Business schools must innovate, too.

• Position: Views of Thomas P. Gerrity, Dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania - Special Section: Being a Global Leader

Business Schools Must Innovate, Too

An American MBA student takes a year off to work as chief consultant to Moscow's fledgling commodities exchange; U.S. business students and faculty advise governments and companies in Eastern Europe on strategies for privatization; a group of Wharton management and finance professors teach Chinese executives in Shanghai; Japanese and American MBA students consult jointly with U.S. companies on accessing Asian markets; business school graduates spend their summer teaching management and marketing courses to Soviet executives in Leningrad and Vilnius; a group of MBA student volunteers help rebuild the economy of hurricane-ravaged St. Croix. This is just a sampling of news bulletins over the past 18 months describing the involvement of MBA students and business school faculty in current issues and events around the world.

Globalization is clearly the most far-reaching and profound change factor facing business and business schools today and in the future. It is fundamentally reshaping markets and competitive forces and demanding changes in the way managers think and work. In direct response to today's global marketplace, students and faculty from top business schools in the U.S. are literally spanning the globe to develop and apply their skills.

To prepare students for this globalized environment, all management education must be global. It must help graduates to lead organizations that span many different nations, to manage increasingly diverse and inter-related work forces, to develop strategies for global sourcing and marketing, and to approach every aspect of the business with a global perspective.

For the past few decades, and particularly the last 10 years, management educators have been carefully studying this evolving global marketplace and bringing results into the classroom. But we still have a long way to go, and the phenomenon of business globalization is still developing rapidly.

The leading U.S. business schools already have become international. One contributing factor has been an increasingly international student body and faculty. At Wharton, for example, MBA applications from international students are up 108% since 1985 and international students from 60 nations now make up 29% of the entering class. The increase in international students, which we have encouraged, ensures a very global diversity of perspectives in classroom discussions, in small groups, and in informal interaction. This...