The Board members who flew into Ljubljana on April 30, to attend the Interim Board Meeting, stayed in the Grand Union Hotel, the venue for the 30th Annual EIBA Conference. When they woke up on May 1, they not only did so in a beautifully restored hotel with that name, but also in the Grand EUROPEAN Union of 25 instead of 15 member countries. After a whole day of meetings and hard work which started at 9 a.m. and lasted till 6 p.m. the national representatives who attended the meeting joined the festivities of the first day of Slovenia’s membership of the EU and mingled with the enthusiastic crowd of youngsters who were drinking beer and eating ice cream on the streets long after the midnight fireworks had dimmed.

EIBA 30

To celebrate one’s 30th birthday is an important event not only in a person’s life but also for an organization that groups hundreds of academics from 40 different countries of which 20 are represented on its Board of Directors. Although only one parallel session will be devoted to this anniversary, the whole Ljubljana Conference should be regarded as a birthday party. As EIBA combines tradition with attention for new challenges, Slovenia as a new member of the EU, offers an excellent location for the 30th Annual Conference. EIBA’s decision to have its meeting for 2004 in Ljubljana is part of its policy to try to integrate less centrally located countries into the organization and hopefully will bring in new members from the Balkan.

Preparing for change

Since a few years EIBA has been preparing for change by taking a number of different initiatives that should provide the Academy with new vigor and inspiration at a time when the international business discipline is being threatened by the internationalization of the core disciplines and new competing organizations. The attitude that at the age of 30 our mission has been accomplished would be totally misplaced. The interdisciplinary character of IB remains an essential element in business education and research that other organizations can not sufficiently ensure.

Organizational restructuring

The 2002 Athens conference shook EIBA into action and the 2003 Copenhagen meeting launched a number of initiatives that will be evaluated and continued in Ljubljana. The new organizational structure with a Chairperson and a Vice-Chairperson elected for 3 years and an Executive Committee with 4 members, the former two together with the President Elect and the Past President will have been functioning for one year at the time of the upcoming conference. The new structure with its rotating composition is supposed to bring more continuity and renewal into the organization. Both the Board and the ExCom are expertly assisted and supported by Nicole Coopman from EISM as Executive Secretary.

Interim Board meeting

To illustrate the important issues that were discussed in the long and well attended Interim Board Meeting last May, it might be useful to briefly summarize some of the principal ones.

Membership:
The Copenhagen conference ran by Torben Pedersen and Lars Häkanson of the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) was an immense success both in terms of the number of participants, but also because of the high level of the panels and quality of the papers. As participation in the conference implies membership, EIBA reached an all time record with 480 registrations. However, to have a substantial and minimum number of members in most of the countries inside and outside of Europe is equally important than sheer numbers.

Financial situation:
It is well known that the EIBA Secretariat is handled by EIASM and although other alternatives have been considered after the Athens meeting, the Board has decided to continue to work with EIASM, especially after more clarity was being given about the services being rendered.

Over the years EIBA had accumulated a debt towards EIASM. Following negotiations between the ExCom and EIASM the debt has been reduced and rescheduled, making EIBA into a more viable organization than before. It should be mentioned that CBS and Maastricht University helped to alleviate the outstanding debt.

Legal statutes:
EIBA’s statutes go back to its very beginning. There seem to have been few adaptations over the years. Because of changes in the Belgian law and the fact that its secretariat is located in Brussels, it has become necessary for EIBA to adopt a legal structure and to submit its statutes to the Belgian Ministry of Justice for approval. A large part of the Interim Board Meeting in May was devoted to the discussion of EIBA’s new statutes and the result will be submitted to its members in Ljubljana. They will be put on the website before the Ljubljana meeting will be held in order to allow the members to check them out.

Future venues:
EIBA’s hosts for the next two years are known: Gabriel Benito (Oslo) and Philippe Gugler (Fribourg). As a result of my contacts and to think ahead there are now 3 potential candidates lined up for 2007, i.e. (in alphabetical order) Amsterdam (Ans Kolk), Catania, Sicily (Grazia Santangelo) and Tallinn, Estonia (Maksim Saat and Jorma Larimo). In order to allow for long term planning it would be preferable if the next location could be decided.

The new conference guidelines prepared by Lars Häkanson on the basis of a proposal from Marina Papanastassiou will become a useful tool for future conference organizers.

Website and newsletter:
Most of you have already consulted the new EIBA website. Torben Pedersen and Nicole Coopman need to be congratulated for its creation and its presentation.

While reading this you certainly became aware that this is the first issue of EIBA’s new internet newsletter. Although an Editorial Board was chosen in May and several Board and other members promised short articles and announcements, very few really delivered even after much prodding. It was decided that the newsletter, EIBA-zine, is accessible to non-members. EIBA-zine needs to be written by its members for its members, and if there is not sufficient interest it will have to be discontinued. Meanwhile the efforts of Tamar Almor merit the greatest appreciation.

Journal and Book series:
Both EIBA and IBR seem to be benefiting from their collaboration and to make the link with Elsevier as publisher even more intensive it was decided to introduce a best paper award at future conferences.

Elsevier and EIBA have also signed an agreement for an Annual Book Series in order to make possible the publication of selected papers from the conference either about its general theme or a particular sub theme. It will be tried out for the first time on the basis of the papers presented in Ljubljana. Ulf Andersson and Torben Pedersen have been proposed by the Board as general editors for the series.

EIBA Fellows:
In their second year of activity the Fellows will be responsible for two panel sessions at the 30th conference, organized by Seev Hirsch. Other initiatives to support EIBA will be announced in Ljubljana. So it very much looks like the Fellows, with John Dunning as its dean and John Cantwell as its secretary, will play a stimulating role in EIBA

EIBA needs to maintain this new momentum to fulfill the expectations of its founding fathers from 30 years ago, but also and even more so to ensure that its younger members can adapt and influence the organization in such a way that it remains sensitive to new developments and challenges in order to be ensured of an even longer future.

Danny Van Den Bulcke
EIBA Chairman