Business School prof wins 7th award from Central Europe uni
Tue, 01 Dec 2015 12:25:00 GMT
Professor John Anchor receives award from the Czech Republic’s Tomas Bata University
THE University’s Professor of International Strategy has won his seventh award from a Central European university.
Professor John Anchor, who is head of the Department of Strategy, Marketing and Economics in the Business School, attended the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Faculty of Management and Economics at Tomas Bata University, Zlin, in the Czech Republic.
There he was presented with a special certificate in view of Huddersfield’s contribution to its “establishment and evolution”, particularly since 1998 when the institutions were partners in a TEMPUS curriculum development project. Prior to 1995, when Tomas Bata University was formed, Zlin was a branch campus of the Technical University of Brno.
The centrepiece of the celebrations was a two-hour event which highlighted the development of the Faculty since 1995. This included a number of speeches, an audio-visual presentation, which featured the Huddersfield link, as well as musical entertainment. The celebrations also themed the life and work of Tomas Bata, who was a leading Czech entrepreneur in the inter-war years.
Bata, who was born in Zlin, set up a series of facilities for the production and sale of footwear during the years between the two world wars. As a result, Zlin became a company town and Bata had a strong ethical dimension to his philosophy of work which included his duty to “look after” his workers, which included the provision of good quality housing. As a consequence, Zlin, a town of 75,000 residents, has many red brick, square, ‘Bata houses’ and is comparable to Saltaire in West Yorkshire, Port Sunlight on Merseyside and Bournville in Birmingham.
Bata dies in 1932 and when the communists came to power after the Second World War, his company was nationalised. The Czech Velvet Revolution of 1989 led to the restitution of property and there are now many Bata shops across the Czech Republic and a reduced scale manufacturing facility in Zlin. The Bata brand is well known and the Tomas Bata University’s Faculty of Management and Economics has been making extensive efforts to theme its activities with the Bata brand.
Professor Anchor was the only international partner to be invited and the event was held in front of an audience of 500. “The Dean kindly presented me with a certificate in recognition of my personal contribution to the Faculty’s development,” said Professor Anchor. “It was pleasing to be able to meet up with a number of Czech friends and acquaintances from other Czech universities, including one Rector who I had not seen for some time.”
He added that the Faculty of Management and Economics at Tomas Bata University has a strong international focus and offers a number of modules in English. “In many ways, its development parallels that of the Huddersfield Business School during the last 20 years. In particular, the growing emphasis on internationalisation in all its many forms,” he added.
This is the second award “medal” which Professor Anchor has received from Tomas Bata University and the seventh in total from our Central European partners. He is also a visiting professor at two other Czech universities. These activities reflect his profile as Director of the Emerging Markets Research Group within the Business School, where he has had a particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe.
