This Way Out; A new American dean in France on the b-school crisis and how to fix it.(Interview)

Byline: Rana Foroohar

One answer to the M.B.A. backlash comes from J. Frank Brown, the new dean of Europe's top B-school, INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. A former head of PricewaterhouseCoopers' $3.5 billion advisory-services unit, Brown says M.B.A. programs need to go beyond the cliches of globalization and impart a real understanding of local markets. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Rana Foroohar. Excerpts:

FOROOHAR: People have talked about training global managers for a long time. How do you push forward?

BROWN: There are plenty of Americans in London, or Britons in India, but what are these expats on big packages really doing for their firms? Has anyone really looked at how it affects a company when its top three people in a particular market are Americans? How often does a Western company send an executive to China who can actually greet the locals in their own language? I'd like to do a program where students might work at a company in China and do a language course, developing fluency in Mandarin. At INSEAD, to be accepted you need to speak two languages, and to graduate, you need a third.

Was the school particularly interested in you as an American?

I think that given their druthers, they wouldn't have chosen an American. There's the perception that Americans are insular, and not as sensitive to local cultures as others might be. But although I was ...