New Oriental

: Look for hope in the hopeless situations, after all life can have splendour

Thursday 29 September 2011, by Leynaud Coline, Ros Raphaelle, Zhu Bruce 祝春海

6 inspired

Why do we have chosen this company?

We have decided to choose a Chinese company as we had the opportunity to be an international team. New oriental appeared to us as a dreaming company. We also thought that it was interesting to illustrate an ethical and profitable Chinese company to go against stereotypes.

a) The main facts about the activities of the company.

New oriental is a company, which is providing help to students who want to have a competitive advantage for their future. In fact, the company has been starting with teaching English language but it has been growing since the creation in 1993 by Mr Michael M Yu. They have now a wide range of educational programs as POP kids program and summer camps for the children who are more than 3 years old within English, Chinese, math, music and art. In addition, the company offers tutoring courses, for the older children from twelve to eighteen years old, in English, Chinese, maths, physics, chemistry, biology, politics, geography and history. Furthermore, students can take entrance exam preparation for the college, or prepare exam like TOEFL, TOIC or the SAT. They have also trainings for the adults, with the overseas tests, domestic tests, other languages (Japanese, German, etc. even French), Adult English and Vocational training. New oriental teach also on the Internet, it is a very modern company, always looking for the success of students.

They have created since 2002 a private school in Beijing, which has the capacity of 4000 students and also a pre-school. They wanted to make an elite school for the most motivated students, to offer them the possibility to go in the best universities in China, and overall in the world.

b) The ethical challenges this company is addressing.

New oriental has to face many ethical challenges.
Indeed, in 2001, Educational Testing Service (ETS) sued New Oriental for illegally reproducing, using and selling their past exam questions in teaching since 1997. The way New Oriental reacts was proactive. They decided to face the problem as well as supporting the policy process. Therefore they recognized the fact that they wanted to provide the best tests for their native students, and offering the same high level as abroad. This explains their behaviour to select the most relevant test questions from a foreign educational testing basis. New oriental paid the fine without loosing credibility according to its clients. This had a positive effect on New oriental company which saw an internal motivation growing to achieve an even higher level for the students. They improved their organizational and operational process.
Another ethical challenge concerns the employments that it generates. The number of teachers is in constant growth.
As Chinese are more and more competing with the students of abroad, this for the admission in excellent universities for example, New Oriental?s challenge is to provide as easily as possible full-time education beyond the traditional one available in China. The demand is therefore growing as quickly as the demographic grows. One of the rule and strong value of the company is to keep quality in their service. They have the challenge to attract each time more effective teachers and parental support. More they will have demand more they will be able to ask for more funding support and offer a wider range of education and teaching.
The company has many ethical values related first to education. Everyone is in right to be taught and that is why they develop more schools and libraries around the country. Each tutoring or learning session is not just for one test preparation but is also of respect and share of values.
In order to provide the best and cheapest books and educational materials, some partnerships have been established between them and Cambridge University Press. Indeed, they develop and distribute localized versions of selected educational materials in China bearing both their logo and the one of New Oriental. By continuing in this way they will help Chinese social integration in the world and avoid as much as possible social and educational exclusion beyond students.

c) What makes you believe this company is really ethical and why you trust it.

There are several reasons that make us believe NEW ORIENTAL is really ethical.
Firstly, the product that New Oriental provides, is a comprehensive range of educational services, this is an ethical business as it helps help a lot of people in China to have access to education and to open on the world and have good teachings. They help Chinese to realize their dreams.
Secondly, as a public company, New Oriental shows a strong responsibility in the education of Chinese students, this by denoting millions of money to help people, by building schools and teaching centres as well as providing books and other educational materials, especially those students from poor families.
Thirdly, NEW ORIENTAL is a listed company with opening account; this makes the company more or less transparent concerning its finances. We can affirm that it is a healthy company not only by helping people and being ethical but also by being profitable. This creates beyond the company a climate of confidence between its employees and itself, but also with the clients and students? families. We do trust therefore the company.
To start with, it has a very good brand image what makes this company a success is also his CEO. This is one reason it make us trust New Oriental. He is indeed a symbol of the Chinese dream and remains a model for them. We also trust this company as we can observe the concrete actions that they do since its creation. They started with just one centre of education and now they spread out in China, also in countryside in order to give an access for education even for poor people.
In every centre and school, we also appreciate the fact that the company kept the traditional Chinese educational values even if they met an important growth and development on a short period of time.

d) The possible challenges facing the company in the future and how you think this company may improve.

One main challenge is to maintain their leadership position in education and internalization of the Chinese. This population is indeed in a demographic growth as well as the country?s economy. Therefore the students must be continuously more aware in foreign languages and education to open them to the world, and enter the international market. This is also in order to impact directly on their social and ethical issues that persist in China.
Moreover, in the future one challenge could be to enrich the content of these books through additional partnerships. In this way they are ethical by not either paying, nor selling the books to the students in China and guarantee a good quality of teaching. The company also need to continue maximizing the life cycle of their educational materials.
In the future, the objective of the company is to extend its centres in more places over China. We hope that the company will keep the same convictions and values.

Bibliography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_Minhong
http://english.cri.cn/6909/2009/10/26/2021s524924_2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Oriental
http://english.neworiental.org/

Start a new discussion

3 Discussions / 3 Messages

  • New Oriental 4 October 2012 at 17:14 , by 卢宇宸

    I think this international group chose a really well-known company with lots of attractive stories. But I`m afraid it`s hard for me to consider this project as a nice one.

    My negative view starts from the first sentence of this report. The group express the reason to choose New Oriental because they " had the opportunity to be an international team". How would this to inspire the reader? I think the purpose of a project like this is to share something interesting, touching and ethical to the receiver. The following part about the facts about the company is also lack of logic. I believe to list this information from the more important to less important.

    According to section c, the group was trying use a clear structure. But I can`t understand why there is a "to start with" in the end of this section. Meanwhile ,the New Oriental in capital letter randomly really confuses me.In my point of view, even short, the last section may be the clearest part of this report. The solution also seems to be practical.

    To sum up, I think this group chose a nice target, but didn`t provide a persuasive report. With more work of material selection and structure organization, I believe they will make it better in the next time.

    Given by Vivian Lu

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University, IMBA

    1121209256

  • New Oriental 4 October 2012 at 18:09 , by Jason

    Authors are inspired by the company of New Oriental for some reasons shown as follows:

    1. great motivation
    As a company for education services, its motivation is to help more people to improve their English skills. So that they can pass the examinations, get opportunities for overseas study. Especially as more and more companies just take maximizing their interest as the only objective nowadays, companies with the motivation for improvement of our society just like New Oriental seems more valuable comparably.

    2. proactive attitude to ethical challenges
    As is sued by Educational Testing Service (ETS), New Oriental reacts proactively instead of avoiding. They just decided to face the problem as well as supporting the policy process. As a result, they recognized that they needed to provide the best tests for their native students and offer the same high level as abroad. Just this kind of positive attitude help New Oriental improve their organizational and operational process and achieve an even higher level.

    3. social responsibility
    As a public company, New Oriental shows a strong responsibility in the education of Chinese students. They devoted themselves to helping people, building schools and teaching centers as well as providing books and other educational materials for especially those students from poor families.

    4. Credibility
    New Oriental is a listed company with opening account; what creates a harmony climate in the company where there will be less conflicts among its employees. What’s more, it will get more support from more parents and students .
    CEO of the company, who indeed is a typical success inspiring all other people, also increases the credibility of the company.

    Totally said, such a company with great motivation, social responsibility, credibility and proactive attitude to ethical challenges, inspires all people indeed.

  • New Oriental 5 October 2012 at 11:50 , by hu junya

    New Oriental is very clear about responsibility, that is, lead the students to open mind and emphasize the importance of individual struggle and value. I would like to add several new challeges New Oriental is facing now.

    First, after Wall Street listed, New Oriental is faced with the risk of dilutted education spirit, culture and teaching quality. Because capital shall abide by many rules, they can’t do whatever thay want to as at the start phase. The harsh financial and performance pressure from Wall Street has increased the CEO’s anxiety and fatigue.Capital characteristic is chasing interest, but education characteristic is pursuing value system. The connection to combine both aspects is significant but tough.

    Second, the success of the new Oriental originally restrict them in multiple fields of development. because at the begining they take a whole brand strategy without sub-brand strategies,thus to split sub-brands to compete with classified market appears particularly difficult.

    Third, the business mode to innovation is another thorny issue. The CEO realized that to maintain sustained growth, the present development pattern may not longer be applicable, especially when compared with emerging on-line schools.

    Forth, the challenge is how to manage increasing staffs who are high-educated "knowledge workers".

Location: Beijing (CHINA)

Sector: educational and consultant services

Official website: http://english.neworiental.org/

Key figures:

New oriental has more than eleven million students all over China.
The company has locations in 54 schools, in these 487 learning centres. There are selling books in 29 new oriental bookstores and in 5,000 parts of bookstores. They have 11,700 teachers in 47 cities. To finish they are 6,7 million of the Internet learning users.
The company is public. They earned more than 77 millions of dollars in 2005, employing 16,182 people.

Nbr. visits: 874

Nbr. inspires: 6