Building a Functioning Society through Peter F. Drucker's Legacy of Management as a Liberal Art

About CMLA

Welcome to The Centre for Management as a Liberal Art (CMLA).

The Centre for Management as a Liberal Art (CMLA) is a joint initiative of The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong (HSUHK) and MLA Academy. Its mission is to promote the legacy of Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management. In particular, the philosophy, principles and practices of Management as a Liberal Art (MLA).

Drucker advocated that management should be regarded as a liberal art, that is, a discipline that integrates knowledge from various fields of human inquiry and applies it to the practice of managing organizations and society. Drucker also envisioned that management should aim at creating a Functioning Society, that is, a society that fosters social responsibility, innovation, and human dignity across all three sectors: business, government, and civil society.

The CMLA seeks to advance this vision by providing high-quality education and applied research on leadership in management, with a focus on the comparative analysis of Western and Oriental cultures and their implications for effective management.

Our Mission

The establishment of the CMLA at HSUHK is in response to the current challenges. It will try to fill the gaps in management education, create value for society and help maintain its sustainability. Its activities will be based on Drucker’s MLA philosophy, mingled with Eastern and Western cultural contexts. We hope that the multi-disciplinary approach of MLA learning could prepare our future leadership with the capabilities to navigate the many uncertainties we now face.

Our Vision

To enable individual achieving, organization performing and society functioning through the learning and practice of Management as a Liberal Art as envisioned by Peter F. Drucker

Our Values

Compassion
Compassion is the act of transforming love towards others into actions that are beneficial to the well beings of others.
Integrity
Integrity is the ability of differentiating right from wrong, and follows the right path.
Truth
Truth initiates evolvement of human and the world. Sometimes truth appears as a tangible form; sometimes it hides away from physical eyes and senses, and lives in the belief of human. The quest for, as well as exploration and recognition of truth, is the spiritual activity that is uniquely human, and differentiates human from other species. Human also grow and develop in the process.

Scope of Services of CMLA

We offer MLA series of seminars, leadership and management courses for entrepreneurs, professionals, and executives for both their personal developments and organizational growth.

Services Overview

The Objective of the Centre for Management as a Liberal Art (CMLA) is to enhance management education with liberal arts perspectives.

To carry out this mission, the CMLA aims to develop Management as a Liberal Art (MLA) management education materials, to offer research reports for companies to consider, to provide conferences and seminars for knowledge transfer related to MLA, and to award deserving companies in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area some MLA recognitions. This is in line with the values of responsible management and liberal arts education promoted by The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong (HSUHK).

The CMLA will offer action-oriented learning rather than focusing only on research. We will mainly conduct activities including, but not limited to, MLA case studies, advocacy and teaching. MLA education, teaching and research, include but are not limited to the following topics: leadership and its development, social ecology and cross-disciplinary learning, ESG practices, innovation and entrepreneurship, managing NGOs for high social impact, etc.