021). It is particularly noteworthy that this decision to conduct as much of the 2020–21 academic year as possible in an in-person setting was taken in consultation with students. It should also be noted that all courses will also be accessible by distance learning, making INSEAD’s approach a hybrid method with a preference for a classroom-based approach.

Similarly, at the beginning of July 2020, Harvard announced a move toward such a solution (at the cost of a reduction from 930 to 720 students in the entering MBA class) (Byrne, Reference Byrne2020b). Stanford is now moving toward an entirely online solution, as well, out of health necessity, specifying that if the situation vis-à-vis COVID-19 improves, its educational offerings will become hybrid. Even the institutions that have announced going online (Wharton; University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business; Georgetown; UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School; etc.) indicate that it is only to avoid remaining in limbo for too long a period and note that as soon as possible, things will change. Likewise, the case of Georgia Tech Scheller is interesting because after management announced that teaching would be partly on campus, the institution finally, reluctantly, gave up on the idea in early July. In fact, it was the teaching staff who drew the attention of the management to the fact that the state of health in Georgia did not allow for such a reopening. Management viewed maintaining education on campus as a strategic and educational priority but responsibly acquiesced to the public health argument.

The reasons for reservations with respect to a change that technically appears to be positive are not just a problem of resistance to change. They are also due to the fact that such a change cannot be conceived in isolation by ignoring the need for consistency with the many other parameters of school management. Some difficulties experienced at the end of summer 2020 by Wharton are an illustrative example of this.

Faced with the sustained increase in coronavirus cases, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania announced on July 31 that it had changed its mind (Wharton School, 2020). It had previously announced (on July 6) that the fall semester would be hybrid but ultimately opted for a completely virtual semester. It also announced that it would not be flexible on matters of deferral of studies or discounts on tuition fees.

The school did not communicate clearly enough, claiming until July 21 by press release that the semester would be hybrid, and many students lamented that it was only after they had paid tuition and declined the offers of other schools they had been accepted into that this news was announced.

They also regretted that the particular case of foreign students was not taken into consideration. While the latter had planned to come to the United States on the basis of Wharton’s first indications of a hybrid semester, the sudden announcement that everything would be online put them in a difficult situation with respect to visas because the American administration is now making it difficult for students studying online to get them.

Students, management education professionals, and the press have thus insisted repeatedly on the poor management of the crisis at this eminent school.

Likewise, NYU Stern’s decision to increase its tuition fees by 3.5 percent (Joung, 2020), announced in early August 2020, appears to pose a problem of consistency and adequacy in the current situation. It is true that business schools traditionally increase their tuition fees every year. But not to see that this increase was acceptable only because it was based on the implicit double assumption that the quality of education improves from year to year and that salary expectations at the end of the MBA were increasing constituted a serious lack of lucidity. Also, in the period of transition to online learning, which is producing a lot of uncertainty, continuing to increase tuition fees constitutes a dangerous temptation and a lack of coherence in management, to which a number of the schools that have renounced such increases (Harvard, Chicago Booth, etc.) have not succumbed. Although it is understandable that NYU’s financial situation may require additional resources, to raise tuition fees (which prompted a petition from over 200 MBA students) is to omit the need for consistency.

Likewise, the manner in which Wharton switched to wholly online education risks damaging that school’s credibility. This shows that even in a crisis situation, it is necessary to take a holistic approach to managing change. In this case, the question of virtual versus face-to-face education was raised in ignorance of the fact that it is linked to many other parameters of school administration, in particular to the management of foreign students and the question of tuition fees and related issues.

The Harvard or INSEAD cases mentioned previously, on the contrary, would seem to demonstrate a comprehensive awareness of the situation. Indeed, the loss of approximately 200 students for Harvard’s 2020 entering class occurred because it was necessary to take into consideration the fact that a liberal policy in terms of deferral was needed, in particular for foreign students. (Harvard decided that any student, after having been accepted, could freely postpone their admission to the school by 2 years.) In addition, this choice can be explained by the decision-making logic holding that maintaining some amount of face-to-face education is very important and that, to that end, it was necessary to be able to follow the imperatives of public health and therefore initiate physical and social distancing among students.

The crisis situation places management education institutions in perilous contexts that are liable to jeopardize the future. Articles, books, and conferences devoted to the direction of academic management institutions in the face of the COVID-19 crisis that repeat that these adaptations constitute an opportunity, or that they validate favorable developments that had already been initiated and were ineluctable, call to mind the famous scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian in which convicts sentenced to death by crucifixion joyfully sing, “Always look on the bright side of life.” To accomplish their mission of training creative managers and agents of change and to maintain the sustainability of their institutions, the management of these establishments must develop global, integrated approaches, of which I have tried to give a few examples.

Business Schools: Social Actors in the Face of COVID-19

The elements analyzed previously show management education institutions that have responded to the COVID-19 crisis by attempting to create the conditions necessary to continue to accomplish their missions and fulfill their raison d’être by training students in management. In certain cases, the discussion has indicated how, in an effort of strategy and foresight, these institutions went even further by attempting to make the crisis an accelerator of change and a catalyst for improvements in the way they function. That these various shifts within schools tend to make them better able to accomplish their missions may seem very self-centered.

Yet in fact, one of their justifications is that business schools and management faculties have a high level of awareness of their social responsibility to train competent managers who, through their activities in companies and organizations in general, contribute to well-being and progress throughout society.

But beyond this important social contribution through their graduates, the COVID-19 crisis has helped to reveal how business schools themselves are real social actors. If the inclination already existed for business schools to act as a positive force for social progress, the COVID-19 crisis has greatly accelerated this trend (Cornuel and Hommel, Reference Cornuel and Hommel2012).

This is arguably the most remarkable aspect of the COVID-19 crisis in the management education sector. Beyond the fact that schools have deployed powerful mechanisms to maintain and improve their teaching activity and its quality, there are many cases in which business schools have stepped forward to provide answers to the social difficulties created by COVID-19.

For these schools, it goes well beyond educating students and executives – it is a question of engaging as a social actor contributing to society’s response to the COVID-19 crisis by employing the skills present in the schools themselves, the research that is developed there, the social influence and mobilization capacity of these institutions, and so forth. The forms this commitment takes are diverse: offering assistance to companies by providing them with volunteer consulting; providing leadership support to help businesses meet the challenges created by the coronavirus crisis; creating labs for ideas and being a creative force in a region or for a network of for-profit or nonprofit organizations, in certain cases accompanied by a workforce commitment in the field; and so forth.

Occasionally, schools have mobilized to seek answers to the problems created by the coronavirus crisis at a particular organization. Thus, Wharton accentuated an existing partnership with the Philadelphia Zoo (Symonds, Reference Symonds2020). The university took the initiative to help the zoo find responses to the lack of visitors during the coronavirus crisis period, an issue that posed problems for zoo maintenance, for the mental and physical well-being of the animals, and especially for the educational programs of Philadelphia schools.

In many cases, schools made a commitment to the business community by identifying territories, particular branches, or even companies that could benefit from expertise in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis (and by providing them with students, professors, graduates, and/or business professionals with whom the school is in contact, to help deal with a particular problem). Sometimes, schools brought together representatives from these various groups to form a task force, a think tank, or a convivium on behalf of a company or a particular business community.

It is particularly remarkable that in almost all cases, the approach followed by the business schools was initiated by a clear desire to help the community and society through an action developed with (or in favor of) companies.

In most cases, it was the business school that offered its services, knowing that its integration into the business world and into society had put it in a position to spot a problem. It should be noted that the cases in which companies went to schools to ask for their support (less numerous, but they do exist) are no less revealing of the position occupied by the schools in the business community and in society.

It is also interesting to note that the schools based their intervention on already-existing systems (portals, webinar creation, project guidance, start-up labs, executive education activities, applied research, workshops, etc.) that, prior to the COVID-19 crisis, had developed expertise that proved to be relevant in the time of the crisis.

The mobilization of schools’ assets to develop a response to the COVID-19 crisis was also achieved through the mobilization of graduates. In this respect, the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) was a paroxysmal case in terms of both its scale and impact and the fact that being a Euro-Chinese school, with its historical base in Shanghai, China, an acute awareness of the importance of what was at stake was established very early on. However, CEIBS, through its action, has been a particularly successful example of schools mobilizing their graduates and also their students: by donating masks, raising funds, offering free services, providing medical equipment, and volunteering in the local communities, students and graduates have responded to the pandemic in Hubei with agility and compassion, as shown by the following examples (communicated via both personal communication with the dean and via news releases on the school’s website):

• Within 24 hours, the CEIBS graduates’ association collected 12 million RMB when the donation project was announced on January 30, 2020.

• By the end of May, CEIBS had collected a total of 1.285 billion RMB. The value of the donated materials reached RMB 474 million.

• With the coordinated assistance of 26 CEIBS alumni sections, the procured medical supplies were distributed to nearly 100 provincial and municipal medical teams in Hubei in just a few days.

• Alumni companies have also contributed (and continue to contribute) according to their capacity. For example, alumni companies have distinguished themselves by implementing the following examples:

  • ∘ The Fosun Group set up a global command center, which quickly delivered donated materials to the front line through its sourcing network covering 23 countries.

  • ∘ At JD Logistics, more than 100,000 employees across China made a concerted effort to ensure that emergency materials were reasonably coordinated, shipped in an orderly fashion, and delivered quickly.

  • ∘ Yuwell Medical mobilized its employees to work overtime to ensure the supply of medical materials.

• CEIBS alumni sections abroad also spontaneously organized to provide meals, masks, and travel assistance to those who were temporarily stranded.

The proactive approach of management schools, the desire to “do good” and contribute to resolving the problems posed by the COVID-19 crisis, is attested by the fact that the know-how (particularly in terms of hackathons and digital platforms) has led to particularly innovative approaches that are the reversal to those seeking to help a company, a business community, a region, or a particular employment area. That is, they seek to tackle a general problem (creating organizations that are resilient to the coronavirus crisis, strengthening health systems, developing social solidarity in the face of COVID-19, avoiding the exclusion of elderly people who must confine themselves, etc.). A platform makes it possible to solicit proposals worldwide while retaining or encouraging individual commitment from students, teachers, and the school. This involves facilitating the creation of start-ups (by providing a toolbox for such creation), giving support to actors already in activity who face a particular challenge, and so forth. In most cases, the project has a limited duration (on the order of 2 or 3 months), but the school supports certain projects over the long term (and it is assumed that for others, a decisive impetus was thus given). In addition, the objective of crisis-management training for students (and also for all participants) is also included in such projects.

All of this allows for both the type of social integration that business schools have been enacting in their new role as full social actors and the way in which the entire sphere of management education has faced the COVID-19 crisis.

Conclusion

The analysis of the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis on management education institutions reveals to what extent this crisis profoundly modifies our understanding of this sector.

Two types of particularly noteworthy lessons can be drawn, corresponding to the two levels at which the response of the management education institutions sector has been structured.

At the first level, a notable effort was made to allow the continuing education of management students and the populations of executives and managers. This happened in various ways, including switching entirely to distance education, attempting to maintain face-to-face teaching when possible and often preferentially, and moving to hybrid teaching styles. In addition, the response of the schools, which endeavored to maintain the most “normal” operations possible, focused as much on teaching questions and questions of selection for the following year as on research questions.

Yet it is remarkable that some schools have gone beyond the quest to operate as efficiently as possible. They have mobilized as full-fledged social actors to help respond to the difficulties caused by the coronavirus crisis at the societal level. This desire to intervene hic et nunc, as outlined previously, deserves to be highlighted. It resonates with a problem that emerged for business schools during another crisis – that of 2008. At the end of it, the observation that business schools had done a remarkable job in teaching the techniques, skills, and tools of business administration but had failed in their mission to instill ethics in their students sparked debates that have spread throughout the world of management education.

It appeared that Milton Friedman’s position that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits” (Friedman, Reference Fox1962/2002, as quoted by Fox, Reference Fox2012, para. 2) best illustrated the approach that business schools were at that time teaching. They seemed to ignore the fact that the Friedman quote is truncated; Friedman went on to write: “so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud” (Friedman, Reference Fox1962/2002, as quoted by Fox, Reference Fox2012, para. 2). In fact, the foundation of the education provided lay in a misunderstanding of Friedman that had led management education institutions to limit corporate social responsibility to the creation of profit (which was supposed to contribute to the future well-being of the company) by neglecting the present social impact of the company. The “hic et nunc” became properly unthinkable in the social domain.

To remedy this state of affairs, following the 2008 crisis, many institutions, among which the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) ranked first, as well as many thinkers and researchers in management and just as many business leaders, stressed the need to reintroduce ethics and social responsibility to business schools. But on the question of how, the responses and proposals hardly went beyond the suggestion of strengthening and enriching the ethics and social responsibility courses. The fragility and the lack of impact of this suggestion made the sphere of management education expect a more appropriate and powerful response to this major challenge.

The response to the COVID-19 crisis shows how far schools have come and how much progress they have made. Management education institutions are no longer satisfied with responding to the crisis by maintaining and deepening their standard operations. They position themselves as actors intervening directly to help solve social problems. They see their roles as including social responsibility and the need to act in response to it here and now.

Thus, the COVID-19 crisis shows that the management education sector has made progress and has moved into a new stage in its maturity.

At the second level, the COVID-19 crisis has changed the balance between regional and global development within management education. Obviously, in recent decades, the world of management education has placed great emphasis on the importance of internationalization. The EFMD itself has preached a great deal in favor of the internationalization of faculty, research topics, student recruitment, and so forth. The importance of following this development was evidently apparent, insofar as it enriched debate in the classroom while avoiding the obvious topics and commonplaces that are the subject of consensus only in a very reduced geographical and social framework. In such a context, the development forced research to gain ground and to take a breath of fresh air and made it possible to increase sensitivities and approaches among professors and others. For example, the need for a high level of internationalization has often arisen in order to obtain accreditation for a school or for a program.

The COVID-19 crisis seems to have marked the return of the territorial, the regional, and the national in the field of management education. This is not surprising because the same trend has emerged in many areas, including health, defense, and food: the need for territorial anchoring – to avoid being in a situation of strategic dependence and the impossibility of defining a policy – has reappeared in the light of the many tensions that our societies face because they no longer control their own production and supply chains. It is therefore not surprising that jointly in the field of education management, the importance of not sacrificing territorial, regional, and national anchoring for the benefit of international anchoring is reimposing itself. For example, the prospect that the flow of foreign students (which had seemed to want to increase steadily on campuses) would slow down, that their proportion in the student body would decrease, reappeared after having been forgotten for 30 years. There has been a sudden reemergence of the importance of the fact that management education institutions are often important local, regional, and national institutions – places that have shaped local leadership for years, institutions whose names enjoy an important local aura that partly guarantees the development of the institutions. In addition, the examination of the commitments of schools in favor of the resolution of social problems created by COVID-19, mentioned previously, shows that in most cases, this commitment took place at the level of the primary anchoring territory of the schools – that is, regional or national rather than international. All of this encourages a rebalancing of the approaches brought into play by the management education sector. This rebalancing is certainly the bearer of new developments for management education that are better anchored in the humanities because it avoids culturally disembodied and socially evanescent approaches.

Introduction

The current COVID-19 crisis has triggered unprecedented upheaval on a global scale. From a strictly public health point of view, however, humanity has proven itself capable of joining forces and transcending political boundaries.

I. Rethinking Leadership after the Experience of Multiple Lockdowns

2. Responding to the Pandemic: Our Eight Key Takeaways

In short, the school’s internal stakeholders – students, faculty, administrative staff – have been strongly mobilized, and from our vantage point today, at the beginning of 2021, we can outline eight practical lessons that will inevitably change the way a Business School is run, in a lasting manner.

1. Taking the 20-40 digital turn today: ESCP has become convinced that neither students nor management research has anything to gain from the uberization of the business school model. What is needed is more widespread use of the forms of blended learning that were already emerging before the pandemic. We have also chosen to give the teaching staff a great deal of pedagogical flexibility. Looking to 2040, it has been decided to have a minimum of 20 percent digital and 40 percent in-class teaching for all courses. This will allow some teachers to favor 80 percent of class time with their students present in person and 20 percent remote, for example, or others might prefer to divide their teaching into 40 percent face-to-face content and 60 percent digital. This will make it possible to adapt the pedagogy of management disciplines. The challenge now is to produce digital modules that can be integrated into a symbiotic face-to-face architecture.

2. Delivering premium asynchronous courses: The crisis has revealed the need to provide students with courses of the highest standard wherever they are in the world. This has led many business schools to produce prerecorded (asynchronous) modules to take account of the realities of time-zone differences. Pedagogically, the production of an asynchronous module is much more demanding than filming a synchronous course livened up by questions from students. The asynchronous module must captivate the learner from beginning to end by means of a teaching sequence that is punctuated with videos of illustrations and quizzes for midterm evaluations, along with impeccable presentation materials.

3. Rethinking ExecEd: As will be discussed in Part II of this chapter, the changes underway in ExecEd are drastic. Corporate expectations will be radically different once the pandemic issues are resolved. The share of digital methods will increase, whereas the duration of seminars will be shortened considerably. Business school professors will be invited as expert witnesses, rather than as the half-day facilitators they were in the past, when they would give presentations with (albeit sophisticated) overhead transparencies and pass from one subgroup room to another to encourage executives to solve case studies. If the business school professor previously took the lead over the group of learners, it will now be the university or a pedagogical coordinator it has appointed who will lead the group of business school professors invited to the company’s training.

4. Striking a new equilibrium between research and teaching: The rise of digital technology will require business school deans to speed up the production of educational capsules for students and continuing education managers in a short space of time. This will have consequences for business school rankings, where the quality of an institution will be measured in terms of research, student selectivity, the pedagogical quality of teachers, and the size of the business school’s digital offering. Digital technology will not replace research; it will become an additional criterion for evaluation.

5. Launching a massive real estate plan despite the uncertainties: The question of business school real estate is being raised once again as we move from managing real estate to digital estate. The need will shift from managing classrooms, floor space, and teacher researchers’ offices to questions of ergonomics, furniture, and equipment adapted to digital technologies and teaching resource storage capacity in terabytes.

6. Not resting on the success of our flagship programs: Digitization is reshuffling the cards when it comes to educational portfolios, with the expected flowering of specialized and regularly updated digital certificates. The accumulation and combination of these certificates can lead to lifelong diplomas.

7. Anticipating what Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) and educational technology (EdTech) will be able to offer tomorrow: This will involve establishing a position for the major digital and EdTech companies in higher education. They have a technological advantage in the global spectrum and have the financial muscle to acquire renowned universities, but they also run the risk of being rejected by the governments that serve as regulators of higher education. In any case, business schools will not be able to avoid taking this potential new player, partner, and predator into account.

8. Positioning higher education institutions in relation to EdTech: It is striking that there is much more talk about the transformation and innovation of EdTech companies than about the transformation of business schools. EdTech companies tended to be seen as subcontractors for the business schools before the pandemic, and increasing digitalization should not reverse that relationship. It would be a bit like science being hosted by Wikipedia.

Business schools must therefore skillfully weigh up the advantages and risks when they engage in a pedagogical mix that combines physical and digital. Figure 14.1 shows the main elements to be taken into account, bearing in mind that there is no absolute “one best way” and that a balanced mix needs to be constructed according to parameters such as the duration of the training, the level of the participants, the size of the group, and the variety of the international audience.

Figure 14.1 Finding the right pedagogical mix.

Source: Augmented from Bournois & Roussillon (Reference Bournois and Roussillon1998).

II. Business Schools Must Engage in Strategic Partnerships

During the past decade, large companies have made profound changes to the way they design programs within their corporate universities. Overall, they have shortened the duration of seminars for senior executives and managers, professionalized their program managers, internationalized the sourcing of their speakers, increased the variety of teaching tools, opened up the themes to include individual development and codevelopment, introduced metrics to systematically evaluate the added value perceived by participants, and so on.

This has led to the creation of much more varied ecosystems than in the past. The main idea behind this contribution is to show that the Grandes Écoles no longer have to do everything in-house, from collecting the company’s needs to providing certificates once the seminar is over, including the implementation of face-to-face or distance learning sequences. The trend that is emerging for the new decade will consist of business schools creating, devising, and professionalizing partnerships with other business schools, with consortia of leading companies in certain sectors of activity, and most certainly, with the leading professional service firms (PSFs), the consultancy firms for which education is at the heart of their strategy.

The ExecEd environment will be different tomorrow, driven by new quality expectations, a new relationship to the workspace, and new organizational and time-management habits. New types of partnerships will flourish in the coming decade. They will deliver diplomas and certificates from largely digital offerings, and the highest-profile and most reputable of them will succeed in attracting corporate leaders to take on a doctoral thesis based largely on their professional expertise.

Conclusion

Our community is particularly proud of the mission statement we set for ourselves a few years ago: “To inspire and educate business leaders who will impact the world.” In that collective spirit, it falls to me to salute the initiative of three colleagues who have launched and steered this project with incredible energy and commitment. On behalf of our president, Philippe Houzé, and everybody here at ESCP, I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank Pramuan Bunkanwanicha, Régis Coeurderoy, and Sonia Ben Slimane, without whom the project would never have risen to such heights. The call for contributions inspired a veritable flood of original scientific work, despite the fact that faculty members were already overburdened by the sudden need to create teaching materials for remote learning while also preparing for an unprecedented level of digital engagement in 2020–21. Once again, I would like to express my admiration and extend my sincere thanks to all the colleagues who have contributed to this wonderful outpouring of intellectual solidarity and stimulation. Thank you for sharing so generously the fruits of this prolific period of reflection, inspired by these uncertain times.

ESCP is a business school with a profound connection to the European humanist tradition. As we traverse this time of global crisis, I am reminded of a passage from the memoirs of Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, published in 1978. His words ring as true now as ever, and they offer a beacon as we navigate these turbulent times: “When people find themselves in a new situation, they adapt to it and they change. But so long as they hope that things may stay as there are, or be the subject of compromise, they are unwilling to listen to new ideas” (Monnet, Reference Monnet and Richard1978, p. 344).

The COVID-19 crisis was a perfect storm for an independent business school like International Institute for Management Development (IMD). On the positive side, we started the crisis on the wings of a substantial revenue-growth momentum – 2020 was going to be our best year ever by a mile! On the negative side, more than 80 percent of our revenues come – or rather, came then – from nondegree programs requiring one party to travel to another, overwhelmingly across national borders. Within the 20 percent of revenues coming from degree programs, more than half came from the executive MBA (EMBA) program, which also requires extensive international travel for students. In other words, as of February 2020, more than 90 percent of our revenues were suddenly at very severe risk.

On the organizational front, January 2020 was the launch of a new governing body called the Executive Committee, a larger group – nine members versus the previous five – including key staff function heads reporting to me. The year also started with us sharing with IMD’s staff the pretty negative results of an internal climate survey conducted in late 2019. Faculty responses were very positive, but the staff (outnumbering faculty six to one) reported a very clear lack of trust in the management team – in terms of both competence and intentions. The report had made for very painful reading, and the town-hall meeting in which I reported the results and faced anonymous questions from more than 200 staff members was brutal.

Given our economic model, the crisis became very much of a reality for us quite early in the process, as Open Program executive education (ExecEd) participants and Custom Program corporate partners started calling us to ask for postponements. In the following weeks and months, I experienced a very interesting case of “theory meets practice.” As a professor of leadership and organizational development, I had been studying and educating leaders for about three decades. So I “knew what to do,” at least in theory. Having to “do it,” especially under the intense pressure created by the risk of revenues grinding to a halt (and nobody to bail us out if we failed), led to four major insights that I would like to share in this chapter.

I am acutely aware that I could have organized these insights differently, so I am not presenting them as “the way” to lead in a crisis. Please consider them as a humble personal reflection on what has been a fascinating – and so far, very successful – experience. Befitting this personal reflection positioning, the style of this chapter is conversational – I will be addressing you, the reader and the leader of your organization.

These four insights are not presented by order of importance – I think they are all equally important – but hopefully, the sequence in which they are introduced will appear logical to you and will make them more memorable.

Insight 1: Maintaining a Very Engaged and Aligned Leadership Team

As critical as the leader is, the performance of the leadership team (LT) is going to be at least as important. In particular, it is even more important during a crisis for the members of the LT to all be engaged and aligned.

You need all members of the LT engaged because in a crisis, you can’t be everywhere at the same time, even less so than in normal times. If you try to do it all alone, you will exhaust yourself in addition to becoming a bottleneck. In addition, the troops would for sure notice that some LT members are not fully engaged, which would undermine their morale and your efforts.

You also need all the members of the LT to be even more aligned than during “normal times.” Research has shown that human beings are fundamentally programmed to look for threats, even under normal conditions.Footnote ¹ Unsurprisingly, this propensity to look for threats becomes even more salient during a crisis. As a result, faculty and staff analyze communications from the LT even more carefully than usual, actively looking for any sign of individual weakness in, and of lack of alignment between, members of the LT.

Outside of crises, most LTs have learned to look at least moderately (if not always perfectly) engaged and aligned. Crises ought to bring the best out of LTs, so why would they suddenly start underperforming individually and/or collectively? For two reasons.

The first reason is individual: While some members of your LT will immediately “step up” during the crisis, showing the confidence, the willingness, and the ability to take on more responsibilities, other members of the LT will tend to wither because they lack one or more of these qualities. This withering can manifest itself in different ways. Some individuals will seem to produce a lower – or at least a less-than-maximum – level of effort and engagement. Others will be “working hard,” but their time and effort will seem to you to be misallocated (too much time and energy on lesser priorities, at the expense of real “must-win battles”). Another sign of withering is increasing indecisiveness/inability to make basic decisions.

An LT member’s insufficient individual effort, incorrect prioritization, and/or growing indecisiveness will rapidly become problematic and potentially debilitating for employees reporting to them. It is also very frustrating for the leader and for the LT colleagues who are “stepping up.” Frustrated leaders can react aggressively – increasingly berating the withering team member(s) – or more passively, by avoiding them and withdrawing from interactions. Both are suboptimal solutions.

The second reason why an LT’s performance may decrease during a crisis is that the crisis may reveal heretofore undetected fault lines within the team. These fault lines are due to less-than-100-percent alignment on the organization’s strategy and/or priorities. Less than 100 percent can still involve a relatively high degree of agreement, and that degree of agreement may be sufficient to go unnoticed in an environment that is not hyper-stretched. But in a crisis, where resources become very scarce, questions from staff become very pointed, and decisions need to be made very quickly, the imperfect alignment will start to become observable and problematic.

What can the leader do to contribute to a higher-performing LT?

1. 1. One important step is to remain patient and compassionate toward the team members who wither. Understand, with empathy and compassion, that their withering is not intentional and probably reflects forces that are currently overwhelming them. When you can accept your colleagues’ difficulties with compassion, it becomes easier to see that the solution is neither berating them (which will only increase their fear of failure) nor disconnecting from them (which will simply trigger a vicious circle of decreasing performance). The solution is instead to make sure you remain engaged with the withering team member(s) and spend more time with them rather than less. These discussions will enable you to help increase the individual’s confidence, willingness, and ability to contribute more during this challenging period.

2. 2. With respect to alignment, you should invest even more time and energy in making sure that you and your team are strongly aligned on the key parameters. (This was particularly true during the COVID-19 crisis because it forced LTs to work remotely to a large and often complete extent. The lack of ongoing, informal contact made it more challenging to stay organically aligned.)

   In a way, the crisis acts as a dam that lowers the level of water in a river. When the water sits at, say, 1 meter high, the 60-centimeter-high rocks are not a problem. As the water level falls to 70 centimeters, the 60-centimeter rocks are not yet observable, but they start becoming a problem for the canoes. At 50 centimeters of water, the rocks are now observable. That’s what the crisis does. By lowering the level of the water in the river, smaller rocks – including a small lack of alignment among LT members – become a problem.

   Looking back, this is the one dimension on which I probably did the least well, especially during Q1 and Q2 of 2020 (i.e., until I identified this insight and realized that I had started withdrawing from interaction with two of my ExCo members, which had only made things worse over time). I knew better than to berate them, but the method I (unconsciously) chose to prevent expressing frustration was to withdraw from it. That was decidedly a less effective approach than engaging consciously and compassionately with them, which I did thereafter.

Insight 2: Communicating with the Troops

As mentioned previously, research shows that human beings are fundamentally programmed to look for threats, even under normal conditions. That’s simply the result of evolution, where for the longest of times, our ancestors lived in a world where underestimating a threat could be deadly.

Very legitimately, crisis situations intensify this tendency. When things all around us are relatively positive, we’re on the lookout for threats. But when things all around become unmistakably threatening, our amygdala becomes hyperactive, and we start to really scan the world for dangers.

In this context, it becomes clear that as a leader, one of your key objectives during a crisis should be to help everybody to stay calm and focused.

Clearly, you don’t want to go to the other extreme and pretend that that situation is not problematic at all and that all is going to be well. If your people believe you, they won’t act with the sense of urgency you need them to have in this crisis. More likely, they won’t believe you, and they will think that either you’re a fool or you’re taking them for one. Neither alternative is a good basis for a strong, positive relationship.

Rather, your goal ought to be to acknowledge that “there are indeed some threats, but (1) these threats are well understood and we have a plan. (2) Executing on this plan is our best bet to get through this crisis.”

This, of course, requires you – the leader and the LT – to have such a good understanding of the situation and such a plan to guide productive action. Clearly, this is more likely to happen if, as per the first insight, you have a very engaged and aligned LT.

At IMD, we understood and acknowledged immediately that this crisis could become highly problematic for us, but we also rapidly identified productive actions that we could take to mitigate the problem. We placed these actions in the context of our ongoing strategy to highlight the fact that they were very credible and feasible actions.

LT members had clear ownership for categories of actions, but they also made sure they engaged their first reports and encouraged these first reports to engage their own staff in the fine-tuning of these actions. The architecture of the plan came from the top, but a lot of ideas and suggestions came from the “bottom up” through a series of connections with subgroups within the organization.

The COVID-19 crisis added an unusual element to a typical crisis: the overwhelming majority of our staff was working from home and was hence deprived of regular physical human contact. We understood that these conditions of relative isolation would be conducive to a lot of rumors and anxiety.

As a result, we made two important decisions: First, we immediately named a Task Force to gather information on the crisis and its various components. We simply did not want hundreds of people to feel they needed to spend several hours every day just to keep up with the news. So we explicitly gave that role to a few carefully selected individuals. Two, this Task Force and the LT gave very regular updates to the troops on the evolution of the crisis and its impact on us.

Again, the frequency of communication matters. We started with weekly “community meetings,” then moved to bimonthly (virtual) connections, with updates in between as and when needed. Overcommunicating is dangerous because it feeds everyone’s anxiety and devalues the LT’s words. But you must still communicate enough and often enough to maintain this strong sense of calm and deliberate action.

We even coined a phrase to remind ourselves of this desired state. “At IMD,” we say, “we don’t get worried; we get busy.” And this phrase has now become part of our common folklore.

If keeping the troops calm and productively busy is your first objective, your second objective must be to inspire them. To do so, we focused on two aspects.

First, we highlighted the opportunity that this crisis represents. Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic had the potential of having a very negative impact on IMD, but it could also be a great opportunity. For example, in our case, the downtime that the crisis imposed on us enabled us to dramatically accelerate our investment in technology-enabled learning. We had already started going in that direction, but with this crisis, (a) we suddenly recovered time to do it, and (b) our clients became increasingly open to it. In fact, increasingly, they asked us what we could propose to them on this front.

Our second lever to inspire the troops was to consciously and consistently reinforce our staff’s sense of community, shared purpose, and shared destiny.

In particular, we used every piece of communication to connect actions and activities to our purpose. IMD exists for a reason: challenging what is and inspiring what could be, we develop executives who transform organizations and contribute to society. All of our faculty and staff know this purpose, but on a daily basis, what each of us does is typically a lot less glamorous. So we needed to remind ourselves that although this or that action may feel mundane or even uninteresting, it is one component in a multiplicative model that leads to value creation for executives, organizations, and society.

Also connected with the purpose, we emphasized the importance of the IMD community. Whereas some organizations around us used this crisis to implement cost-cutting measures that they were thinking of but heretofore had not dared to put in place, we chose instead to emphasize solidarity within the community by resorting to partial unemployment and Voluntary Salary Reduction (VSR; starting with a 25 percent VSR by the LT). We encouraged employees to use the intranet to stay connected at a personal level; we supported and celebrated their charity activities; with the help of our IMD coaching community, we also offered staff members free coaching sessions to give them an opportunity to express their concerns and possibly discuss them with a professional.

Our staff understood that IMD’s financial means were not infinite and that if the situation worsened, we would have to resort to more painful cost-cutting measures.

Actually, we did end up reducing about 10 percent of our staff positions at the end of the year. By then, most companies in our region had started laying off employees, we had exhausted our ability to use government-sponsored furloughs, and our staff could clearly see how much program activity had dropped and how much money we were losing. The inevitability of layoffs to reduce our cost base was hence very clear by then. Still, to maintain the sense of community in spite of layoffs entirely directed at the staff, we also obtained a near-unanimous vote from faculty accepting a reduction in their 2021 ExecEd rate.Footnote ²

In the meantime, we think that we maintained our organization at the peak personal and professional levels by pursuing two complementary objectives: First, we communicated frequently, candidly, and resolutely on the challenges and the solutions to ensure that our staff remained calm and focused on their tasks and their priorities. Second, we made sure that our communication also inspired our staff by (a) highlighting the opportunity that this crisis represented (if we do X and Y, we will come out of the crisis a stronger organization), (b) connecting all our actions to IMD’s purpose, and (c) nurturing our employees’ sense of community by sharing financial sacrifices for long enough to allow the inevitability of layoffs to become clear.

Insight 3: Balancing Offense and Defense

During a crisis, numerous stakeholders reinforce very regularly to the LT the need to “play defense” – that is, to protect liquidities, line up financing sources, and reduce cost as much as possible. In our case, our alumni, our Foundation Board, and the bank(s) from which we borrowed made sure that my LT colleagues and I remained very focused on this dimension.

But alongside playing defense, you and your LT must also ask a very important question: Will you come out of the crisis a stronger organization, fit for the post-crisis world, or will you survive but exit the crisis pretty depleted?

There are two major reasons why an organization could come out of the crisis weaker than it started it: One reason is the future impact of the sacrifices you may (feel you) have to make in order to survive the crisis – reduced investment in people, in systems, in research and development, and/or in business-development activities.

For example, during the 2008–2010 global financial crisis, most organizations and most countries made pretty severe cuts in these areas in order to survive the crisis and/or to maintain their financial performance during that period. In contrast, the Singaporean government decided to draw on its reserves to support companies and help them to upgrade their human capital by retaining and retraining their employees during the crisis.Footnote ³ Singapore came out of the crisis much faster than most – and with a momentum that contributed to Singapore’s remarkable success over the last 10 years.Footnote ⁴

As IMD’s Executive Committee and with the support of our Board, we decided that as much and as long as humanly possible, we would pursue a Singaporean strategy, and we would avoid, as long as possible, making cuts in areas that would reduce our medium- to long-term success.

The second reason why an organization might come out of the crisis weaker is by failing to make the additional investments needed to succeed in the post-crisis world.

Some crises bring about a major disruption but do not fundamentally change the rules of the game. Other crises do change the rules of competition, and if you don’t make the decisions needed to excel in that new world, you may survive the crisis, but you won’t thrive thereafter.

At IMD, we decided pretty rapidly that this COVID-19 crisis would change the rules of the future game to a nontrivial extent. In particular, we felt that after months of using technology-mediated interactions (TMIs) increasingly effectively, executive-development participants and clients would want to continue to use TMIs in the future, at least for part of our activities.

This meant that we should take advantage of this crisis to accelerate our investments into (a) new technologies enabling us to support executives at a distance and (b) developing our faculty’s and our staff’s capability to design interventions and interactions that make the most of these technological possibilities.

So we decided that alongside playing defense, we would also play offense by using this crisis as an opportunity to prepare ourselves for the world that will follow. Our rallying cry became: “Let’s innovate as much on technology-mediated pedagogy over the next 3 months than we would have otherwise done over the next 3 years.”

This effort included significant investments in “technology” (hardware and software). We outfitted most of our classrooms with state-of-the-art equipment, equipped another 15 or so smaller rooms for individual faculty members to “teach from,” and accelerated the development of a state-of-the-art classroom and system enabling us to interact in a very engaging way with up to 120 individuals at a time. Over the next few months, we also developed a new multimedia studio to enhance our capabilities in this area. We also acquired two very professional “self-recording booths” to enable faculty to record short videos by themselves.

Looking back, I realize that although I was part of the discussions on playing defense, I (somewhat unconsciously) decided to take a leading role on the “playing offense” front. I think this was a good idea because “defense” already had quite a few natural champions – our chief financial officer (CFO), several members of our Board, several senior faculty members – all quite vocal on the need to cut down, hunker down, and retrench. Playing offense needed a strong champion, and in our case, the best champion was probably the dean.

Having a champion for “offense” is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for success. I gave two of my strongest LT members a very clear “innovation mandate,” encompassing the launch of new programs, the acceleration of pedagogical innovation (especially on TMIs), and the scaling up of effective practices across all our programs. We also identified a few innovative colleagues willing and able to be at the forefront of innovation, and we secured support from key opinion leaders.

One of the key decisions we made was to launch, in June 2020, a liVe (synchronous technology-mediated) version of our signature Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) program, which normally gathers between 400 and 500 executives, coming from all over the world, for a week on campus. We resolved to design, market, and deliver a liVe version of this program and gave ourselves 10 weeks to do so. We really had no idea how to make this happen when we made the decision, so this was a real “man on the moon” moment for us.

Although faculty and staff understood the revenue-generation impact of this program, the LT had three major objectives more important to us than the financial one. First, we could feel the energy of our faculty and staff dissipating after 2 months of confinement, and we wanted to create another burst of collective energy by giving ourselves a risky collective project. Two, we knew that planting such a stick in the ground would help accelerate pedagogical innovation at a time when our faculty didn’t have enough opportunities to innovate and practice. Third, we wanted to show to ourselves and to our clients that this kind of liVe program could be satisfying and impactful for participants; this was a proof-of-concept endeavor.

The program gathered 350 executives from all over the world. It was not a financial boon – we decided to double faculty compensation for this program because it required substantial additional investment on their part. Much more importantly though, OWP liVe was a major energy boost, an effective innovation accelerator, and a very successful proof of concept. It has since then been repeated several times.

We also spent significant time keeping our Board informed and engaged to ensure that they remained confident in the strategy and in the LT’s ability to implement it successfully. For 2021, we even negotiated a special additional investment budget for TMIs.

Managing up effectively is potentially even more important during a crisis than in normal times. Your bosses and your board are probably facing anxieties of their own in their respective areas, and they have much less understanding than you do of all the good decisions you and your team are making. So keep them informed and engaged to help them remain, like your staff, calm and focused on their job instead of trying to do yours.

On the investment front, we also maintained marketing investments, increased communication expenditures, and hired several individuals to help us to innovate faster.

It has been very interesting, over the last few months, to work this balancing act between short-term survival and longer-term preparation. The balance between these two poles has varied up and down over time and will probably continue to do so as the crisis continues to evolve, hopefully toward a resolution. In the meantime, maintaining our focus on “offense” has required a strong resolve and discipline on my part. The “playing defense” forces are strong, and they can easily slow down even agreed-upon key investments if you take your eye off the ball and your foot off the gas. At the same time, you must also play enough defense to maintain support from the board and fund some of the key investments. It’s been an interesting balancing exercise.

I don’t know how high the return on our investments will be, but I do know one thing for certain: in the meantime, our decision to keep playing offense has been a powerful energizing force for the LT, as well as for all our faculty and staff.

Faculty and staff engagement are particularly important dimensions during crises because crises reduce slack resources, and world-class performance hence requires significant “beyond-role,” “over-and-above” efforts from the organization. By staying clearly focused on our purpose and supporting our community, by giving everyone a clear path forward and reasons to be confident in our ability to survive the crisis and then thrive in the post-crisis world, we reduced the rise of individualistic, parochial, short-term-maximizing behavior.

Napoleon said that leaders are “dealers in hope.” Leading through a crisis does require that you give your troops a reason to keep fighting together toward a common goal. In the absence of such a sense of shared destiny, centrifugal forces will ensure that the whole becomes less than the sum of the parts.

Insight 4: Why and How Leaders Actively Need to Manage Themselves

This fourth insight comes last not because it is the least important or because, from a timing point of view, you must address it after the others. In fact, quite to the contrary. It is probably the most important insight because, as highlighted in the first three sections, so much rests on the leader’s shoulders during a crisis. Granted, there’s also a lot resting on the leader during normal times, but crises reduce the time available to decide and execute, as well as the amount of redundant resources available to pick up and compensate for errors. In a crisis, everyone’s paying a lot more attention to what you say and do, and the decisions that are being made have very high stakes. During a crisis, the sensitivity of the system to your and your LT’s actions is very high, and a drop in performance on your part can hence have even more massive consequences. As a result, your goal shouldn’t be to maintain yourself in functional order; it should be to maintain yourself at peak performance!

Managing yourself to remain at peak performance through a crisis involves a range of dimensions – some physical/physiological, others cognitive and emotional. These two domains are obviously linked; in particular, your level of physical energy influences your ability to think straight and to manage your emotions productively. In the other direction, feeling productive, engaged, and connected will, in turn, nurture your level of physical energy.

But connected as they are, these two domains still involve different sets of action. On the more physical side, many books are now available discussing how leaders can manage their energy levels. Tom Rath’s (2013) book provides a good analysis of the interplay between nutrition, exercise, and sleep to help leaders to maintain a high level of productive energy and a positive attitude across good and bad times.Footnote ⁵ I imagine that by now, most of you have developed a point of view and probably also some practices and even rituals in this area.

Interestingly, a crisis introduces two additional challenges on this front: (a) time pressures, which may lead you to feel that you don’t have as much (discretionary) time as usual to dedicate to self-care, and (b) a likely sense of guilt over taking valuable time away from your colleagues or even your family to “take care of yourself.”

These are very fair concerns, and they may lead you to make some trade-offs; at the end of the day, leadership is about trade-offs. But as you consider these trade-offs, do keep in mind that there is a reason why airlines tell us to put the mask on ourselves first before we help someone else. Throughout a crisis, your team, your staff, and your family will rely and depend on your ability to think clearly, to have enough energy to power yourself and inspire them, to deal with your and their emotions, and to do so every day and throughout the crisis. So you must place a high enough level of priority on managing your own energy-generation system.

In particular, you should be mindful of your sleep patterns. It is easy for leaders to develop sleep disorders, in part because it is harder to manage thoughts and feelings while we sleep. Research shows very clearly how quickly and how significantly human beings’ intellectual performance and emotional mastery decrease when we are sleep deprived, even in relatively minor ways.Footnote ⁶ So you may want to pay particular attention during these times to your sleep rituals – how you prepare yourself for sleep. There are excellent resources on this topic that you can easily access online. Too many people complain that they don’t sleep well and treat this condition as an exogenous one – “It’s genetic” and/or “It’s not my fault.” And there’s no doubt that genetics plays a role in this area, as it does in most areas. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot improve our lot in this realm by taking more effective actions.

Again, you cannot use or give to others the energy that you don’t have, and your ability to get the cognitive and emotional dimensions of your job right relies in significant part on your ability to get the physiological component right as well.

Beyond minding your physiology through nutrition, exercise, and sleep, leading in a crisis presents leaders with emotional challenges. Leaders’ emotions tend to be quite contagious under any circumstances, but they are even more so during a crisis, when so much depends on the leader’s ability to remain calmly and resolutely positive. Unfortunately, remaining calm and positive is bound to be much harder than it normally is because in a crisis, you will have to deal with a lot of emotions – both yours and theirs.

One powerful emotion you and your staff will have to deal with is grief, that is, the psychological-emotional experience following a loss of any kind, from physical losses (e.g., the death of a loved one) to symbolic or social ones (e.g., divorce or loss of a job) or even simply the loss of a future that we desired or expected. In addition to the functional loss (i.e., the loss of the benefits associated with the expected outcome), the situation also highlights one’s (partial or total) powerlessness vis-à-vis the situation, which magnifies the sense of frustration.Footnote ⁷

Another emotion leaders experience during crises is fear. “Am I going to be able to do this? Am I going to be up the task?” For some leaders, this crisis awakens or reenergizes their “imposter syndrome”Footnote ⁸: “Is this the time they will realize I’m not as good as they think I am?” The fear can also pertain to the fate of the organization: “Are we going to be able to come out of this crisis on top? Or will it bring us to our knees, or worse?”

Yet another emotion you have probably been experiencing is frustration, and potentially anger, because some people don’t perform the way they should and/or some outcomes fall short of your expectations. That’s always frustrating, but it is particularly frustrating when you are working at or slightly beyond your own maximum.

Compounding your own emotional challenge is the fact that as the leader, you must also help your colleagues, starting with your LT colleagues, to deal with their emotions. At a minimum, you will be exposed to their emotions, which may further intensify yours.

Ignoring your emotions, pretending that you don’t have them, or trying to suppress them is unlikely to help. The emotions will resurface – tomorrow, next week, next month, during the day or at night when you’re trying to sleep. Ignoring them won’t help. Managing them will.

Managing one’s emotions is obviously a skill that can be developed. Here are a few helpful avenues.

First, it really helps to be aware of the emotions that you are experiencing. For part of the day, particularly when you’re interacting with others, you are managing your state – you are leading yourself to feel and act calm, confident, and resolute. Remember that this process takes effort, and make sure you have moments where, by yourself or with a close confidant, a mentor, or a coach, you can connect with and acknowledge your underlying emotions. Naming these emotions is a first step toward managing them.Footnote ⁹

Research also shows that writing about your emotions and experiences in a journal can be a very effective way of processing negative emotions.Footnote ¹⁰ So if you can discuss with a trusted advisor, great, but you can also become a quasi-trusted-advisor for yourself when you write to yourself.

Beyond naming and potentially writing about your emotions, you could also consider three very powerful practices. The first and most powerful practice of all is conscious breathing. Conscious deep breathing has two very fundamental benefits: One, physiological benefits. Breathing deeply sends a message to your brain to calm down and relax. Your brain then sends the same message to your body, which helps decrease the stress symptoms we often experience, such as increased heart rate, shallow breathing, and high blood pressure. So first, your stress level goes down.Footnote ¹¹ Second, conscious breathing helps to bring you back to the here and now; it is a very simple but very powerful mindfulness training exercise.

Bringing yourself back to the here and now is a very effective way to manage anxiety about the future: “I don’t know what may happen later, but for now, I’m OK.”

It also helps you to choose your response in specific situations. If you’re not present in the here and now, the habit wins. But if you are here, now, then you have a choice, and you can choose to craft your behavior more productively than you would if you were on autopilot.

Finally, bringing yourself back to the here and now enables you to manage your state to bring it to where you need it to be right now. You may not feel very confident as you’re about to appear in a virtual meeting with dozens or hundreds of employees, but they need you to look and come across as confident, so now’s the time to make yourself feel this way.

Second important practice: when we feel frustrated or annoyed, it helps a great deal to be able to maintain a strong sense of compassion for the individuals we are interacting with. Notice that I referred to the need for compassion rather than empathy.

Over the last few years, leaders have been strongly encouraged to develop their empathy for their staff. But research actually shows that empathy (which involves adopting the perspective of the other party and feeling similar emotions) is not necessarily the best approach. Over time, it can even prove damaging for oneself, leading to emotional distress and even burnout.

A more effective approach is to show compassion, which, “in contrast to empathy, … does not mean sharing the suffering of the other: rather, it is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other’s well-being. Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with the other.”Footnote ¹² In a crisis situation, you may well have to inflict pain on parts of the organization (e.g., by ordering layoffs or otherwise reducing investments or opportunities). When inflicting pain, actively feeling this pain (empathizing) won’t be as helpful as you being able to relate to it and being intent on doing your best to reduce it.

Concretely, maintaining your compassion for people starts with you reminding yourself that they are very probably doing their best. Yes, this best may not be enough for you, but it is still their best right now. In addition, this best may not be enough, but it’s generally not completely crappy either; there are typically some areas that are still going well. Connecting with their good intentions and their partial good performance will help you to be more patient and more helpful toward them.

You may still decide that this won’t be enough and that you will have to make more drastic decisions somewhere down the road, but again, for now, your compassion will help you to get the best out of them – and to create a more supportive atmosphere for all your other colleagues who are watching these interactions.

The third powerful practice that can greatly help you to stay at your best during a crisis is to nurture your sense of gratitude via a gratitude practice. Yes, some things are very tough right now, and you deserve better. Yes, this crisis is requiring you to step up considerably, at some cost to yourself and maybe your family, and it’s forcing you to make up for the underperformance of some of your faculty and staff colleagues. Darn, this is frustrating and annoying!

It certainly is (frustrating and annoying), but do try to also pay some attention to all the things that are going well in your life. Start with all your body parts that are working relatively to very well. Then, are your family members healthy and well? Well, that alone is a great blessing. Look also at all the folks around you who are going over and above the call of duty to help you, their colleagues, and the organization. Some of them are even finding time to volunteer outside the school to help their communities! You can also be grateful for the client who will stand by you or the supplier who’s giving you a break. Think of all the things that went well today and all the people who were admirable. Actually, no matter how difficult the situation is, we always have so much to be grateful for!

Gratitude helps leaders on several fronts. First, research shows that a regular gratitude practice contributes to better physical and mental health.Footnote ¹³ Also, by helping you to place your setbacks and frustrations in a proper perspective, gratitude can help you to deal more philosophically and calmly with these setbacks and frustrations – which will lead to better outcomes. Gratitude can hence be a foundation for resilience (the ability to rebound after a setback), a quality that leaders can greatly benefit from in times of crisis.

Summarizing this fourth insight: during a crisis, your role as a leader is more critical – and also more challenging – than ever. This combination of high stakes and high challenge means that you must be consciously looking after yourself to make sure you remain in peak performance throughout the crisis. This “self-care” has a physiological foundation building on the interdependent tripod of nutrition, exercise, and sleep.

Maintaining yourself in peak performance throughout the crisis also requires you to understand and manage your (and your colleagues’ and staff’s) key emotions. You cannot manage what you’re not aware of; being able to identify and name your emotions will hence be very helpful. So will developing a mindfulness practice (starting with conscious breathing exercises), nurturing your compassion for others, and developing a gratitude practice to remind yourself regularly of how lucky you are.

Wrapping Up

It is important to acknowledge that some of the ideas proposed in this chapter do not feel “natural” to most of us. In fact, in many cases, they feel almost like the opposite of what we would be inclined to do. And that is precisely why leaders need to discuss and practice these ideas. Leaders do not need help to feel stressed and to become inhibited or frustrated; we can all do that pretty easily and pretty naturally! What is more challenging is to develop practices that are sometimes counterintuitive and oftentimes quite challenging, in order to become better versions of ourselves as leaders and as human beings. A crisis is a great opportunity to do so.

One last thought: rereading this chapter, I imagined some readers thinking that our situation at IMD was greatly helped by the clear sense of urgency we developed early in the crisis as a result of our dependency on non–degree-program activities. There is no doubt that faculty and staff understanding the severity of the situation was indeed helpful for the IMD LT, but please allow me to point out two elements in return.

First, a sense of urgency can and must be nurtured. In speaking with some colleagues at other schools over the last 18 months, I have been surprised at how many of them are looking forward to life post–COVID-19 “returning to normal.” I do not think that life will return to what it was pre–COVID-19, certainly not on all fronts. This crisis created a real discontinuity in the evolution of business schools, and I think smart deans will follow Rahm Emanuel’s admonishment to “never waste a good crisis”Footnote ¹⁴ and will use this one to introduce fundamental changes to their model.

Second, the slight benefit we may have gotten on the initial sense-of-urgency front was paid dearly when more than a third of our revenues disappeared, considerably reducing the resources available for continued operations and for investment. The point, I believe, is that smart leaders make the most of the situation they’re in and leverage whatever advantage they may have to “make happen what otherwise would not,” as Sumantra Ghoshal was fond of saying.Footnote ¹⁵

Crises reshuffle the cards and raise the stakes. They put leaders under enormous pressure and require even more dedication and commitment on their part. I hope these modest reflections will stimulate yours and will help you prepare for the next crisis.

About the Change

Everything flows, as Heraclitus used to say. Business schools and the entire socioeconomic environment alike are changing rapidly before our very eyes. Schools are preparing their graduates to enter a labor market that we know nothing about yet. We educate students to take up professions that don’t even exist, only knowing how big of a role transformation technologies are already playing. The overall atmosphere is changing, the ongoing digital transformation is gaining momentum, and the need for support not only in professional but also in more general development is getting bigger. Where is the place of management education in this landscape?

Change is a natural state – our environment is changing, and so are the organizations existing in it. The changes that occur usually take the form of more or less acceptable efforts to adapt to the transforming reality. They occur gradually, on an evolutionary basis. Changes of this type can be implemented in organizations effectively, but many conditions have to be met first. First, it is important to have a good, clear vision and a strategy to support it. The strategy has to be good as well – meaning appropriate, well thought-out, and feasible. The second condition is for the management board and the entire team of an organization to be able to turn this vision into reality effectively – and this is where problems resulting from limited and incompatible resources, regulatory aspects, or excessive costs determining compromises limit the original dreams and ideas start to appear. This multiconditional evolutionary nature makes real changes remain only an option, feasible in the long run, implemented slowly, carefully, and conservatively. Evolution brings about only correct changes – all too late and all too costly, but less daring, less risky. And this is how most business schools acted in terms of online teaching in the pre–COVID-19 years when trying to adopt new, more agile organizational cultures. Many discussions have not translated into any real change because they upset the existing ecosystem of stakeholders and because the current operating model has been working just fine despite its many flaws.

But there are also sudden changes caused by new, often unexpected, disruptive developments and circumstances. They can come from inside an organization (e.g., changed business model, loss of liquidity, and the resulting drastic cutbacks in the amount of resources and a structural reorganization), but they can also originate from the outside – an example of which is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced almost all business schools in the world to redefine their operations in a very short time, at least in the area of online teaching and remote management of their institutions, research projects, and relationships with students.

In this case, we can speak of a radical change – one that brings about a significant transformation of the ways in which an organization functions and operates. Such changes take place more quickly and suddenly because they are not optional but necessary; they are the only way possible – which eliminates the problems typical of evolutionary changes, such as lengthiness or compromising on solutions that don’t provide answers to urgent strategic matters.

The most important question is whether the radical changes that have taken place in business schools worldwide as a result of COVID-19 are permanent and systemic; whether they respond to the expectations voiced many times in discussions at the institutional level; or whether they are just a temporary, makeshift dressing applied for the duration of a difficult period – something named by Hodges and colleagues (Reference Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust and Bond2020) as an “emergency stage,” which we want to get out of as soon as possible and return to the “old normal.” In the years to come, we will see if the ongoing changes become common and permanent, or if they appear to be one-off, isolated cases of individual institutions – global business school brands – which, just like successful online platforms, will prove the digital business perspective of “winner takes all.” We will see if these changes become rooted in the rules and standards of rankings and accreditations as well as in the practice of domestic policymakers.

It is difficult to answer such questions. This will require many years of analyses, in fact. It is surely easy to fall into the trap of getting stuck in the middle of transformation at this point. What is the nature of this trap? And what is to be expected of the transformation of business schools forced by COVID-19?

A Changing Landscape

COVID-19 is, as already said, a natural contributor to the rapid implementation of radical changes in business schools (Jonathan, Reference Jonathan2020). This involves, for example, adopting methods of synchronous and asynchronous online teaching, new forms of classes, new teaching content, and new channels used to reach stakeholders (an example of such a new format is collaborative online international learning [COIL] – which makes possible the effective use of technology in teaching in the domain of internationalization); implementing new software to stimulate in-class interaction (e.g., Mentimeter, Kahoot!); using learning management systems (LMSs) or massive open online course (MOOC) systems; and/or employing artificial intelligence (AI) to provide students with opportunities for long-term development.

Discussions on whether business schools are losing their monopoly on the knowledge and education market have been going on for a long time (e.g., Davidson, Reference Davidson2017; Eyring and Christensen, Reference Davidson2011; Kaplan, Reference Kaplan2018). There are claims that universities do not create knowledge that is of relevance to and could find practical application in society (Tourish, Reference Tourish2019), that they nurture the culture of egoism and greed (Parker, Reference Parker2018). The credibility of business schools as the dominant source of knowledge, competencies, and solutions for enterprises and executives is being questioned (Collinson, Reference Collinsonn.d.).

New players are appearing on the education market, a new force to be reckoned with – educational platforms (Kaplan and Haenlein, Reference Kaplan and Haenlein2016), corporate universities, entities offering certification programs supported by globally recognized brands, especially from the information technology (IT) or educational technology (EdTech) sectors. This also concerns the creation of valuable and quickly applicable knowledge, which is produced in the existing think tanks, research departments of global corporations, or renowned knowledge portals and data aggregators, all with access to the best and most recent sources of information.

The monopoly on the business education market has also been a result of the common and globally recognized currency in the form of a diploma granted by a good higher education institution, which has been considered proof of a graduate’s level of knowledge and competence. In addition, the system has been solidified by the standard labor-market practice, where a diploma of higher education has, for years, been a key to opening the door to interviews and, eventually, a career. This ecosystem has been kept alive and strong by the regulator, meaning the state, which determines the conditions to be met by a higher education institution to have the right to grant such diplomas. We thus have a system of cause-and-effect relations, encased in a rigid framework: state regulations, accreditation-supervisory bodies, and employers’ requirements and expectations. This has always been accompanied by the lack of alternative formal ways to acquire knowledge and skills outside the university classroom and by the strong impact of rankings, making the existing rules and principles even stricter.

Nowadays, the model in question is undergoing a big transformation. First, the “diploma” monopoly is crumbling – employers are increasingly more willing to hire individuals with nonformal or alternative evidence of their professional preparation, meaning not only knowledge but also skills and competence. Because such signals come from the most wanted employers in the world, for whom many young people would like to work (Musk, Reference Musk2020), it can’t be ruled out that the conventional model of bachelor-level, master-level, and MBA-level education will go out of date over time. Employers and students alike will come to terms with other forms of proving one’s level of knowledge, skill, expertise, and overall competence. These forms will include a range of various certificates, completed master classes, annual or semiannual training courses, development programs, and even one’s achievements or scores in certain computer games or simulations. And they can be provided – even now, as we speak – not only by universities. If such alternative and innovative solutions are to be accepted, they need to be acknowledged by and incorporated into the existing education system and its principal outposts: ministries, universities, and accreditation bodies alike. The sooner these solutions are accepted and embraced by the current system, the quicker the existing structures governing our education will transform, to the benefit of both students and business schools.

Second, access to knowledge served in an interactive and attractive way is at our fingertips, not just because it’s possible to serve it online but because business entities operating in the EdTech sector already provide solutions that make it possible to take advantage of sophisticated, reliable software, techniques, and methodologies enabling instructors to teach classes in an effective way in virtual settings. And although the pandemic has taught us that online education cannot replace its traditional form, online teaching can be very useful in some areas and disciplines – especially when it comes to acquiring practical knowledge – and may stay with us for good.

Third, thanks to the globalized market of online education and knowledge, there is greater competition for students and attention based on the uniqueness of the competing brands – brands of higher education institutions and brands of individual academics. This observation is of great significance in the context of the management activities undertaken by business schools and the changes taking place in the digital world featuring scientific influencers – individuals with millions of followers forming their target audience, popularizing knowledge and lifestyles, or scientists whose bold and often future-oriented statements enjoy record-breaking numbers of views, and they themselves suddenly become media celebrities, promoting themselves but also the brand of the universities or other institutions they are involved or affiliated with (Korzyński et al., Reference Korzyński, Mazurek and Haenlein2020). Are we to expect knowledge and science to become “marketized”? Are we to see research teams becoming assembled like boy bands, where each band member is a marketing product designed for a particular target audience in the world of science and business? Surely, the desire for attention and brand recognition, the urge to popularize the knowledge one has created, juxtaposed with the existing rules governing the media world, may lead to a number of scenarios of development of the knowledge – or pseudo-knowledge – market. The existence of such phenomena as scientific influencing and the emergence of scientists-celebrities should be discussed further in more detail, especially in the context of business schools building their position, image, and trustworthiness. After all, as argued by Davis and Farrell (Reference Davis and Farrell2016), as higher education institutions, we compete not in a knowledge or education market but in a prestige market.

Last but not least, in the light of the rapid changes taking place in the social and environmental sectors, business schools need to redefine their mission, the role they play in society. Especially in times as difficult and challenging as the present, entities such as business schools are expected to become examples to follow and creators of positive change, promoting changes that have to be implemented – among the younger generations in particular. Universities should aim to become spaces for development, not just for acquiring specific competencies for career building, especially in the times when we don’t know what professions in business will look like in 5 to 10 years. This very utilitarian, inflexible perspective of higher education (career, profession, work-related skills) is actually a threat to the concept of the university and to society as a whole in the long run. A university should inspire students to become valuable contributors to a reality that is yet to come. This means that apart from the “hard” core competencies and skills required for professional development in a given field, students also should be encouraged and enabled – preferably by means of experiential learning – to acquire qualities like natural curiosity, entrepreneurial flair, critical thinking, leadership, care for others, social awareness, and care for the natural environment. An important thing to consider here is that in the technology-infused, digitally transformed world of today, students pursuing different fields of study, particularly from the STEM area, should be offered a curriculum containing elements of the humanities (psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc.) – and the other way around, of course. Every student in the world should be well familiar with notions and ideas such as digital transformation, circular economy, technological unemployment, sustainability, and well-being. They should be aware of the implications these phenomena carry for every human being and for the entire planet alike.

Easily said, of course, but this is, in fact, about a radical cultural change in many business schools, which is a big challenge for the leaders of these organizations. A lot is expected; the new world appearing after COVID-19 is in desperate need of new answers.

What Is Expected

The turbulence and the concern about the future – including its economic aspects – are the main challenges for the identity of business schools, for their own future, and for the promise they make to society and try to keep.

Although the discussion on what business schools should teach has been going on for many years, the usual standard still involves silo-like, function-oriented teaching based on old teaching programs and curricula, described in detail in tables with accompanying performance indicators, known unfortunately very often only to the most ardent evaluators from administrative staff. We teach marketing, finance, accounting, or strategy. This approach is additionally grounded by the practice of assigning scientific disciplines and categorizing scientific journals. Leaving the need for a serious discussion about the interdisciplinarity in educating contemporary managers aside, it’s very important to stress what should be inside the “package” of knowledge and competencies offered to graduates of a good business school – apart from a collection of certain subjects. The most important thing should be for them to know that the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the world make it really difficult to make managerial decisions. Complexity and uncertainty are actually the main characteristics of the world of today (Pucciarelli and Andreas, Reference Pucciarelli and Andreas2016). This complexity makes it necessary for managerial plans, strategies, and decisions to take unexpected events – appearing suddenly, often unrelated to the operations of a given organization, coming from areas and disciplines far away from those we deal with – into account. The same applies to how managers of business schools perceive reality. Complexity determines the quickness and speed of action and reaction. At present, the number of networks of connections and networks of influences is constantly growing. Add to that the virtual networks that overlap with the former, as well as the strong impact the parallel – virtual – world has on us and on our environment. For business schools, responsible for the education and development of young managers, the complexity and ambiguity of the contemporary world should be a starting point for the creation of new scientific knowledge offering a sort of compass to guide the actions of their socioeconomic environments and to organize not only the right curricula but also individual paths of education and development for students and managers alike, or for anyone who wishes to embark upon the journey of personal development but isn’t necessarily determined to officially be a student. Today, everyone is a student, in fact. And studies are any possible dose of development, not just two or three formally obtained degrees – lifelong learning is not an option anymore but a necessity. It’s time it became obvious to everybody, not just because of the pressure of changes originating outside, but also because of an inner, spontaneous will to develop – and a business school should support the fulfillment of this need by all means.

Another crucial element of both the operation of a business school and the vision of education in such a school, be it on-site or online, is the sense of purpose. The many questions appearing in the development of societies today explain the search for authorities – including institutions ready to take on the responsibility for setting new paths and providing new patterns of action, based not as much on economic performance or a success–failure perspective as on the overall value for society. That’s why a higher education institution should be an individual’s life partner, so to speak, and that’s why it is so important for it to be credible and trustworthy and have considerable social standing.

What Business Schools Have on Their Conscience

When it comes to changes in higher education, including in business schools in particular, it is mandatory to break free – at least to some extent – from certain “cardinal sins,” especially three of them. The first of these sins is the lack of identity based on values, which results from treating the success measured by rankings as a goal in itself – not as a consequence of an adopted value-based and value-driven strategy. Such focus on all kinds of rankings leads to a certain “other-directedness,” involving a mechanistic, index-oriented view of the university. What drives such a university is success for the sake of success, and its identity is a result of the subservient approach to strategically selected ranking lists. Such a university becomes Frankenstein’s monster, a cluster of elements, which may seem powerful and well performing but is actually a hollow form, without an identity, uniqueness, and always-upheld values.

The second sin is the measurement of success – high-earning graduates and top-tier scientific articles are the two most crucial indicators of a business school’s position and prestige nowadays. The first aspect nurtures the individualistic, opportunistic modus operandi of both students and headhunters alike. Is it worth recruiting an applicant who dreams of working for a nongovernmental organization (NGO) where they’re not going to earn enough, or a keen young entrepreneur who will fail in business a number of times before they actually achieve what they dream of? The other aspect usually sees years of effort and hard work of brilliant researchers and scientists wrapped up forever in six typed pages, four of which will discuss the adopted sophisticated research method, followed by a few lines of conclusions and implications for business, which won’t be of use to anyone because they’re written in an overly hermetic language and get published 3 years after the question that they answer has first appeared. This exaggerated perspective illustrates the risks that the world of business schools now has to face and deal with.

In the post–COVID-19 times, marked by uncertainty, isolation-induced trauma, economic slowdown, and accelerating digital transformation, business schools should not promote the idea of business Darwinism but instead advocate looking for and applying solutions to problems of relevance to as many groups of beneficiaries as possible – this is manifested in, for example, corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices; measurement of the real impact of a business school on its environment using new measurement systems (e.g., Business School Impact System [BSIS]); consideration of teaching and attempts to measure its quality in a systemic way, using measures other than graduates’ earnings only; research into contemporary – often interdisciplinary – problems; professional dissemination of the findings of such research in the media; and incorporating as many courses discussing social responsibility, mindfulness, or defining one’s own happiness – not through slides but through experiential learning – into the adopted curricula as possible.

Business schools need to understand that their greatest and most important role is to “produce” and shape not egoistic plutocrats but socially conscious individuals, leaders, managers, and specialists who are aware of the challenges the world is to face; educated in an interdisciplinary way; proficient in the digital domain; and most of all, sensitive to other people, caring for the natural environment and their milieu.

The third sin is convenient inertia – staying in a comfort zone, which is often a result of a school’s decent performance, which may also result from operating based on public funds granted on the grounds of simple measures, such as, for example, the number of students enrolled. This is also where a certain cultural context comes into play, especially in Europe. Universities, particularly European ones, are historically based on some influences, or bad habits, which include the following: a hierarchical structure, natural delay in decision making because of the number of decision makers involved in the process, application of formal, overly regulated and bureaucratized rules, fossilized communication structures, silo-like functioning of both administrative staff and faculty members, and a natural reluctance and reactive approach to the challenges of the reality. The deceptive pleasure of being in a comfort zone may easily make us blind to the need for changes, which, in the case of the acquisition of funds required for a business school to operate without implementing the necessary adaptation measures, can lead to the further erosion of trust in higher education institutions. The “wait-and-see” strategy is like the band playing on Titanic, and its business perspective has been addressed by Christensen (Reference Christensen1997) in his in-depth theory of disruptive innovation.

Dimensions of the Main Vehicle of Change in Business Schools – Digital Transformation

Digital technologies have long been affecting the way in which business schools operate, but nowadays, we can see their impact to be even greater, with new technologies emerging and taking the form of digital transformation. Digital transformation is a phenomenon affecting organizations horizontally and affecting the strategic foundations of the functioning of business schools, where the crucial areas of this functioning undergo significant qualitative changes as a result of the employment of digital technologies – including emerging technologies (artificial intelligence [AI], machine learning, social media, big data, cloud computing, etc.). Digital transformation differs from digitalization in that the former doesn’t aim to improve organizational performance, reduce operating costs, or accelerate or shorten processes; its goal is to change how organizations operate, including finding new areas of operation, especially in the digital environment (Vial, Reference Verhoef, Broekhuizen, Bart, Bhattacharya, Dong, Fabian and Haenlein2019).

Digital transformation has already disrupted many areas of human life, including business and education, which is a consequence of the occurrence of strongly developed drivers of digital transformation – digital technology, easily accessible for all market players; digital competition; and digital customer behavior (Verhoef et al., Reference Verhoef, Broekhuizen, Bart, Bhattacharya, Dong, Fabian and Haenlein2021). In education, parallel to other spheres and sectors, effective digital transformation manifests itself through strategic imperatives such as digital resources (hardware, software, content), organizational structure (implementation in crucial areas of a business school’s operation – education, teaching, and management), growth strategy (which sets the purpose of the transformation), metrics, and goals (Verhoef et al., Reference Verhoef, Broekhuizen, Bart, Bhattacharya, Dong, Fabian and Haenlein2021). It’s reasonable to get a deeper insight into the three crucial – key – areas in which business schools can or should already see digital transformation taking place.

The Trap of Feigned Digital Transformation – a Digital Myopia

A clear distinction is needed between the digitalization of education and the digital transformation of education.

First, the rapid, obligatory switch to online teaching cannot be called the digital transformation of education. Using remote teaching tools has made it possible to make teaching digital, but in a situation in which the teaching practice simply copies the model of teaching applied so far, it has nothing to do with a true digital transformation of teaching. It’s just one of the stages of the development of remote teaching (Norris and Lefrere, Reference Norris and Lefrere2011). The situation has been aptly defined by Hodges and colleagues (Reference Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust and Bond2020) as “emergency remote teaching” (ERT), which is a temporary switch in the domain of teaching to an alternative method of instructional delivery in response to the occurrence of some crisis. It involves the employment of fully remote solutions to teach classes that would otherwise be taught face to face/on-site or in the form of blended learning or hybrid courses. It is also expected that once the crisis or emergency ends, the original format of delivery will be restored.

The key idea that needs to be underlined in such a scenario is the temporariness of the online model.

Indeed, a real, long-lasting digital change involves transformations of the ways, the methods, and the modes applied in equipping students with knowledge, competencies, and skills through the optimal utilization of digital technologies in the process of education based on selected forms of both teaching and learning. This means, in turn, that the most crucial area of development is not technology itself but teaching involving the use of new technology. The digital transformation of education therefore means fundamental changes in the adopted model of teaching classes and in the teaching techniques and aids used. This is what Norris and Lefrere (Reference Norris and Lefrere2011) speak of, claiming that a digital transformation of teaching actually means a great transformation of entire universities, involving, among others, the following: unbundling and reinventing teaching, learning, assessment, and certification; a focus on value, not just quality; a change in the use and roles of faculty, mentors, and peer-to-peer learning; and a transformation of the existing business models.

Digital transformation is a long-term process – a permanent process, in fact. It takes place with such objectives in mind as quick management, good working conditions, less bureaucracy, and making students better prepared to face the labor market. But both high-tech solutions and the digital era need to be confronted with the most important aspect there is – the benefits offered to stakeholders such as people, society, and climate, as well as the human and resource-related potential of each business school.

The Role of Policymakers

We shall not forget here that this digital transformation is, in fact, made possible and supported by not only the management boards of business schools, aware of the changes necessary to be made and having all the instruments necessary to implement them, or the faculty actually implementing these changes, but also the regulators, defining the very essence of studies, of ideas such as part time, full time, and so forth. Regulations are necessary. But they have to adapt to the circumstances of the present as quickly as the entities creating this present. Otherwise, the regulatory constraints will prevent real changes in education from actually taking place, which will only accelerate the processes of the decomposition of education – offered increasingly often by entities from outside the sector of education but aware of the existing (and widening) gap between the expectations of all stakeholders and universities, with their hands tied by regulations, unable to operate in these difficult conditions.

It seems reasonable to underline the big role played by institutions such as the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), which is a meta-regulator, by all means, but also a supporter of the best practices of change – one quite advanced when it comes to the awareness of its role in the creation of new standards and expectations. A similar role is played by ranking institutions. In the case of the business education sector, they have a great impact on how business education changes worldwide. Local domestic laws and regulations governing the sector of education in each market are equally important. This means that the regulatory awareness of the authorities of a given country translates directly into the level and extent of innovations that can be implemented and incorporated in the local ecosystem of education.

On the one hand, the flexibility of business schools in their efforts to adapt to the expectations of regulators carries a risk of homogeneity in the development of these schools, with each one of them operating according to the same rules, the same guidelines, suggestions, or even expectations, losing their identity and individual nature along the way. On the other hand, it makes it possible to consciously promote certain attitudes and expectations among game-makers.

The progress in the transformation of universities can be measured by analyzing their mission statements. The studies from previous periods show clearly that the catchphrases and slogans that were sort of buzzwords in the global system of business education in the second decade of the twenty-first century were reflected in the adopted mission statements, which were – in turn – determinants in the design of strategic goals and plans. This means they were implemented and enforced by business schools in practice on the level of their everyday operations (Mazurek et al., Reference Mazurek, Korzynski, Gorska and Pałyga2020b). It is therefore vital to identify how the present reality is articulated in these key definitions of progress and the development of universities – as quickly as possible.

An alternative to the conscious support of the transformation offered by all sorts of regulators and makers of standards is not stagnation but a quick development of “third-party” entities, existing outside the system of education but offering a similar or even better, faster, more innovative value. Although in the case of primary education it’s difficult to think of nonstandard, “extracurricular” alternatives implemented on a large scale, it’s quite easy to imagine such a course of action in the case of tertiary – higher – education, especially business education. The vision of higher education institutions losing their authority and the role they play in society over the next dozen years to come if they don’t transform and evolve is not that abstract anymore.

Conclusion – the Business School of the Twenty-First Century

Will the time of the COVID-19 pandemic be used to skip – or leap over – the magical status quo of the transformation of business education around the world, which has been discussed for so long? Or will it become the fuel for the discussion held within the framework of pre–COVID-19 rules and regulations? These questions can’t be answered right now, of course. The months and years to come will show how the evolution of business education progresses and if the time of the pandemic has been used wisely. It is clear that to make the necessary changes real, it is essential to see at least two groups of stakeholders involved in a systemic way: business schools and regulators on both international and domestic levels, including ranking institutions. Rapid changes in higher education policies shall be proposed and promoted by accreditation bodies, ranking institutions, and governments.

Business schools should aspire to be spaces for development, closely connected with many other key players in the social and economic landscape; they should be inclusive and accessible, ready to welcome the thought-challenge born within their networked structures; they should be environments encouraging the development of one’s personality, regardless of age; they should be organizations that understand the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) world and the idea and implications of digital transformation; they should be institutions that are not afraid to be socially responsible. A business school of the future is where meaningful social attitudes are born, where research of relevance to society (and business) is conducted to provide answers to urgent issues. The business schools of the twenty-first century need to become authorities, act as role models for societies, and create a new kind of leader because this is something much expected and hoped for.

And maybe this urgent global demand for new thoughts, new solutions is a great opportunity for business schools, enabling them to respond appropriately to the global needs, proving that a crisis is a chance to break a deadlock and set a completely new, bold vision and path of development. Perhaps it’s the very first time in dozens of years when business schools are actually needed and may prove really useful to societies – we need to educate and create thought leaders, leaders for new times, who will be able to create new standards, new models, and new patterns of actions, like pioneers, trailblazers with a fresh view of business and entrepreneurship in general. Graduates of business schools shall be role models in society.

Introduction: The Challenges Posed by the COVID-19 Crisis for the Management Education Sector

The expectations of business school and management faculty students go well beyond obtaining a degree and are defined around four essential elements:

• Acquiring theoretical and technical knowledge in the field of management and leadership

• Learning a manner of approaching problems and a mindset

• Developing a professional network with fellow program members (given that business school graduates are destined for a career in the field) and potentially entering the social circles of leaders once the degree is earned

• Social recognition of intellectual potential associated with an aptitude for accomplishment in action

Analyzing these four elements in conjunction with some of the consequences of COVID-19 makes it possible to appreciate the importance of the impact of this crisis on management education institutions.

For example, it seems obvious that its first effect is to have enormously accelerated virtual education, which affects both teaching methods and selection processes in educational management institutions.

In this new context, it is conceivable that management education institutions will succeed in meeting the requirements of the first of the previously listed elements – that is, the acquisition of knowledge – at the cost of immense work. A great deal of creativity will be required in order to adequately address the second and third of these, i.e. to inculcate a way of approaching problems and to develop networking, in the context of widespread virtual education.

The fourth element, the recognition of potential, is undoubtedly the one for which the new context in which business schools find themselves poses the most serious challenges. Indeed, although a business school degree is often seen by companies as a guarantee of the potential of graduates, this positive postulate is largely based on their having successfully passed the selection process for admission to a business school. To illustrate how companies perceive the importance of the selection process in elite management education institutions, Henri Tézenas du Montcel (Reference Tézenas du Montcel1985) compared it to high-jump events for athletes. Successfully passing a difficult selection process is like an athlete successfully clearing a 2-meter-high bar. If they have succeeded in doing so once in their life, we can reasonably assume that these individuals, if well supervised and well looked after, will continue to be able to jump over a 1.8-meter-high bar very regularly for a long time to come.

Tézenas du Montcel (Reference Tézenas du Montcel1985) went on to postulate that, on the other hand, in general, success during studies proper at a business school or a faculty of management is comparable to being able to systematically jump over a 1.5-meter-high bar. Using this metaphor, Tézenas du Montcel showed the fundamental role of selection in the process of social validation of the potential of business school graduates. Thus, COVID-19, which strongly affects the selection process of these institutions, poses a major challenge for the consistency of the management education system.

In addition, by quickly diverting the teaching of management education institutions toward distance education, COVID-19 not only poses a major challenge in terms of educational and curriculum reorganization, but it also obliges the collective of business schools to rethink the competition from those among them that had already moved to entirely distance education, insofar as these had represented controlled competition. This crisis appeared at a time when new challenges were manifesting themselves in business schools, foremost among which was the emergence of wholly new projects that followed completely rethought logic. Large companies were embarking on management education for audiences that extended well beyond their own employees (e.g., AI Business School, developed by Microsoft, and EY Business Academy, developed by Ernst and Young). Some ambitious projects were free (e.g., the University of the People, which allows students to obtain degrees in business administration entirely online), whereas others (e.g., JOLT) presented original business plans that were different from those of business schools or particularly innovative teaching methods (e.g., Quantic, a mobile, flexible executive MBA).

Management Education, COVID-19, and Extreme Situations

This chapter offers an analysis of the response of management education institutions to the conjunction of these profound changes by viewing the situation of such schools caused by the coronavirus epidemic as an extreme situation (Bettelheim, Reference Bettelheim1943). Obviously, managers, teachers, and administrative staff in business schools are used to facing an array of challenges that range from the most operational (e.g., facing a lack of classrooms at a time during the week when the entire campus is full of students) to the most complex (those with short- and medium-term educational and financial consequences; e.g., managing the establishment’s recruitment and admissions campaign), and even societal and long-term challenges (e.g., how to answer the question that periodically arises about the social function of business schools and their relations with businesses).

All of these issues are multifaceted and important, but they arise periodically and normally in the life and management of a school. Contrarily, however, Bettelheim characterizes extreme situations by their complete exceptionality and their highly destabilizing character, and moreover, he underscores the fact that facing them successfully implies very strong adaptability (Bettelheim, Reference Bettelheim1943, p. 419). When management education institutions were first affected by the coronavirus crisis in February, March, and April of 2020, it looked like an extreme situation. During this period, a strong feeling of concern for the health and even the lives of students, teachers, and administrative staff existed, which attested to the exceptional nature of the situation for institutions that generally do not have to consider this kind of eventuality. In addition, these institutions had to very quickly face up to strongly destabilizing factors (e.g., new obstacles to the recruitment of international students, increased difficulty in developing international programs, and the need to rethink the selection process). But especially, in their response to the crisis, they found themselves faced with the need “to adapt themselves entirely and with the greatest speed” (Bettelheim, Reference Bettelheim1943, p. 419). The methods and requirements of this adaptation are the subject of this study.

One possible objection to an “extreme-situation approach” to analyzing an organizational situation is that Bettelheim (Reference Bettelheim1943) formalized his theory to analyze the behavior of prisoners in concentration camps when he himself was returning from the one at Dachau. When we use this approach to analyze organizations, do we not take the risk of falling into anthropomorphism? No. Bettelheim, anxious to clarify the scope of his work, himself indicated that this approach was relevant for individuals, groups, organizations, and the masses (Bettelheim, Reference Bettelheim1943, p. 419).

Bettelheim’s definition of the priorities essential in the case of extreme situations reinforces the relevance of this approach to the analysis of the way in which management education institutions have faced COVID-19 and its consequences. These priorities are twofold for Bettelheim: on the one hand, to preserve one’s integrity and, on the other hand, to continue to accomplish one’s mission.

He further specifies that the examination of how these two priorities are articulated provides an excellent tool for analysis, including the analysis of organizations.

These priorities correspond to the way in which the management education sector reacted to the outbreak of COVID-19; the two priorities that characterized the start of the crisis consisted, on the one hand, of preserving the integrity of schools by protecting the health of students, teachers, and administrative staff – very often by closing establishments at least for a specified amount of time – and, on the other hand, in accomplishing their missions by seeking the means to teach despite the impossibility of teaching face to face.

How Management Education Institutions Can Adapt to Extreme Situations

The centrality of the notion of adaptation in the context of an extreme situation has been underlined earlier. Faced with the mounting coronavirus epidemic, management schools largely distinguished themselves by reacting quickly and seeking to adapt.

The determining factors of the management education sector’s rapidity in taking into account the challenges posed by COVID-19 are easily spotted. The international has taken such a prominent position in the life and management of schools, whose activities and recruitment reach all corners of the world, that they are in a position to appreciate the importance of problems even if they take place in an environment far from the historical headquarters of an establishment. Thus, even though the countries in which their teaching activities were located were not yet affected by COVID-19, schools had to think about issues such as whether to go ahead with student study trips. (From the beginning of March, the question of whether it was necessary to go ahead with study trips to China was raised in an acute manner, given the importance of this country for international seminars and learning expeditions for students as well as for executives in training.) Similarly, the difficulty that could exist in welcoming international students for the following year quickly became apparent, especially given that for some schools, the number of such students greatly exceeds half of the student body. Among these international students, students from Asia constitute a major portion. Schools were also quickly alerted to the importance of the challenge (Graduate Management Admissions Council [GMAC], 2020; Lister, Reference Lister2020; McKie, 2020).

But above all, beyond the questions raised by the international, management schools also had to very quickly determine whether to continue activity on their campuses. The EFMD Global Focus review provided many interesting examples of how management schools have not only been able to use their international experience to anticipate and take stock of the COVID-19 problem but also often made the decision to close their campuses for several days before the public authorities imposed such conditions (Saviotti, Reference Saviotti2020). This ability to position themselves as a source of information, coupled with their strong institutional image, has even, in many cases and many regions of the world, led them to advise and inspire public authorities on the decisions to be made and actions to be taken.

In addition, although the health situation in different countries led to the closure of many campuses, the speed with which teaching resumed via distance learning demonstrated impressive responsiveness. To take just one example among many, when the lockdown was put in place, thanks to the prior work of the university’s rectorate, the management faculty of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev moved from a pedagogical style in which face-to-face education was overwhelmingly dominant to 100 percent virtual teaching, with only one day of interruption. In general, the management education sector has asserted itself through its ability to adapt in a crisis situation.

Management education institutions, like other faculties, have had to adapt their teaching practices.

This was not a careful or planned renovation but simply a response to the challenge created by the epidemic. The diversity of responses provided by the various faculties around the world to the challenge posed by the different stages of the pandemic has been accompanied in many cases by an impressive capacity for action and, above all, by a remarkable will to implement strategies. After realizing that the COVID-19 crisis would also affect the next school year (2020–21), some business schools decided to combine the two learning methods – face to face and virtual – as part of a hybrid education program. For example, lectures are given online in large auditoriums, and face-to-face meetings are held in small groups. This is the case, for example, with the Cambridge Judge Business School and the London Business School. At Cambridge, it is even required to physically go to school as soon as the situation allows. Each response to the crisis leads to further adaptation efforts. Thus, some students felt, already in the summer of 2020, that because of the virus, they could not commit to going to campus, which increased the rate of postponement of the start of studies. In addition, it was also decided to adapt the physical environment of the school in order to comply with the directives relating to the fight against the virus; thus, measures such as one-way elevators and stairs, physical distancing signs and procedures, and new self-service rules for the cafeteria, among many others, were put into place. Being very concerned about the fight against the spread of the virus, the health of staff and students, and the sustainability of learning, other schools (such as HEC Paris and EDHEC) asked everyone coming to campus to take periodic COVID-19 tests or routinely have their temperature measured on arrival (Nugent, Reference Nugent2020). To enable all students to have a good start to the school year, the opening of the school year was postponed in some schools by 14 days in order to allow the isolation period requested of students to be completed. Finally, some postponed the start of the school year so as to give themselves the best chance of delivering the program face to face and to allow students from different countries around the world to arrive. For example, Alliance Manchester Business School delayed the start of its school year from September to December (Nugent, Reference Nugent2021).

Many schools also created arrangements for students to arrive on campus in maximum safety within the framework of hybrid programs. For example, WHU in Düsseldorf put in place a meticulous health and safety plan to ensure safe and harmonious education. Plexiglas walls were installed in classrooms, one-way systems were put in place, and the campus was extensively equipped with disinfectant dispensers. Access to the school premises is electronically controlled. Each student is registered via their electronic card when they come onto campus. Students receive detailed instructions prior to arrival and are encouraged to download and use the official coronavirus app, which the federal government promotes. No parties are allowed, and strict rules also apply to extracurricular and social activities. At the Bologna Business School, the pavilion was divided into eight classrooms to accommodate 370 students in a space that can typically accommodate 10,000. Every hour, an air-recirculation system brings fresh, clean air into the pavilion (BusinessBecause, 2020).

The Frankfurt School of Finance and Management invested in coronavirus tracers. Small devices are given to each student and each staff or faculty member (Nugent, Reference Nugent2020). Each device has a unique tracking ID linked to its owner, and using Bluetooth technology, it records the details of every device that is within 2 meters of it. This information is then kept in a system for 14 days, making it easy to spot potential infections if a student, staff member, or faculty member tests positive for COVID-19.

Types of Reactions to Extreme Situations

The very notion of an extreme situation seems to intuitively lead to behavior based on the assumption that it is not destined to last. However, in such a situation, it is quite possible to adopt an attitude that takes into account that an extreme situation can be prolonged, as it is the situation in its essence that is extreme in the difficulties that it generates, the contradictions it entails, the tensions it gives rise to. However, this does not say anything about its ability to last over time. For example, the state of extreme poverty experienced by 11 percent of the world’s population puts these individuals in an extreme and unfortunately lasting situation.

To better understand the present situation for management education institutions, it is useful to compare it to loss. Loss is the extreme situation par excellence because it arises suddenly and puts the individual or organization in a difficult situation that must be faced. Three attitudes that religious literature has echoed (Grossman, Reference Grossman2016) since ancient times and can be described under various terms emerge when facing a situation of loss: coping, mourning, and resilience.

The attitude of coping involves coming to terms with the new, unpleasant situation, even when it is an extreme one – trying to do what it takes to “live with” the situation while still supposing that it will disappear. It is thus, above all, a matter of being in the best possible situation “afterward,” when things return to normal, because the central assumption of coping is that the extreme situation is not destined to last.

The work of mourning, however, consists first of all in accepting the fait accompli, admitting that what was will not return, and that therefore, we must make it so that we can live in the new situation, which is the new reality.

Resilience occurs after having carried out and then moved beyond the stage of mourning, and it therefore implies having accepted that the present reality will persist. It also consists of trying to create the conditions to influence this situation by making it better and therefore more acceptable, creating new opportunities.

This section describes how, faced with the challenge of COVID-19 and the extreme situation that it created for the management education sector, schools reacted with attitudes, decisions, and actions relating to these three behaviors – coping, mourning, and resilience.

Obviously, sorting the behavior of business schools in response to COVID-19 into three categories is part of an approach that seeks after Max Weber’s ideal types. Weber himself clarified that these are not found as such in the social reality; rather, it is a question of indicating the main features that help to think about the subject being studied. Thus, none of the ways in which business schools and management faculties have dealt with COVID-19 are linked totally and uniquely with a single attitude of coping, mourning, or resilience. Instead, they mix together elements belonging to each of these categories. However, the description of these three ideal types makes it possible to lay a foundation for the analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on management education institutions.

Conclusion

The debates on the vocation of business schools traditionally oscillate between their responsibilities toward their students, which consist of educating them in management, and those toward companies in terms of training qualified personnel. They induce numerous developments for the way in which these two responsibilities complement and oppose each other and for the obligations toward each other that all of these stakeholders share.

The analysis of the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for management education institutions via the notion of the extreme situation leads to the highlighting of another aspect of the raison d’être of these institutions. The coronavirus epidemic, like any crisis, is not limited to, on the one hand, “dealing with it” and attempting to operate in the manner closest to what was in effect before the crisis (even if it means disregarding it), nor, on the other hand, taking note of the fact that many aspects of the crisis are irreversible and trying to adopt behaviors that take into account the new situation in order to try to carry out one’s mission.

This chapter has underscored how the notion of the extreme situation makes it possible to characterize the two attitudes described previously as relating to coping for the first and mourning for the second. But it has also highlighted a third alternative, resilience, which is characterized by acting proactively on the environment in which we operate. This analysis of the extreme situation through these three modalities reminds us of an element whose relevance is not limited to crisis situations: if management education institutions have a mission to educate students and meet the human resources needs of companies, then they are also a social place whose raison d’être is also to train elites for the society in which we operate and to influence the state of society as a whole. The leadership of management education institutions is enriched by also taking this third dimension into account. In addition, it thus contributes to the social legitimacy of business schools.

In its analysis of the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis on the management education sector, this chapter went through the notion of the extreme situation, borrowed from Bruno Bettelheim. Bettelheim (Reference Bettelheim1943) argued that because extreme situations imply the need for adaptation, they act as accelerators and therefore revealers of the ongoing and desirable development pursued by an individual, a community, or a society.

The description and analysis of the responses of business schools to the crisis brought about by the pandemic have shown that alongside the two traditionally recognized missions of business schools and management faculties (training students in management and business administration and meeting the need for trained managers in companies), a third responsibility that had already emerged is now essential.

Indeed, the types of responses that can be given to an extreme situation (coping, mourning, and resilience), which have all been implemented by management education institutions, have demonstrated the increasing importance of a third mission of the management education sector, according to which business schools take note of the irreversibility of the consequences of the pandemic but use all their potential to contribute as social actorsFootnote ¹ to a reconstruction of the social environment and therefore to a way out of the crisis. We have seen that management education institutions, by letting companies in difficulty benefit from their knowledge, organizing forums in which skills are aggregated, training their students and participants in their executive education activities, and being immediately operational in confronting the crisis by adapting their teaching and so forth, work toward resilience for society in general and for the various communities. Obviously, this role of structuring society, or even, to paraphrase Berger and Luckmann (Reference Berger and Luckmann1966), of social construction of reality, had already emerged well before the coronavirus crisis. But this crisis, by demonstrating that the recognition and exercise of this social responsibility have a primordial role in the “post–COVID-19” world, also indicates an important direction of development for business schools, “in peacetime” as well as now.

This book is a collective work comprising 17 chapters by the deans and leaders of important business schools from six continents.

Its conception occurred as the coronavirus crisis was in its beginnings and we were starting to sense its enormous consequences. The chapters themselves were written at a time when the pandemic was hitting societies all over the world and creating a new reality by having a strong impact on the systems in which business schools operated and on their prospects.

At the time of writing the conclusion to this book, everything suggests that we are, however, at the end of the coronavirus crisis; several vaccines have had their effectiveness demonstrated and are gradually being distributed throughout the world. Many astute observers foresee the end of the effects of this crisis in the months to come.

One might thus worry about the relevance of this book, which could be seen as little more than a work about a crisis that has ended, whereas marketing-inspired behavior could give rise to the temptation to shift the subject of the book from how to face the coronavirus crisis toward a reflection on the consequences of COVID-19, the latter being considered a violent but time-limited exogenous shock.

We feel, however, that the present work retains its strong relevance because of the fault line that it reveals in the way two groups of authors apprehend the consequences of COVID-19.

On one side lie the analyses that underscore how the COVID-19 crisis has brought to the fore trends that were already underway and have simply accelerated – that is, trends one could have all the same expected to establish themselves at a later date. A good example of this is distance education, which was progressing slowly but very surely.

On the other side are the authors who, to the contrary, feel that the coronavirus crisis has created possibilities for business schools that would never have been able to emerge in such a strong way without the crisis. Many are the chapters in this book that maintain that COVID-19 has induced a recombination of possibilities in the world of management education. Trivial but relevant examples of this development include the upheaval experienced by business school selection systems and the increase in the number of students admitted to the most reputable business schools – developments that nothing prior to the pandemic had previously hinted at.

Thus, this book highlights a split and a classic opposition in business strategy between those approaches in which organizations must adapt to respond to constraints and conditions created by their environment (which is considered an exogenous datum) and approaches that, on the contrary, hold that companies may not even be able to influence the market conditions in which they operate and that this must constitute an integral part of their strategy.

These two attitudes are found in many major, highly recognized works of business strategy. They are not limited to this work. Literature is an excellent way to understand the gap between the two approaches, which are generally considered to be radically opposed.

They can be understood through the distance between the declaration of principle that Shakespeare puts in the mouth of the character of Page in Act V, Scene V of the Merry Wives of Windsor, “What cannot be eschew’d, must be embraced,” and the modern, proactive stance of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Reference de Saint-Exupery and Stuart1950) in his posthumous work Citadelle (or The Wisdom of the Sands), paraphrased as, “The future is only the present to be put in order.”

This opposition, found in both business strategy and in literature, can be spotted just as well in many other areas where human thought is exercised. Remarkably, it always consists of a strong opposition between an opportunist attitude that renounces acting on the world but wants to take advantage of the latter’s conditions and a voluntarist attitude that, on the contrary, aspires to influence its environment and society.

Our teaching in universities and business schools often makes it a point of honor to insist on the incompatibility between these two positions; the academic approach would designate such a rapprochement just the sort of paradigmatic dissonance that we teach our students to beware of.

On the contrary, reading this book makes the two attitudes coexist. Reading the contributions that make it up leads one to think that when faced with the COVID-19 crisis, the best attitude for business schools to adopt to meet both their educational mission vis-à-vis their students and vis-à-vis the need of companies for human resources training and to face their own constraints regarding their sustainability consists, conversely, of finding a compromise between these two attitudes.

To meet the challenge posed by COVID-19, business schools have had to both adapt to the constraints imposed on them by the conditions of the crisis and, at the same time, develop policies aimed at inducing market and social conditions that are different from those encountered during the crisis.

But above all, this book shows that the theoretical posture that emerges as an adequate response to the challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic is not limited to this particular crisis. To the contrary, through the dialogue that underlies it between the different chapters, this book establishes that the bias that consists of both accommodating the constraints of the crisis and creating the conditions for overcoming it by acting on the social system constitutes a mode of crisis management whose validity goes well beyond the COVID-19 crisis. In particular, it conveys the message that the attitude that seeks adaptation corresponds in particular to the sustainability needs of educational institutions, whereas the movement that seeks to act on the system corresponds more to the educational mission. In general, such a dual attitude is affirmed as constituting the very mission of business school leadership.

The scope of this important message makes this book not simply one more book on “management education and COVID-19” but, rather, a treatise on management education strategy that the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) is happy to have initiated.