Life as an exchange student at HHL, Leipzig Undergraduate School of Management

28 Sep 2009 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth

By: Anna Lindbom

I have now spent about 5 weeks here in Leipzig and I just love it. The city offers most of what I require and the people are just great. However, school has already started out tough and will include a lot of group work and late nights at the library but I came here to study as well as have fun so I am going to make the best out of it all. HHL seems to be a great opportunity for future work and since I have already made friends with most of my classmates I can only hope that this will be one of the best semesters of my studies.

This is my third semester abroad now, so I am getting comfortable with moving to and seeing new places as well as meeting new people. The experiences and relationships I make will last for a long time, however it is hard to leave people behind.

So far Leipzig has offered lots of historical buildings, pubs and clubs, and good shopping. The city is easy to access from most European cities, e.g. Berlin is only an hour away and Prague about 3-4 hours. Moreover, Leipzig is both big enough to offer what I require but also small enough to get around by bicycle. Luckily my friend let me borrow a bicycle and the others, with whom I live, bought theirs in a market.

I am renting a room in a shared flat of 4 people, where we share the kitchen and bathroom together. The house is pretty old but is located close to both school and city centre. At the moment we are about 12 exchange students, 1 MBA student and 1 MsC (master) student in the house. Further, there are some Germans and some people moving in and out. The atmosphere is really nice since we can cook and party all together.

As for the German language I regularly have German intermediate classes and try to use my German while I am out shopping. Even though there are mostly Germans in my courses I do not speak much German with them, as all lectures are in English but I am hoping to be able to use what I have learned soon. I guess it takes some time to get in to it all.

Bis spÃ¤ter,

Anna

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JIBS International Office at the EAIE Conference in Madrid

23 Sep 2009 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth

By: Peter Warda

On Wednesday September 16, 2009 I landed together with my colleague Eric Freid in Madrid, Spain. A week before our arrival, Madrid had experienced lots of sun and warm weather. With this good news, I packed my sunglasses and Eric left his jacket back in JÃ¶nkÃ¶ping. As we landed the sky turned grey and started sending raindrops down on our heads. I wonder how this could be.

The purpose of our trip was to attend the 21^st annual EAIE Conference. The European Association for International Education (EAIE) is a network that strives to link international education professionals together in order to help create a global environment where there is mobility and education for all. The conference was situated outside the core areas of the Madrid, in the Congress Hall located at Campo de las Naciones. This year a new record of participants was set as 3900 persons joined the conference.

Our stay in Madrid was quite hectic, with a tight schedule planned for the week containing lots of meetings and networking activities with staff from our partner universities and new potential partners. We learnt a lot from our stay in Madrid and it definitively helped us both to improve our competencies within internationalisation!

madrid2

The cultural spirit of Madrid, as a city, belongs among the best in the world. The cityâ€™s beautiful architecture, colourful activities and lively streets were some of its many factors contributing to this. And of course, the food was great!

We had a wonderful time in Madrid and are proud to have had the opportunity to represent JIBS at this yearâ€™s EAIE Conference.

Madrid1

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Personal networking in family businesses

21 Sep 2009 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth

By: Erhan Trsani

On Wednesday September 16 CeFEO (Centre for Family Enterprise and Ownership), GÃ¤rde Wesslau AdvokatbyrÃ¥ and the Henry and Sylvia Toft Foundation hosted a lunch seminar with Professor Bengt Johannisson at Science Park, JÃ¶nkÃ¶ping.

CeFEO is a research and learning centre at JÃ¶nkÃ¶ping International Business School, with research devoted to family enterprising and ownership.Â With its 28 researchers, large international research network and twelve years of research on family businesses, CeFEO is one of the leading knowledge centres in the world for research and education around family business and ownership.

Bengt Johannisson was one of those who established entrepreneur and small business research in Sweden and received the 2008 FSF-NUTEK Award for his research in this field. Bengt Johannisson is active at Linnaeus University and JÃ¶nkÃ¶ping University.

At the seminar, Bengt Johannisson spoke about personal networking in family businesses and how it works. His research shows that in a family business, the trust in a handshake is greater than that in a contract, and that entrepreneurs avoid dependence of banks but accept dependence of personal relations. Owners of family businesses like to be in a network of personal relations which is built on feelings an common values rather than on calculations. They enjoy making business with each other because they also enjoy the people they do business with.

In a family business there is often a reluctance to become dependent on others, but when that happens, the criteria is that those others have the right experience, are capable to do things useful to the company and have good references. Sometimes new contacts are also made because of necessity. It might be that they have many useful contacts or that there isnâ€™t any other choice. In a family business people are not exchangeable.

Bengt Johannisson also pointed out that by networking you make yourself visible and you create legitimacy which can create a lot of influence, both politically and in the business world.

The small businesses get their main strength from their local network to become internationally competitive.

Some of his research is focused around the businesses of the GnosjÃ¶ region, where it was shown that the companies had their significant partners within one-hour drive. There is a myth that GnosjÃ¶ is the region with the most newly established companies in Sweden, and that shows that GnosjÃ¶ has a good entrepreneurial reputation.

In conclusion, Professor Johannisson said that being in a family business means that you have to be interactive- not just active and that the personal network is the most important asset of the entrepreneur.

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Hubert Fromlet: Germany after the elections â€“ continued small steps

18 Sep 2009 | Posted By: JIBS Stories

Germany acted and reacted relatively well during the financial crisis. Only one major bank â€“ the mortgage bank HRE â€“ contributed to a real systemic risk. During her first term as a German chancellor, Angela Merkel was quite successful in keeping together the great coalition with the social democrats. Germany advanced structurally during Merkelâ€™s term mainly in 2005 and 2006, mostly based on smaller steps in the right direction. One major reform, however, has been hardly observed in foreign analysis: the more or less abandoned possibility of new public net debt, starting in the second half of the next decade.

Whatever the future government coalition may look like, I do not expect substantial changes from the forward-oriented policy of relatively small steps into the right direction after the general elections on September 27. However, there are still a significant number of necessary reform areas such as demographically oriented social issues, subsidies, tax structure, bureaucracy, traffic infrastructure and constitutional reforms.

When it comes to GDP growth, the bottom was reached already in the second quarter of this year. During 2009, GDP should shrink by 4 Â½% which is much less than consensus economists expected a couple of months ago. In 2010, I predict German GDP to increase in the range of 1 Â¼-1 1/2%. This is quite optimistic in relation to current circumstances â€“ but still below potential output.

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