IBR School of Executive Management
The IBR School of Executive Management is the Global MBA business school at Steinbeis University Berlin. The IBR Institute of International Business Relations focuses on offering Global MBA and PhD programmes for working professionals. IBR’s headquarters are in Berlin, Germany. In different regions of the world, IBR runs Information and Business Consultation Centres that serve existing students, graduates and applicants. As opposed to a regular university campus set-up, IBR faculty members live in 10 different countries and on four continents, each of whom speak an average of three different languages. Furthermore, IBR faculty members draw on an average of 15 years of working experience in executive management positions and/or as business consultants.
For a “truly” global management education, it is not sufficient to invite foreign guest speakers that expose students to the flavour of a global market place. Global management education requires the integration of different national approaches to teaching and researching. IBR as the Global Business School at Steinbeis University Berlin acknowledges that there is no one best national approach to management education. Thus, it is the mix of different nationalities in the faculty, the administration and the study groups that allow students and professors to taste “truly” global management education.
The IBR Global MBA is a blend of on-campus and off-campus activities. On-campus activities include five residential periods in different countries. Off-campus activities include 30 in-company projects that are adapted to executives’ needs who wish to combine work and study.
For the sake of an inspiring international experience, IBR invites study groups to participate in weekly residential periods in European, Asian and African countries. Here they meet an international team of professors that are first hand sources of information as they base their workshops on own research in IBR or other universities. At the same time, students benefit from their professors’ business experience in higher management positions of international organizations in different parts of the world.
Between these residential periods, participants are engaged in 30 smaller individual company projects. Here they systematically analyze their chosen company and create suggestions for further growth and development. At the end of each project, students are required to write a management report, which course professors comment and mark in detail from an academic and business point of view. These projects compose a larger overall project, which students complete over the course of their studies. This approach allows students to create immediately practical and tangible benefits for them personally and their employers. The overall idea is to apply key theoretical concepts in a practical working environment as a “consultant”. This is the essence of the project competence concept, that makes management education at Steinbeis University Berlin unique.