Graduate School of Business Administration

The Graduate School of Business Administration, also known as the Keio Business School, was established in 1978. The same year, we replaced our one-year graduate program with a two-year MBA degree program, the first in Japan. Since then, we have nurtured contemporary business leaders through our practice-oriented education using the case study method, in line with Keio’s founding philosophy of practical learning. In 1991, we added a doctoral program to train professional researchers in business administration.

Keio Business School has awarded approximately 2400 Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degrees over the last 30 years. The number of KBS graduates exceeds 3000 when the doctoral program and the one-year program that was offered for nine years prior to the MBA program are included. Our current students come from a variety of backgrounds, range in age from mid-twenties to late thirties, and devote two years to full-time study in a highly competitive but friendly and collaborative environment.

Japanese businesses are seeking new business models and management styles for further growth in the current economic climate. At the same time, people’s values and the regulatory environment are changing dramatically, creating a growing need for professional management skills to cope with such changes. In these circumstances, Keio Business School has adopted a new educational objective: “the development of business leaders capable of pioneering innovation in the new age.”

In the coming age, innovative leaders must have a deep understanding of the mechanisms of the economy and know how to navigate a company to success even in less-than-ideal economic conditions. They must also possess the confidence to stay the course despite short-term trends and market vicissitudes, and the judgment to know what will change and what will not change. They need to be able to boldly chart a new course when needed. We believe that leaders with such insight and abilities will enable constant innovation in today’s rapidly changing business environment.

In order to develop innovative leaders, Keio Business School revises its curriculum every year to expand core courses, update specialized courses, and reconsider topics from an international perspective. The current curriculum has three main components: core courses, specialized courses, and seminars.

Core Courses

The core courses cover eight major management areas and are designed to help students develop their management skills in general. These courses are mandatory for first-year KBS students.

One of the key features of our program is that the case study method is fully utilized in the core courses. The value of the case study method is that each student learns the basics of business administration, acquires knowledge in various fields essential to management, and learns to think logically and make decisions through analyzing actual business cases from various time periods, regions, and industries. This method also helps students to acquire basic capabilities needed in business; making decisions, developing good judgment, taking quick action, exercising will, and taking leadership.

Specialized Courses

With “cooperation” as the keyword, we offer a variety of specialized courses.

Academia: Our specialized courses reflect the latest research results of our faculty members in each academic field and also utilize case materials that we develop specifically for each field.

Society: In addition to lectures and case-method sessions, we invite prominent and innovative business leaders to give lectures and conduct seminars and field-study-oriented programs on topics such as corporate analysis, customer analysis, and consulting. We also provide field courses which primarily deal with such field studies.

Overseas institutes: Keio Business School has created mutual credit exchange programs with 29 top-ranked business schools overseas (as of April 2011). We also invite faculty from overseas business schools to give lectures and workshops. Every year, KBS students study at overseas partner institutions and students from those institutions study at Keio Business School. In addition, we launched one double-degree program with a leading business school in Europe in 2009 and another one in 2010.

Other graduate schools of Keio University: We launched a joint-degree program with the Graduate School of Medicine, in which Keio Business School MBAs can obtain a master’s degree in medicine in as little as one year by completing specialized courses commonly offered in both graduate schools. We plan to further enhance such cooperation with other graduate schools in the future.

These specialized courses will enable students to concentrate their efforts in the specific fields of their own interest, learn advanced knowledge, techniques, and theories in various forms, and enhance their ability to innovate.

Seminars

Each second-year student of Keio Business School attends seminars offered by our faculty members. The seminars, which consist of a supervising faculty member and seven or fewer students, provide students with in-depth experience of the process of identifying issues, analyzing them, and then devising potential solutions. Students will spend almost one year completing their master’s thesis under the guidance of the supervising faculty member. In this process, they will learn to plan, act, think logically, and acquire knowledge in specialized fields. These new skills will help students to contribute to society as MBAs upon graduation.

A Closer Look

As globalization continues to accelerate, the need for managers capable of leading in such times is becoming acute. The MBA program at KBS has set two primary objectives for our internationalization efforts.

Our first objective is to strengthen the double-degree programs we have established with ESSEC in France (2009) and with WHU in Germany (2010). In these programs, enrolled students study at both KBS and the partner school for two years (two and one-half years for KBS students at WHU) to earn master’s degrees from both KBS and the partner school. The students work hard; in addition to taking a full course load, they must obtain language skills and adapt to another culture. Though it is demanding, KBS and our partner schools consider it to be an outstanding opportunity for our students. This double-degree program provides a unique MBA education in Japan. In parallel with the initiatives for the double-degree programs, KBS is also enriching its short-term program for the international mutual credit exchange, mentioned above, with nearly 30 partner institutions. Our international reach includes Asia, for which a new series of field-study courses are being organized.

Our second objective is to gain international accreditations by passing the quality assessment tests administered by the organizations that govern higher education. These accreditations are crucial for both KBS and our alumni as we cooperate with—as well as compete with—prestigious business schools overseas. In 2000, KBS was the first institution to be awarded the AACSB accreditation by the U.S.-based quality assessment organization AACSB International, and has had the accreditation renewed twice since that time. KBS also obtained the EQUIS accreditation from the European organization EFMD in 2011, also the first to do so in Japan. As the only Japanese business school with both AACSB and EQUIS accreditations, our educational and research activities meet global standards. Attaining these accreditations, however, is not an end in itself; it is a good opportunity to review our ideals. We are determined to enhance the level of our education and research in order to nurture business leaders in international society.

In 2012, KBS will celebrate the 50th anniversary of our founding; the original Keio Business School, launched in 1962, offered executive seminars. In these fifty years, we have not wavered from Keio’s spirit of practical learning; we have strived to fully utilize the case method and to continually update our education and research methods in our efforts to develop the business leaders of the future. We have also worked incessantly to improve and update our two-year master’s program, three-year doctoral program, and seminars for business professionals to ensure that our graduates will be at the forefront of change not only in Japan, but in the global economy.

KBS graduates are the next generation of business leaders. If you see yourself as one of these future leaders, please get in touch. We’d like to learn more about you.