The EIBA 30th annual conference 2004 - Ljubljana, December 5-8, 2004

by Marjan Svetlicic

Programme and papers

The objective of the 30th EIBA Conference was to create an opportunity for meeting academics and business people at least at the plenary sessions was achieved by the participation of prominent speakers from business (also thanks to the support of the EIBA Fellows). That these exchanges were not more intense was due to the limited amount of time. Although the number of special sessions was rather high, they were generally well attended.

In total 230 papers were accepted: 82 as competitive papers, 105 as working papers and 43 as posters. Out of this total 192 were presented during the conference: 73 as competitive papers, 90 as working papers and 29 as posters. A blind review process with two reviewers for each paper was used. The track chairs had complete autonomy in accepting or rejecting the papers papers on the basis of the reviews. Thanks to efficient track chairs and many reviewers this process ran very smoothly. Apart from a very large numbers of papers on emerging markets the structure of papers on the basis of the subjects dealt with submitted was not all that different from the previous EIBA conferences. Internationalization and management and organization of MNCs dominated, followed by marketing issues .

Participants

The total number of registered participants was; 254 (11 accompanying persons, 43 students), not included the local organizing committee, the sponsors and invited external speakers.

The regional distribution was widely spread although the academics from European countries clearly dominated. The three countries with the highest number of participants were Finland (31 participants), followed by the UK (27) and Germany (17).

Especially encouraging was not only that the conference attracted 31 participants from transition economies, but also that as many as 10 participants came from Australia, 12 from USA, 6 from Canada, 5 from Japan, 3 from Brazil one each from China, New Zeeland and Korea.

Awards

Due to the insufficient number of applications there was no Gunnar Hedlund award in 2004. The doctoral theses that were sent in for the 2004 Prize, will be taken into consideration together with the new applications for 2005.

Best Paper to a young scholar (The Copenhagen Business School gave the Copenhagen Prize (3.000€) for the best paper to a young scholar): Felicia Fei, Bath University, U.K. 
Best PhD: Nejc Jacopin, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Best Poster Presentation: TakahideYamaguchi, University of Hyogo, Japan
Best Paper on International Marketing (Awarded by the International Marketing Review): Rudolf Sinkovics, University of Manchester, UK and Anthony Roath, University of Oklahoma, U.S.A.

And

Lifetime Achievement Award: During the closing event John Dunning was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award in International Business by Danny Van Den Bulcke and myself on behalf of the whole EIBA community

Ljubljana, April 2005