Developing Future-ready Business Management Professionals through Advanced Education Programs

Zheng has over a decade of experience in teaching and research. She specializes in energy economics and labor economics, and has 40+ publications in prestigious peer-reviewed academic journals.

In a recent conversation with Asia Business Outlook, Zheng shared her insights on how education will play a vital role in developing students into future-ready business professionals.

How are advanced degrees enabling students to enhance their leadership and decision-making skills?

Of late, we are seeing an increasing number of university students to upgrade themselves by taking-up advanced degrees to stay ahead of today's constantly evolving digital technology landscape. Thus, we too offer a variety of courses at the graduate level to help students hone their leadership skills. For instance, the Leadership in Service Innovation course will help students to learn industry-best practices and develop skills related to business leadership, innovation, customer experience design and many others. As a result, students can develop the transformative mindset to successfully steer through today’s dynamic market landscape.

Tell us about the key areas of business development that need to be further strengthened through better education models.

While there are numerous areas of business management to focus on, a few of them which are crucial in today’s business scenario are data analytics, sustainability management, digital marketing, IP management, and HR management. This is also in line with the key areas that Singapore as a country has been focusing majorly on, namely, digital economy, green economy and Industry 4.0. Care economy is another key area, but maybe less related to some of the business management. Therefore, further education could help train and prepare talents in those areas.

What is the role of new technology courses in molding students in future-ready business managers?

Chat GPT has completely disrupted the way majority of the industries worldwide function; and the same holds true for education as well. It has not only changed the way students usually do their assignments, but also transformed the way teachers deliver their courses in the classrooms. Thus, it is important to have robust strategies in place going forward to effectively manage the risks and opportunities that are associated with such technological change.

In our university, we have launched a few new programs such as graduate diplomas in AI for Business and Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) which even the students with no coding skills can take up. This way, we are stressing upon the importance of knowing how to apply AI related knowledge to help business managers make data-driven decisions.

While a little bit of AI/ML related curricular knowledge will indeed be necessary, the focus will be more on the application. On the other hand, since AI and IoT have been the cornerstones for digital transformation across various industries such as healthcare, agriculture, logistics, and manufacturing, the graduate diploma in AIoT will enable students to be sufficiently skilled to provide smart and connected solutions.

How can educational institutions imbibe ethical and social responsibility centered decision making among students?

Ethics and social responsibility have already been imbibed into many of the course curriculum across various business management institutes. For example, we offer a master's in digital marketing course, wherein our students are asked to work on marketing campaign projects for non-profit organizations. This not only helps the students to contribute towards various social causes, but also gets them the necessary hands-on industry exposure that enables them to understand the various intricacies involved in the marketing domain.

Explain the importance of developing a global mindset among the students.

Currently, the global economy is going through a lot of uncertainties and challenges brought about by recent innovations, tech advancements, and geopolitical aspects. This has forced the business leaders and managers to develop a strategic mindset pegged through global insights to address various problems that organizations face due to the increasing volatility across various regions of the world.

As a result, it is now more critical than ever before for the industry professionals to take various international perspectives into consideration while making crucial decisions within their respective organizations. Thus, we are seeing an increasing number of working professionals as well as students taking-up various postgraduate programs to develop a global mindset towards each aspect of managing a business, especially those programs with global immersion component that take students to different countries so that they can experience different cultures, industries, and specific business practices within those countries.