IN a bid to gain international exposure, Chinese business schools have been learning from the experiences of their overseas counterparts.

Italian business schools have much to offer given that they face some of the same issues and challenges that confront Chinese institutions.

Shanghai Daily reporter Ni Tao recently talked to Stefano Caselli and Giovanni Fiori about Chinese and Italian management education at the 2015 International Partnership Deans Forum, held at Fudan University’s School of Management. Caselli is vice rector for international affairs at Milan-based Commercial University of Luigi Bocconi, while Fiori is a professor at the School of Economics and Business at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.

SD: Have European economic woes dented applications to your institutions?

Fiori: Absolutely no. Europe is not growing so much, but it remains one of the strongest economies, and a strong economy needs good management. So there has been no impact on our applications at all.

Caselli: I agree. Even when the economic cycle was negative in many countries across Europe, the reactions of many families and students was to choose quality education. Despite the economic woes, the quality and number of applications for my school are going up.

SD: Can you offer concrete figures to back up your claims?

Caselli: I can give you some numbers to consider. We work in both graduate and undergraduate areas. In both categories, we have seen applications increase by some 5 to 6 percent per year over the last three years.

And applications coming from foreign students are also growing. Foreign students now represent 40 to 45 percent of all our students.

Fiori: At Luiss we have different figures because Luiss is smaller and younger. Growth in application is approximately 10 to 15 percent. And this is happening in an environment in which you see a decrease in enrolment among weaker universities. This confirms what Stefano was saying. The crisis is leading to a demand for quality education among young and talented people.

SD: Business schools are sometimes criticized for being elitist. Can this image be changed?

Caselli: In our case, the answer is based on two elements.

On the one hand, Bocconi strongly believes in merit. Everything is based on merit at the beginning of the process of selecting students.

On the other hand, we promote a program of tuition waivers, which, again, are completely based on merit. Every year Bocconi gives tuition waivers for 24 million euros (US$25.8 million). This represents 10 percent of our income per year. It’s an incredible amount of money we invest simply to attract the best students with modest means.

The feeling nowadays in Europe is not that we are elite schools that are open only to the rich, but that the market is divided between business schools that decide to be global and those that choose to remain very local.

Fiori: I totally agree with Stefano because at Luiss we follow the same policy. Both Bocconi and Luiss are seen as elite and top-class universities in Italy, judging not by the wealth of the students, but by their merit.

In my personal experience, most of my students come from normal families — maybe not the poorest tier, but not rich anyway. Due to our tuition policies, we attract poor people and give them the possibility to have quality education.

In Europe what is happening now happened in the US some years ago. There is a strong demand for top-class business schools, and only they are gaining market shares.

SD: Any suggestions for increasing the global profile of Chinese business schools?

Caselli: Chinese business schools are on the right track. If we take a look at the major rankings of universities in the world, Chinese business schools are growing a lot.

Probably the next step for them — and also many European business schools — is to become more attractive for international faculty.

A measure of attractiveness is the willingness of foreign professors to become tenure professors in Chinese business schools. It will be a clear demonstration that your business schools are really global.

Fiori: Openness and attractiveness, I think these are major weaknesses of Chinese schools, but weaknesses that many European business schools share.

In Italy we also face some difficulty attracting foreign faculty, despite the fact that we have very attractive locations in Milan or Rome.

It is a challenge we have to overcome. It will take time. Becoming an international professor in Europe or China means becoming a professor in the US or the UK in the first place. We still suffer from an Anglo-Saxon-centric university regime.

SD: Management science is a system of theories and case studies, mainly with a Western provenance. Do you see a place for Oriental wisdom in management curriculum?

Fiori: Of course I think there is a place for that. The problem that you mentioned — that most business cases are based on Western stories, and in particular on American stories — is not limited to Chinese business schools.

I read an article in the Economist some months ago that said 90 percent of articles published in top management journals are related to American or European environments, while only 10 percent are related to other countries.

Of course, if we do not orient our research toward countries like China, India and Japan — and in the future, countries in Africa and South America — we are making a big mistake.

I see great weakness all over the world related to this issue. It’s a result not only of the dominance of English as an academic language, but also of many other things.

For example, many published papers are related to an American context because in the US there are sufficient databases and information, without which you cannot develop case studies. In China, the mentality is like in Italy, where entrepreneurs do not offer enough information. They tend to keep it to themselves.

Caselli: I would say more and more business cases will be devoted to understanding and investigating the stories and deals related to China and Asia in a wider perspective. I have no doubt about that.

On the other hand we are talking about management style, which is not related to business cases. In fact, Chinese investors and entrepreneurs are involved in more and more large deals in Europe. It’s something that generates a sharing of different ideas.

When you start doing deals and running businesses together, it’s very clear that you transfer knowledge and different styles, stories and views. At this moment Chinese investors are very active in Europe.

SD: China seem to be years ahead of Europe in tapping the e-commerce sector. Is Europe trying to catch up?

Caselli: It’s clear that China has established sort of a leading role in e-commerce innovation. If I may say, however, Europe is also moving ahead. The impact of big data in business analytics is becoming sort of a mantra.

The stories of Alibaba and Baidu are in a certain sense revealing about the indispensable role of big data. For example, Alibaba is moving from the retail sector into the financial sector. Potentially it could become the first retailer-turned-banker in the world.

Rumors are clearly related to these movements, because at the moment they have data related to customers, to retail transactions, so it’s very easy to jump on the other side of the moon. But to do that, you must be very skilled to manage big data in business analytics.

Fiori: I think it’s a matter of culture. In Europe customers do like to shop in a traditional way, while in China, many customers have been empowered by the new era of technology.

In Italy, however, there is a strong tradition and persistence among customers in getting to see the items they are going to buy. In some segments, customers don’t want to buy online.