Minutes of the IFSAM 2005 Council Meeting,

(held on 24^th and 25^th September 2005 in Bloemfontein – South Africa)

Present Prof. Joan van Aken, Prof. Sue Bruning, Prof. Juan-José Durán, Prof. Ursula Hansen, Prof. Shunji Kobayashi, Prof. Rolf Lundin, Prof. Klaus Macharzina, Prof. Dirk Moosmayer, Prof. Keiji Natsume, Prof. Yvon Pesqueux, Prof. Ronél Rensburg, Prof. Nick Terblanche, Prof. Denise Rousseau, Prof. Eric Simon, Prof. Yoshiji Suzuki, Prof. Pieter Terlouw, Prof. Wolfgang Weber, Prof. Zhang Yang (+ Colleague-ik heb geen visitekaartje, Pieter misschien?), Hèla Molijn (notes)

Apologies, Prof. Alan Brown (ANZAM), Prof. R.S. Steinthorssen, (BAM), Prof. Su Dongshui (CNEMA), Prof. Chen Zhicheng (CAMS)

First the host of this meeting, Ronél Rensburg from SAIMS, welcomes all participants to South Africa. The welcome is followed by the opening of the IFSAM Council meeting by Wolfgang Weber, President of IFSAM, with a thankful gesture towards SAIMS for hosting this meeting.

2. Introduction and confirmation of the agenda

No new items are mentioned for the agenda, it is confirmed.
As the agenda is quite heavy, Wolfgang Weber mentions that some discussions might be interrupted in an attempt to handle all mentioned items.

A short introduction of all present council members follows.

3. Confirmation of the minutes from the IFSAM Council meeting 2004 held in Gothenburg (July 3 and 4, 2004)

Section 10 on page 7, will be changed into work together, “strong force”, or impact

Page 17, put the document by the minutes (corrections), and change youngsters in young associations. The minutes are accepted with the above mentioned changes.

4. Business arising from the minutes NOT elsewhere included in this agenda.

The JSBA representatives would like to submit a qualification criterium concerning the acceptation of papers. JSBA also suggests that the international panel should be established out of national chairs.

The Japanese papers will only be accepted when sent through a member of JSBA.

Furthermore, there is a misunderstanding about the mentioned national chairs for Japan concerning the IFSAM World Conference in Berlin. To sort out this out, contact will be made with the Japanese within a very short term.

This item will be discussed later in this meeting, at item 14.

5. Report on the progress towards the 8^th world congress in 2006, to be held in Berlin

Klaus Macharzina reports.

The brochure concerning the call for papers is distributed amongst the IFSAM Council members.

The location of the conference is changed, it will now take place at the Free University of Berlin. Ursula Hansen of Hannover University is in charge of the social program.

The organizing committee, of which three members are present at this meeting, is looking for special funding. The Schmalenbach Business Review, in the brochure mentioned as track (no. 7) is a good example to see what arrangement are made to achieve funding.

The committee meets approximately every 2 months, and discovered that organizing a conference of this size with only 8 organisational members demands very intensive efforts. This leads to the explanation of the importance of nomination of national chairs . The IFSAM Council members are asked for their support in this matter. So far only 4 or 5 organisations reacted to this request, and in order to arrange a perfect review including a large quality dimension, more help is needed. The Council Members are asked to contact the presidents of their organisations to nominate national chairs.

This issue will also be further discussed at item 14 of the agenda.

The council members are given the opportunity to give feedback to the information and/or ask questions. A short report is given below. (overview!!)

Doctoral Consortium One of the members mentions that he thinks it is very important to arrange a doctoral consortium, as it is very urgent to work on “younger scientists”, regarding the recent developments.

BAM organized a doctoral consortium which started with a preliminary meeting and a discussion one day later.

This meeting was very successful and the organization was not very complex. Not only is the meeting, but the organization can be very important for the development of the doctoral students.

Cultural diversity Concerning the review the council feels that the conference should contain cultural diversity.

This might be a dilemma because of the different qualities of the various cultures will have to be combined.

The role of the chairs A question is asked concerning the role of the national/program chair. The answer to this question is that as it appears to be difficult to get both chairs filled. The organizational committee decided to make a combination chair, but that in the conference the track

chair is followed.

The present representatives of the Japanese association were not informed of the national chairs. (see item 4) As mentioned earlier there will be a meeting with the Japanese members shortly after the meeting, the council trust that this issue can be resolved to the satisfaction of the Japanese representatives.

Limited participation? The matter on limited participation for IFSAM members rises. Some of the members feel that participation should be restricted to the IFSAM membership, in order to create a “special” position for IFSAM. It turns out that in some countries only those papers are accepted when delivered from an organization that is IFSAM member. The council feels that as the invitation is worldwide, the conference should be open for anyone in the world, without restriction.

Different format? One of the council members remarks that perhaps a different format (like posters etc.) could help to obtain funds for the students.

Progress Papers With “In progress” papers, the research work can be introduced to obtain feedback (South-Africa works this way, a system has been developed so that work “in progress” is shown in the paper.

Review It is also very important to build a stable team of reviewers, because it is very important to the authors to be reviewed thoroughly. This review can be carried out by the own social network. They fully agree that it is important that quality of the papers should be high, and then the review will also be high.

Practical examples The final comment for the organizational committee concerns a request for practical examples so participants can decide where they want to present their papers.

All remarks have been written down and will be discussed in the next meeting of the organizing committee.

Klaus Macharzina brought along some brochures and will have a list circulated amongst the council members so they can fill in the number of brochures they would like to receive. On the list they can also mention if they agree with a poster announcement so the organizers can decide what to do with this.

6. First report on the progress made towards the 9^th world congress to be held in Shanghai 2008.

Zhang Yang reports. (3 documents were handed out to the council members):

Zhang Yang furthermore informs the council that the conference will be organised under leadership of Professor Su Dongshui and that the expected number of participants for this conference is approximately 500-600.

A question is asked about the participation of the scientific committee into which Sue Bruning and Wolfgang Weber will participate, as this is not clearly mentioned in the documents. It turns out that in December a meeting will be organised for the organizational committee, the documents are being prepared now.
Sue Bruning and Wolfgang Weber are invited to join this meeting, they will attempt to combine the meeting with their own schedules. Further contact on this will follow.

The council also points at the missing name of Chen Zhicheng on the list of the organizational committee. A question is asked regarding the MBA-students that are mentioned in the program of the conference, while doctoral students are not.

Prof. Chen will be contacted after Zhang Yang returns to China.

Concerning the MBA-students, Zhang Yang explains that in China an MBA Education is a scientific professional education and that this development grows fast. Besides this MBA’s are tought at universities. During the 9^th IFSAM world conference a PhD-forum will be organized, as well as an MBA-forum. The activities for both however will be different. It is not yet known how many MBA’s can be expected, it is in discussion if there should be a restriction.

The next question concerns the language problem, an issue that might cause a large problem and was already pointed out during the last meeting. The council would like to know if it has been solved. Zhang Yang explains that the organisational committee is working on interpreting the speeches for the older professors, as the English language will be used as basic language.

The last important issue that rises amongst the Council concerns the hotels. The organizational committee will take care of a broad variety of hotels, as most people have low budgets to deal with. The same goes for the conference fee.

Zhang Yang answers that the fee will probably be very low. This will be possible due to the many Chinese companies that have already mentioned that they are interested in the conference and would like to be part of it, which means a lot of funding.

With this answer the meeting is interrupted for a lunch break.

7. President’s report.

In his report Wolfgang Weber thanks Rolf Lundin for his work during the past two years. He has improved the information exchange and established the strategy committee (Agenda item 11.) Also the website, a very important information channel nowadays, was renewed.

IFSAM has a broader base, with two new members (SAIMS from South Africa and possibly RABE from Russia).

In the last IFSAM Meeting some possible members were discussed, below an overview is given of the progress that was made with those associations:

Concerning EURAM Wolfgang Weber remarks that several attempts were made to contact them, as well as CENAM to see if they would like to join the Berlin Conference. Ronél Rensburg will contact Hungary, Slovenia etc. to see if they would be interested in coming to Berlin as well.

8. Secretary’s Report.

Pieter Terlouw makes a short remark that the secretary should be used more than it has been so far. So far it has only been busy for IFSAM round the period of the Council Meeting, but is present all year. Most of the work that is carried out by the secretary is what is was appointed to do; keep them members informed, take care of a stable contact address. It can be used for more jobs, the various members can use it more.

Hèla Molijn, the assistant secretary will leave IFSAM as of the 1^st of October 2005, due to a new job that she has taken at the University of Twente. The necessary arrangements to fill the vacancy were already taken. Pieter Terlouw will keep all members informed of the outcome.

9. Treasurer’s Report

Eric Simon reports that the budget is slowly decreasing.

Furthermore, he points out to all present council members about the payment of the complete fee. Every now and then it occurs that members share costs in paying the fee, which leads to a lower income for IFSAM.
The budget is increasing mainly because of the costs that are paid for the secretariat as well as the lower income that came in from the past conferences.

Nevertheless, the treasurer mentions that an increase of the fee is not necessary, although this will be an item for the agenda of next year’s meeting.

10. Report on the 2004 World Congress at Gothenburg, Sweden

Rolf Lundin reports that although the number of participants was rather low, it still is a good idea to change the date of the conference to the comfort of the organising institution. The conference was very successfull, in spite of the lower number of participants as was expected.

Financial matters have been taken care of with the treasurer.

Some suggestions for the future organizers of IFSAM Conferences are put on paper and will be handed out to the representatives of the Chinese and German

Associations.

From the other members a suggestion follows concerning the theme: perhaps special sessions can be put in the program of the conference to help remember the theme more easily.

11. Strategic directions and specific initiatives for IFAM.
The Strategy Committee has had two meetings in Amsterdam between the last and the present Council Meeting. They have come up with the mission statement that consists of several strategic points as well as an action plan in order to answer the question that arose in the past year: What follows next?

The present and future council meetings will be more and more content oriented, instead of informative. Therefore, the mission statement is aiming at the future and future directions for IFSAM. The strategy committee further explains that par. 1 till 5 explain the 5 main goals of IFSAM. Furthermore the general direction is shorter, not that many actions are mentioned in detail. New in the mission statement is the focus on exchange of ideas and contextualization and the idea of quality.

Removed from the old document are unified, because this could lead to the conclusion that the member associations are divers.

The council would like to see IFSAM’s vision split from IFSAM’s mission. IFSAM’s vision should shortly state what IFSAM stands for while IFSAM’s mission shows the way IFSAM intends to achieve these goals. Furthermore, the mission statement should focus on strengthen and support of participants in IFSAM.

The strategy committee collected all comments of this day. They will be used to draft a new document that will be presented tomorrow.

Main theme will be that IFSAM is no super-coordinator, but intends to be a facility of exchange and a mechanism to facilitate development for member-organisations.

Education, learning from each other, will also be included in the new draft.

The plans for the near future for IFSAM are:

In order to execute these plans, the strategy committee discussed some PR-ideas like an IFSAM journal, but this idea appears not to be possible. This goal is too big for such a small organization as IFSAM.

On the other hand, the making of a yearbook came accross; a yearbook has many different possibilities, and can be edited in the years between two conferences. It could contain the best examples of papers, show examples of English, Chinese, and/or Japanese papers. Classical papers can also be shown in this book and it could show the ideas of management education in the various member organizations.

The council is very much in favour of the idea of a yearbook and decides to establish a small committee to set up this book.

The book should contain the following items:

IFSAM will edit the yearbook itself, this will not be an easy job due to the many contacts that will have to take place with the various authors. Establishing and maintaining the contact will be the key issue.
Finding a publisher will be less difficult. A thorough discussion and stable agreement on the main costs will be most important part. As a guarantee $ 10,000 could be agreed upon for the first issue, depending on the sales of this first issue the council will decide if and how to continue the yearbook.

One of the main questions for IFSAM is the support of this idea. (not only the council). After all, executing this idea means combining the job of own publications with those of the association.

The council suggests forming a group to work out the ideas and possibilities. Members of this editorial group are appointed: Yvon Pesqueux

(Fnégé-France), Denise Rousseau (AOM-USA), Pieter Terlouw (IFSAM Secretary). Additionally Elizabeth Chell from BAM (UK) will be asked to join the group. The committee agrees to report its findings in the next IFSAM Council Meeting in Berlin.

12. The statutes of IFSAM

In the statutes some minor and major changes were made; the minor changes need no further explanation, the majors are described below:

The IFSAM Council agrees by vote on the changes of the statutes as mentioned so far.

13. Update on the research of Ursula Hansen

The subject of the research for the 8^th IFSAM World Conference has been changed. Prof. Hansen presents the progress of the research, her presentation is attached to these minutes. During the past days and during the next two days, Ursula Hansen will contact all Council members in order to receive some feedback on the survey that was developed. A very important issue in this research is the distribution of the questionnaire, because when it is not distributed correctly, the research will not succeed.

The results of the research will be presented during the conference in 2006 and will be discussed in the 2006 Council Meeting.

A number of remarks follow, and are written down below:

An other issue that has to be solved is the filling out of the questionnaire and the deliverance of it. In order to achieve that, the suggestions follows to send the questionnaire to secretaries and award them with a small gift. An other suggestion is to have the questionnaire translated into various languages in order to make them easier accessible. That might help in receiving more data.

Ursula Hansen thanks all member for their support, all feedback will be discussed and used where possible.

Some important points for the organisation of the 8^th IFSAM World Conference:

For the coming IFSAM world conference a list of national chairs should be

made so the review process can be taken care of properly.

colleagues so a meeting can be organized.

Planning of the 2006 IFSAM Council Meeting

Meeting IFSAM Executive (evening of) 25^th September 2006

Meeting IFSAM Council (afternoon) 26^th September 2006, start 13.00 pm

Continuance Council Meeting (day) 27^th September 2006, start 09.30 am

Registration IFSAM Conference 28^th September 2006, start 08.00 am

With the acceptation of these dates by the IFSAM Council, the first part of the IFSAM Council Meeting is closed on Saturday, September 24, 2005. All members and their partners are invited for the Council Dinner, which will take place at the Holiday Inn Garden Court Hotel at Bloemfontein.

Continuance of the meeting on Sunday, September 25, 2005

14. First discussion: Standards for/of good research in the field of Management.

The goal of these 3 discussions is to exchange ideas and get possible recommendations. These ideas and recommendations will be used and publish on the website, as information for all IFSAM members.

A discussion follows on the documents that were delivered by a number of IFSAM participants. A summary is given by Klaus Macharzina.

Below an overview of the remarks is shown on:

“Standards for/of good research in the field of Management”:

Individual (member organizations) remarks:

ACEDE In Spain the impact of research is not considered very important, because Spain keeps changing the system. Not only is the method important, but there are 2 types of professions: science academics and consultant companies.

ASAC In Canada it is important to determine your own faith. It is also possible to start with topics of one’s own interest. Wanted topics follow.

In Canada research is done with standards of quality methods that are improved and reviewers look at the way ideas are worked out.

FNEGE In France during the past 2 decades research standards were developed. The amount of research that was produced is high, and according to high standards.

15. Second discussion: Doctoral Programs

Rolf Lundin prepared this item and summarises:

The Swedish situation is given as an example.

Public defense is an important event and varies amongst the different countries. For example, in Sweden the appointed jury members are only international. The student is judged after the defense of his thesis and is evaluated individually. Schools and departments are evaluated on regular basis. Both institutes are formatted on one subject.
In Sweden no rewarding systems exist. The output of the degree is delivered elsewhere. Besides doing research, the doctoral student teaches.

One of the issues that rises is a possibility for comparison of systems.

The first reaction concerns the market requirements. Canada, for example, (ASAC) emphasizes on teaching. Apprentices teach to improve their teaching skills, a component that has increased in the past few years.

In the United States, (AOM) teaching is adapted to the interest of the doctoral student. In The Netherlands, the doctoral student is prepared for academic work. The MBA student is not suited for the academic world, which is the reason why the Research Masters were built. This way the students receive more education and are still prepared for the academic work. The teaching load is about 20%. The latest development, DBA’s, is not possible in The Netherlands.

In Europe, the Bologna regulations are followed; Bologna supports development for more structural programs and has not yet decided on the directions of business and science.

The question rises what the title of Dr. stands for and when a program can be called “good”. At this moment research on top managers is carried out. In France and the United States a high amount of Dr.’s are from top schools of management. In Germany, the situation is different: there a professor invites a student to join his group and DBA’s are built at the moment. In China, a very thorough procedure has to be followed in order to gain the doctoral title. There a promotion even has to be approved on national criteria and a thesis has to go a long way before it is finally approved.

Apparently the various countries show different developments in doctoral education and goals for doctoral students.

All Council members are asked to deliver a short report on doctoral procedures. The information will be published on the IFSAM website, so it will be globally available.

Continuance of item 11. Mission of IFSAM

The ideas of the council members have been summarized during and after the Council dinner and are worked out in a new document. The new document is handed out to all members and is discussed in the meeting. Some additional changes are proposed; a change in the order of the words diversity and quality in the first paragraph and a change of the word contextualization into adaption to local context.

Besides these changes a footnote will be put in with a reference to the IFSAM website where further information can be found.

With these changes the Council decides to accept the new Mission Statement of IFSAM

Legal identity of IFSAM

Pieter Terlouw reports. At the secretariat a small investigation has taken place on the possibilities of giving IFSAM a legal “status”. It turns out to be possible, but not without certain amount of costs (involvement of a notary etc.) Further, international, research will be carried out by the secretariat on this subject.

16. Third discussion: Management Teaching: Standards of good programs

Sue Bruning reports.

In order to create managers the teaching component needs to be discussed and programs need to be tailored.

The following items are used as to decide wether a program follows the necessary criteria or not:

Accreditation is often used as a marketing “act”, t.i. schools that have been accredited, use it that way. It turns out that schools who are not accredited, do not care.

It can be said that accreditation is “quasi” official.

In Spain, a union of accreditation exists, every university has a right to give out its own diploma’s, but these diplomas are accredited by regional agencies.

For SAM, (Academy of Northern European Countries) there are standards of diploma’s. Equis looks at quantities (of students and diploma’s) and certain qualities like if the criteria for the diploma are adapted to the market.

Employability is also one of the key words (like it is for Bologna), als well as output.

South-Africa also follow Equis and follows a governmental accreditation program. This country is confronted with an overproduction of MBA’s.

The big question in this subject is if accreditation leads to improvement of the quality of education. Education programs go through continuous assessment. Besides this, it is very difficult to accreditate “good” teaching. How can means of teaching and how can a scientific attitude be measured?

The council concludes that good teaching can be understood in various ways. Models of theory processes are available but these ratings very often mean very little. It turns out that the education process is very important for the students, as they are co-producers of knowledge and they make use of the existing regulations.

Concerning methods the council notices that there should be a change from lecture based learning to group based learning where multi-media is preferred. It should be learning instead of teaching and students attitudes should change from passive into active learning.

The conclusion of the council on accreditation is that accreditation should show more depth. With the present status of accreditation, a program that has been accredited does not always allow good teaching.

17. Other matters arising from members discussion

No other matters arise.

18. Closing of the meeting

Wolfgang Weber thanks all members for their joint participation and closes the meeting mentioning that he would like to see all members again next year in Berlin!