The Case Study Legacy of Ivey’s Early

Linkages in China

Paul W. Beamish

Canada Research Chair in International Management

Ivey Business School

Western University

May 10, 2014

Background

• Ivey has long been active in Greater China

– Research

– Teaching

• First North American business to establish

degree program campus

• Case study writing and distribution (via Ivey

Publishing)

– Service

• Since 1984 via CIDA-sponsored “China

Project” with Tsinghua’s School of Economics

and Management2

Phase I of China Project

• 35 articles, cases, notes published

• 9 Ivey faculty visited Tsinghua to lecture

• 12 Tsinghua visiting scholars to Ivey for a

year

• 8 Tsinghua graduates of Ivey MBA program

• All visiting professors from Tsinghua

attended Case Writing Workshop

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Phase II of China Project• Additional partners

– U of Waterloo

– Dalian University of Technology

– Southeast University

• 1992 program delivered on teaching “Joint

Ventures, Technology Transfer, and

International Trade via The Case Method”

• 1992 first of 5 international business case

books published by Tsinghua University

Press

• 1993 saw publication of 6 additional case

books by our other Chinese partner schools 4

These 2 Phases Laid the Groundwork for Four

Major Case-Study Related Initiatives by Ivey in

China over the Next Two Decades

1)Ivey-Tsinghua Casebook Series (1998 – 2002)

2)Annual Case Teaching/Writing Workshops at

Tsinghua (since 1998)

3)Ivey Publishing’s Case Distribution in China

4)China Management Case-Sharing Centre

(CMCC) (since 2010)

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1) Ivey-Tsinghua Casebook Series

(35 Books Published,1998 – 2002)

• In response to the education ministry’s

decree that 25% of MBA courses be taught

using the case method, 16 MBA casebooks

for China were published in English in

1998, in collaboration with Tsinghua.

• Translations of these 16 casebooks in

expanded form were published in Chinese

in 1999. Each book involved an editor from

Ivey and an editor from Tsinghua6

• Some of the more popular Chinese casebooks

were expanded again in 2001 – 2002 into

second editions, along with the introduction

of casebooks on three new topics.

• In addition, 18 best-selling textbooks in the

west, jointly recommended by Ivey faculty

and Tsinghua faculty, were reprinted in 1998

for use in China.

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9

Professor Paul Beamish,

Director of the Asian

Management Institute (right)

presented the largest collection

of business casebooks

produced for China to Zhu

Rongji, Premier of the State

Council of the People's

Republic of China (left). The

former Premier, who served as

Dean of the School of

Economics and Management at

Tsinghua University, received

the casebooks during his

official visit to Toronto,

Canada in April 1999.

2) Annual Case Teaching/Writing

Workshops at Tsinghua (since 1998)

• For the past 15 years, a Hong Kong based

foundation has provided funding to allow us to

provide an annual Ivey-Tsinghua Case Teaching

and Writing Workshop. Over 1,000 Chinese

university professors have attended.

• In addition, Ivey professors continue to offer

workshops at other universities throughout

China. More than 2,000 additional Chinese

professors have attended these workshops to

date.10

3) Ivey Publishing in China

• Ivey Publishing is the world’s second

largest producer of business school teaching

cases, after Harvard. It has nearly 5,000

items in its current collection. 800 Ivey

cases or Ivey Business Journal articles are

available in simplified Chinese with 200

additional ones being translated annually.

By practice, all Ivey cases or IBJ articles

involving China are translated into

Simplified Chinese, as are all Best Sellers.11

• Ivey Publishing has over 300 cases

involving China in its current collection.

Ivey cases are used all over China. Ivey

Publishing has dozens of site licenses with

Chinese business schools.

• In June 2013, Ivey hosted a visit by deans

and case center directors from China for a 2

day workshop on how to set up and manage

a case center. There are over 50 case

centers being established at Chinese

business schools as of early 2014.

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4) China National MBA Education

Supervisory Committee (CNMESC)

and China Management Case-Sharing

Centre (CMCC) (since 2010)

• An MOU on Case Development

Collaboration was signed to foster the

development and dissemination of China-

based cases. This collaboration involves

over 200 Chinese universities and one non-

China based institution: Ivey.13

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(l to r) Shuming Zhao, Dean of School of Business, Nanjing University, Jingqin

Su, Director of China Management Case-sharing Center and Dean of School of

Management, Dalian University of Technology, Ivey Professor Paul Beamish,

and Prof. Yunhuan Tong, Secretary General of China National MBA Education

Supervisory Committee joined hands after the MOU signing ceremony during

the inaugural China Management Case-sharing Conference in Kunming.

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The 3rd CMCC International Case Forum

January 7 – 8, 2012

• The CMCC is supported by the China

National MBA Education Supervisory

Committee. CMCC operates as a non-

profit service organization with a focus on

researching, developing and sharing cases

that discuss local business challenges.

• In 2013, a delegation from the China

Academic Degrees and Graduate Education

Development Center (CDGDC), Ministry

of Education visited Ivey Publishing.

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• CDGDC had been entrusted with a new task

by the Ministry: to build a national-level

case center for professional degrees

education in China. There are now nearly

40 professional degrees in China and their

proposed case center is intended to help

ALL of them!

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Reflections

(Q1) How did universities, acting in

partnership, contribute to China’s

economic revitalization and rapid

transformation?

In the early 1980s, the state of management

education in China was very low. Our

Chinese partners played an important role in

China’s economic revitalization, because the

country supported growth in its number of

degree granting business schools. Canadian

business school linkages in China in turn 18

facilitated their role in two primary ways.

First, Chinese visiting scholars learned a great

deal during their visits. They observed first-

hand how a market economy functioned, and

how a business school functioned within such

a context. Exposure to alternative models

allowed them to think about how to bring

back to China the relevant elements.

Second, they were introduced to new, current

teaching material (both textbooks and case

studies) which they could draw from

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for their new reality.

The fact that the Ivey casebooks for the

Chinese market sold hundreds of thousands

of copies, and the fact that millions of copies

of Ivey cases have been studied in China,

suggests that this content was able to

contribute to China’s transformation.

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(Q2) How did university partnerships

foster the spawning of new ideas that

would address issues of governance,

social justice and sustainability that

had arisen in the face of rapid change?

Whether through observation as visiting

scholars, or access to more and current teaching

materials, university partnerships certainly

created knowledge transfer and the introduction

of new ideas to one’s Chinese counterparts.

Any key word search of the Ivey Publishing

website (www.iveycases.com) using

governance, justice, and sustainability (and

related terms) will return hundreds of relevant

examples. All of these cases have long been

available for use in China.

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(Q3) What organizational or

contextual features of the linkages

enabled them to be effective? What

serious challenges or hindrances arose?

A major strength of the Ivey-Tsinghua linkage

was continuity. The same key people were in

place both during and after the 10 year funding

period. This allowed personal

relationships/friendships/trust to develop, which

in turn created and environment in which

complex issues could be managed more easily.

A number on hindrances/challenges nonetheless

existed or arose. First, if Chinese faculty had

limited facility with English, they were unable to

derive as much benefit as would have been

desirable. Second, the issues around Tiananmen

Square protests of June 1989 resulted in a number

of Chinese visiting scholars in Canada not

returning to China. This slowed progress in the

linkages. Third, the CIDA contracts required a lot

of time to be spent on paperwork.

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(Q4) What lessons for current and

future collaboration between Canadian

and Chinese universities may be drawn

from past experience?

A guiding principle from the Ivey side was to

always treat our counterparts in China with

respect. There was a widespread recognition

that the state of management education was

likely to improve quickly in China and that

eventually our counterparts would have the

skills and abilities such that they would be able

to teach us as much about the practice of

management as we were teaching them.

An important lesson for future collaborations is to

retain strong institutional memory. Most players

will change over a three decade period so it is

helpful on all sides to understand the past.

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