Aim: To improve the mobility of graduate management students by offering short-trips to spend time at partner schools studying in the areas of social entrepreneurship and sustainable development.
We provide below some snippets from the reports and case studies written by students engaged in the exchange programme. These snippets provide a good summary of the learning that took place from the exchange activity.
Thanks to Asia link, I not only learn a lot of knowledge from this exchange school, but also experience the Spanish culture in the normal living, which is equally valuable, in terms of trans-culture exposure.
The family business structure from Spain is going to be a good mirror to look at and hopefully will help in understanding the Chinese situation better.
As an organization like CEIBS, we can reduce our resource waste in many fields. For example, at IESE, school installs double-side-capable printers at library and computer center, and encourages students to print files on double sides. At the same time, there is a Responsible Business Club, which devotes to the eco-friendly consumption at campus. They post the reminders and tips beside the printers to remind schoolmates to print with double-side capable printers, persuade administration to set up water fountains to reduce the consumption of bottled water.
The diversity issues between the continents as well as the globalization issues on the other side for the next business leaders made the school’s curriculum of Cross Cultural Management an open floor to sincerely discuss the differences and similarities between different cultures. It was a very useful course in order to prepare ourselves and to learn on what to expect in terms of different styles of business between the cultures in today’s globalized economy.
CSR in Global Supply Chain requires all groups to do a paper concerning CSR. Now I would like to introduce our mini-project because I learnt many useful concepts and the application of the frameworks through the study and research on the case, and working with my group members- one Danish girl and one American girl. We found an interesting topic about how L’Oréal’s acquisition of The Body Shop can have a synergy effect on L’Oréal’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts.
I came to know that CSR is not only emotional-driven by doing the right things, but also institutional and instrumental-driven, that it is a promising business which can bring enormous financial and intangible benefits for corporations’ sustainability development. In terms of CSR implementation in China, most of the Chinese companies nowadays tend to be more supplier-oriented in global supply chain.
Educating the Chinese consumers to improve their understanding and supporting to “Sustainability” becomes important. Only when the customers are aware about the sustainable issues and add value to companies’ ethical behavior, at the same time, require social responsibility when buying products and willing to pay more for that, companies will have the incentive to do CSR.
As sweeping private sector initiatives go, formalized CSR programs and policies are a relatively young concept. So, also, is the existence of significant foreign direct investment in China by Spanish firms. Hopefully by bringing these two subjects together at such an early stage, we have achieved a glimpse of what the future will look like should Spanish firms in China continue on their current course.
There are many pitfalls to fall into if you come with knowledge of how to manage a business in Denmark and then try to apply it to China. Also it is other aspects that you have to focus on when starting a business here, as the conditions are very different from country to country. The procedures and regulations when starting your own business in China is very different from Denmark and many hypotheses were confirmed of disproved throughout the class.
But a very positive add-on compared to having had the same courses in Denmark is that most of them have had this extra dimension of focusing on China. No matter if it was Consumer Behaviour, Game Theory & Strategic Marketing or Cross Cultural Management. And getting the view and the opinions from the Chinese students when discussing issues concerning China is very insightful and it leads to many thoughts and reflections that I would for sure not reach by just discussing them in class in Denmark or with other international students. First of all, it teaches me something about my own way of looking at China (and Denmark) and secondly it teaches me something about cultural differences.
In line with social entrepreneurship, I took the course entitled “The Poor and the Private Sector.” Though I knew some about the poor as I see it all around in the Philippines, it is interesting to hear how international students, particularly Europeans and those from first world nations, view poverty and OUR role in it.
I had the notion of the social enterprise was focused on more than one bottom line with the aim of differentiating itself through a brand strategy. However, as a result of the SE-course I now understand that a social enterprise is not about increased brand value. Instead it is about changing the world on a local scale where there is an unsatisfied need that local governments cannot handle.
