Settling into Insead's multicultural environment

The Insead File:In the first of a monthly series, Ulster Bank's Niall Dunnewrites on the cultural and academic opportunities and challenges of studying for an MBA in France

Where better to study business than in France? After all, the nation's famous joie de vivre is fuelled by caffeine and nicotine, the two dominant food groups in most business students' diets.

France is also home to Insead, a leading global business school, where I will spend the next 12 months earning a master's degree in business administration (MBA).

And believe me, earn is the operative word. It may sound cliched, but there simply aren't enough hours in the day to complete the reams of required reading while attending all the classes and coping with the congested calendar of social events. Hence my rapidly developing caffeine dependency.

Yet the workload hasn't shocked me; we were forewarned. What I didn't expect were the responses of my classmates when they heard I was from Ireland.

Insead prides itself on the diversity of its intake and more than 70 nationalities are represented in the current class. But it isn't the multicultural aspect of the class that strikes you as an Irishman abroad; instead, you can't help but be amazed at how Ireland's international reputation has preceded you.

Where once we were known for Guinness, now we are known for double-digit economic growth and, as an eyewitness to the Celtic Tiger's development, I frequently find myself explaining our apparent overnight success to classmates from eastern Europe and Asia, countries that seem intent on emulating our accomplishments. Yet I just can't bring myself to tell them about the downsides of our dynamism, such as increased traffic congestion and the cost of housing; who wants to be the bearer of bad news?

But back to the cliches. Insead is like a United Nations assembly that just happens to be located in France. Once you set foot on campus, French rules and regulations cease to apply.

Step off the campus, however, and you instantly encounter infamous French bureaucracy.

Take banking, for example, since no utility will provide service until a renting tenant has opened a bank account.

The last time I opened a bank account in Ireland, I left the branch within minutes, not only with an account number, but also with a credit card, chequebook and pre-approval for a mortgage.

Not so in the Fifth Republic. Seeking an appointment to meet an official who has the discretion to approve your request to open an account is the first hurdle. And when the said official finally finds the time to accommodate you in his strictly-observed 35-hour week, the complexity of the required paperwork is staggering.

Envious social-welfare system aside, you quickly develop the impression that France is a sleeping economic giant weighed down by documents and regulation.

It's also interesting to note that, despite not speaking a word of French, each application form must be signed in triplicate with the phrase lu et approuvé, which I am reliably informed means "read and approved".

The French clearly have a sophisticated sense of irony. You can't help but wonder what Irish regulators would make of this practice.

Insead also displays a degree of stereotypical French existential conflict through its choice of welcoming lectures for MBA students. In fact, an interesting dichotomy is starting to emerge in the syllabus.

In this bastion of capitalism, we have the proponents of value maximisation fighting against the stakeholder-approach activists - the ethicists who espouse corporate social responsibility.

It's unabashed capitalism in the blue corner versus inclusive, ethical and (ideally) profitable management in the red corner, in a heavyweight contest for the hearts and minds of the next generation of global managers.

Joking aside, it's refreshing to see both sides of the argument being presented, which probably reflects Insead's European heritage.

Finance professors seem set to spend the next 12 months debunking the concept of stakeholder management, insisting that the firm's only social responsibility is to maximise its profits.

Ethics professors, meanwhile, have promised to guide us through cases dissecting recent corporate scandals to highlight the shortcomings of current business models, and to suggest that managers should consider the impact of their actions on constituencies beyond direct shareholders.

Personally, I suspect that the corporate social responsibility professors are preaching to the converted; it's amazing how altruistic business students profess to be these days.

So why come to the home of revolutionary thinking to study for an MBA? Precisely because of a long-standing willingness to embrace new ideas and external influences.

For example, it's no coincidence that the country most represented in the current MBA intake is India, with 10 per cent of the class hailing from the subcontinent. How better to debate the relative merits of globalisation than to discuss the issues with counterparts from the countries and continents directly affected by these issues?

Small-town life in France has its disadvantages, notably a tendency to close early at weekends and entirely on a Sunday, but as my microeconomics lecturer says, life is about trade-offs.

Everyone else here seems to believe that the streets of Dublin are paved with gold, but for a year I think I'll be happy to swap Ireland for a Parisian satellite town. It's a trade well worth making to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

niall.s.dunne@gmail.com