THE GLOBETROTTING GLOBALISATION GURU

When Paul Tiffany was teaching at Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration, Thailand's premier business school, one December, colleagues asked him on which beach he would be spending Christmas.

His response was that - au contraire - he would be running business seminars in Istanbul over the break.

The global demand for gritty but voguish business strategies is now big enough to keep even a workaholic ronin such as Prof Tiffany as busy as he wants to be. And that is likely to last as long as globalisation, defined as the triumph of free markets, endures, he says.

When the pace of globalisation - "the coming together on a platform of common values" - picked up after the fall of the Berlin Wall, so did the demand for people capable of decoding free markets and the US business model.

"America may notbe everybody's favourite country these days, but the world remains in awe of American business techniques," he says.

When a strategist at a recent investment seminar talked of the "esoteric"markets, Malta, Iceland and Turkey, that jolted even Prof Tiffany, who realised he had lectured in all three places in the previous 12 months. He works out of Berkeley's Haas School of Business,but will also teach this year in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur,Thailand, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland, among other places.

"America is still the fount of management concepts. I don't want to sound arrogant, but the sheer depth, breadth and flexibility of the American economy, its constant search for profit and cost reduction, makes it so dynamic, so innovative, that much of the rest of the world is still playing catch-up," he says. "The American management model has become, de facto, the global model."

The urbane Prof Tiffany is no supporter of red, raw capitalism: he regrets corporate America's reluctant environmentalism, dislikes Washington's close ties to the energy industry and admits that free market capitalism is not always pretty.

But the widening realisation that international capital favours ruthless efficiency - "China can make it cheaper" - is acting as a scourge to complacency and tradition. The European Union's elaborate social system and Asian oligopolies alike are being shaken.

"I teach at Berkeley, which means you must quote Marx at every lecture. For Marx, capitalism was modernisation. And that means standardisation and commoditisation. That's what we're seeing - the suppliers are the lowest-cost producers wherever they are."

As a management trainer in corporations as diverse as Axa, Deutsche PostWorldNet, Crisco and Siam Cement, Prof Tiffany is keenly aware that ambitious organisations can now take little for granted.

Neither the Asian family-owned company that resists restructuring, nor the "socially responsible" European firm, may be comfortable with US-style cold-bloodedness, but they will both be increasingly at risk from more "rational" competitors, he argues.

That seems, de facto, to be the attitude of businessstudents from Beijing to Boston: "They want to learn the same things. They ask the same questions. They even dress the same."

Any "American model" lecturer who ventures forth with a few bright beads of basic capitalism to wow the locals will be quickly and rudely disabused. "You have to dig deep to keep them interested. Everyone's heard about the latest management fashions before you walk through the door."

But reading about something and experiencing are not the same thing. "International strategy" may seem premature to some students outside the west. Prof Tiffany was, for example, forced to abandon a course on the management of technology and innovation ("which I really liked") in Bangkok because the students did not find it relevant.

Pedagogic ability remains vital everywhere. "How can I say this without sounding conceited? I think I teach well. I've got good stage skills, a certain flair. You can be the smartest guy on the block, but if you can't communicate . . . "

The business education industry is now so "modern" that every MBA programme syllabus looks similar and the best business schools promise high-powered networking to justify their fees. This leads Prof Tiffany to argue that executive MBA programmes are becoming the flagships for the business schools.

"The typical MBA students don't really have the seasoning and the breadth of experience to leverage the insights someone like me can provide. But when students are in their mid-30s, with 10-15 years' experience behind them, they can get so much more out of a programme," he comments.

In the knowledge economy - using the terms of the management writer Peter Drucker - corporations must nurture their most valuable asset, their people, with continuous education, he says. "This is happening. The concept of lifelong learning has really taken root in the best firms, and I think the number of people being put into EMBAs signals that."

He never puts on a special act for international audiences: "They are paying you to be yourself. As an American professor I'm very open and interactive, which is refreshing and appreciated."

Nevertheless, he adds, "You can't expect Harvard-style participation from students in places like Asia. You have to adapt. Cold calling in class can upset people and I'm much more likely to break the class into groups to tackle problems." Students like personal stories and anecdotes almost everywhere: "Get off the textbooks. They love insider-type talk. A bit of reality."

No one has discovered what triggers innovation and the subject needs careful handling in the classroom, he says. The Anglo-Saxon societies that reward individual achievement have proved fecund (Berkeley's campus holds more Nobel Prize winners than Japan), but the creative impulse could shift elsewhere.

He finds it faintly alarming that the "Dummies" series of textbooks has been such a hit in the US, which is interesting, considering he himself is the author of the popular Business Plans for Dummies, now in a dozen languages. He also wrote "a real book", The Decline of American Steel.

The purpose of a corporation is to make profit, he tells his students - "Period. End of story." - and the greatest threat to profit is competition. Business people will inherently do, therefore, whatever they can to minimise competition. Free trade must always be protected from its components.

Yet, disconcertingly, cracks are now appearing in the global free trade system. His most interesting discussions with students happen these days, he says, when he asks them to imagine a fallback position after a breakdown of free trade.

"Globalisation happened because a single countryhad the will and the patience to act as enforcer. To say 'Eat your spinach! I know you don't like it, but it's good for you!'

"In the 19th century it was Great Britain. After the second world war it has been the US. Could it be China in the future?"

Prof Tiffany likes to sober up his students by reminding them that, historically, great powers have appeared and faded like comets. He also likes reminding students that the world was more tightly knit, more globalised, 100 years ago thanit is today.

"Is Iraq the beginning of the end of American power? Can you hedge against a crash in free trade? These are interesting questions."