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Media Release

June 9, 2004

Denmark a doorway to peak international business experience

Seven highly successful MBA students from UniSA are about to set off on an educational experience in Denmark that will change their lives.

And instead of facing classrooms of eminent professors, it is highly likely that some of their teachers will be world leaders – people like the Secretary General of the EC, financiers from major world banks or human resource managers from big brand international companies.

The European Summer School for Advanced Management (ESSAM), which this year runs in Aarhus, Denmark, from June 20 to July 3, has been established to give MBA students from around the world a pressure-packed experience of international business.

Attended by 120 students, it has people clamouring for places, with up to 600 applicants each year. The UniSA contingent includes high achieving MBA students who are in the final stages of their degree program. They represent seven places out of only 20 allocated to the Australasian region.

UniSA’s MBA program director Bob Gilliver says the Summer School gives students one of the closest simulations of an international business environment they will experience outside the working world.

“The program includes two core elements – intercultural experiences and their implications for management and strategic management in an EU perspective – and then a team based exercise to solve a real business problem for a real Danish company,” Gilliver says.

“From day two the students are allocated to small teams – so they are working side by side with people from different nations and cultures on an industry-based project for a Danish company that may be looking at setting up trade or product development in another country in Europe or indeed anywhere else in the world.

“It is a challenge on many levels – and it is not unusual for people to face a whole host of problems beyond the strategic business issues. It is high pressure – students work 24-7 on their project and by the end of the session as a team they have to present a progress report to the managerial group from the company they are working with, which is later refined by email collaboration between team members when they have returned home.

“The challenges are intellectual but they are also personal and many people come away from the experience understanding that the collaborations across culture have been as much a part of the learning as anything else.”

In 2003 UniSA’s International Graduate School of Management became one of the eight educational partners in ESSAM. This year’s group of seven UniSA students, which includes key people from the wine, allied health, mining and e-commerce industries, will be the first from South Australia to attend the program.

“What is significant about this for Australia is that we are able to take some of our most promising business leaders and put them into an environment that tests and teaches them about internationalisation – about what it takes to build successful international business and fruitful international relationships.

“These are the vital skills they will bring back home. This kind of educational experience is rare and it is something the students will be able to use as a platform in their own business spheres. But it also gives them kind of expertise that is of benefit to the whole state.”

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