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Academy of International Business

Report on Western European Chapter

Danny Van Den Bulcke
University of Antwerp

1. Annual Conference 1999
   The 25th Annual Conference of the 'European International Business Academy " (EIBA) took place in Manchester. Chairman was EIBA's President Fred Burton, (UMIST). A total of 180 participants were registered. The use of electronics was predominant in the preparation of the meeting (CD-ROM). According to Fred Burton the conference suffered from being too close to the AIB-Conference in Charleston. Especially the low number of UK-members was disappointing.
    
2. Future Annual Conferences
   2000, Maastricht, December, 10-12, Chairperson, John Hagedoorn (UM - MERIT)
   2001, Paris, December, 13-15, Chairperson, Alain Chevalier
   2002, Athens, December, ..., Chairperson, Marina Papanastassiou
   2003, Linz, December, ..., Chairperson, Lars Häkanson
   2004, Llublijana, December, ..., Chairperson, Marian Svetlivic

   The theme of the Maastricht Conference is : European Business in the Global Network.
    

3. Doctoral Tutorial
   The 13th Doctoral Tutorial took place on December 12 in Manchester. Twenty-three applications were received, i.e. 15 from within Europe and 8 from outside of Europe. The European applications originated from the following regions : 4 from South Europe, 4 from Northern Europe and 7 from Western Europe. The applicants from out of Europe came from North America (3), Asia (4) and Africa (1).
   As a result of organizational limitations only 10 students could be selected, i.e. 8 from Europe (Germany (2), Austria (1), Netherlands (1), Ireland (1), Spain (1), Portugal (1), Sweden (1) and 2 from outside of Europe (Canada, Hong Kong). It is interesting to mention that 5 of these selected students followed a doctoral programme outside of their country of origin, i.e. 4 in the UK and 1 in Finland.
   The Faculty consisted of Peter Buckley (University of Leeds), Alan Rugman (Oxford University), Bernard Wolf (York University), Steve Young (University of Strathclyde) and D. Van Den Bulcke (chairman and organizer) (University of Antwerp).
   The prize for the " best thesis proposal went to Jan Hendrik Fisch (Hohenheim University). His thesis subject is : " International Distribution of R&D in Multinational Corporations ".
    
4. Gunnar Hedlund Award
   For the Gunnar Hedlund Award for the best thesis in international business 20 theses were received from all over the world. Four finalists were invited to present their doctoral thesis during a special session of the EIBA-annual meeting in Manchester.
   The winner - as selected by the jury (Orjan Solvell, John Dunning, Danny Van Den Bulcke, Don Lessard and Naklye Boyacigiller) - was Joeyong Song (Korea) who prepared his thesis at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
    
5. EIBA-journal
   For many years EIBA has discussed the possibility of establishing its own journal or linking up with an existing journal.
   During the Interim Board Meeting in April in Maastricht, the proposal by the International Business Review (editor : Pervez Ghauri) (Pergamon) was accepted. This proposal has to be submitted to the General Assembly of EIBA in December 2000.
6. EIBA-Fellows
   Several years ago Reijo Luostarinen proposed that EIBA should grant its past presidents the status of fellow in order to keep them interested and active in EIBA. A working group was established to study this proposal and to specify the criteria that should be applied.
    
7. Membership
   EIBA's membership reached a record level in 1997 when the Annual Conference was held in Germany, Stuttgart (340) and Germany's total members climbed to 55. The UK counted 49 members and was second highest in numbers, while the USA had 32 members.
   In Jerusalem (1998-Annual Meeting) membership declined to 248. The dominating countries in the previous year registered large decreases and fell back to 30 (Germany), 22 (UK) and 26 (USA).

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