Dear Colleagues,

Although EIBA was launched in 1974 it took 21 years before we had our first Annual Meeting in Italy. EIBA’s Urbino meeting in 1995, organized by Roberto Schiatarella,  was a memorable event. Only 12 years later  we will be back in Italy, more particularly  in Catania, Sicily for what is likely to become another fabulous meeting with Italian flavour. Grazia Santangelo as EIBA’s President, together with Valentina Barbagello,  has been working hard and will be ready for the conference participants in the middle of December.

EIBA will be gathering for its annual conference in the immediate neighbourhood of the Etna volcano, known as one of the most active in the world. Although we hope that the volcano will put on a show during one of the nights during our presence in Catania, we also hope that the flows will be limited to knowledge instead of lava flows and that the knowledge ‘explosions’  will occur in the  18th century (specially restored ) building of the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Catania.  Also the ensuing ‘spill-overs’ are likely to be beneficial for our discussions and understanding of international business issues during our Sicilian meeting and even beyond through publication of many of the papers to be presented in Catania.

The Board members who were able to come to Catania for the Spring Board meeting last May, have been able to visit the conference site and  premises. They discussed the programme as proposed by Grazia Santangelo, while they were treated with Sicilian oranges and sweets. A number of important items were dealt with during this one day meeting.

The nominations of the National Representatives was one of the important topics on the agenda it should be mentioned that the Board had received indications that a number of the ‘older’ Board members had proposed a ‘changing of the guard’ and had expressed the wish to be replaced by younger colleagues. Some of them wanted to step down after having organized an EIBA conference in the past or more recently or because they had been elected as EIBA Fellows and would be able to continue to support the organization from there.

A changeover of National Representatives, especially after their predecessors invested so much time and effort to further develop EIBA  as one of the leading academic associations in international business, certainly has great merit, especially when it allows younger members  to build on the expertise and enthusiasm of their predecessors. 

Other items on the agenda were the doctoral tutorial, future venues, the update of the conference guidelines, the International Business Review, the  new Annual Book Series, the membership and financial situation, the evaluation of the previous conference, etc. Some of those topics are elaborated further in this issue of EIBA-zine.