THE ASIAN Institute of Management, once labeled as Asia's top management school, has been in turmoil the past year: The faculty formed an "association" called the AIM Faculty Association, which some say reek of a union.

The AFA filed a case demanding the school owes them over P984 million in back wages from tuition fee hikes and served notice to the Board of Governors, composed of an international body, causing embarrassment to the school officials.

After over seven years AIM decided to let go of its Asian Center for Entrepreneurship school after it deemed that the program lacked the rigors of other AIM courses. It however continues to have a one-sixth stake in the spun-off ACE-Master in Entrepreneurship, now owned equally with AIM by its core professors--Eduardo Morato, Tomas Lopez, Danny Antonio, Andy Ferreria and Jay Bernardo.

Recently it decided not to pursue its re-accreditation from the European Foundation for Management Development-European Quality Improvement System after the foreign body's initial assessment stated in its Peer Review Team (PRT) showed AIM lacking quality in several areas like research, that could affect its application.
AIM was among the first Asian graduate school of management to have received the accreditation needed to provide recognition for its graduates in Europe.
AIM Board of Trustees chair Jose L. Cuisia hosted a BusinessMonday interview with AIM president Francis G. Estrada and Dean Victoria S. Licuanan in his office. They issued a joint reply to the following questions:

Q: What is the status of the US-based (Association to Advanced Collegiate Schools of Business) AACSB accreditation of AIM? Are you pursuing accreditation with other institutions?

A: AIM continues to be accredited by AACSB (Association to Advanced Collegiate Schools of Business). AIM received accreditation by the AACSB in 2004. This accreditation expires in 2009.

EFMD-EQUIS and AACSB are the two leading international accreditation bodies for graduate schools of management. There is no accreditation organization for graduate schools of management in Asia. AIM is the only school in the Philippines (and among the first in Asia) to have been awarded accreditation by EFMD-EQUIS and AACSB. AIM continues to be a "Center of Excellence" of CHEd.

Q: After DOLE's ruling, what is the status of the AFA? I understand Prof. Victor C. Limlingan and Emmanuel A. Leyco won their cases so they are now free to go to AIM(Ed's note: The two professors were suspended last year for serving the notice of the P900-million claim to the Board of Governors. The two recently won the case against AIM in NLRC.)

A: a) The position of Professor Limlingan/Leyco has been sustained at the Arbiter level at the National Labor Relations Commission ("NLRC").

b) AIM believes that the decision was erroneously based on extremely narrow grounds, i.e. whether or not, Professors Limlingan/Leyco directly participated in the distribution of the letter to the AIM governors and trustees. Accordingly, AIM filed an appeal with the NLRC on the basis that the arbiter had overlooked a number of issues fundamental to the case such as:

i. The malicious nature of the claim.

ii. The unsubstantiated nature of the claim. To this day, the claim, remains wholly unsubstantiated, despite repeated requests for the professors to submit their basis for such a dramatic financial claim

iii. The Institute's chief financial officer has issued an affidavit certifying that no tuition increases have taken place on AIM's degree programs in the last five years.

iv. The Institute's duly audited financial statements for the applicable periods are unqualified and do not refer to any outstanding liability of the nature claimed by the professors/AFA.

v. In any event, under Philippine law, a money claim of the nature submitted is subject to a three-year statute of limitations--something that would (should) have been understood by the professors/AFA and their legal counsel.

vi. The damage done to the Institute by such an irresponsible action.

vii. The dysfunctional nature of the action of the Professors.

Their press release notwithstanding the arbiter's decision, IS NOT immediately executory. The pro forma statement in the decision's covering letter about the immediate reinstatement of a dismissed employee is inapplicable in this case. Limlingan and Leyco were not dismissed from employment. Nor did the decision refer to an illegal dismissal. Under the law, only an employee who was found to have been illegally dismissed is entitled to immediate reinstatement even pending appeal. The two professors were merely "suspended."

Prof. Limlingan, who has never been barred from entering AIM continues to enjoy that privilege. While originally enjoying the same privilege as Limlingan, Prof. Leyco is barred from entering the premises as a result of his attempts, at the start of his suspension, to agitate members of the AIM community. He is not permitted entry until the end of his period of suspension.

c) On AFA

AFA had never been recognized or certified as the collective bargaining agent of the Institute's faculty.

AFA filed a petition with the Department of Labor and Employment ("DOLE") on May 16, 2007, requesting the conduct of a certification election among the Institute's faculty members to determine the sole and exclusive representative of the faculty for collective bargaining purposes.

DOLE dismissed the petition on Aug. 30, 2007, on the grounds that members of the Institute's faculty, including the AFA members, are considered managerial employees under the law by virtue of the unique powers that they exercise and the functions they perform. Therefore, being lawfully considered managerial employees, AIM faculty members are ineligible to join, assist or form a labor organization or bargain collectively with management.

The Institute will uphold the constitutional rights of its stakeholders provided such rights are exercised in a manner prescribed by law. AFA has attempted to exercise the rights of the collective bargaining unit of the faculty as a whole when it has not met the conditions to be one.

Q: The Peer Review Team report raised some pretty serious issues on the quality of education AIM currently offers--need for more Ph.Ds and DBAs to teach and do research. What led to this decline?

A: There is no decline. From inception, AIM was committed to the development of practitioner-oriented (as opposed to "academic") managers and entrepreneurs. While retaining its commitment to practitioner-oriented research, AIM acknowledges the need to develop "domain expertise"--particularly in areas relevant to the Asian region.

Accordingly, AIM is committed to recruit younger Ph.Ds/DBAs to lead much of the desired research. Far from pointing to a deterioration in the Institute's quality of education, the PRT explicitly rated the quality of AIM's programs, teaching, students and alumni network very highly.

There has not been a decline in the number of Ph.Ds/DBAs at AIM. In fact, the current faculty composition comprises the highest number of Ph.Ds/DBAs in AIM's history. Currently, AIM's faculty consists of 41 percent doctoral holders, 22 percent doctoral candidates, and 100 percent Masters' degree holders. AIM has been hiring and will continue to hire young Ph.Ds and DBAs who can teach and produce quality research.

AIM has been the leading exponent of the case method in Asia. This highly interactive and participative pedagogy is widely appreciated in the Asian region. The Institute's practitioner orientation clearly favors research that is useful to practitioners as opposed to that aimed at academic journals. Similarly, AIM has traditionally preferred to hire faculty members with meaningful, "real world" managerial experience.

What is true is that AIM has not been able to rejuvenate its faculty at the pace that it should have. That is what we are trying earnestly to change.

Q: Why is there a lack of international faculty in AIM?

AIM's relative lack (9 percent of the Institute's full-time faculty are non-Philippine nationals) has been driven primarily by economics and an inadequately decisive commitment to regionalization.

Capable/qualified international faculty would generally be significantly more expensive than their Filipino counterparts --simply because of existing compensation differentials.

AIM has hired a number of senior, non-Filipino management practitioners as adjunct faculty and the number of visiting faculty has increased. AIM has also begun implementing faculty exchanges.

Q: Why was there a "paucity of quality research" as pointed out in the PRT? What is usually the nature of these researches? Would not the ME program have provided a rich source of research into real life businesses in the country?

A: As practitioners, AIM faculty have always favored teaching and consulting to academic research (and publication of the same in "refereed journals") of the nature currently favored by international accrediting agencies like EFMD.

The ME program does not address that requirement.

The Institute's strategic plan acknowledges the importance of Asia-relevant content and therefore, research, beyond cases if AIM is to:

a) continue providing its students the best preparation to operate in a rapidly changing Asia,

b) continue to be at the forefront of graduate management education in Asia, and

c) build upon a sustainable comparative advantage in a changing business school environment.

Research in the past was almost entirely led by individual initiatives ("faculty champions") in their areas of special interest. AIM's strategy aligns the Institute's research agenda with the Institute's over-all strategy. It is designed to produce the relevant "new content" and build the desired domain expertise.

(To be continued)