As businesses and management education extend their global reach, educators worldwide will face serious challenges maintaining high quality, hiring enough professors, and keeping up with a host of issues from changing demographics to a growing emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility, according to a new report by the Global Foundation for Management Education.

The report identifies key economic and business trends, as well as developments in management education in various regions of the world. It then recommends steps business schools, businesses, and government can take to deal with those challenges.

“It is essential that we recognize and build upon the mutual dependencies of businesses, governments, and business schools,” said Howard Thomas, chairman of the foundation and dean of the Warwick Business School, in Britain. “This report helps each of us to rise above our regional interests and invest in management education for success in this rapidly changing and integrating global environment.”

The foundation is a joint effort of the world’s two largest business-school associations: AACSB International (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) and EFMD (the European Foundation for Management Development).

Among the global trends the report examines are advances in information technology and an emerging emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility. Education issues include the shortage of business-school faculty members with doctorates and the increasing diversity of degree programs.

The foundation’s Web site also includes profiles of management education in more than 50 countries. —Katherine Mangan