New Member
Otago Business School, University of Otago
With an international reputation for quality teaching, the Otago Business School (OBS) is acknowledged as a center of excellence and New Zealand’s leading business school for research. From undergraduate to PhD and DBA, we offer a range of academic programs and executive-level study options. Our career-focused programs equip our graduates with skills, experience and qualifications that are highly regarded both in New Zealand and internationally. Otago Business School students enter the work force with practical, career-ready experience, are often entrepreneurial in nature and have strong community orientations. Today, business operates more than ever in a global marketplace. At Otago, this is reflected in the international make-up of our staff and students, global study opportunities, including our DBA offered in Dunedin, Samoa and Shanghai, an increased focus on flexible, inter-disciplinary course structures, distance learning options, and our prestigious international accreditations and memberships.
While our primary focus is to help our students achieve academic excellence, we also encourage them to embrace the full Otago experience and take advantage of the many extra-curricular opportunities on offer outside the classroom. At Otago Business School, we believe in contributing to the long-term collective success of New Zealand in areas such as health, economic development and sustainability, and our forward-driven ethos recognizes the important impact that business will continue to have on our wider society. To learn more about Otago Business School, visit https://www.otago.ac.nz/.
Current and Pending Accreditation(s): AACSB, EQUIS
Dean: Professor Robin Gauld
GBSN Ambassadors: Associate Professor Leah Watkins, Associate Dean (International) and Dr. Muhammad Nadeem, Auxiliary Ambassador
Emerging Markets Institutions or Center:
Otago Global Health Institute: A cross-disciplinary group involving staff from across the University focused on global health and development, with a secretariat based in the Otago Business School.
Current Partnerships with GBSN Members:
- CUHK – Student Exchange agreement
- Copenhagen Business School – MOU and Student Exchange agreement
- ESADE – MOU and Student Exchange agreement
Network Engagement
Ways the institution will support the GBSN mission to improve access to quality management and entrepreneurship education for the developing world:
OBS has long standing strengths in sustainability, ethics and responsibility in business and strong links with practice; considerable strengths also in areas such as development economics, entrepreneurship, healthcare management and digital
Description of how the institution plans to contribute to the network platform in the first year:
We are working presently on a healthcare management initiative with a cluster of other GBSN members and the CEO.
“We are the first and, probably for the foreseeable future, only NZ business school in
this premier network focused on business education and research for the
developing world. It is an excellent fit for us with our focus on sustainable
development and the SDGs as well as on Maori and Pacific business and areas such
as health which are of particular interest to GBSN. A number of opportunities for
our staff to contribute to the work of GBSN will result will result from our
membership, which we are excited about and look forward to.”
Robin Gauld, Dean and Pro-Vice Chancellor
Description of ways the institution hopes to engage with fellow GBSN member institutions:
We are developing an internal interest group and will look to liaise with GBSN shortly around how we engage this group. Several are originally from developing world GBSN member countries, so have specific interests and skills they can share.
The biggest challenge facing management in your community and how the institution addresses this challenge:
Access to global networks, given the distance New Zealand is from the rest of the world. We tend to use virtual communications which has been an advantage since Covid and it has ‘reduced’ the distance between our part of the world and others.
Innovative and Impactful Program
The Master of Sustainable Business is an interdisciplinary program providing you with an advanced qualification in sustainability. Drawing upon emerging research in the field, this program will position graduates for a wide range of career options.
GBSN promotes the expertise and interests of our members by providing a platform to communicate news and open opportunities to global audiences and share how they are innovating in management education to the benefit of their colleagues around the world. The New Member Spotlight series serves as a way for new member schools to introduce themselves to the network.