Strategic Plan | EPOKA University

Strategic Plan

Introduction

1. Mission

The mission of the Department of Business Administration (BUS Department) is developing business capabilities through holistic teaching methods by cultivating a sense of intellectualism, togetherness, and inclusive leadership.

The final output is educating early professionals for co-creating value among market actors, in terms of employability, continuous improvement, and business system sustainability.

2. Vision

The Albanian Business Ecosystem is moving toward a new era, which will be accompanied by best business practices and success stories. The vision of BUS Department is to be the most valuable partner for transforming Albanian business cases into best business practices. Our ambition is to have behind all business case histories, our early professionals.

3. Motto

Today knowledge students, tomorrow knowledge workers.

4. Challenges

Due to rapid changes in technology and considering the economic environment nowadays it is clear that the BUS Department faces several challenges for the upcoming years. Main challenges include offering an environment in which students can use efficiently their analytic skills and take advantage of the technology development. For this purpose, qualified staff, a central library, student co-working areas, and smart classrooms are provided to achieve the challenging academic and professional objectives. Moreover, the BUS Department must ensure strong relationships and furthermore enhance its network with business professionals, academic institutions, research centers, and other stakeholders. Another challenge that the department will be facing is the diversification of research areas and the establishment of research units/clusters, by being able to ensure agreements and memorandum of cooperation with other institutions in order to carry out research according to business necessities. Finally, considering the growing trend of students in the department, especially the business informatics branch, the department should design the suitable scenarios for recruiting ulterior qualified academicians and providing the necessary learning infrastructure. Since businesses and markets are very dynamic, it is the responsibility of the BUS Department to be a vigilant observer of complex dynamic business systems in order to fit the curricula with the upcoming market changes.

5. Sources

There is a rising market demand for programs such as Business Informatics and International Marketing and Logistics Management. Since the first year these programs opened, respectively 2011 and 2012, the students were very promising and their employability rate has been high after graduating from BUS Department. Currently, the number of students in the BUS Department is 357 students. Considering the enrollment number of students in BUS Department, given also the trending rise, it is estimated that the number of students will increase furthermore. The number of students that will be studying in Business Administration by 2022 is estimated to be 600. Given these sources, the department must be prepared, as stated also in the “Challenges” paragraph, to afford the new wave.

6. Achievements

Since the opening of BUS Department, the network logic was established. Company visits, open forums, Dream Business Competition (this competition aims to select students with excellent results and talented, mainly in the field of business and entrepreneurship) and Brain Ring Competition (this competition aims to select students from high schools with excellent results and talented, mainly in the field of marketing and information technology) were among the milestones of BUS Department. In accordance with the principles of mobility of Bologna Process and Erasmus Program, the BUS Department has established several agreements to offer to the students and the academic and administrative staff the opportunity to learn in a multicultural perspective. Actually, the department has Erasmus Agreements with the University of Applied Sciences Mainz and the Middle East Technical University. Other agreements are also with top universities such as Sapienza University of Rome (Department of Management), University of Salerno, California University of Pennsylvania and others. For the executive education, the department offers a unique joint MBA with EADA Business School (top 24 European business schools and top 31 worldwide according to FT ranking). In terms of research, the BUS Department is the unique in the whole Western Balkans to have established a Research Unit/Cluster for Social Business research in collaboration with the Yunus Social Business Balkans. It is also among the first in the region to have launched a master course dedicated to Social Business and Sustainability.

In order to succeed in terms of teaching and learning the department must have highly qualified and experienced academic staffs that are looking forward to constantly develop their skills and stayed updated to the last social and technological developments (EPOKA University Framework Strategy 2018-2022, Areas A, F3, F7). Furthermore, there should be a systematic collection of graduation theses done at the department in order to create a collection of academic and practical materials that are case-based referring to the Albanian and the regional market (i.e. Western Balkans). Also, students and academic staff should have the possibility to access online data sources of the university from outside the campus. The number of prestigious online sources should be enhanced furthermore to make the department competitive also in the international market, and to provide possibilities for students to access the most updated sources during their study period (EPOKA University Framework Strategy 2018-2022, G.38). In addition, the BUS department must have annual subscriptions with newspapers and business journals, to give the possibility to faculty and students having access in cases, videos and other materials. Finally, the department must focus to provide short online courses on behalf of already established platforms (e.g. edX, Coursera, etc), or create its own digital platform.

Specific goals for theme 1:

Goal 1.1: Increase the efficiency of academic staff and the quality of their publications.

Goal 1.2: To have a better relationship among the triangle: academic staff-students-industry.

Goal 1.3: To build a “thesis directory data”.

Goal 1.4: To build a good infrastructure to make easier the access to sources for both students and lecturers.

Measures in order to reach mentioned goals under Theme 1:

Measure 1.1: Arranging flexible working hours for the academic staff and defining goals to be achieved. Design “bonus” payment systems according to the quality of publications and teaching.

Measure 1.2: To create an “industry network directory” (IND) of the department, and managed only by the department in full compliance with the regulations of Epoka University.

Measure 1.3: To provide a good thesis guideline, to design a new thesis evaluation system that would be more specific, to take advantage of technology and build an online “Thesis Source Directory” in order to create a handbook of Albanian business cases.

Measure 1.4: Technology infrastructure so that students can study at their places as they were at the university. Recording courses in order to overcome absences (should be done in a controlled manner).