Sixteen people, age 24 to 70, who traveled to China last summer for a 12-day B-W MBA seminar had a broad-based learning experience that relates to business in Northeast Ohio.
Larry Cantrell, who received his MBA from B-W, is executive vice president and CFO of The Oatey Company, a Cleveland based manufacturer of plumbing supply products. He touched base with suppliers and colleagues in China, studied the feasibility of opening an Oatey manufacturing facility there and - a bonus for Cantrell - visited some newly constructed “Western-style model homes.” The houses did not have Oatey plumbing products, but Cantrell got to look under their kitchen sinks to see what they did have.
Cantrell said B-W helped him find a sense of the Chinese culture. “They are a very family-oriented, culture-oriented people,” he said. “In the second week, when we went into the countryside to see first-hand the manufacturing facilities and how they utilize engineering, I felt the people really appreciated how much we had already learned about their culture and their history. We were able to parlay that into a wonderful social dialogue.”
Those on the trip visited a Sherwin-Williams Co. manufacturing facility in China; several had previously visited a Columbus, Ohio, Sherwin-Williams plant, so were able to compare the two facilities. Like all B-W MBA seminars, the trip was preceded by orientation sessions on campus to introduce the country’s culture, politics and social and business structures.
Malcolm Watson, who heads the B-W International MBA Program, and David Yen,
executive director of the World Trade Center Cleveland, led the seminar, which included
Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an. The trip incorporated visits with Chinese government representatives, academics and B-W alumni, as well as visits to cultural and historic monuments, business and health care facilities and an experimental agricultural park.
“We try to link the relevance of the country’s culture to its business, educational and political institutions,” Watson said. “For the China trip, we tried to instill an awareness that while industrial development is reaching 300 million people along China’s coasts, there are another billion Chinese in the interior without adequate roads, electricity or schools.”
Steven and Dolly Minter enhanced their understanding of the global economy. He formerly headed the Cleveland Foundation and now is involved with regional economic development efforts for Northeast Ohio. She is on the B-W Board of Trustees. Both are B-W alumni. “We got a much greater sense of the global competition that Northeast Ohio faces in terms of development,” she said, adding that workers in China have great ambition, and most do not seem to expect benefits such as western-style vacations. “In Shanghai, we must have seen 500 construction cranes - an indication of the speed of development there - yet the workers wore no hardhats and, instead of work boots, they wore flip-flops.”
Thomas S. Campanella, director of the B-W Health Care MBA Program, found parallels and contrasts between the Chinese and U.S. health care systems. Traditional Chinese medicine incorporates herbs, acupuncture and other holistic, non-invasive healing methods, yet issues of access to care, quality of care and cost of care plague the Chinese system just as they do here, he said.
“Their health care system has been 5,000 years in the making,” Campanella said. “In China, many physicians believe that our U.S. system relies too much on drugs that can cause complications, yet they have respect for western medicine.”
The health care experts Campanella met expressed interest in joint ventures between Chinese and American hospitals. He said the Chinese have work under way to evaluate other countries’ health care systems and appear very open to ideas on ways to improve their system. He said we also can learn from them. “While the U.S. health care system has many advantages, we still can learn from other cultures and societies, particularly in terms of addressing health care cost, quality and access-to-care issues,” Campanella said.
Photo: The MBA Seminar to China at the Great Wall
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