The Responsible Minerals Sector Initiative at the Beedie School of Business hosted the Global Exploration, Mining and Minerals Dialogue earlier this year.

The following article was first published by the Globe and Mail as a special information feature in the November 2012 issue of Report on Business Magazine.

Since launching Canada’s first Executive MBA in 1968, Simon Fraser University’s School of Business has gained a reputation for program development that meets the shifting demands of an increasingly global marketplace, as well as for its world-class research.

In 2011, the newly named Beedie School of Business built on that reputa­tion by growing a number of initiatives aimed at integrating sustainability principles with education.

Those efforts have occurred at every level of the institution, and incorporate a broad sustainability mandate, says Dean Daniel Shapiro. “A sustainable society is one that does not do harm to its environment, but is also sustainable socially and economically.”

For undergraduate students, the business school offers courses in social entrepreneurship and in sustainable innovation, which are augmented by a social venture accelerator. “We have many courses in our programs that cover sustainability and social innova­tion, but we’ve also tried to link those courses to higher levels of experiential learning,” explains Shapiro.

At the MBA level, another group of students works on projects related to sustainability in a “living lab,” launched in partnership with Ecotrust Canada, a non-profit conservation organization.

In keeping with its “social sustain­ability” mandate, the school also introduced an Aboriginal Business and Leadership EMBA and an Americas EMBA.

Focus on the Americas

In the Americas EMBA, SFU part­ners with three other universities in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil.

For Americas EMBA student Yurij Duda, the opportunity to work with an international team has great appeal. Following a 20-year career with a global company, Duda now works as a self-employed consultant. The interna­tional nature of his studies has deeply affected his view of what is possible in business. A visit to an NGO that provided microfinancing in Santiago, Chile, for example, left an indelible impression, he says. “Listening to the way this business operates and sustains itself economically, and helps very mar­ginalized people create livelihoods for themselves, with such limited resourc­es, was a profound experience.”

Addressing Aboriginal business

The Aboriginal EMBA is designed to equip Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal leaders with skills that will lead to sus­tainable opportunities for Aboriginal Peoples and create Aboriginal busi­ness opportunities for non-Aboriginal leaders.

“In terms of environmental sustain­ability, western business thinking might be described as struggling to catch up with the traditional way in which First Nations and other indigenous people view their place and responsibilities in the world,” notes Mark Selman, direc­tor of the Aboriginal EMBA. “On the social side of sustainability, we live in a very unequal society that is still wres­tling with the effects of colonialism.”

In one sense, he says, the program is an effort to address reconciliation and rebuild the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in a respectful way.

“Many First Nations are accessing more wealth and resources, so this is becoming increasingly urgent,” he adds.

The program is also designed to cre­ate important networks for current and future leaders. “It can be difficult for leaders of First Nations to pick up the phone and ask other leaders how they are dealing with a particular issue,” says Selman. “The EMBA program builds a different set of relationships between the various participants and therefore a different kind of network.”

The links created by the students will become an important information exchange that allows First Nations leaders to build on each other’s experience more effectively, he predicts.

Global engagement

The Beedie School has also launched many non-curricular sustainability initiatives. For example, in partnership with Teck, Canada’s largest diversified mining company, the school has joined the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI), a worldwide network of companies and learning institutions that advances responsible leadership.

The SFU-Teck GRLI project aims to further define understanding of the way companies can develop sustainability cultures.

The findings will then be shared with other GRLI partner members, which include companies such as IBM, Daimler and Petrobas, the state-owned oil company of Brazil, as well as other leading business schools.

The recently established Responsible Minerals Sector Initiative (RMSI) fosters dialogue around effective leadership and responsible management within the extractive sector.

The initiative brings representatives of communities, civil society, governments, academics and companies from all over the world together to discuss the primary issues that they confront.

Glenn Sigurdson, chair of RMSI, says, “To build successful enterprises and maintain access to an increasingly diminished global mineral supply and the long-term relationships that are fundamental to continued operations, organizations must engage with an extraordinary number of players and stakeholders.”

The initiative endeavours to build a “knowledge engine” in which engagement “helps to shape better practices and more responsive research and the process of building better practices and more responsive research continues to engage and inform the conversation,” he notes.

“Mining is an industry that is really important to our community, and through RMSI, we’ve engaged the global community in a dialogue on issues of sustainability in the sector,” says Shapiro.

In this and other initiatives, he adds, “Our aim is to be the connection between the global world of knowledge and our local community.”

The feature includes an interview with school Dean Daniel Shapiro, Glenn Sigurdson, Director of the Responsible Minerals Sector Initiative, as well as Mark Selman, Director of the EMBA in Aboriginal Business and Leadership.

“Our aim is to be the connection between the global world of knowledge and our local community,” said Shapiro. “We have many courses in our programs that cover sustainability and social innovation, but we’ve also tried to link those courses to higher levels of experiential learning.”

The new EMBA, the first of its kind in the country, meets a growing need for senior-level management education for Aboriginal managers and entrepreneurs, as well as individuals and organizations collaborating with Aboriginal communities. It will provide executive-level education that reflects the growing role of business development for First Nations.

Participants will study core management concepts and principles already included in the Executive Master of Business Administration program but will also examine business and economic issues from the perspective of First Nations.

“This is an idea whose time has come,” said William Lindsay (Cree-Stoney), director of SFU’s Office for Aboriginal Peoples. “We’ve reached the stage where Aboriginal people are in senior executive positions and could use some extra training to hone their skills. This will benefit participants, their communities, and the business world in general.”

“The Executive MBA in Aboriginal Business and Leadership is a reflection of SFU’s commitment to using its education and research resources to support Aboriginal peoples and communities,” said SFU President Andrew Petter in a media release last fall. “This program is particularly needed at a time when Aboriginal peoples are striving to overcome longstanding challenges and seeking to take advantage of new challenges.”

SFU’s Beedie School is home to Canada’s first Executive MBA program, established in 1968. The school has a long-standing history of creating customized programs such as the EMBA in Aboriginal Business and Leadership to the meet the needs of individual students.

“The Beedie School of Business believes that our biggest opportunity to create change for Aboriginal people and communities in B.C. and Canada is by building capacity of groups of students with common interests and concerns,” says Beedie School Dean Daniel Shapiro.

For more information, contact Mark Selman, Program Director: Mark_Selman@sfu.ca

The following article was published by the Financial Post on March 27, 2012 as part of their MBA issue.

BY MARY TERESA BITTI, FINANCIAL POST

Jocelyn Ball knew she wanted to get her MBA sooner rather than later in order to give herself more control over her career. She also knew that she wanted to be able to hit the ground running after graduating.

That’s why shortly after earning her undergraduate degree she joined the first cohort of Dalhousie University’s Corporate Residency MBA, the only corporate residency program in Canada and one of only two in North America.

“There aren’t a lot of MBA programs where you get a full eight months to intern with a company and really immerse yourself in the culture and put management, presentation and conflict resolution skills into practice.”

And that’s exactly why Dalhousie University radically changed its MBA program. “About four years ago, we decided that the traditional 17, 18, 19 courses that make up an MBA wasn’t enough,” says Scott Comber, director of Dalhousie’s full-time MBA program.

Focus groups with employers across the country revealed that while MBA graduates were prepared from a technical perspective, they lacked the everyday, practical skills necessary to be effective.

“Conflict resolution, mediation, leading teams, strategic implementation, the ability to deal with and solve complex and ambiguous problems — these were all areas that needed improvement,” says Mr. Comber. “We turned that list into a 22-month curriculum that we call personal and professional effectiveness, providing all the practical skills for the day-to-day workplace.”

In fact, the first six months of the program are spent preparing the students for the eight-month job placement. “Interview skills, professional dress, presentation skills, if you have one minute to pitch yourself, what do you say? These are all things we address in preparation for their corporate residency interviews, which is a competitive process,” says Mr. Comber. “If they don’t pass the interview they don’t get the placement.

“We’re bringing business back into business schools.”

From the perspective of Bruce Smith, manager of staffing and planning at Scotiabank in Halifax, Dalhousie’s timing could not have been better, in part at least because of a recent shift taking hold among MBA candidates.

“In the past, most people entered an MBA program after having built up their resumé for six or seven years. Now more and more students are jumping into an MBA shortly after completing an undergraduate degree,” says Mr. Smith, who took part in the university’s focus groups. “In some cases all they have under their belts is summer job experience.”

At the same time, increasingly complex business structures and a hyper-competitive global marketplace make it that much more important to have MBA graduates who know how to work within and lead teams, build relationships and communicate effectively.

“Scotiabank has brought in 10 interns over the three years of the Corporate Residency program. What we are finding is the team piece and communication skills are huge.

“They are learning how to work as part of a team and work closely with coaches throughout their time with us.” Scotiabank has gone on to hire five people from the first cohort.

Across the country, the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver is in the process of recruiting for the first cohort of its new EMBA in Aboriginal Business and Leadership. Interest is high, with half the spots already filled. And for good reason: The world of First Nations across the country is changing rapidly.

“We are seeing new impact benefit agreements being signed between corporations and First Nations,” says Mark Selman, director of the program. “We are seeing new revenue-sharing agreements between government and First Nations. There is approximately $350billion to $400-billion in proposed development projects in B.C. alone. Very few of those projects can go ahead without some consultation and accommodation with First Nations. It’s in the interest of everybody to make sure those decisions are made well.”

To that end, the program will offer a unique course designed to find a good way of working between traditional knowledge and social science knowledge as it’s taught in business schools. First Nations and all indigenous cultures have a different way of understanding the world than has been common in Western universities, says Mr. Selman.

“Traditional knowledge emphasizes balance, the connectedness of everything. It’s our job to find some middle ground that respects the importance of traditional knowledge and social science knowledge and melding the two. I view this EMBA program as addressing one of the most important practical challenges to our economy. While it was designed with B.C. in the forefront of our minds, I’m getting applicants from all across the country who see this is highly relevant.”

Laurier School of Business and Economic’s MBA program gives its students the opportunity to put theory into action in the workplace through its required integrated applied research project.

“In effect, the students are working as professional consultants for businesses, not-for-profits or government organizations and agencies,” says Chris Maziarz, special projects and research coordinator at Laurier.

Business partners pay a consulting fee to the school and students work in teams of five, putting in a combined 1,000 hours of time and effort to resolve a specific challenge for clients.

Those clients have included such organizations as the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, Nike, the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Royal Ontario Museum, Walmart, Dofasco and RIM, as well as smaller, local businesses.

“Students tackle a variety of issues and work on the project from January to July and are graded largely on the nature and quality of the deliverables to the organization,” says Mr. Maziarz.

“It’s not philanthropic on the part of the partners. Students are meant to give value and solve something – make a difference.”

Eric Humes, an MBA student at Laurier, has just started his project, working with a new startup trying to break into the water-purification business. “We are coming up with strategic marketing plans both for the business-to-business and business-toconsumer market,” says Mr. Humes.

“We’re working directly with the entrepreneur, meeting bi-weekly to make sure we keep moving forward.”

This project was one of the reasons he chose Laurier over other business schools. “I wanted that hands-on, real business world experience.”

That’s exactly what Jocelyn Ball was able to take away from Dalhousie’s Corporate Residency program. She worked as a strategic business advisor for global insurance brokerage AON in its Calgary office during her eight-month paid internship. In that role, she shadowed one of the firm’s leaders and she helped integrate an acquisition that had experienced flagging sales.

“Sometimes you fear as an intern you’ll be sitting in a corner making spreadsheets. I was fortunate enough to have significant work to do and helped dramatically improve sales.”

Her success landed her a full-time job upon graduation last May. “It feels like I started working here two years ago, took a short break for school, and returned. That’s a tremendous advantage.”

Click here to read the article in its entirety at the Financial Post.

Submitted by Ahp-cii-uk, a Beedie School of Business-supported initiative

The Nuu-chah-nulth community of Tseshaht is the first aboriginal community to pursue funding under a system developed by the Aviva Insurance Company that involves online voting to select finalists for community grants.

Tseshaht has proposed a project to build an ocean-going canoe and a canoe shed, thereby reviving important traditions within the community (carving, paddling, visiting its traditional territories, interchanges with other coastal communities) and engaging its young people. Although Tseshaht was a whaling community in the past, for the last generation or so, Tseshaht has not had a canoe that is seaworthy enough to take on the ocean. This is an opportunity to renew that tradition.

Tseshaht is involved in this project because for the last three years, it has been one of the communities involved in Ahp-cii-uk, which means “going the right way” in Nuu-chah-nulth. Ahp-cii-uk is a unique partnership of First Nations, businesses, the federal and provincial government, and has been designed and managed by Mark Selman at the Beedie School of Business.

It is an attempt to find new ways to build relationships and support First Nations in making the changes they think will make them stronger and better places to raise their children. Ahp-cii-uk has worked with first nations communities to build trails, develop cultural tourism, engage young people in apprenticeship and job readiness programs, establish artists markets, road safety programs, build playgrounds and improve the transparency of their planning and governance processes.

More importantly, Ahp-cii-uk has built a sense of hope, trust, and mutual respect in communities and between partners.

The Tseshaht First Nation grassroots community is asking for your support and vote for this important “Going Home” Canoe and Canoe Shed Project. To vote for the project:

1. Click on the following link: http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf11193
2. click on “Vote Now” button
3. Register to vote by entering your name and email address. Create a password.
4. Receive a confirmation to your email, click on the link
5. Sign in with your email address and password
6. Click on the “vote now” button again.
7. You have a maximum of 15 votes but only one vote per day.
8. Voting for round 2 closes on 9 November 2011.
9. Vote now and help the community of Tseshaht make it through to the semi-finals.

For more information:

Lerato Chondoma
Ahp-cii-uk Community Liaison
778.862.8982

Mark Selman
Beedie School of Business
778.782.5070

by Jennifer Lewington, Globe and Mail

In a 40-year history of executive MBA education at Simon Fraser University, only 10 aboriginal students came to the program. The abysmal record is typical of the under-representation of First Nations, Metis and Inuit students in higher education in Canada.

Seeking to improve its standing, the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University this week announced a new executive MBA in aboriginal business and leadership for September, 2012.

“People see increasingly that the economic success of the region and the country are somewhat dependent on the success of aboriginal as well as non-aboriginal people,” says Mark Selman, director for the new program, who consulted with aboriginal leaders for several years on its development.

Priced at $48,000, the three-year program aims to meet a growing need for senior-level management education for aboriginal managers and entrepreneurs as First Nations communities take greater control of their land and resources and establish new businesses. The program is also open to managers of non-aboriginal businesses increasingly keen to learn how to interact effectively with First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities.

Through in-classroom and online studies, students will learn core management concepts and principles and examine issues from a First Nations perspective.

About 70 people have expressed interest in the program, but the first class will be limited to 30 students, most from the Vancouver area, says Prof. Selman.

Students accepted into the program typically will have an undergraduate degree in a non-business discipline and seven to 10 years of work experience, but there could be exceptions for candidates with significant work experience and no undergraduate degree.

Prof. Selman hopes to attract corporate donors to fund scholarships for the program.

jlewington@bell.net

Click here to read the complete article on the Globe and Mail website.