About us
The Graduate School of Business (GSB) is part of the University of Cape Town, South Africa's oldest university, well known for its leading-edge research and outstanding international reputation.
The GSB regularly draws on the expertise within the university, giving students valuable access to teaching and research beyond the bounds of a traditional business education.
Breakwater Lodge forms part of the Breakwater Campus of the GSB and is able to offer comfortable and affordable accommodation.
Alumni achievements | Objective measures | Top faculty and research | Board of Advisers | Exchange programme | Student body | Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) | Growing the whole person | New approaches to executive development | Intensive and actionable | Entrepreneurship, leadership, communication and sustainable development | Research focus | Local and national engagement | African initiatives | Breakwater Lodge
GSB graduates are world-class and have shown that they can hold their own, irrespective of where they come from and where they operate.
Their success creates an enduring reputation for the school.
GSB alumni have achieved highly both in the public and private sectors and as entrepreneurs.
Well-known graduates include:
- Dr Iqbal Survé, Chief Executive Officer, Sekunjalo Investments
- Mr Crispin Sonn, Director of Corporate Affairs, Media & Marketing, Old Mutual
- Ms Kim MacFarland, Global Operations Officer, Investec Asset Management
- Mr Sandile Zungu, Executive Chairman, Zungu Investments Company
Confirmation of the GSB's reputation for excellence can be found in the school's consistently high ranking by the Financial Mail survey of South African MBAs.
The school is also accredited by the European Foundation for Management Development, which confirms that its programmes meet international standards. The GSB is one of only two postgraduate schools in South Africa to have this endorsement.
It is also the first tertiary institution in South Africa to join the Proudly South African campaign, which attests to its high standards.
Students are taught by a wide range of academics and practitioners drawn both from UCT and from around the world.
Many are engaged in original research that is changing the way people think about key areas in business, and are making a vital contribution to the future global competitiveness of South Africa.
The GSB has assembled an experienced Board of Advisers to help the school to navigate the complexities of the local and global environment. Board members include leading South African individuals from both business and academia, as well as top international figures.
Click here for a full list of the Board of Advisers.
The GSB has a thriving exchange programme with 23 of the world's top business schools, including:
- London Business School
- Columbia Business School
- ESADE
- Duke
- Stern
- UCLA
- Washington (Seattle)
- City University of Hong Kong
- Indian School of Business
- Cranfield.
The exchange allows MBA students to spend a term at these schools, giving them a different perspective on their studies.
The school also benefits from the influx of exchange students from partner schools, who bring with them new insights and ideas.
The student body has a high proportion of international students drawn from Africa and further afield.
Numbers vary from programme to programme, with the full-time MBA and Executive MBA programmes attracting the highest number of international students. International students significantly contribute to the mix of each class, which helps to generate lively debate in the classroom.
Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT)
The GSB is the only business school in South Africa that insists that MBA applicants sit the GMAT test as a criteria for entry. GMAT is an important international benchmark and is commonly required by all of the world's leading schools.
GSB programmes are holistic and focus on all aspects of development: emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical. Students and delegates will find that not only do they develop exceptional managerial and leadership skills at the GSB, but they emerge with a greater sense of self-awareness and an appreciation of context that will help them to operate effectively in times of change and complexity.
New approaches to executive development
Along with an elite group of business schools world-wide, the GSB is pioneering new and highly effective approaches to executive development.
The school uses a mix of systems-thinking, action-learning and scenario-thinking techniques to help individuals integrate their own prior experience, theory and workplace discourse into a coherent and actionable management philosophy.
The school's innovative Executive MBA programme and executive short courses are the primary laboratory for these processes.
Evidence emerging from these programmes strongly shows the success of this approach in equipping executives with the skills and confidence to handle complex problems in diverse organisational and socio-political environments.
GSB students are immersed in the learning experience for the duration of their time at the GSB.
The full-time MBA programme in particular - which is one of the few quality programmes internationally that runs for less than a year - compresses learning and reflection into a short and intense period, helping students to develop the ability to manage under pressure.
All GSB programmes are also designed to deliver relevant and workable ideas.
Through real workplace projects or consulting exercises, students get to apply the theory of what they have learnt to a real situation.
Entrepreneurship, leadership, communication and sustainable development
The GSB is developing new streams of learning around communication, leadership, entrepreneurship and sustainable development. This enriches the learning experience, helping to ensure that students gain the broadest possible perspective of business.
The school is the only business school in South Africa to make these streams an explicit part of its core curriculum.
The school also supports two centres that are dedicated to developing a deeper and broader understanding of these areas:
- Southern Africa-United States Centre for Leadership and Public Values
- Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Some two-thirds of the world's population lives in emerging economies, which are characterised by an unusual degree of complexity and uncertainty. The significance of these regions to international business, and to the role of business schools in equipping leaders and managers to be effective in such circumstances, is obvious.
The GSB is taking advantage of the fact that it is located in Africa to respond to these challenges. It is pioneering a new model of a business school, one that is both international in orientation and suited to countries where simultaneously there are imperatives of socio-political transformation, international competitiveness and economic development.
The school believes that it is only by taking this route that it will equip business leaders with the knowledge, depth and vision needed to steer South Africa and other developing societies to success both at home and on the international stage.
Through its research, the GSB is enlarging and articulating its understanding of the role and future of business in emerging economies. This research is laying essential foundations on which to build South Africa's international competitiveness.
Current research programmes range from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which looks at South African entrepreneurs in a global context and at what makes them successful or not, to individual research carried out by faculty and students.
A key part of the school's philosophy is to ensure the relevance of the curriculum to local and national circumstances and needs, as well as to ensure that, wherever feasible, its activities are undertaken in a way that achieves positive developmental impacts.
In the Western Cape, the school has initiated a number of projects that are designed to add value to the local economy, as well as to enrich students' appreciation of context.
Examples include:
- the work of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which is working with local businesses, ranging from township enterprises to those that are knowledge-based and internationally ambitious
- the Centre for Leadership and Public Values (CLPV), which is running an Emerging Leaders' Programme that is engaging directly with the needs of, and challenges facing, young leaders across Southern Africa.
The School, in association with Cambridge University and the National Business Initiative, is also involved in running a programme that is grappling with critical issues around sustainable development in Africa.
In the last decade, the GSB has been building its connections with institutions in the region.
The school now regularly hosts students and short course delegates from sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2002 it began a recruitment drive in East Africa.
Other initiatives include a distinctive programme for policy-makers, regulators and executives on the privatisation and regulation of public utilities in Africa.
There is also an executive development programme that is tailored to the needs of multinational companies operating in Africa.
The school also now runs its flagship executive short course, the Programme for Management Development, in Kenya once a year.
Beyond Africa, the GSB is working to form additional alliances with top-class institutions in Asia and other developing countries to complement and augment its partnerships in Africa and the industrialised world.
For more information visit the Graduate School of Business website.
Once a 19th-century prison, Breakwater Lodge, owned by UCT, offers affordable accommodation in a spectacular setting that looks out over the harbour and up onto Table Mountain.
The hotel boasts 230 bedrooms ranging from business and family suites, with options to choose from single, twin and double share shower or en-suite rooms. Other facilities at the hotel include the Time-Out Café, a la carte restaurant and the Stonebreakers self-service restaurant. Conference and function facilities are also available, with wireless hotspots and secure parking.
For more information visit the Breakwater Lodge website.