BA490 -- IMAGE Program - Schmalkalden 2009 - 25May - 6 June 
Get all classes, housing, some meals and a full social program, including a weekend trip, at no added cost. 

International Summer School - Schmalkalden 2009 - 7 June - 27 June
(up to 6 hours of Southeast Missouri State University credits)
Get all classes, housing, some meals and a full social program, including a weekend trip to Berlin, at no added cost - full details below) 

Intensive German Course - 28June - 11 July
(pay  a single fee of  $500) and get all classes, housing, some meals and a full social program, including a weekend at no added cost )  You will need to obtain your own transportation to Schmalkalden - more info on that at class meeting to be held after spring break.

International Summer School Schmalkalden

Introduction

The International Summer School Schmalkalden focuses on the challenges confronting the world economy under the conditions of cross-cultural management.

The second millennium ended by bringing a truly global dimension to economic activity: the prerogative of the market extended its reach even to those countries which had resisted it for decades; the well-advanced internationalisation of economic relationships has resulted in significant interdependence between regions and countries and an increasing integration of previously peripheral societies into the world economy.

Matching these empirical trends, theories of 'globalisation' have grown in influence in academic and public policy circles since the end of the Cold War. According to this emerging orthodoxy, long-standing conditions of time, space and territoriality have been transformed, or even made obsolete, by world-wide trends.

The third millennium has begun in the realisation that world-wide economic activity does not necessarily entail a growing similarity between systems of economic governance or between business practices, despite the ever increasing importance of multinational companies and the free flow of capital around the globe. Instead, inherited tradition and cultural difference are said to play a more important role than ever before as global trade and investment bring once nationally-orientated economies and firms into intimate contact and hence intense competition with one another. These developments make the role of contrasting and sometimes conflicting cultural value-systems highly relevant in two regards: first, differing approaches to the means and purposes of economic activity deriving from non-Western philosophies and cultures have consequences for the way in which, for example, Asian, Latin-American or African countries understand their role in the international economy and the trade policies they adopt as a consequence. Second, individual firms interested in expanding their activities to countries where 'western' technocratic rationalism is confronted by religious-based value systems (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity or Islam), have to be able to adjust their market-entry, bargaining and trading strategies to 'fit in' with local conventions and sensibilities.

The challenges of the new economic reality do not, however, stop there. The enormous increase in international financial transactions, especially on the currency markets, over the past 20 years has been one of the clearest indications of the interconnected nature of today's world economy. Financial crises, for example, are no longer limited to one country, or even one continent, but have global implications. At the same time international capital flows and international trade act as a motor of further globalisation, linking the fates of the richest and poorest economies. With new communications techniques facilitating 24-hour round-the-world financial transactions, nation states are said to have lost much of their capacity to maintain control of, and to steer, their economies. Consequently the possibility and desirability of government intervention in pursuit of traditional goals such as stable economic growth, high levels of employment, the survival of national industries and greater equality via the welfare state, are increasingly called into question. The developed democratic states face competing and possibly contradictory demands: the creation of appropriate conditions for economic growth in global markets (flexibility) versus the maintenance of social cohesion (regulation). The ever-more integrated world economy is also made responsible for global ecological damage, financial and economic instability, starvation and mass migratory pressures, and the gap in wealth and health that separates the rich West from the poor Rest.

Paradoxically, it is at the very time that the market is universally recognised as the only viable form of economic and social organisation, and the challenges and alternatives to it least effective and credible, that the victory of a liberal world economic order is more likely to engender pessimism and fear than faith in a new era of growth and development. Some of the most trenchant and fundamental recent critiques of global markets have notably come from practitioners and former proponents of free market capitalism. The speculator George Soros has commented that he finds "it easier to imagine the collapse of the global marketplace than the continuation of the present regime", while one-time neo-liberal advisor to Margaret Thatcher, Prof. John Gray, now believes that "by allowing ... freedom to world markets we ensure that the age of globalisation will be remembered as another turn in the history of servitude".

The fear of an impending economic crash as a result of the advent of international 'turbo-capitalism' is, however, perhaps less indicative of the state of the real economy than it appears. The exaggerated sense of a world economy out of control is encouraging the view that capitalism's problems stem from excess, from growing too fast, and that it needs to be reined back. With governments announcing action plans involving some extension of international regulation, control and containment, today's instinct for restraint in business and finance (as shown by decreasing levels of investment and the growth of 'risk management') is likely to be reinforced. A possible real danger in the major economies is that the hype about a global crisis will strengthen the impulse of business and political leaders to downplay the international economy's potential for growth. The mentality which both inflates the difficulties and then reacts by saying 'hold back' could be a bigger threat to economic and social progress than either the possibility of a traditional economic crisis in the West, or the fall-out from financial disarray elsewhere.

Guest professors from different continents are invited to give us their views on these issues. The wide variety of countries, cultures and religions represented provides a timely and unique opportunity to investigate the impact of contrasting cultural-religious value systems on international business. We will be welcoming students from our partner universities in Canada, the USA, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Albania, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekhistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and China. Our goal is that students participating in the 8th ISSS will be offered, and be able to develop through the exchange of perspectives and experiences, detailed knowledge and understanding of the complex and interwoven challenges facing economies and firms in the new millennium. In addition, the growing importance of religious values and their economic implications will be examined in multicultural classes and develop the students' cross-cultural abilities to prevent Huntington's "clash of civilizations".

Program Details 
 

Participation in the three-week ISSS includes:

* lecture programme comprising all modules
* certificates for all successfully passed modules
* one ISSS T-Shirt
* one Schmalympics T-Shirt
* Accommodation for the period of the ISSS (7 June – 27 June 2009)
   (due to limited accommodation in Schmalkalden, arrival before the beginning of the ISSS is not possible.)

* Cultural programme:
        Tour of Schmalkalden
        ISSS Opening Ceremony with buffet in a medieval castle
        Disco Party in the Students’ Club
        3 to 4-day Berlin Weekend, UNESCO World Heritage Site
           (travel, accommodation, tickets for public transport for three days, vouchers for places of interest) 
        Potsdam Trip, UNESCO World Heritage Site  
        Schmalympics (sports events) 
        Concerts on campus
        Graduation Ceremony with buffet in a medieval castle
        Tour of Weimar, UNESCO World Heritage Site (including travel and admission fees)
        Tour of Buchenwald (including travel and admission fees)
        Tour of the Wartburg, UNESCO World Heritage Site (including travel and admission fees)
        Tour of Eisenach (including travel and admission fees)
        Good-Bye Party  

Accommodation
You will be accommodated in the university’s dormitory or in a Schmalkalden hotel (three-bed or four-bed rooms)  or with students / local families.

Conditions of Admission 

• You are a student of Economics or Business Admin. with a basic knowledge of International Economics.
• You are able to understand and actively participate in lectures in English.
• Your completed application form is received by the ISSS co-ordinator by 30 April 2009.
• All students must register at 10:00 in room C 301 on opening day.
• Do not forget to bring your Student ID Card. 
• You have to show evidence of health insurance at 10:00 in room C 301 on opening day.
• Courses are taught in 1 hour modules - pass three modules for three hours credit - pass 6 modules for 6 hours credit.  (For Graduate Students - you must complete an extra assignment for each 3 hour credit - See Dr. Peter Gordon (Dempster 246) for details.
• Passing at least 5 courses will allow you to earn a certificate from the University of Applied Sciences.

Printer-friendly

E-mail this page to a friend