Wharton business school active in UAE
Research is the main focus of the institute
Without any fanfare, the Wharton Business School has been busy working on joint research projects on entrepreneurship and family business in the UAE with the CERT Group of Companies — the commercial arm of the Higher Colleges of Technology — since February last year.
During a recent visit to the UAE, Dr Thomas Robertson, Dean of The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania, announced that since the launch of its Entrepreneurship & Family Business research centre, more than 20 projects have been funded.
The name of the centre will soon change due to the broadening scope of the activities undertaken with CERT, he said. It will be called Wharton @ CERT.
"For a couple of years we have been involved with CERT and Wharton has decided to put a stake in the ground. We hope it's a two-way street where we can contribute to helping business and governments in this region and, in turn, our faculty, and students who visit, will learn about the Middle East and North Africa region."
In addition, Wharton has produced an Arabic language version of Knowledge@Wharton, an online business journal with more than 1.8 million subscribers. A high school version for the Middle East is also in the pipeline.
Leadership programmes
Despite Wharton's increasing activities in the UAE, Pankaj Paul, managing editor and general manager of the Wharton centre in Abu Dhabi, stressed that at no stage will degree programmes be offered.
"This does not happen and will not happen. We feel we don't know enough about the region to offer programmes and we don't believe we can offer the same quality of education as we can in Philadelphia," he said.
Dr Bulent Gultekin, academic director of Wharton @ CERT, was also in town and explained that the centre's educational activities will extend to, for example, events and seminars on leadership for executives, courses on Islamic finance for Wharton students and courses on management.
Last week Wharton held a one-day senior executive programme in Abu Dhabi for leaders of corporate, government, and non-profit organisations.
