The dramatic spread of COVID-19 has disrupted lives, livelihoods, communities, and businesses worldwide. The collapse in global economic activity has ruptured the traditional arteries for school operations and international study, travel, and exchange. Yet, the need for international and interdisciplinary contact has never been greater. In this sense, the internationalization of business schools in the post–COVID-19 era will have two layers of new meanings.

Robert K. Yin has written in a reference book that “case studies are the preferred strategy when, how or why questions are being asked. When the investigators have little control over events, and when the focus is on contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context” (Yin, 1994, p. 1). When the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) asked me to write a crisis-management chapter on the issues involved in the strategy of business schools in order to cope with the consequences of COVID-19, I decided to focus on a particular issue to which my professional practice brings me daily, namely, the leadership of a newborn management education institution. Indeed, it seems to me that these two fields of crisis management and of launching an academic institution have in common, in an exacerbated way, to use Yin’s formula, the fact that they constitute fields in which “the investigators have little control over events” and are examples of a “contemporary phenomenon.” In addition, the aim of my chapter is to detail the rationale for the project and describe how our schools faced the challenge of the COVID-19 crisis – in other words, the “how” and “why” questions. Therefore, structuring this chapter around a case study was an obvious choice.

The year 2020 will be remembered as a moment of omni-crisis at the intersection of public health, politics, and economics. A global pandemic on a scale not seen in a century struck tens of millions and left a wake of devastation. Governments around the world responded in divergent ways, from competent and well organized to chaotic and inept, with predictable consequences for their citizens. Their economies suffered the consequences as well, with many facing skyrocketing rates of unemployment and business failure. Those at the low end of the income spectrum fared the worst: in the United States, employment in the foodservice industry dropped from 12 million to 6 million in a single month, leaving the equivalent of the population of Denmark out of work.

For business leaders in market economies, the sanctity of national law for setting their respective governance frameworks is diminishing. It is giving way to global forces and the activities of international institutions, alliances, and public opinion, spurred on by the laws of climate and nature. Previously, company leaders could have confidently said that they act in the interests of the company and its shareholders, that the company obeys applicable national laws that govern its activities, and that the company acts ethically and responsibly, but beyond that, they had wide discretion when carrying out their duties. Today, extraterritorial forces are redefining many aspects of corporate life and the agendas, roles, and responsibilities of corporations, their leaders, and governing boards.

The first business schools, which appeared in the nineteenth century in Europe and then began to proliferate as the Industrial Revolution spread to the United States – notably in the early years of the last century – were set up to train the cohorts of managers needed to fill executive positions at companies (Kaplan, 2014). Their guiding principles can be traced to the Greek philosophical concept of techne, a term referring to technical education in classical Athens (Parry, 2020).

The COVID-19 crisis was a perfect storm for an independent business school like International Institute for Management Development (IMD). On the positive side, we started the crisis on the wings of a substantial revenue-growth momentum – 2020 was going to be our best year ever by a mile! On the negative side, more than 80 percent of our revenues come – or rather, came then – from nondegree programs requiring one party to travel to another, overwhelmingly across national borders. Within the 20 percent of revenues coming from degree programs, more than half came from the executive MBA (EMBA) program, which also requires extensive international travel for students. In other words, as of February 2020, more than 90 percent of our revenues were suddenly at very severe risk.

The expectations of business school and management faculty students go well beyond obtaining a degree and are defined around four essential elements:

• Acquiring theoretical and technical knowledge in the field of management and leadership

• Learning a manner of approaching problems and a mindset

• Developing a professional network with fellow program members (given that business school graduates are destined for a career in the field) and potentially entering the social circles of leaders once the degree is earned

• Social recognition of intellectual potential associated with an aptitude for accomplishment in action

The crisis has revealed challenges of business models for business schools. At the same time, as history shows, institutions of higher education are resilient organizations with a high adaptive capacity. Hence, responses to the crisis range from strategic continuity to disruption caused by financial impediments. It can be assumed that a new landscape of schools and programs will emerge.

In order to investigate the adaptive structures of business schools, this chapter has three objectives:

• Analyze the main uncertainties of the future.

• Present different scenarios of adaptive structures of business schools.

• Develop models of business schools in the future.

On February 14, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in Africa was recorded in Egypt, North Africa (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020), and by May 13, 2020, the virus had spread through all 54 sovereign African states. Following this, similar to countries in other parts of the world, almost all countries on the continent established measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. These included the closure of land borders, flight cancellations, travel restrictions, and school shutdowns that affected universities as well as business schools. Only a few business schools on the continent were able to transit seamlessly to online teaching as a result of several factors, which are discussed later in the chapter. For the majority, there were major disruptions to their activities as teaching effectively stopped, with negative implications both for the learners and the schools concerned. In this chapter, I discuss the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business schools in Africa, the challenges faced by business schools, the risks and opportunities arising from the crisis, and the changes that have to occur in business schools across Africa for them to remain relevant.

E. Morin developed thinking on how important it is for the social sciences to study crises.1 In particular, he showed that a crisis of endogenous origin reveals the tensions and contradictions in a social system that led to the crisis occurring – that determined it from within. Also, beyond its analysis (its course, its eventual means of resolution, its consequences), studying an endogenous crisis helps better understand the social system in which it occurs.