NMU business school wants to increase its influence

If there’s one thing SA business has learned to its cost in recent years, it’s that the economy can’t function properly without efficient ports. Floods and riots in the past 18 months, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, have highlighted the severe shortcomings of several SA ports.

Maybe Nelson Mandela University (NMU) Business School can help. The Gheberha-based institution has a master’s degree in maritime management, as part of its growing repertoire of specialities. Curriculum subjects include ports and shipping management, and strategic maritime management – skills apparently in short supply in SA.

The degree, says acting director Hendrik Lloyd, is part of a reorganisation to make the school more market relevant. There is also a new emphasis on executive education.

Michelle Mey, deputy dean of NMU’s faculty of business and economic sciences, under which the business school falls, says the school wants to re-instil the academic and reputational impetus it enjoyed before Covid.

Its master’s and doctorate in business administration are both internationally accredited, and it has relationships with a number of leading overseas schools. It is also seeking to expand its reach and influence across Africa.

It is doing all this without a full-time director, following the departure of Randall Jonas at the beginning of this year. Lloyd says the search for a successor is under way. He says the school’s renewed ambition is part of an overall university “organisational redesign”.

Academic head Sam February says: “The university has a clear vision for us.” Covid helped clarify that vision. Like other business schools, NMU had begun a shift to online education but with no great urgency.

“Covid forced us to stop and think, to accelerate what we were doing,” he says. “For some of us, there was no overwhelming pressure to go online. But then Covid came along and said: ‘You’re going to work according to my timeline.’ It showed us what was possible.”

He adds: “In five years, we will be operating at a very digital level.”

So will the business world. Mey says leaders must be readied to work in this rapidly changing environment. “We have to develop people with a different mindset, able to operate in this future-orientated environment.”

With Covid restriction lifted, most of the school’s education remains online, though February hopes the campus will reopen to face-to-face teaching in 2023. For the time being, executive education corporate clients wanting that can host it on their own premises.

Lloyd says the school wants to increase its executive education influence at senior executive level, “but without neglecting lower management and employee levels”. Overall, he says the school’s aim is to be of service to society.

In pursuit of that and in line with the university’s broader vision, he says the school works with other university faculties, like engineering, the humanities, social science and law to provide holistic offerings to clients and the broader community.