Danny Van Den Bulcke
EIBA Chairman

Dear Colleagues,

This will be the first time that the EIBA Conference will be held in the Baltics. It will be a real pleasure to meet in the capital city of Estonia. The capital of the most Nordic country of the Baltics has many faces and presents a mixture of medieval memories and modern hip, as well as post-communist and new capitalist characteristics. The conference hotel, the Olümpia, was built in 1980 for the Olympics, as Tallinn - as part of Russia at that time - hosted the sailing events. Since then the hotel, which is within walking distance from the city’s historic medieval centre, has been renovated four times and offers all the facilities required for an excellent meeting.

While the growth of the Estonian economy was a success story during the last few years, to the extent that it made a number of other new members of the European Union jealous, the economy started to slow down at the end of 2007, a few months before the Board of EIBA met in Tallinn for its interim (Spring-) meeting. This economic downturn even had an effect on the plans of the local organizing committee, as some sponsors decided to back off. Although this loss of sponsorship will make it difficult to make Tallinn into ‘T(he) all in(n)’ conference that EIBA members would love, the local organizers succeeded in coping with these unexpected challenges, even though their problems were exacerbated by the world financial crisis of the Summer 2008 and its repercussions, also in the so-called real economy.

The Tallinn Conference Organisers: Enn Listra, Urmas Varblane, Marianne Kallaste and Jorma Larimo

That the 34th Annual conference of EIBA takes place in Estonia is illustrative of the attempt by the Board to try to integrate international business scholars from the new EU members, especially because they were more or less isolated during many years. Estonia joined the EU in 1997 and became part of the Schengen zone at the end of 2007, thereby facilitating travel to its new EU funded airport where most of the EIBA members will arrive.

The initiative to bring EIBA to the Baltics and Tallinn was taken by Jorma Larimo, our National Representative from Finland and goes back four years ago. When the Board approved the proposal of the Tallinn University of Technology (TUT) it suggested to Enn Listra that Jorma should remain involved in the preparation of the conference, together with Urmas Varblane of Tartu University, who had supported this initiative from the very beginning. It is this ‘troika’ of representatives of those three universities, together with Marianne Kalaste as the secretary, who worked out the scientific programme and the logistics of the conference and submitted this to the EIBA Board meeting last May.

Over the years the Spring Board has become the most important meeting to discuss the strategies necessary to further develop EIBA. Contrary to the two hour meetings during the hectic conference days, the interim meetings in April or May allow for a more elaborate discussion of all relevant items and better decision making. However, because the General Assembly can only be programmed during the conference week in December, certain decisions have to wait for the approval by the Assembly.

The Interim Board meeting in Tallinn in May was well attended as 17 out of the 22 national representatives came to Estonia. During a whole day of deliberations at the Tallinn University of Technology, a long list of issues was discussed. One of the major topics concerned the possible venues for the future conferences. José Pla Barber, who will host EIBA in 2009 in Valencia, presented already a detailed picture of the city, the university and the conference site (see further).

Most important was the fact that, in the immediate aftermath of the Spring Board meeting, Ana Teresa Tavares was able to confirm that she is willing to welcome EIBA in Porto in 2010 and that Liviu Voinea (SNSPA/GEA) agreed to host the annual conference in Bucharest in 2011. Both the University of Porto and the University of Bucharest gave their support to these proposals in a written statement to the EIBA chairman.