Mona business school takes on corporate Jamaica as research partner
Published:Friday | March 1, 2019 | 12:00 AMHuntley Medley - Senior Business Writer
The Mona School and Business and Management, MSBM, has not only been advancing top quality business education in Jamaica for the past 12 years, but has also been involved in ground-breaking research and the real-life application of research findings to drive multibillion-dollar revenue and profit growth among some Jamaican businesses.
One of those clients is National Commercial Bank, NCB, Jamaica’s largest commercial bank that has been producing outsize profits from its organic operations as well as from gains made through acquisitions.
“We’ve done cutting-edge research for NCB which they use to drive profits and growth,” said MSBM executive director Dr David McBean.
“We do consulting with many of the blue chip companies,” he said.
Some of the recent engagements include NCB, Sagicor, Victoria Mutual Building Society, and GraceKennedy, he told the Financial Gleaner in an interview reflecting on his first year as administrative head of the University of the West Indies, Mona-based business school.
McBean, 53, an engineer by training, experienced business manager and former adjunct lecturer at the business school, was tapped last year to head the school and officially took up the position on March 1, 2018.
In 2012, the then 25 year-old Mona School of Business was merged with the university management studies department, which had been providing management education for 42 years.
Now MSBM is placing renewed focus on entrepreneurship from an instructional as well a practical perspective. While producing entrepreneurs, the school is also seeking to prepare business and management professionals to work with entrepreneurs even as it encourages further business development as part of the transformation and modernisation of the university.
The school, which has membership in organisations including the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, PSOJ, and the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, prides itself on not only providing the theoretical knowledge for business development, but also in the direct business involvement it provides for students and research staff.
The business school is in the early stages of an engagement with PSOJ to provide financial literacy training for small businesses across Jamaica.
For the past 17 years too, MSBM has been the representative in Jamaica for the World Economic Forum, providing services surrounding the forum’s flagship global competitiveness data.
“We are the point institution for Jamaica. Late Last year we ran a forum to highlight the data and did some research around the data,” McBean said of the school that provides business education for some 16,000 undergraduate and 3,200 postgraduate students.
McBean sees the role of the school as rooted in the Caribbean using research, teaching and learning to drive regional solutions for Caribbean businesses. MSBM is accredited by the prestigious France-based Eduniversal, and currently has a five-year accreditation by the Association of MBAs, or AMBA, which normally provides accreditation for three years at a time for MBA programmes worldwide.
Last year, MSBM copped an AMBA innovation award for its finance laboratory that provides real time links to financial markets and business news sources for students.
The school also runs a venture capital competition that is sponsored by Vincent Hosang Family Foundation of Jamaican businessman Vincent Hosang, owner of Caribbean Food Delights restaurant and Caribbean Royal Bakery in the United States.
The competition encourages members of the University community to use their talents and skills to harness ideas and opportunities that can be grown into full-fledged operating businesses. Students from across five faculties of the university are encouraged to participate.
“We have done research on the business process outsourcing industry, family-owned businesses, etc. One of my visions is that our research be made more public,” McBean said.
The MSBM administrative head is himself a management board director of investment house Mayberry Investments Limited, NewsTalk 93 FM radio station and Mona Technology Engineering Services Limited – a consulting, engineering management and machinery repair company based on the Mona campus.
MSBM has produced many top managers in Jamaican business including GraceKennedy CEO Don Wehby; JN Group head Earl Jarrett; VMBS president Courtney Campbell; Leighton McKnight, the Caribbean regional head of accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers; former Scotia Group Jamaica CEO and now coffee entrepreneur Jacqueline Sharp; and Diana Blake Bennett, general manager of Salada Foods Jamaica Limited.
While declining to give budget and revenue figures for MSBM, which operates both as a limited liability company and a university school, McBean suggests that the operations are that of a small to medium size company.
“Financials are not divulged outside the university context,” he said.
The school’s revenue streams include the self-financing programmes under which its postgraduate degrees including MBA, executive MBA and doctoral business degree are administered, a professional services unit that provides consultancy services and the Centre of Excellence for Information Technology, which administers research grants. Some investment income also accrues from accumulated surpluses, which McBean points out, is reinvested in teaching and facilities.
The MSBM is looking to grow its numbers although the executive director maintains that quality, and not student numbers, is the focus.
“Over time we have to build and grow accumulated surpluses to fund school expansion,” he notes, pointing out that entrepreneurship a big push of the school and the university. “There are lot things we can monetise here on campus that we need to focus on.”
At the same time, attention is being given to building more partnerships with businesses. The school has been the beneficiary of some amount of grant funding and scholarships from businesses such as JMMB Group, Grace Kennedy and others.
“Historically, in Jamaica we haven’t done well with philanthropy in the same way that they do in North America or in Europe. And that’s one of the goals – to change the culture. We have to reposition the school as a place where we can say to people, contribute to the development of business education in Jamaica by coming to partner with us.”
The business school has seen student number growth in the region of 50 per cent in the past six years, both at Mona and at its western campus in Montego Bay, and McBean is forecasting future growth from both face to face instruction and virtual or online education.
Conceding that the physical facility is bursting at the seams, the business school head says attention is being given to upgrading technology for the expansion of virtual education even as plans are advanced for physical expansion.
Architectural drawings have been done and costed and the building programme will be prioritised according to the availability of resources.
“The UWI is a top-five per cent university and we won’t remain top five by standing still. Yesterday’s excellence is today’s mediocrity,” said McBean, while referencing the university’s global ranking in the 2019 Times higher education world university rankings. “We are contributing to the history of excellence of the university,” he said.
As to the growing market entrants, local and globally, the executive director asserted that both MSMB’s track record and the UWI’s strong brand provide sufficient advantages to keep ahead of the competition.