On July 2, 2022, Professor Lu Xiongwen, dean of the School of Management of Fudan University, delivered a speech at the graduation ceremony
Dear President Zhang, the graduates on site, the online graduates, their families, relatives and friends, and Second generation children, colleagues and friends:
Good afternoon everyone!
It’s graduation season again. This year we will hold the 2022 graduation ceremony simultaneously online and offline. First of all, I would like to express my warm congratulations to all the students graduating this year, including undergraduates, masters, doctoral students, MBA, EMBA, MPAcc, DBA and other 2,296 students from the School of Management in 2022, who have successfully completed their studies at Fudan University! The glorious names of all of you were published in "21 Century Economic Report " and " First Financial Daily " on the occasion of the party's 101st birthday yesterday to commemorate and celebrate the special moment.
Looking back on your study journey at Fudan, some PhD students may have spent five years or even ten years at Fudan, but most professional degree students only have a short two or three years at Fudan. When you are about to graduate, you will have two years. But it has been troubled by the epidemic for a long time. Although you spent most of your time studying on campus from the summer of 2020 to the winter of 2021, due to epidemic prevention and control, you are not as free to roam the university campus as we once were. A classmate just said in the graduation video that he wanted to go back to school to see cherry blossom tree , but he could only enjoy it through photos and videos. At this special moment, I would like to express my special thanks to the families of the graduates for their tremendous spiritual and material support in helping you successfully complete your studies, especially the parents of full-time students for their great efforts!
At the same time, I would also like to thank our overseas partners: MIT Sloan School of Management, Washington University Olin Business School, Norwegian Business School, London Business School, Hong Kong University, 博Coney University , Lewis University, City University of Hong Kong , National Taiwan University, Korea University , National University of Singapore . Most of the courses in the two-year cooperative project are taught online. The two partners understand each other and work closely together to provide our students with a "perfect" preparation so that you can successfully obtain your degree.
No crisis should be wasted, and no cost should be wasted. I believe that your experiences over the past two years have given you a deeper understanding of study, career, life, society, and even the destiny of mankind as a whole.
Actually, when I say "perfect", it is just a beautiful wish. Today, I see off the graduates with great regret and some reluctance. I understand that the campus life of this class of graduates is very unusual and incomplete, but regrets and shortcomings have also created a kind of non-classic beauty, which is unique and profound. The students may have lost some real-life emotions and experiences, but they also left behind a memory that is engraved in their bones. In the fight against the epidemic, we feel physically and mentally exhausted, anxious, and even frustrated. But along the way, our will has been sharpened, our spirit has been hammered, and we have become more resilient. No crisis should be wasted, and no cost should be wasted. I believe that your experiences over the past two years have given you a deeper understanding of study, career, life, society, and even the destiny of mankind as a whole. Through repeated torture and struggle, our souls are sublimated, and through constant purging and searching, our souls are baptized. This is what I call non-classical beauty.
I know that despite such shortcomings, our students have always been proud of Fudan School of Management. This is not only because the college's international rankings in terms of academic contribution and management education continue to steadily improve, but the entire college also does its best to provide everyone with advanced international level education and growth opportunities. Our excellent teachers uphold the spirit of truth-seeking, are loyal to their duties, and do their best to cultivate talents.Our administrative colleagues adhere to the concept of concentration, expertise and love, and have created a wealth of extracurricular activities, practical internships and international learning conditions for students, and try their best to provide everyone with colorful, real and virtual experiences. College life. I believe that the graduates have completely studied and mastered the systematic management theories and methods, and are eager to prepare to practice the ideal of "rejuvenating the country through management".
management has irreplaceable value for the response to the current global public crisis, the realization of cooperation in the reconstruction of the global economic order, the advancement of the technological revolution and the industrial revolution .
In today's era, the scientific and technological revolution is booming, and the industrial revolution is approaching. However, the international political situation is strange and turbulent, the global economic structure and financial order are being reshaped, and the COVID-19 epidemic continues to plague us. The VUCA era is becoming more VUCA, that is, more turbulent, more uncertain, more complex and chaotic. I believe that since the first industrial revolution in the 1860s, management has never been as important to the evolution of all aspects of global socioeconomics as it is today.
As far as the technological revolution is concerned, only with the empowerment of management can the probability of failure of technological innovation be greatly reduced. Otherwise, failure in technological and product innovation will seriously slow down technological progress and industrial innovation. Without the scientifically designed R&D organization, governance structure, business model, market strategy and supply chain layout of scientific and technological innovation enterprises, it will be difficult to transform technology into actual productivity.
At the same time, global enterprises that have been plagued by natural and man-made disasters are facing an important test, which is the reorganization of supply chains. Without an in-depth analysis of the division and combination of supply chains, as well as the logic of gestation, growth and evolution from a management perspective, any emergency or contingency actions, fragmentary extraction or copying of certain links, will be reckless and short-sighted. Effective reorganization of the supply chain must allocate resources from the perspective of the next twenty years or even longer. This can not only ensure the smoothness of the supply chain, but also support the resilience of the supply chain under the pressure of various complex external forces.
Over the past two years, the COVID-19 epidemic has been raging around the world, and different countries and regions have adopted different response strategies. Generally speaking, wherever scientific management ideas and methods can be used to guide and organize epidemic prevention and control, the prevention and control effect will be better. Without scientific management, there will be misallocation of resources, raging viruses, and even interruption of social and economic activities, and a large number of secondary disasters, resulting in huge waste of social and economic efficiency and even loss of life. The so-called "layered increase" of prevention and control in some places just highlights the ignorance and contempt for management.
Never forget the past and be the teacher of the future. Literary writer Camus said in his famous work "The Plague": "All a person can win in the gamble of plague and life is knowledge and memory." If the whole society does not pay attention to management, does not regard management as a science, and does not regard management as a productive force as important as technology, we will go a long way. The significance and value of reflecting on management from the perspective of life cannot be overemphasized. Management has irreplaceable value in responding to the current global public crisis, realizing cooperation in restructuring the global economic order, and advancing the scientific and technological revolution and the industrial revolution.
Management concerns, such as ESG, diversity and inclusion, sustainable development, metaverse, Technology ethics has jumped beyond single institutions such as enterprises, non-profit organizations, and governments, and is oriented to technology, industry, society, and the development of the entire human race .
Since I entered Fudan University to study management in the 1980s, two former national leaders have given me profound inspirations about management. They have always urged me and pushed me to practice the scientific theories and ideals of management, determined not to Chongqing promotes the development of management education. One is Comrade Zhu Rongji, who has served concurrently as dean of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University for 17 years. He is the longest-serving dean of the management schools of mainstream universities in the country.He believes that China is very short of management experts and professionals, and lacks the understanding and attention of the whole society to management. He puts forward the idea of "rejuvenating the country through management" and promotes the development of management disciplines in universities across the country through his part-time job without remuneration. The other one is our highly respected old schoolmate Comrade Li Lanqing. When he presided over China's education and economic and trade work, he attached great importance to management work. He believes that management is the most basic driving force for effective organization and development of the entire social economy. After leaving office, he used his royalties to launch the Fudan Management Award Fund to select and commend entrepreneurs and outstanding management scholars with successful practices and theoretical summaries. He hoped that this award would become the Nobel in the field of management. Award , in order to promote the development of management theory and practice in China. He also repeatedly warned me to innovate management theories and methods based on Chinese management practices.
So, what is management? To put it simply, it means "managing people" and "governing directors". Every student who graduates from the School of Management knows very well that the essence of management is to first set goals, then allocate resources and develop capabilities in order to achieve the goals, then formulate strategies and tactics, and then implement them step by step. These processes must be guided by scientific methods.
For more than a hundred years, management has been understood, analyzed, developed and taught due to the development of industries, changes in society and the prosperity of civilization. In Taylor's day, managers were simply record-keepers, supervisors, and reporters, responsible for collecting information relevant to decision-making. Henri Fayol was the first to realize that management is an independent discipline and it is necessary to study it systematically. He believes that management is prediction and planning, organization, command, coordination and control. Drucker believes that management is the basic organ and function of organizing society, and management is a truly comprehensive science and art.
Today, management as a science is based on many disciplines; management as an art, its effective practice depends on the beliefs, cognition and experience of each manager. Issues that management is concerned about, such as ESG, diversity and inclusion, sustainable development, metaverse, and science and technology ethics, have jumped beyond single institutions such as enterprises, non-profit organizations, and governments, and are oriented towards technology, industry, society, and the development of mankind as a whole.
The beauty of business is that business is a science that “stands up to the heaven and the earth”. The "highlight" of business studies lies in its philosophical and scientific nature. The "foundation" of business lies in its practicality and artistry.
At the graduation ceremony five years ago, I specifically shared my understanding of the "beauty of business" with everyone. Five years later, I can refine it further: the beauty of business is that business is a subject that is “top of mind”.
The "top quality" of business studies lies in its philosophical and scientific nature. The reason why management has developed from accidental behavior to science is closely related to the development process of industrial revolution and technological progress. The realization of the ultimate goal of management requires the support of philosophy, ethics , mathematics, economics, psychology, sociology, and even political science and other disciplines. When an organization's leaders and decision-makers set goals, they do not always use quantitative methods to calculate gains and losses. Many goal settings are based on personal value preferences or even a belief. Only after the goals are determined can specific planning, organization, coordination, control and execution be analyzed, calculated, compared, selected and implemented using more quantitative methods. Without the support of many sciences, the scientific nature of management would be impossible to talk about. Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, said that management is about simplifying complex problems and standardizing chaotic things. I believe that management is a process of scientificizing phenomena and problems, and is essentially a process of scientific decision-making.
The "position" of business lies in its practicality and artistry. Adapting measures to local conditions, people's conditions and the times reflects managers' thorough understanding and deep grasp of management as a scientific, professional and rational tool. Mencius warned us: "It can be fast, it can be long, it can be everywhere."Truth is a conclusion drawn from in-depth exploration based on a full grasp of facts and information using professional and scientific methods. Management that is rigid, indifferent, dogmatic, divorced from reality, and pursues a single goal and result is often not truly scientific management, let alone artistic management. In practice, we must take actual scenarios and practical problems as the starting point, and we should not try to solve the problem by scratching the surface. Globally, after more than ten or even decades of training, some of the students who graduated from business schools have become big entrepreneurs and leaders of multinational companies; some have become owners of small and medium-sized enterprises or middle-level professional managers of enterprises; and some have become Becoming a government official or university scholar is inseparable from one's ambition, cultivation, experience, self-motivation and learning ability. I sincerely hope that all our graduates from Fudan School of Management can achieve their life goals.
Our Fudan School of Management is committed to cultivating leaders in all fields of society, not only leaders of enterprises, but also leaders of government organizations and other social organizations, and academic leaders. This requires us to be committed to cultivating and Develop student leadership.
Leadership is rarely innate, but most can be discovered, developed, and developed. Excellent leaders often have missions and visions. He can penetrate today's practical troubles and fogs, capture future opportunities, and organize for this strategic vision in five, ten, or even longer time dimensions. , mobilize various resources. An excellent leader is not only a self-motivated example, but also good at motivating people around him and encouraging more people to participate in the goals and causes he has set. He can know people well and appoint them on their merits. Excellent leaders must not only be benevolent and righteous, but also act kindly, embody human concern, and respond to the aspirations of the people. Here, I would also like to warn everyone that when you assume a certain leadership position, you must be wary of those who hang around you all day long and fawn over you. Historical experience tells us that such people are either selfish or ambitious. Even when the situation changes, they are the quickest to betray you.
The study and practice of management is not only a precise scientific inquiry, but also a rich artistic creation, and it is also a training of leadership. The work of the cook and the cow embodies not only skills, but also the essence of management. Management should use philosophy as the hilt and methodology as the blade to create a "savage knife" for solving problems. Whether it is as small as an individual, a group organization, the survival of the fittest of an enterprise, or as large as the survival, competition and development of a city or a country, we should let the light of science and art of management shine through.
Mr. Xu Zhuoyun said that people are cultural animals. As long as people do not exist independently from the human civilization system, they need management. We should realize that the effectiveness of management determines the operational efficiency and order of all aspects of society, the scientificity and effectiveness of complex decisions, the direction of industry and business prosperity, and to a certain extent, the fate of human society.
Graduates, I hope that in the future you will be a compassionate and responsible manager in your management practice, and a leader with a world in mind and a benevolent heart.
Graduates, you are about to embark on a long journey of life in the future. Your time as a student in the School of Management is limited, ranging from two to three years to five or ten years, but your time as an alumni is unlimited, ranging from seventy years to one hundred years. I also welcome you to have the opportunity to return to school and recharge your batteries in the future. However, the management concepts, ideas and methods you have learned at Fudan School of Management, and the learning abilities you have developed are enough to enable you to learn new knowledge and meet new challenges in various new ways in the metaverse era.
Graduates, I hope that in the future you will be a compassionate and responsible manager in your management practice, and a leader with the world in mind and a benevolent heart.You must not only achieve your personal career ideals and achieve the mission of the organization you are responsible for, but you must also mark the level of achievement of our School of Management with your level of achievement. Not only will you create material wealth, you will also interpret, create and spread positive spiritual wealth through your management practices.
Over the past year, Fudan School of Management has reorganized the culture of the School of Management through in-depth and extensive discussions among all faculty and staff. Our college's motto is "Study diligently to establish a career, be virtuous and benefit people", and our college culture is "rejuvenate the country through management, pursue truth through practice, lead innovation and change, be open and diversified". Here, I also hope that you will become the best ambassadors of the culture of Fudan School of Management. You must use your own practice and performance of integrating knowledge and action to prove that management is a science that is "upright and groundless", and it is also an art that can write dreams and create wonderful things.
At the same time, you must become evangelists of management science to spread the value and significance of management to today's world and era. While achieving your own success, change your organization, change your industry and field, and create a new future for this society!
On the journey of rejuvenating the country through management, let us embrace the truth of management, pursue the reality of management, and create the beauty of the world!
bless you! thank you all!
Professor Lu Xiongwen, Dean of School of Management, Fudan University
