- 8/1/2025
The 29th NIBES Annual General Meeting was held from July 1 to July 4, 2025, at Yuan Ze University in Taiwan. “NIBES” stands for the Network of International Business and Economics Schools. The membership consists of 21 “business and economics” related universities from 21 countries/regions. Hiroshima University of Economics is the only Japanese institution in this network. It is also one of the founding members of this network. At this meeting, there were 23 people from 16 member institutions in attendance.
This year’s meeting had four objectives. The first was to amend part of the NIBES Constitution (bylaws). Recently, in some regions, “academic freedom” has been restricted and/or in some sense threatened, and NIBES decided that it was necessary to introduce provisions supporting and strengthening “academic freedom” into the bylaws. The Board of Directors drafted the provisions, proposed them to the General Meeting, and they were unanimously approved.
Second, with the 30th NIBES Anniversary Meeting coming up next year, we had a group discussion about NIBES's future plans and role. The themes were: (1) proposals for social impact projects that member schools can implement, and (2) how to think about education and digital transformation (DX). Because of time constraints, more discussions on other issues and future plans will continue at next year's anniversary meeting.
The third issue on the agenda was the election of the Secretary General. Professor Vesna Zabkar (Ljubljana Univ.), who had served for two years, resigned due to her busy schedule at her home university, so an election was held. Sophie Peters of ICHEC Brussels Management School was nominated and unanimously approved. The new Board members were also nominated (Professor George R. Harada (HUE) continues to be a Board member of NIBES).
The fourth issue on the agenda concerned membership termination. In NIBES, if a member school misses two consecutive general meetings without reason, it is subject to termination of membership. The Board of Directors proposed the termination of IQS Business School (Spain) for missing two consecutive meetings without reason. After discussion in the General Meeting, it was decided that the termination of membership was unavoidable. With this termination, the number of members becomes 20 universities from 21. To fill this opening, a proposal for the Dubai University Business School from the Middle East was introduced as a potential candidate for membership. Due to time constraints, it was decided to continue the discussion at the next Board Meeting. Finally, the General Meeting concluded with an introduction of the host institution for next year's 30th NIBES Anniversary Meeting (Southern Denmark University).