Summit Points to Opportunities in Asia

By SHEERAN, Garry

UNIVERSITY BUSINESS schools will get a rev-up from an Asian business summit being attended by more than 500 business executives and Prime Minister Helen Clark in Auckland tomorrow and Tuesday.

So too will schools which, under new curriculum guidelines, are required to place more emphasis on language teaching.

The Action Asia Business Summit is the brainchild of the Asia NZ Foundation, which has held similar gatherings focusing on Australia, the United States and Britain in recent years.

Recommendations from two working groups to this week’s summit, in part focusing on education as a key to better business in Asia, follow a 2005 foundation survey of the country’s university business schools.

Foundation education director Pamela Barton said: “We found very little emphasis in the business schools on Asia and what there was resulted from the influence of Chinese students over the past five years.”

Barton said too few Kiwi young people were entering business with a proper understanding of Asian cultural issues, with a good knowledge of Asian economies or any sort of Asian language skills.

While some 20,000 school children were learning Japanese, there was a need for others to learn Chinese (Mandarin) and Korean.

Among the recommendations are calls to encourage business schools to do more to educate and encourage future business leaders on doing more business in Asia.

They also want Kiwi businesses to scour tertiary institutions for Asian post-graduate students and offer them internships.

Asia NZ Foundation chairman Philip Burdon said the conference was as much about helping participants to a better cultural appreciation of Asia as it was about helping businesses better align themselves to Asian business opportunities.

–Garry Sheeran

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