Learning The Value In Education

AUTHOR: Deborah Tarrant   DATE: 01.09.05   ISSUE 2, 2005
He may have spent just six years at school, but Frank Lowy, AC*, founder of the world’s largest retail property empire, Westfield Group, has an eager appreciation for the value of education.

Widely recognised as the man who managed the growth of the business he started as the co-owner of a delicatessen in Blacktown, NSW, into an operation with interests now in 129 shopping centres in four countries, Czechoslavakian-born Lowy has spent much of his lifetime compensating for the education he missed as a teenager in war-ravaged Europe.

The insight and knowledge that have powered his success have been self-taught, he says, drawn from life experience or from the voracious reading of books and newspapers. Consequently, lending his name to a world-class educational library is more than apt for the entrepreneur and tireless business leader.

Management education plays a particularly vital role in the development of business.
ILLUSTRATION: Gregory Baldwin

More than a decade ago when Mr Lowy actively demonstrated his respect for management education by making a $2 million endowment to AGSM, the library was renamed in his honour. His philanthropy enabled the library to be built in a vital era of radical technological change to become ‘a creative partner’, facilitating business leadership through the delivery of quality information access and services.

When first invited to join AGSM’s advisory council by then Dean Fred Hilmer, Mr Lowy recalls he was initially attracted to the School due to his strong belief in the importance of education. “It’s the contrast,” he says. “It’s something I didn’t have, but would have liked to have had.”

Education takes many forms, as Mr Lowy’s experience shows. However, he upholds an emphasis on the opportunities created by formal education – and he believes there’s a social responsibility to provide them. Westfield’s sponsorship of a range of educational initiatives, including a national program sending high school teachers on global study tours, has grown from its founder’s conviction.

Management education plays a particularly vital role in the development of business, according to Mr Lowy who sees it as a basis, in combination with instinct and hard work, for business success.

While attributing his personal achievements to a naturally strong work ethic, he has seen first hand the benefits of employing capable graduates, not least because his three sons – David, Deputy Chairman of the Westfield Group, Peter and Steven, both Westfield Managing Directors – all have Commerce degrees from UNSW. The university also conferred a degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa on Frank Lowy in 1999.

Mr Lowy attributes a large degree of this corporate success to the group’s focus on educating managers.

Beyond these immediate connections, Mr Lowy has watched the benefits of management education to business consistently play out through the Westfield Group, where he is Chairman. And, as the beneficiaries of management education’s impetus, members of the business community should be prepared to contribute to the cost of education, insists the Chairman.

“The fact that we are in such a great business position is testimony to the quality of the people we employ to manage the business, and the initiatives put in place to ensure that they develop the management and leadership skills required to carry out the day-to-day tasks of running it,” Mr Lowy says.

The Westfield Group was formed by merging Westfield Holdings, Westfield America and the Westfield Trust, in July 2004. The merger which combined assets, reduced borrowing costs and allowed larger transactions, made it the largest retail property group in the world by equity market capitalisation, with a total value in excess of A$44.3 billion (US$33.7 billion). Despite lagging retail industry figures, market analysts continue to tip growth for Westfield.

Mr Lowy attributes a large degree of this corporate success to the group’s focus on educating managers which now is structured as a three-tiered global leadership program:

Westfield Executive Leadership Program – aimed at COOs, Directors and equivalents. This is a joint activity between AGSM and UCLA, and will commence in early 2006;
Westfield Strategic Leadership Program – aimed at Directors, General Managers, and senior middle managers, and soon to be offered to managers globally;
Westfield Foundational Leadership Program – currently being rolled out to Directors, senior and middle managers, and high potential staff in Australia, USA, the UK, and NZ.

An annual performance review process also identifies key managers through specialised development programs, and the company runs an online learning ‘mall’, along with individual and group coaching activities. Selected senior managers undertake international exchange assignments, to enhance their knowledge and understanding of the business’ global operations.

The endowment to AGSM for The Frank Lowy Library, renamed on October 1994, forms part of Mr Lowy’s widespread philanthropic approach which aims “to make Australia a better place”, he says. His most public philanthropic act has been the foundation of the Lowy Institute for International Policy to promote awareness of international affairs and enhance connections to the global community. Mr Lowy also keenly supports the arts, sport and medical research.

The Frank Lowy Library’s overarching objective is to foster teaching, learning, research and professional growth.

The AGSM endowment was timely, fast-tracking the move of the library into AGSM’s Kensington campus West Wing and coinciding with the sudden trajectory of the information age. It enabled the development of an abundance of new electronic services, enhancing search capabilities and the ready availability of information sources. In the past decade, electronic services have changed the operating mode of the library profoundly, due to the introduction of remote access. The delivery of distance education, in particular, has been significantly altered, according to acting head librarian, Raj Saxena.

Today the Electronic Library includes online search facilities to the world's major business information databases and electronic journals, in addition to the library’s 35,000 book volumes, 900 current hard-copy serial titles and an extensive range of working papers and Australian company annual reports.

Current AGSM staff and students have access to web-based and online business services including Bloomberg Financial Markets, IBIS Business Information, and the McKinsey Quarterly premium content. Former students are also encouraged to continue use of library resources through the Alumni Plus information service providing special rate access to world leading business journals and newsletters, along with a topic alert service.

The Frank Lowy Library’s overarching objective is to foster teaching, learning, research and professional growth for members of the school community, associated organizations and the broader community, says Mr Saxena.

Like AGSM, the library meets the stimulating challenge of straddling both the academic and corporate worlds.

The library provides a school-wide amenity, known as an ‘Information Commons’ offering a learning environment with areas for individual and group learning with access to shared print and electronic resources.

Like AGSM, the library meets the stimulating challenge of straddling both the academic and corporate worlds. It provides information services to support the teaching, learning and research of the school and at the same time supports competitive intelligence, marketing, digitization, records and copyright management and other business initiatives.

As a logical extension of its educational role, the Frank Lowy Library has developed a commercial arm, the AGSM Business Information Service (BIS). “BIS presents a professional and entrepreneurial view of AGSM and the library to the external world,” says Mr Saxena. It delivers research on request, and document delivery on a fee-for-service basis, along with running several annual seminars for the library and information community.

The BIS service is an additional point of contact with alumni, and it provides library staff with work that challenges them intellectually, and fosters their research skills, reports Mr Saxena. This commercial development would seem to be in sync with the entrepreneurial spirit of the philanthropist who has enabled the library’s growth.

*Frank Lowy was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1980 and an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1988 and a Companion of the Order of Australia, the country’s highest civilian honour, in 2000.