Danny Van Den Bulcke
EIBA Chairman

The mail below was forwarded by Peter Buckley to Grazia Santangelo, Torben Pedersen and myself shortly after the conference in Catania (December 19, 2008). It was discussed during the Board’s Spring meeting in Tallinn last May, where the described behaviour was condemned as unaceptable. It was decided to ask Peter Buckley’s approval to publish his mail in EIBA-zine, without mentioning the names of the ‘perpetrators’. Together with the Board, I subscribe to Torben Pedersen’s comments that he hopes ‘that this is not reflecting a tendency that younger EIBA participants see themselves more as customers shopping around in the intellectual supermarket instead of members of the intellectual community with a desire and wish to push our knowledge further. It would be good to work with an un-negotiable requirement reminding people of their obligation to participate in the intellectual debate and sit through other peoples presentations even when they would rather wish they were somewhere else.’

“I am writing to the Chair and Vice Chair of EIBA and the President 2007 in order to express my extreme displeasure at the behaviour of a couple of participants in EIBA 2007. In Session H: 2W. MNE Strategies and Linkages at 16:00 – 17:30 (parallel sessions 5) I was present whilst my doctoral student Elizabeth Wang gave a paper. This was followed by a paper given by Celeste Amorim Varum and then by a paper by xxxx and xxxx from a Swedish University and xxxx of an Italian University. Our paper and the paper by Celeste were given to the session without the participation of xxxx and xxxx. Both of them then turned up and gave their paper without bestowing their presence on either of the two earlier papers. I said the following at the end of their presentation “I consider it to be an extreme discourtesy to the other presenters, the audience and particularly to the Chair of this session that you didn’t see fit to attend the first two presentations. We have paid you the courtesy of listening to your presentation and it is a great shame that you did not see fit to pay us the courtesy of listening to our papers”. One of them then muttered something about this being the fault of the organisers because he wished to be in the panel session running parallel to our session. I consider that this behaviour simply cannot be tolerated. The whole system of conferences is based on the fact that we have to go to sessions when we would prefer to be in other parallel sessions. This must happen to every participant in every conference with parallel sessions. Not to attend other presentations in the same session in which a participant is giving a paper is not only extremely discourteous, but would destroy the system of conferences as currently arranged. I should add that the Chair of the session was completely blameless in this, as she attempted to encourage xxxx and xxxx in the strongest possible terms to attend. I consider it to be an extreme discourtesy to the Chair of the session to behave in this way.

There is little that can be done to proscribe this type of behaviour if academics are as antisocial as these two appear to be. However, maybe an un-negotiable requirement can be put in next year’s (and future years) programmes reminding people of their obligations to sit through other people’s presentations even when they would rather wish they were somewhere else.

(I was informed that a similar thing had happened in another session where a doctoral student gave the paper first and then walked out of the session. As this is hearsay I cannot take it any further, but may be you would wish to follow this up too.)”

Best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

Peter

Peter J Buckley
Centre for International Business
University of Leeds (CIBUL)

Sylvie HERTRICH (Ecole de Management Strasbourg, Robert Schuman University) and Ulrike MAYRHOFER (IAE Lyon, Jean Moulin University and ESC Rouen) have received the Golden Pen of the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry for their case-study: "Adidas: la femme est l'avenir du sport". This prestigious award is given to authors whose case studies are used by an important number of Business Schools and Universities. The case-studies have been published at the Centrale de Cas et de Médias Pédagogiques, CCMP (http://www.ccip.fr/ccmp).

Sylvie Hertrich and Ulrike Mayrhofer have developed a rich expertise in the field of marketing case-studies: they have written twenty case-studies, prepared in collaboration with companies like Adidas, Audi (Volkswagen), Club Méditerranée, Eurodisney (Disneyland Resort Paris), Hilton, Parc Astérix (Compagnie des Alpes). More than 38.000 students have been working on their case-studies. Following their success, the two authors are currently preparing a book on marketing case-studies (Editions Management & Société, 2008).

Who is who?



Only the following participants have been identified:

1st  row:  John Dunning, Gunnar Mattson, Birgitta Swedenborg, …
2nd row:  Gerry Van Dyck, Sylvain Plasschaert, Erik Hörnell, Peter Sanden, …
3rd row:  Peter Walters, Pal Korsvold, Björn Wootz, Mats Forsgren, …
4th row:  Hans Günther Meissner, Reijo Luostarinen, …
5th row:  Barto Roig, …
6th row:  Peter Buckley, Eleonor Morgan, Poul Schultz, Deo Sharma, …
7th row:  Gunnar Hedlund, …

Further down: …