Europe Club
Study Trip to Europe
The Europe Club together with the Manufacturing Club are organizing a study trip to Europe during spring break 1997. The information on these pages will be continiously updated while the details of this pan-european industry tour become finalized.
If you have any comments or input, feel free to send an e-mail to any of the organizers of this trip.
An understanding of the issues facing today's major industrial firms is critical to business leaders across the globe. Those firms that can most successfully adopt the best manufacturing practices will be able to create competitive advantages for themselves. Similarly, those firms which can best discipline themselves to advantage their political and non-market environments will achieve similar competitive success. Understanding the best practices in each of these arenas is not an easy task, however. World-class practices have been and are being developed by firms across the globe, but perhaps nowhere more than in Eastern and Western Europe. Solid conceptual knowledge of how these firms manage their manufacturing facilities to achieve world-class production excellence within the constraints imposed by their national political environments, labor unions, and the evolving European Union constitutes key learning for students of general management interested in building their own world-class organizations.
Unlike past manufacturing study trips, the 1997 Pan-European Industrial Survey will capitalize upon the combined efforts of the Manufacturing Club and the Europe Club to yield a multidisciplinary investigation of manufacturing issues as well as the broader socio-economic context of European industry. During the 1996-97 academic year, the Manufacturing Club would like to provide its members and the greater GSB and Stanford communities with unique opportunities to learn about and get hands-on experience with the issues facing manufacturing organizations today. The mission of the Europe Club is to promote awareness of European interests and issues within the GSB community. We view this trip as a unique opportunity to integrate the objectives of both Clubs. Specifically, our joint objectives are to:
Provide the GSB community with first-hand experiences in world-class manufacturing organizations, as well as in smaller, developing manufacturers.
We will accomplish these objectives by planning an integrated Education and Travel Program which would be accessible to students of the GSB and the School of Engineering. For the Travel Program, we propose a student-organized and led trip. We have chosen an itinerary that will include stops in Western and Eastern Europe. This area was chosen because of the opportunity to examine varying levels of technological expertise, as well as look at significant non-market influences so prevalent in European industry. The trip will allow us to compare organizations in the context of different cultures and at different stages of development and competitiveness.
The Education Program will help to prepare the Study Trip participants for their travels, and further help to educate and raise awareness of European industry in the GSB and greater Stanford community. The education program will consist of a pre-trip education and awareness program, and a post-trip communication program.
The Education Program will consist of both a pre-trip education and awareness program and a post-trip communication program. The primary objective of the pre-trip program is to educate the prospective travellers, as well as the rest of the GSB community, in order to provide a context for understanding the managerial and political issues facing European manufacturing firms.
The program that follows the trip will have the objective of sharing the benefits of the study trip with the GSB and greater Stanford community. We plan to gather information both before and during the trip, and to recod that information in a form from which future members of the GSB and greater Stanford communities will be able to benefit.
We expect to select 35 students to participate in the Study Trip. Past manufacturing trips were comprised of approximately 70% business students and 30% engineering students. There is a distinct possibility that the number of interested students will exceed the available slots. If this is the case, we will select participants prior to the pre-trip education phase, based on the following criteria:
Tarquin would have preferred to be looking forward to conflict-ridden Cambodia, dysentry in India, or observing religious warfare in Israel. Unfortunately, these trips were so oversubscribed that he hadn't stood a chance. So Europe it was. Boring, socialist, backward, old-fashioned Europe. But at least it was another continent. And the more Tarquin heard about the trip, the happier he felt parting with $2000...
The official schedule was Brussels - Munich - Prague. Prague was supposed to be very pretty and one of the most beautifully preserved old cities in Europe. Tarquin guessed the commies had to be thanked for something. Anywhere else, the old buildings would have been torn down by now to make way for drive-thru Burger King's and Wal-Mart stores. Prague also had a beautiful cathedral, and the trip would coincide with Easter festivities. That would make a refreshing change from watching gospel singers on cable raising money to pay for their new swimming pool and hot-tub.
Brussels, however, was supposed to be a bit of a hole. Home of the European Commission and of the little boy relieving himself in public. Tarquin wasn't really all that interested in industrial policy, but he was keen to hear about the latest efforts to curb Mad Cow Disease. The UK and France were still arguing over who was responsible for ruining the world's faith in French cuisine. The UK said it served France right for burning all those British sheep exports a few years back. France blamed left-wing vegetarian activists in London for what it saw as a plot to replace the Canard à l'Orange with Spicy Tofu Bake. The deadlock had lasted for over 6 months and was seriously threatening convergence of economic policies and implementation of a common European currency.
How could anyone even think of trying to harmonize a region as diverse as Europe, wondered Tarquin, as he read through the material for that week's pre-trip education program. It was about the Euro-condom, which had to be 41/2 inches wide and 11 inches long, as specified by the Commission. Big Brother was well and truly alive. Maybe Brussels wouldn't be quite as big a drag after all, Tarquin thought.
He was disappointed, however, that there were no plans in the schedule to go to Amsterdam. The organizers had nevertheless assured him that he would have time to go on the Sunday, instead of going to Antwerp, or Paris, or some other tourist trap. The trip would be mostly work, work, work, but there was to be a little time set aside for sight-seeing. Tarquin had heard a lot about Amsterdam. He couldn't believe there was a museum of sex there, and had been advised that the phrase window-shopping would take on a whole new meaning. He could also get stoned legally there for the first time.
A brewery trip was planned and evenings would be taken up with compulsory nightclubbing. There would be real French cuisine, German Sauerkraut and Czech sausage. No burritos, however. Dean Spence had also tried to get the City of Munich to bring its beer festival forward by 6 months. Sadly, his attempts had been unsuccessful. But never mind, Tarquin thought. He could always be forced to share a room with someone he fancied.
The extraordinary diversity of cultures and work practices was something Tarquin had ignored before he had become interested in the trip. He still didn't have a clue as to how all these countries, with their different languages, traditions and religions managed to get on with one another. But he was increasingly keen to learn.
" Tarquin, what does Black-Scholes tell us about this option price?" - A voice interrupted his daydreaming, and he looked up at his Finance Professor. He stared at her blankly. She stared coldly back, walked slowly over to her desk and wrote his name on sheet of paper. Tarquin went bright red, but the thought that Black-Scholes wasn't going to solve ethnic tensions in former Yugoslavia, Belgium, Northern Ireland or Spain comforted him, and suddenly made him feel vastly superior to everyone else in the room. He got up, exited the class, and went to get a bottle of beer from the LPF that was being set up. He knew he was going to enjoy the European Study Trip.
See The Reporter for Tarquin's latest adventures by Jim Paton.