A new MBA course to be offered by Sarajevo University will bring better business opportunities to BiH, the Principal Deputy High Representative Donald Hays said today.
Ambassador Hays was speaking this morning at a ceremony at Sarajevo University to mark the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Universities of Delaware and Sarajevo and USAID. Under the MoU Sarajevo Graduate School of Business will offer an MBA together with University of Delaware.
Noting that “you can’t produce results in practice if you don’t have a firm basis in theory,” Ambassador Hays highlighted the important role of this MBA as a “tool with which to mould progressive young executives who are conversant with the challenges and expectations of the global market,” and as a tool “in orchestrating a fundamental change in the BiH business culture.”
The need for such a change in the business culture was highlighted by the Special Auditor’s investigation of BiH public companies last year, when managers were found to have operated “on the basis that if this or that practice is not explicitly labeled as dishonest, it can be viewed as acceptable.”
Ambassador Hays noted that postgraduate business studies are “about equipping BiH companies to compete in the global market, a market that does not forgive inefficiency and that richly rewards competitiveness, a market that over the long run rewards honesty and good corporate citizenship rather than corruption and moral expedience – a market in which BiH wants and needs to compete. This MBA course will help make that competition possible.”
This is a project funded by USAID to the value of 10 Million US Dollars.